Riot Revisiting Ranked
You guys mentioned your gameplay team is playing around with a possibly new ranking system. Although I don't terribly think a new ranking system is needed, I will humor a possibility that might make things work.
You had mentioned 5 separate ranks for each role. I would reduce this to 2 separate ranks, "Main role(s)" and "Off role(s)."
For example I always select Top / Mid. Those are two lanes I can play pretty effectively. If I get autofilled, that counts toward my off role rank.
Main role ranked wins or losses affect your main ranked by 100% and offrole rank by 0% Off role ranked wins or losses affect your main rank by 50% and offrole rank by 100%
For this to be implemented I think you'd have to start the season as usual with provisionals as usual. If you happen to get autofilled, then it plays as it would all the previous years. But after you get your ranked placement, the above would start.
But the difference being that your autofill placement would be 30% lower than your main role rank. I figure this because I'm currently roughly Gold 2 skill level on my main toplane, but as support I'm maybe Silver 3.
The only problem would be balancing that around how many times you get autofilled; since it's very random. So, for instance, I rank up to Plat V and my mechanics improve. If I get autofilled again, I'm playing against Silvers in my offrole rank whilst ranking up in Plat by a margin of 50% of my MMR. But it wouldn't happen that often so is it an issue? It might end up being unfair to lower ranks or maybe not. So maybe mainrole ranking affects offrole rank by 10% or something. Cause legit 99% of the time I don't get autofilled in Gold leagues. I legit always get top and I'm very happy about that.
Personally, as I mentioned, I don't think ranked needs a change. And if you do change it, you're opening up a nasty can of worms with many difficult issues to solve. Doesn't mean it's not solvable, though.
My proposed solution as noted above is proposed in order to solve the issues of people not caring about the other 4 ranks (referring to the 5 separate ranks system). They wouldn't want to play the offrole games cause they wouldn't progress the main role, and they wouldn't play hard and would just want to FF ASAP. But also, the 3 game LP boost for playing the offroles isn't a large enough reward to care. Norms is what playing offroles is for. I do understand the previously suggested ranked system is to also try and prevent the smurfing issue, but I feel like that will only be solved by a Social Security # confirmation..... which is obviously not something any of us would feel comfortable with.