Why do Platnium players go all the way down to Silver after a reset? It doesn't really seem like a good idea to make the people (yes myself included) have to get stomped by people much better than them, when we all know that these players don't belong in Silver. What is the bennifit to anyone, including Riot of this? Because right now it makes me not want to play your game until these players have a chance to climb the ladder.
Because many of them don't actually belong in plat.
They only end up in silver if their MMR is horrible or if they're doing with very low MMR players during placements.
Proof? I went 3-7 in placements and still started in gold while still getting matched against plats/diamonds. All of the players I get matched with have similar experiences.
Because the highest you can get placed after the reset is plat 1. This means all the diamond, masters and challenger players get placed in plat. This forces plat players into gold and silver, gold players into silver and bronze, silver players into bronze, and bronze players into bronze 5. If you didn't see this drop after the ranked reset then you should consider yourself very, very lucky. Most people drop a full division (i.e. gold 5 to silver 5) but some people drop even more if they do poorly on their placements. This is how the beginning of the season always is. Its kind of like black Friday. Matchmaking is a bit of a cluster but you can get some massive LP for wins and you usually don't lose much for loses. I'm currently getting 27 LP for a win and only losing 14 LP with a loss which is allowing me to climb back up to my end of season rating very quickly. If you don't think that you can excel in that kind of madness though then you're right, you should just sit out for the first couple months until things stabilize.
I ended Plat 2 last season. Went 4-6 in my provisionals and got placed in Gold 5. I ended up winning so much I skipped tiers all the way to Plat 3. Point is that yeah its bullshit. I don't see why I have to force my way back to a rank I got to by beating lower skilled players along the way.
Well the silver players went down to bronze unless they had really good mmr's, and the plats mostly went down to gold unless they had bad mmrs. Things are a little janky after the reset every year, it's just a bit delicate trying to ride your like-skilled people up through MMR at the same pace. Wait too long, and you'll be stuck with inferior teammates who are frustrating to play with, but climb too fast and you'll be up against particularly skilled people beyond your skill level and that could be frustrating too.
That said, you shouldn't fear high elo people as much as most people do. They're a good learning opportunity, and besides that they're not that much better than you in absolute terms. I recently had the experience of playing against not one but two challenger players and was pretty intimidated at first, but once the game got going they turned out not to be unstoppable gods (albeit pretty darn good), and it actually ended in victory. Some day you presumably want to be better, so you need to eventually get over your fear of higher elo players and eventually just view them as regular other players.
