Ranked Balance

I felt people didn't want to read the first half, so i flipped them around. This is my idea. The reason the idea came up is below. This idea is an attempt to balance ranked so that players are benefitted for more than just winning, which can cause huge problems and get people stuck in low tiers. It will also encourage team cohesion later on.

My first idea, which is simpler, would be to find a way to add individual work as well as teamwork into the ranking. While its obvious that just making KDR a personal success factor would have its own difficulties and exploitations, finding a way to help judge players on both factors, individual and teamwork, would be a huge improvement. It would still be primarily dependent of victory, but the better one does at the, game the less impact the loss would have on their LP. For example, Jinx does well, wins lane and gets a large amount of CS, but top lane Darius also gets very fed and shuts her down, resulting in a loss. While she lost and will lose LP, instead of losing 18 like her buddy Irelia who lost top, she only loses 7 or 8 LP, because she was still a critical part of the team. The issues with this would be the difficulty in implementing this fairly based on position, after all, KDR isn’t everything (supports), and wining isn’t necessarily determined by KDR (it’s objectives), or even CS. It’s a work in progress, but nothing is perfect.

The other idea I had, a preferred idea, would deal more with the issue of learning to play that I mentioned earlier. I mentioned that especially for bronze and even low silver players the issue with a team-based ranking system is the inability to fully comprehend what that actually means. If Riot is really focused on the emphasis in team-play, which is understandable, then we should find a way to help push that a little harder and start to show bronze and silver players exactly what that means. To do this, I would suggest implementing a similar system that I just suggested, while using some of your design values at the same time. Ranked is used to test people’s metal, figure out where they belong and who they typically fight against in order to keep fights fair. That being the case, it would be appropriate to set certain goals and skillsets within each ranked tier (bronze, silver, gold) to be a final test to see if the skills and goals are met before they move on.

For example, make it so that in bronze, while victory is still the most important factor, players are also judged on their ability to take objectives (dragon, Baron, towers). Objectives are the key to winning, and the most important factor of working in a team. In this way, while victory still determines positive or negative LP gain/loss, teams would be more inclined to work as such and take objectives to better their score. An example instance would be; “Draven’s team loses the fight, but Draven realizes that towers are the key to victory. Draven takes out the three tier one towers and his team follows suit, taking 2 of the tier two towers. They also grab two of the five dragons. While they still lose, they only lose 10 LP instead of 15 for working as team to take objectives.” Even if a player (cough-Tryndamere-cough) was to individually take many objectives, if Riot lets bronze players know that this is an important part of their ranked experience and see that Tryndamere working hard to take objectives, they will learn that objectives are as critical as KDA and victory.

Once players make it out of bronze, which would show at least veteran knowledge, they move to silver where CS becomes critical, as well as assists. By making these the critical parts players will learn the importance of laning and team-fights. Victory is still the key factor (to prevent that bot-lane Vayne from farming all game for 400 CS to boost her LP), but if CS and Assists are taken into account, people will be focused on farming and helping in team fights as critical to their success (note that this is more individual based skill being integrated into team co-operation). At this point the winners also can benefit from this, for example “Olaf won lane and farmed well, reaching 120 farm. He farmed decently the rest of the game but he also joined many team-fights, ending 6/4/12. His team won, earning them 20 LP, but because he farmed well (230 farm, not bad for silver) and assisted his team in team-fights (He assisted 12 of 30), he gained an additional 4 LP (24 LP)” Prioritizing assists lest supports also benefit despite not CS-ing very much, and we could also let smite affect the CS benefit (90 CS for jungler is pretty good, even though the ADC might have 160 at the same time). It will also encourage the idea, ‘I don’t need to secure the kill, we need to secure the kill’ which will prevent kill-taking frustration, or the issues with benefitting players based on KDA.

In gold the focus would be a mix, prioritizing both assists and objectives (combining silver and bronze). In gold, the importance of teamwork will be brought together giving benefit to teams who work well in team fights as well as objective taking. Whether they win or lose, if both teams can show competence in their ability to work as such, they will be benefitted for understanding.

The primary purpose of these modifications I’m suggesting is to better judge players based on their knowledge rather than luck (did I get placed with a troll?) or poor team co-operation (that guy was only searching or pentakills!) By giving the first 3 ranks (bronze, silver, gold) a clear objective that benefit’s their rank, it will encourage learning these skills in order to progress. It also means that if these skills aren’t known, it will be much harder for them to progress along the ladder, better sorting people into ‘who can’ and ‘who can’t’. Another benefit is it will make bronze and even silver feel more like ‘progress stages’ rather than ‘I’m bad a league stages’; rather than feeling like you are at the bottom of the tree, one feels more like they just have some stuff they need to work on, and on top of that they know specifically what it is they need to work on.

By implementing these changes, I feel that the ranked system will feel more dynamic and players will start to feel more like they are where they belong and even know why. Obviously I’m no expert at league; with a year and a half under my belt, I’m no greenie but I’m not a veteran either. I’m also not a programming expert, so the steps needed to make changes on this are pretty unknown to me, other than the knowledge that the changes I’m suggesting are by no means simple, programming or otherwise.

Dear Beloved Rito,

I’m writing this letter in regards to ranked gameplay. Before I continue I would like to say that League of Legends is by far my favorite game of all time, and I will probably play league for as long as the game continues to grow and add champions. That is part of why I am writing this letter, because I want to see the game grow as it always has.

My reason for writing this letter has come about after finishing my promotional series for the new ranked season. I’m aware that it is likely you receive many complaints regarding placement during the ranked season, but I would like you to hear me out to the end. After playing all ten and going 7/3, I was placed back into the same rank that I ended last season; bronze III. This alone is not anything to get upset about, especially since I had friends drop down to even lower stages of bronze from higher. The frustration comes from other friends being more successful for less, and the general setup of ranked.

In terms of my friends, I had one friend go the same score as myself (7/3) and end up in silver IV. My brother went 6/4, and made it to silver V. Both of them were unranked from last season, which means this was the first time either had ranked themselves. Yet both of them managed to surpass myself, who has more experience by far, and (this may sound a little cocky) who is a better player than them both (if you were to ask either of them they would agree and were both baffled by my bronze III ranking). In fact my brother admitted that of his 10 games, he only went positive in 2 of them and was only support for one. He told me directly that he was carried into his rank; he was lucky. I on the other hand went positive in 9 of my 10 games (never supported, technically, there was an issue in one of them that involved a Quinn supp), was the primary taker of objectives, tended to have the best farm and was the carry in half of them (KDA isn’t everything, I know). Yet we were fighting the ‘same level people’ by ranked standards.

I am fully aware that it is not possible for ranked to compensate for everything, there is no way to monitor a person 100% to find out exactly where they belong, short of assigning a riot staff to every player, which is ridiculous. However my issue with ranked has always been that the player’s personal skill has always been ignored. I saw an article several months back, one of the DEV design blogs, explaining the reasoning behind ranked. It said that ranked was fully dependent on team co-operation for victory, as it is a team game. I cannot deny that league is a team game. Watching the LCS and World Championships, there is no doubt the essence of league is all about team effort and co-operation. However I can think of several issues with this interpretation into our ranked queues.

The primary issue with this is that the ranked we play is called ‘solo queue’ (sometimes duo queue). The ranked games we play, and the ranks we get as individuals, are based on team effort. To me, this is a problem. In ranked teams and the LCS, this form of judgment makes sense, these teams have been built together; there is likely communication, and even bonds of friendship between the players. But when I click ‘ranked solo queue’, I am being placed with four strangers, likely without communication, no knowledge of their play style, and only 90 seconds at most (banning sequence) to figure out any strategy whatsoever. Is it impossible to work as a team? Absolutely not. I’ve had great team experiences, and terrible ones. The issue boils down to when the game is said and done, my personal rank has now been judged by a team effort, which has four other bodies I cannot control.

How can my own skill be based upon four other people? When could that ever been seen as fair judgment? Especially when you are at a low ranking such as myself when team cohesion is even harder and newer of a concept. If the answer is to teach them teamwork, it isn’t working, because they have no model. How can these bronze level and even silver level players learn team cohesion with no one to emulate it, nor an understanding of why it is important, especially when it’s called ‘solo queue’? On top of that, if the reason they are bronze or low silver is because their individual gameplay is lacking, how can they learn how to work as a team when they can’t land skill-shots or know positioning?

The other major issue I find with this argument for ranked is that teamwork does not work if individual skill isn’t there in the first place. If a player can’t even figure out how to win their lane, CS or push turrets, how can they be expected to react positively when a team fight occurs, or a Baron steal begins (note; losing lane does not necessarily mean they are bad, the other player could just be better. But in bronze, all too often I see incompetence being a large factor in lane loss/victory)? If it is truly a team oriented ranking system, why is it that my single platinum, several gold, and several silver friends have told me that the only way to get out of bronze is to ‘carry yourself’, which implies that I individually have to force my way out by being dramatically better than the other team and winning by my own skill alone?

While the point of this letter is to vent a little bit of frustration, It would be unfair for me to get angry and say nothing else. After all, league is a game dedicated to growing and changing in the name of fairness and fun (at least I hope so!). Based upon my frustrations with ranked gameplay, I have a few ideas of potential additions to make ranked a competitive yet more equal area of gameplay.

My first idea, which is simpler, would be to find a way to add individual work as well as teamwork into the ranking. While its obvious that just making KDR a personal success factor would have its own difficulties and exploitations, finding a way to help judge players on both factors, individual and teamwork, would be a huge improvement. It would still be primarily dependent of victory, but the better one does at the, game the less impact the loss would have on their LP. For example, Jinx does well, wins lane and gets a large amount of CS, but top lane Darius also gets very fed and shuts her down, resulting in a loss. While she lost and will lose LP, instead of losing 18 like her buddy Irelia who lost top, she only loses 7 or 8 LP, because she was still a critical part of the team. The issues with this would be the difficulty in implementing this fairly based on position, after all, KDR isn’t everything (supports), and wining isn’t necessarily determined by KDR (it’s objectives), or even CS. It’s a work in progress, but nothing is perfect.

The other idea I had, a preferred idea, would deal more with the issue of learning to play that I mentioned earlier. I mentioned that especially for bronze and even low silver players the issue with a team-based ranking system is the inability to fully comprehend what that actually means. If Riot is really focused on the emphasis in team-play, which is understandable, then we should find a way to help push that a little harder and start to show bronze and silver players exactly what that means. To do this, I would suggest implementing a similar system that I just suggested, while using some of your design values at the same time. Ranked is used to test people’s metal, figure out where they belong and who they typically fight against in order to keep fights fair. That being the case, it would be appropriate to set certain goals and skillsets within each ranked tier (bronze, silver, gold) to be a final test to see if the skills and goals are met before they move on.

For example, make it so that in bronze, while victory is still the most important factor, players are also judged on their ability to take objectives (dragon, Baron, towers). Objectives are the key to winning, and the most important factor of working in a team. In this way, while victory still determines positive or negative LP gain/loss, teams would be more inclined to work as such and take objectives to better their score. An example instance would be; “Draven’s team loses the fight, but Draven realizes that towers are the key to victory. Draven takes out the three tier one towers and his team follows suit, taking 2 of the tier two towers. They also grab two of the five dragons. While they still lose, they only lose 10 LP instead of 15 for working as team to take objectives.” Even if a player (cough-Tryndamere-cough) was to individually take many objectives, if Riot lets bronze players know that this is an important part of their ranked experience and see that Tryndamere working hard to take objectives, they will learn that objectives are as critical as KDA and victory.

Once players make it out of bronze, which would show at least veteran knowledge, they move to silver where CS becomes critical, as well as assists. By making these the critical parts players will learn the importance of laning and team-fights. Victory is still the key factor (to prevent that bot-lane Vayne from farming all game for 400 CS to boost her LP), but if CS and Assists are taken into account, people will be focused on farming and helping in team fights as critical to their success (note that this is more individual based skill being integrated into team co-operation). At this point the winners also can benefit from this, for example “Olaf won lane and farmed well, reaching 120 farm. He farmed decently the rest of the game but he also joined many team-fights, ending 6/4/12. His team won, earning them 20 LP, but because he farmed well (230 farm, not bad for silver) and assisted his team in team-fights (He assisted 12 of 30), he gained an additional 4 LP (24 LP)” Prioritizing assists lest supports also benefit despite not CS-ing very much, and we could also let smite affect the CS benefit (90 CS for jungler is pretty good, even though the ADC might have 160 at the same time). It will also encourage the idea, ‘I don’t need to secure the kill, we need to secure the kill’ which will prevent kill-taking frustration, or the issues with benefitting players based on KDA.

In gold the focus would be a mix, prioritizing both assists and objectives (combining silver and bronze). In gold, the importance of teamwork will be brought together giving benefit to teams who work well in team fights as well as objective taking. Whether they win or lose, if both teams can show competence in their ability to work as such, they will be benefitted for understanding.

*The primary purpose of these modifications I’m suggesting is to better judge players based on their knowledge rather than luck (did I get placed with a troll?) or poor team co-operation (that guy was only searching or pentakills!) By giving the first 3 ranks (bronze, silver, gold) a clear objective that benefit’s their rank, it will encourage learning these skills in order to progress. It also means that if these skills aren’t known, it will be much harder for them to progress along the ladder, better sorting people into ‘who can’ and ‘who can’t’. Another benefit is it will make bronze and even silver feel more like ‘progress stages’ rather than ‘I’m bad a league stages’; rather than feeling like you are at the bottom of the tree, one feels more like they just have some stuff they need to work on, and on top of that they know specifically what it is they need to work on. *

By implementing these changes, I feel that the ranked system will feel more dynamic and players will start to feel more like they are where they belong and even know why. Obviously I’m no expert at league; with a year and a half under my belt, I’m no greenie but I’m not a veteran either. I’m also not a programming expert, so the steps needed to make changes on this are pretty unknown to me, other than the knowledge that the changes I’m suggesting are by no means simple, programming or otherwise.

I hope that you will even get to read this email Riot staff, and if you do and decide you don’t like it, it would be cool to know what is wrong with it. I guess for now I’ll take Bronze III with a grain of salt and try to trudge my way at least into silver. But while that’s happening, I hope that my message will get through to you and ranked can move in a much fairer direction.