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Demoted yet again for a 4v5 in ranked

iainB85··35 votes·1,942 views

Riot, we are now on SEASON 5 of ranked play, and people still lose elo when it is a strait up 4v5 (i.e. your 5th teammate NEVER even connects to the game).

I understand that giving loss forgiven for people disconnecting later in the game presents a whole slew of abuse cases, but when one person never connects... how hard is it to make them lose elo, give the other 4 people a loss forgiven, and the enemy team half points (or whatever you normally get for winning a loss forgiven game -- I know it's reduced).

Oh yea, while you are at it -- if said person doesn't connect within the first 10 minutes of the game, why not let people surrender at that point rather than waiting for the 20 minute mark?

To prevent the only abuse case I can think of (if someone enjoyed 4v5's for whatever reason and used the duo queue system to get them at low risk), duo queuers would be warned that they are responsible for whomever they queue up with -- and will be subject to the same leave/loss penalties as their duo queue partner.

Yea, yea, we've all won 4v5 before -- but those games are far and few between, and mean the enemy team obviously screwed up royally. The majority of 4v5's will go just as you expect, and implementing a system similar to the one described above would do far more good than harm.

Is there some obvious abuse case that I am missing here? Rito plz.

40 Comments

siilentdeath4 votes

i quit this season for this reason. had 3 series in 4 days to get into bronze 4. i lost 4 games in my series total in 4 v 5 fashion. had 4 losses on my placement matches due to 4 v 5 games. riot needs to fix with stiff punishment on those who afk in ranked. heres my idea of the stages of punishment. 1st afk = a loss of 30 lp + a warning and u only get 1 warning. if you go negative lp u stay negative as its a punishment. u must win to get into the not -numbers. 2nd afk = a loss of 50 lp + a 24 hour ban from ranked play only. same negative lp rules apply. 3rd afk = a loss of 70 lp + a 72 hour ban from ranked, same negative point penalties apply 4th afk = a loss of 100 lp + a week long ban from ranked. same negative point penalty rule here. the slaps on the wrist do nothing. the punishment needs teeth. as suggested by other posts in regards to duo Qs. the partner also recieves the penalty. heres a 2nd list of situations not play ranked in. just play normals if anything on this applies to you.

  1. your connection is just bad at that moment.
  2. every one on your house is using the internet so do not knowingly play if your gonna lag.
  3. if its a terrible whether day and your internet has already cut out before.
  4. close to bed time {if you are a minor and have school + a bed time}.
  5. lastly if you play this game on a dinosaur of a pc that will blue screen.
Marinaras Trench2 votes

There is no way you get that many afks. I get like 1/25 games in bronze elo

iainB851 votes

{quoted}

There is no way you get that many afks. I get like 1/25 games in bronze elo

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. I'm sure sometimes I get zero AFK's in 50 games. I'm also 100% sure that I've gotten 3 AFK's within 10 games as well. I've made no claim that it's the norm to get AFK's, but it's statistically significant enough to be a frustration for the majority of players who play this game, so it's something Riot should think about FINALLY addressing.

siilentdeath1 votes

{quoted}

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. I'm sure sometimes I get zero AFK's in 50 games. I'm also 100% sure that I've gotten 3 AFK's within 10 games as well. I've made no claim that it's the norm to get AFK's, but it's statistically significant enough to be a frustration for the majority of players who play this game, so it's something Riot should think about FINALLY addressing.

i had and afk in 1 out of 4 games before i quit for the season and i play at least 50 games. whether it be people going afk for 5 minutes or the whole game it can hurt your chances of winning. imnot even joking about the 25% number and i wish i was.

High53 votes

I upped the vote because I agree that it's a big problem, especially at lower levels. However, I don't know what the solution is. I have a stable, low latency connectuon, but not everyone does.

Two things I can't stand ... afk and feeding (0/10 after 10-15 mins). Afk would be better than 0-10 and afk is one of the worst things you can do.

iainB853 votes

{quoted}

I upped the vote because I agree that it's a big problem, especially at lower levels. However, I don't know what the solution is. I have a stable, low latency connectuon, but not everyone does.

Two things I can't stand ... afk and feeding (0/10 after 10-15 mins). Afk would be better than 0-10 and afk is one of the worst things you can do.

Like I said though, this isn't punishing the person who disconnected any more than they already are. They still lose ELO when they never connect and their team loses 4v5. This is about not punishing the other 4 people for this person's connection as well.

Llanite2 votes

Inc sympathetic trolls "people can't control life".

iainB855 votes

{quoted}

Inc sympathetic trolls "people can't control life".

Not even a valid counter point though, because in the current system -- the guy who never connects and causes his team a 4v5 loses full elo anyways. This system would simply alleviate the elo loss for the other members of the team.

Llanite4 votes

{quoted}

Not even a valid counter point though, because in the current system -- the guy who never connects and causes his team a 4v5 loses full elo anyways. This system would simply alleviate the elo loss for the other members of the team.

Not as simple.

MMR (hence, LP) gain and loss need to be balance to prevent inflation. i.e. if the winning team gain LP each person, the other team has to lose 75 LP so no LP is 'created' out of thin air. So if you want the other 4 to walk free, the AFK has to lose x5 as much.

Nucleophilic atk2 votes

Perfectly acceptable.

iainB853 votes

{quoted}

Not as simple.

MMR (hence, LP) gain and loss need to be balance to prevent inflation. i.e. if the winning team gain LP each person, the other team has to lose 75 LP so no LP is 'created' out of thin air. So if you want the other 4 to walk free, the AFK has to lose x5 as much.

They already have a loss prevention system in place for when they are experiencing technical issues. They can slightly modify that to have elo loss for the one person who disconnects, and keep the decreased elo for the winning team of 5.

Sammystorm4 votes

Server errors are rare and are truly random. Meaning that it is just as likely for any one person to get loss prevention for a server error. It is not even close to equally likely for people to get the same amount of afk's. Simple by playing more you increase your chance of getting someone leaving a game which in turn gives you a greater chance of not losing lp for a game or artificially not losing points. So a person who plays more is likely to have more occurrences where they don't lose points so 2 people with the same w/l ratio the person that plays more is more likely to be higher on the ladder under your idea.

iainB851 votes

{quoted}

Server errors are rare and are truly random. Meaning that it is just as likely for any one person to get loss prevention for a server error. It is not even close to equally likely for people to get the same amount of afk's. Simple by playing more you increase your chance of getting someone leaving a game which in turn gives you a greater chance of not losing lp for a game or artificially not losing points. So a person who plays more is likely to have more occurrences where they don't lose points so 2 people with the same w/l ratio the person that plays more is more likely to be higher on the ladder under your idea.

You are right on the fact that AFK's happen more often than server problems. However, factor in that when there is a server issue, Riot has to hit a GLOBAL button that gives EVERYONE currently playing a "loss forgiven" status and suddenly you must start to question that more loss forgivens might still be given for server issues than for people who never connect, as each time this happens only 10 people are affected versus hundreds of thousands (or even more, as Riot boasted in 2014 that they get 27 million daily players -- that is split up between the day, different servers, and different game modes, but that is still a HUGE pool of people).

The rest of your points are just as moot, because someone who plays more games is also more likely to encounter more server problems as well. Also, 4v5's are just as random as server problems in the fact that they are outside the players control and everyone who plays equal amount of games has an equal chance of it happening to them (unless you want to compare Diamond vs Bronze elos or something like that -- but I don't think that's relevant to the discussion, as the Diamond players had to climb the same ladder and deal with the same amount of AFK's as everyone else to get there).

There are also other things Riot could do to prevent inflation of elo, such as halving the winning teams points (which already happens), and/or doubling the disconnecting persons loss of elo. I just don't buy the excuse of "elo inflation" as a valid reason a system like this couldn't exists. There are ways to balance that out.

Sammystorm1 votes

The amount of people that are given a loss prevention for a server going down is irrelevant because the occurrence is truly random. Also the frequency of a server going down is so rare that the lp gain would be negligible between two players. Meaning that you only get a couple of loss prevention's from servers going down in a year or the equivalent of 20-30 lp. Not a huge deal. With afks if you play a lot you could easily get 10-20 afk's in a year. That is substantially more and could artificially raise you 1-2 whole divisions higher then you actually were. Afk's are not entirely out of the player's control hence why they are not random. Each person has to deal with different amounts of afk's which can also correlate to how many you get. Simple put: being an ass increases your chance of having an afk. Halving the winning teams gain doesn't stop inflation it just marginalizes it and it still could be a substantial number if you got it off afk's. Doubling the loss of a disconnecting player is also a terrible idea. It makes that individual's rating substantially lower then it actually is. You need to remember the point of the elo system. It is to match you at your true rating so arbitrarily subtracting or adding points just destabilizes your rating and makes the system have to work harder to put you back to the place you belong. So it could take a person a substantially longer amount of time to get to their true rating then it does now.

Basically you feel it is unfair and it isn't. Even if you are correct that afk's happen equally to everyone playing then their is no reason to implement your system. If afk's happen to everyone at an equal rate then everyone will have more or less the same amount of free points or lost points. Meaning the system already balances it self out so what would be the point of adding your system?

Let me clarify my point. Adding points disrupts the self correcting nature of the elo system making it so that the system takes longer to balance out resulting in a short term boost or drop based on what happened.

iainB851 votes

{quoted}

The amount of people that are given a loss prevention for a server going down is irrelevant because the occurrence is truly random. Also the frequency of a server going down is so rare that the lp gain would be negligible between two players. Meaning that you only get a couple of loss prevention's from servers going down in a year or the equivalent of 20-30 lp. Not a huge deal. With afks if you play a lot you could easily get 10-20 afk's in a year. That is substantially more and could artificially raise you 1-2 whole divisions higher then you actually were. Afk's are not entirely out of the player's control hence why they are not random. Each person has to deal with different amounts of afk's which can also correlate to how many you get. Simple put: being an ass increases your chance of having an afk. Halving the winning teams gain doesn't stop inflation it just marginalizes it and it still could be a substantial number if you got it off afk's. Doubling the loss of a disconnecting player is also a terrible idea. It makes that individual's rating substantially lower then it actually is. You need to remember the point of the elo system. It is to match you at your true rating so arbitrarily subtracting or adding points just destabilizes your rating and makes the system have to work harder to put you back to the place you belong. So it could take a person a substantially longer amount of time to get to their true rating then it does now.

Basically you feel it is unfair and it isn't. Even if you are correct that afk's happen equally to everyone playing then their is no reason to implement your system. If afk's happen to everyone at an equal rate then everyone will have more or less the same amount of free points or lost points. Meaning the system already balances it self out so what would be the point of adding your system?

Let me clarify my point. Adding points disrupts the self correcting nature of the elo system making it so that the system takes longer to balance out resulting in a short term boost or drop based on what happened.

If you don't think the servers go down more than 10 times a year, I'm not sure what game you've been playing -- or you clearly just don't play much at all. Also, each player experiences a different amount of server problems as people all play at different times. Those two facts really nullify the rest of your case... proving that giving loss prevention for disconnects would most likely inflate elo far less than Riot's standard server problems.

Also, I was very clear that it should only be given in the clear cut case where someone NEVER connects to the game (i.e. they never make it past champion select). If you harass someone in champ select enough that they leave, the game won't even start. It'd be an extremely rare occurrence that you were able to get someone to leave through harassment, AND the game still started. Another statistically insignificant problem compared to the amount of good loss prevention for AFK's would provide.

It's obviously true that throughout enough games we'll roughly get a similar amount of 4v5's as 5v4's in our favor. The point of the system isn't to correct some kind of imbalance AFK's are putting on the elo system as a whole, but to make players feel better about the very frustrating case where they play a 4v5 the entire game. I'd wager the majority of people agree that playing on the team of 4 sucks, and playing on the team of 5 makes you feel bad for the other team, and is overall not an enjoyable game still. Hence, if Riot would spend a little time to create a system where the game recognizes the overall pain of the game, rather than ignoring the problem -- they will raise overall player morale of their game.

It's not all about statistics, friend. Player perception and experience is extremely important to a successful, positive, and fun video game that people will continue to enjoy throughout the years. I feel this is one major area Riot has dropped the ball, and I know it's made more than a few people up and leave, or play severely less of the game -- which means it's something they should take a hard look at.

Lot's of other games, including MOBA games, have come up with systems that don't force people to play 20 minutes of a game that nobody wants to play anymore, and/or remove or lessen penalties for such games.

edit: Just to back up my point about server outage frequency... Just looked at the hot threads and Riot's servers have shit the bed at least twice in the last three days alone.

Sammystorm1 votes

So your plan is to hit people that can't connect even harder then we do now just so your ego is ok. Seems like a waste of time.

Maph3 votes

{quoted}

Not as simple.

MMR (hence, LP) gain and loss need to be balance to prevent inflation. i.e. if the winning team gain LP each person, the other team has to lose 75 LP so no LP is 'created' out of thin air. So if you want the other 4 to walk free, the AFK has to lose x5 as much.

Actually, since the leagues and MMR are all based on where you sit compared to everyone else, and since the 4v5s are functionally random with this large a community, everyone would get this extra LP at about the same rate, and thus nothing would change because of it.

iainB852 votes

{quoted}

Actually, since the leagues and MMR are all based on where you sit compared to everyone else, and since the 4v5s are functionally random with this large a community, everyone would get this extra LP at about the same rate, and thus nothing would change because of it.

Fair point!

Frikgeek2 votes

Except that it isn't. Constant inflation would only be balanced if everyone was playing an equal amount of games. Imagine simply not playing for a week only to find that that due to MMR inflation caused by people winning MMR without anyone losing it, you've effectively dropped a few divisions in MMR. That would just encourage grinding, since with a barely positive winrate you would still gain MMR faster than someone who wins more but plays less.

Sammystorm3 votes

leagues do not correlate to mmr at all. Also the mmr system is actually the elo system which is a system that predicts how many wins you will get. The system is also not intended to show short term skill. Basically it is meant to "balance out" over time. Another way to put it is that the elo system is self correcting. Meaning that if you play enough games the elo system will place you where you belong and the afk's are balanced out with in the system.

4 v 5's are not random. Not even close to random. So certain segments might increase artificially or in the case of the op's proposition not decrease very much or alternatively decrease 4-5 times faster then you normally would. So no not everyone would gain lp at the same rate.

Basically I don't understand the purpose of implementing something like this when all it does is make people feel better at the cost of the integrity of the matchmaking ratings.

Nucleophilic atk2 votes

The problem is that rito doesn't think there is an issue at all with afks/intentional feeders in ranked games. But let you say "omg afk again" and you are chat banned.

Sammystorm1 votes

They have put way more visible pressure on people leaving games and scaled back on pressure put on people being asses. Makes me think Riot only cares about people leaving.

TeemoJenkins2 votes

I'd rather them just put a system in place that if a player hasn't moved by 1:55 from the fountain, game is forfeited, that player loses LP and everyone else can safely leave.

DONT NEEEED TEAM1 votes

Dumb people take 10min to load and 5v5 for champ select who wants to wait 15 mins to play for 2mins

magic pole1 votes

love it.

DONT NEEEED TEAM1 votes

Deal with it ur fault for being at 0lp

iainB851 votes

{quoted}

Deal with it ur fault for being at 0lp

{quoted}

Dumb people take 10min to load and 5v5 for champ select who wants to wait 15 mins to play for 2mins

While my title may have been about being demoted again, you failed to respond to any of the actual content of my post.

Also, as for your second point, ignoring your bogus time frames, the real issue is I guess it depends on how you define "playing". A 4v5 where the team of 4 obviously has no chance of winning anymore, but has ~ 10 minutes left to play before they are even given the option to surrender is not how I want to spend my time "playing". I'd much rather be given the option to move onto the next game.

DONT NEEEED TEAM1 votes

ive won lots of 4v5s. If u deserve to win u don't even need 5th if u carry u can replace the afk and count as 2 people

iainB851 votes

{quoted}

ive won lots of 4v5s. If u deserve to win u don't even need 5th if u carry u can replace the afk and count as 2 people

If you are honestly winning "lots" of 4v5's, you must have a lower ELO than you should. It's a huge disadvantage to be down an entire player, no matter how you slice it. If the enemy team can't capitalize on that then they've done something horribly wrong. The higher elo you are, I am sure the less chance of winning a 4v5 you have, as skill starts to normalize out at the higher rankings.

DONT NEEEED TEAM1 votes

lol im gold 5 if u carry u can win 4v5

DONT NEEEED TEAM1 votes

and if u lose 1 game at 0 lp and get demoted then ur mmr is low I had lost games at 0 lp and not ranked down. And no not when I was gold 5 when I was still in divisons

Daedalus8711 votes

Please tell me about all the other AFKs on you way down to your demotion.

PandahHeart1 votes

What happens when you win against a team with 4 people? Do you get win prevented or do you still win?

VeryGreen1 votes

If someone Afks in a game there LP Loss should be doubled. And thos who stayed through the game and tried to win should have there LP losses cut in half.

magic pole1 votes

I didn't read every post, but the first slew i read the main issue seemed to be about LP or mmr inflation, since with OP's idea, the winning team will receive LP and a victory while the losing team members that did not afk remain at the same LP.

I have a solution. What if NO ONE gains (or loses) any LP for a 4v5 ( as OP pointed out, it must be a 4v5 from the start only (1 or more players never connected), to prevent abuse...)

What I would really call LP or mmr inflation is winning a game you might not have been supposed to win. Many times when I get shafted with a 4v5, the team down a player is actually winning every lane, but inevitably loses as they are 4 vs 5...it becomes easy for the team with 5 players to out-rotate, out-pressure, and just straight up win team fights with their extra player. In this example, we see people that possibly should not have won a game gain LP. Granted, if they shouldn't have won, their next games will become more difficult, and if they don't belong where they're at, they will probably lose again. But meanwhile, the players that should have won, lose some LP, and are faced with easier games...basically just becomes a frustrating grind to get back to where they were.

as i'm sure you could guess, all 9 (or 8 or 7?) players that actually showed up are gonna be pissed about receiving nothing. (perhaps the team of 4 will feel relief that they aren't punished for an unfair match, or still be angry that their game was ruined.) Incoming 9x report. Weed out these AFKers. I think when 7+ people report you for the same thing, those reports are gonna carry a lot of weight..

Now, you could say abuses could result with players intentionally disconnecting during the loading screen vs. an obviously superior comp. However, the person who never connected needs to face a harsh penalty. A few suggestions: 1) they receive an increased loss of LP. 2) they are the only one whose LP changes, but they lose LP as usual. 3) the afker is treated normally, tagging their account for AFK and typical punishment of low-priority queue enacted. 4) Lay down the hammer: Ranked afks are arguably more frustrating than normal AFKs. Balance the punishment with this increased frustration: i.e. the low-priorty queue threshold is much sooner when AFKing in ranked games. 5) OR the AFK is banned from ranked games for 1-2 weeks.

Honestly, if we can add Mark/Dash to ARAM, none of my suggestions seem radical.

tl;dr: No players gain or lose LP when one or more players is disconnected from the start of the game. (except possibly the AFKer).

sidenote: every time i type AFKers, it gets autocorrected to Fakers xd. NO! NOT FAKERS AT ALL. THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE.

iainB851 votes

The harsher penalty for disconnecting was merely a side idea, not included in my original post. Now you are just nitpicking on one little detail that is not part of the main idea because you realize you don't have a sound argument to refute why this loss prevention system for people never connecting would benefit League of Legends as a whole.

Up until this point you were at least trying to make valid counter points.

iainB851 votes

Well, I think a large part of that is the Tribunal has been down for "maintenance" for... must be over a year now? Sorry Rito, a year of downtime is not what many would normally consider maintenance in the software world.

GundayMonday1 votes

OP has a smart suggestion. Can we please do this?

iainB851 votes

You are still entirely missing the point. The post wasn't about winning 4v5's or how high my MMR is. Just consider the following points:

  • In a 4v5, the team with 4 is at a significant disadvantage. Whether it's possible to win or not is irrelevant, don't focus on that. It's a strait up disadvantage either way.

  • Riot currently treats a 4v5 as they would any other game, and offers no compensation for the obvious disadvantage, which frustrates many people on top of already having a crap, unfair game.

  • There are seemingly obvious solutions that Riot could try to help with this frustration, so the question is why haven't they? Lots of other games have.

Cyreg Paddlehorn1 votes

Its BS i just lost promos the same way

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