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Closing the gap in ELO distribution

Ghoulungulate·6/19/2016, 2:02:56 PM·2 votes·2,534 views

Dear anyone who views this, I am a relatively new player to League of Legends and I've been playing it for about 7 months or so. I mostly play DOTA 2 and have been playing that for just over 2 years. My highest achievement in League of Legends is reaching Silver 4 but today I had a Shaco in a ranked game that decided to not play because the Orianna mid wasn't having a good day.

As a result I've nearly demoted to bronze and bear in mind this board isn't because of salty or flame but rather an improvement that could bridge the skill gap between let's say gold and diamond players. Imagine that a new season has just started. You're relatively new to the game and you've just reached level 30. You play your promos and you place in bronze 3. Okay so you just got your starting placement and you play and play but you're not so fortunate and struggle a lot. As a result you go to bronze 5. This could be because of a lack of experience. So this player keeps playing and playing and builds up a lot of experience and reaches silver around mid season. So this new player is pretty happy about his achievement and struggle to overcome the first base. Now the player continues to play and reaches silver 4 but starts to lose every match from there. Eventually he demotes back to bronze 1 because of a lack of skill in silver division.

I know what you're thinking, oh he must just be a bad player or he has bad communication and is toxic towards his team. But what if he was genuinely trying his best, he tried to communicate effectively with his team but he lacked the experience to play good enough to help his team win the match. As a result he keeps dropping from silver because he has no experience.

Now here comes the cool idea what if there was a permanent safety pool for a NEW division that is achieved in a NEW season. An example of this is you played 200 matches in bronze, you just get to silver and you have no experience of the play style of that division as a result you lose. So as a result the player will lose matches and drop but if there was a permanent safety pool that only applies for the 5th tier of each division excluding diamond 4 and up then that player could play more games and gain experience.

This permanent safety pool would only last for that division for that season. So if that player plays enough and builds enough experience that player will eventually start ranking up and get to gold. When he gets to gold he loses that permanent safety pool for the silver 5 and gains it for the gold 5. If the new season comes and he places in silver he will not have the permanent safety pool for silver or gold because he achieved it in one season however if he doesn't achieve gold in one season but does in the next season then a permanent safety pool will be achieved for gold for that new season.

This will help even out the number of players in each division with increasing tiers in each division also feeling that the skill required is slowly increasing. This will help reduce the queue timing it takes for each division and even show some candidates to get to challenger potential younger LCS players since RIOT is a lot more enthusiastic on the LCS. One more thing you could say why even bother playing ranked when you could just play normal and practise there The normal games does not provide a tough enough scenario for a player to improve themselves as a player.

It is hardly ever taken serious and is seen more as an environment where players can try new heroes, practise certain mechanics or to simply have fun. In ranked games it is taken very seriously and people will try hard in order to win and the only way to surely learn is to be thrown in the deep end. Thanks for taking the time to read this and if you have any ideas please don't hesitate to put them in the responses or share if you agree with this.

10 Comments

Snowball4u6/19/2016, 2:23:17 PM1 votes

Dude, its almost impossible to drop divisions.

Lets say you just got to silver 5. Now you go on a losing spree (because that normally happens after you promote) You have to lose MANY games in order to drop. Its not just "lose a few games at 0 lp and you become bronze" You literally have to lose 20 games or so in a row to get that bronze 5 elo.

I'm very positive if someone reaches silver, sure they may lose a few games because it is harder for them. However they have to be WAY worse than they originally were in order to get that bronze 5 elo and demote.

jaymc11306/19/2016, 2:39:26 PM1 votes

Holy wall of text batman!

Edit this into cohesive paragraphs please. It will make the read much easier.

Mysticman896/19/2016, 4:26:14 PM1 votes

Ranks are only cosmetic, since you're matched based on mmr, and the ranks only determine your end of season rewards.

There's already a pretty hefty safety net for being demoted tiers (compared to divisions [which is the 5-1 thing, tiers are bronze, silver, gold, etc]), where you need to have an MMR of division 5 of the tier below, so you need one heck of an unlucky spree to be demoted, and much more often than not if you're demoted, it means you didn't actually belong in the tier you got to (as if you're silver 5 and losing against bronze 4's, then you're probably not actually a silver level player). I'm willing to concede that yes on rare occasions it is possible you will get like 10 trolls/afks in a row and your mmr will be destroyed enough to be demoted, but it should be a steady climb back if you deserve the rank.

Again though, you're only matched on mmr. If you win a game, your next match has in theory slightly better players on either side, even if you're the same rank. Theres no special bump in player skill when you get promoted, and theres no dip when you're demoted. In the match someone gets demoted from silver 5 to bronze 1, they are playing with and against low bronze 4ish players, so if someone notices a difference in player skill before and after promotion/demotion, it's simply a plusebo effect.