Let me ask you this. My buddy got placed B5 after going 8/10 in his promos. I don't think that's fair. I made a new account went 3/10 and was placed into silver 5. So why is riot trying to keep bronze players down? does going 8/10 not prove the improvement of a player or does riot just not care about its low elo players? Let me know what you think.
Because this system is based on MMR. If your friend was low bronze last season then he went 8-2 against low bronze players. What sense would it make to have it so that going 8-2 vs bronze 5 would give you silver? In order to get in silver you need to go against and beat silvers. New accounts start at around Silver 3 / Silver 2. It takes going 2-8 to place in bronze, anything better gives you silver. Riot made it really easy to not be bronze for people's first season.
New players usually go to Silver
Players ranked in last season go to Bronze
I'm willing to bet that your buddy played ranked last season.
Placements aren't clean slate, they just influence your mmr more than normal. If your mmr is already trash from a previous season, then going 8/10 will work wonders for starting to fix that mmr, but it doesn't undo the previous season. In the majority of cases people will place around 1 tier below where they ended last season, so most bronze players from last season will start in bronze 5 this season, which is normal.
If they're as good as they were last year, they'll be able to climb back to wherever they used to be. If they've improved, then they'll climb further. This is how it works for every elo player, low elo players don't get a free pass thanks to placements.
