(Fat rant) My personal problem with Matchmaking
Honestly, let's come to the one agreement that yes, this post is a pure salty rant, reasonable arguments or not, so i'd appreciate any actual decently constructed feedback that doesn't show the person effectively trying to be more triggered and saltier than me.
I have one big fat ugly issue with matchmaking, and that is the way it matches players.
From my understanding, It tries to create a matching mmr-summ on both sides of the team, like an equation.
The extended version:
Let's say one player has an MMR of 100 (Examplanary number, not real) means if 5 players come together as a team, their standart mmr is 500, which would be taken as the roughly estimated middleworth. Right?
So, what this current matchmaking tries to do is make sure both teams are as close to that same middleworth as they can be. Means both teams are the same mmr or as close to being the same as it can be.
So, why is that an issue? Because League is a game that does not solely work on teamplay, but also individual skill. By trying to match both teams to be the same, it means the system will go as far as to find THE worst players to "balance" the best players for the sake of a "fair team". It will, if you have an MMR of, let's say 180, give you three players who's summ results in a total of 300, and then slap your nuts with an MMR 20 intentional feeder.
AKA higher mmr is likelier to get you matched with trolls, who effectively have the lowest mmr's due to their constant intentional losing.
Riot should rather try to match MMR's individually, so if one player has an MMR of 100, that all 9 others will be as close to 100, and if the player wins, gets better, and grows to, lets say, 150, then the 9 others should all have an mmr around 150 too. People should be matched based on skill, which, do correct me if I am wrong, is THE corepoint and center of balance for MOBAs.
Yes, the downside is that general matchmaking search would get longer by, I roughly estimate a minute, and smurfs are likelier to advance, but let's see the plus sides of this. People who play good get matched with people who play good, and trolls get matched with other trolls. The indirect newbie-filtering from the MMR would still be intact for the most part.
This game shouldn't be balanced solely around who has the "better" team. It should be balanced around which players work best as a team. The current matchmaking system is just a massive fuckfest of winstreaks and lossstreaks taking turns. We are already at a stage where you get on a normal basis 6 wins, then 6 losses, then back to 6 wins and 6 losses and so on. How long until the number goes up even more? The up and down curve for frustration would become immense, and an unstable waving frustration is very dangerous for the concious sanity. Not to mention all the natural red alerts this would trigger if suddenly you casually go on a 10 win streak, then you enter a 10 loss streak.
Maybe I am overthinking it, and I most definetly am triggered to the point where people are very likely to just mock my post as a salty rant, which I won't even try to deny. But seriously. This current matchmaking is a very toxic experience to deal with, regardless of how fair it is to the created teams. it is not fair to the individual players.
TL;DR Matchmaking should match players based on individual skill to form fair teams created with equally rated players, rather than try to keep a central MMR-summ between both teams and balance each team's member around that central number. It is very degenerative for the gaming experience when you have to realize you lost/won not because you were better, or because your team was better, but because the losing side had the worse trolls to deal with, be that you or your enemies.
#NOTHING about winning feels satisfying and nothing frustrates you more when losing if it had to happen over a 4v6 rather than a 5v5.
