What is up with the ranking system?

dachanchanman1·Mar 13, 2016·1 votes·416 views

So I have been playing league for about 2 and a half years, last season i joined a friends game and it was ranked, we lost and i never played ranked again that season. This season i wanted to see what rank i would get, and once again i join my friends game and its ranked , but long story short, the last game of my placements, i was 5 wins 4 losses, and the last game seemed very one sided. After the game i look at all of the ranks, and on our team we have a silver 4, silver 3, silver 2, and 2 unranked. For some reason we were matched with a Gold 5, silver 4, 2 silver 3, and a silver 1. How is it that the ranking system is putting 2 unranked players against high silver low gold. Someone explain or let riot know to add another thing to fix in their game.

3 Comments

GrashnimMar 13, 20161 votes

Gold 5 is silver 1.

PowderkeggMar 13, 20161 votes

Rank means nothing. The system matches teams based on similar mmr.

Mysticman89Mar 13, 20161 votes

Player ranks, while often indicators of their approximate skill, is not actually their measured skill, which is their mmr. It's not uncommon for people to have mmr's somewhat lower than their rank would indicate (which is why X-5 rank players can be appropriately matched with people almost a full tier below them). Which is to say, a gold 5 player might be equal in skill to a silver 1 player, but they might also be equal in skill to a silver 4 player, as getting demoted tiers is quite difficult.

Additionally mmr's can be out of sync in the other direction as well, so sometimes players will be playing at a gold level (and so be matched against golds) despite still being silver. Unranked players typically start with a silver 4ish mmr, so after wining more than you lost up until that point, it's possible you (or the other unranked) had a silver 3/silver 2ish mmr at the time.

Combining that with the fact the gold player could have functionally been as low as a silver 4 player, it's quite reasonable to believe that the match was statistically fair. Sometimes games will snowball and feel like complete stomps, but that can (and does) happen even with evenly matched players who might just get lucky and get a small lead initially which in turn snowballs, rather than necessarily being a sign that people were matched unfairly.