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Diamond 4 is inexcusable garbage, not worth it, and I blame the ranked system.

Tremaursen·6/17/2019, 9:35:54 AM·8 votes·5,077 views
Yikes

*edit: I noticed I posted this in Gameplay when it should likely be in General Discussion. Not sure how to change that and would like to go to bed. Sorry Mods

Tl;dr: Stay away. If you are close, run while you still can.

Made a post pertaining to this discussion recently as seen here. I figured I was prepared to play a few ranked games once in a while and stomach whatever misfortune came my way. I was wrong, this one may have broken me. I have been hardstuck in Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum before falling into Diamond. I can safely say without exaggeration that after less than a week Diamond 4 is the absolute worst ranked experience I have ever had with League of Legends.

I could go into vivid detail on how nearly every step of this game was a mistep that should seriously threaten players with loosing their Diamond status (speaking of level of play here), but I likely don't need to write that particular blog post to get the point across. Our bot lane went 2-29-2 in a sixteen minute game. Our Yasuo ADC, by the skin of his teeth, succeeded in dying once for every minute. Our Lee left sometime between the imminent sense of doom and the crushing feeling of despair (minutes 7-8 I believe) and I honestly don't blame him for a second.

I don't want to make too many assumptions on individual players, however considering that neither of my bot lane can boast a positive winrate while very clearly doing most of their climbing as a duo, it is absolutely baffling that both these players are allowed to remain in Diamond. This one game, this single instance, should be enough to seriously damage a player's MMR at this elo. However, not only are those expectations not upheld in Diamond, it is clearly VERY hard to actually get demoted out of Diamond. This speaks nothing on the overall game performance of these players. Nothing of CS, wave management, map awareness, ect, and whether or not these abilities are up to a good enough standard. No, the single decision to say "fuck it" and race down bot to duel into a guaranteed 2v2 loss over and over again FOR EVEN ONE GAME is a mind set that should not be tolerated in the top single digit percentile of players in the game. However not only is it tolerated, it appears to go completely unpunished. Bronze level games have absolutely zero business at this Elo, yet it seems players can have dozens of these games and never face repercussions for it. This isn't even addressing player behavior and attitude. Competitive environments NEED a professional expectation at their highest echelons. This is true for any sport or competitive game. Doesn't matter if it's a game at it's core, this is League's top tier, and there is consistent behavior here that even at a local sporting level would seriously call into question a player's privilege to play PERIOD, let alone at the highest level.

Diamond 4 is pure, inexcusable garbage. It is not up for debate. It is a pathetic excuse of a high elo and a horrid reflection on this game. I do not tell people in other gaming communities that I am in Diamond 4 in League. I am too embarrassed to do so. There is nothing to gain here, one week at this elo has KILLED any and all desire I had to climb. I heard it was going to be bad while I was still in Plat, but even then I still had at least the morbid curiosity to see just how far I could climb just by playing consistently. Now I doubt I will play enough ranked games this season to get to Diamond 3 even if I was at a 100%WR. It has simply lost all it's appeal. To give closure, if I drop from my 58% winrate to 50% or less and am STILL in Diamond 4, I truly do hope that I lose my place in Diamond.

There is no luster to Diamond, nothing to envy nor anything worth striving for. It has felt like working for the Asshole Corporation, where you still crave the dream of upper managment. You where warned ahead of time they are nothing but a bunch of monkeys up there, but you assume it could not possible be that bad. You dig deep and push to the top, pushing past the threshold and bursting through the doors of the company prestige. The first thing you see is them, apes. Hundreds, no, THOUSANDS of them. They are dirty, they smell, but they still wear their stained tuxedos with pride, each of them believing they are the most well dressed in the room. They swarm you, they steal your wallet and shit on your shoes. You realize you've made a terrible mistake and try to call an elevator to go back down. You realize you can't. The elevators here only go up, but only do so once you become the best poop flinger in the room. You sit surrounded by apes, the sounds of their screeching insults the only thing you can hear, their stench the only thing you can perceive. You cannot leave, you are not allowed. And slowly, bit by bit, it gets to you. Your hair becomes more coarse and your speech more slurred. With every moment spent in this place, you inch closer and closer to becoming an ape yourself.

Dumb asides aside, I hope something can be learned from my experience. Players NEED to be able to fall out of Diamond in order for them to improve and maintain their standards as participants. There is a horrid good enough mentality among seemingly the majority of Diamond 4 players that plain and simply is not nearly good enough. League is over ten years old at this point, it's legacy from time alone deserves better than this. Sadly I do not believe there is any saving this elo this season. The best we can hope for is a hard reset next season, with changes to emphasize more of what it takes to stay at an Elo, rather than just climb to a peak and then stagnate. Unless you can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that you will briskly climb to high Diamond this season, don't bother. Take it from a player who used to look at Diamond like it was a shimmering star in the sky, you're happiness and overall general sanity is just not worth the climb.

7 Comments

haaaaaaalp6/17/2019, 10:29:16 AM3 votes

You aren't going to change people's mentality. Even if it was easier to fall out of diamond, the players know they can get back into it whenever they want.

Also, hard reset will just make things worse. Season 1 ranked when everyone was at the same elo was ten times worse than anything that happens in diamond right now. Soft reset puts low diamond players into high gold low plat mmr range. If they can climb to diamond from there, they will have no problems climbing to diamond from silver. The only difference is that they make the game worse for others they play with along the way.

There will always be a point where the good enough mentality takes over and there is nothing you can do to stop it from happening.

Novae Idyllica6/17/2019, 5:05:11 PM2 votes

I have no words referring to ranked as I try to avoid it like the plague, but I really love your writing style. It kept me interested in what you were saying the whole way through.

fire2636/17/2019, 9:04:31 PM2 votes

Unfortunately, a hard reset will not really do anyone very good. Not just in diamond, but everywhere there's an influx of players that aren't in the elo they should be, just because of how bugged ranked has been at the beginning and now people of lower skill level are playing against each other at higher elo's. The skill level between plat and silver, for example, is much closer than it has been any other season. I'm currently in my promos for diamond, where I never expected to be, and honestly don't believe I should be. Diamond used to be top 1% of players I believe, and was truly an accomplishment, but now it's like top 4%. I was hardstuck gold last season and somehow I'm now almost diamond with a 62% winrate, which should not be happening if the elo's were actually an accurate representation of skill.

The only suggestion I would have that's not a complete reset would be to just drop everyone down to diamond 4 or so, and make everyone's mmr even. (gain and lose same amount of LP). This way, only the best of the best would be able to climb back to the top, while the rest would either drop or be stuck. Perhaps plat 1 would be even better, as one of the major problems is that there are too many players at D4.

But not just in diamond, across the board I feel as if players need to be dropped. How I see ranked system working is that the lower the tier, the more players there should be in that tier. Yet that is not the case, as Iron is one of the smallest tiers, and gold has nearly double the amount of players as last season. The problem is not that matchmaking suck ass as everyone is saying, it's just that there are too many people that should be lower tier that are higher tier than they should be. Iron needs to be 30ish% of the playerbase, bronze 25%, silver 20%, gold 15%, and plat+ should be last 10%, (give or take a few percentage). Gold and silver should not take up ~60% of the ranked playerbase. Riot tried to include these new tiers to even out the ranked playerbase, but they failed to actually put people in those tiers, and now most of the people that ended bronze season 8 are now silver-gold season 9, and so on.

That kind of turned into a rant, but I really do believe that everyone should be sent down tiers. If you are truly better than your tier, you should climb and get out of the tier you were sent to, otherwise you should stay there until you improve. This will also fix a lot of problems with matchmaking, as players will be closer in skill level than what they are currently.

ModAcademy Kayn6/22/2019, 8:35:33 AM1 votes

Eh, it's close enough to be in gameplay.

Heos006/22/2019, 8:41:57 AM1 votes

Also this is because of the same ranked or matchmaking system forcing people to 50% win rates giving them hard win streaks, hard losing streaks or just maintaning them where they are making literally a rollercoaster of their elo into plat 2- diamond 3 elo's (yeah without forgetting about boosted people).

Not only me says that, some pros also say that lol