Honestly, I feel like the MMR system either need to go or have some serious fine tuning (suggestion)

Look, I understand how this works. I get it, but I can't help but feel that it's seriously bad. As it stands right now, I haven't adjusted to the new changes yet and I've dropped A LOT from where I was ending part of season 7. My MMR is SO bad, that riot thinks it's a GOOD IDEA to match me, a plat player, with low golds and high silver players.

Me losing is due to 4 things:

1. Tilt
2. New system
3. Next to impossible to carry teammates unless I play the early game (and ONLY the early game) perfectly
4. The big one, it's preseason and me as well as others are still trying things out (so take what I say next with a grain of salt)

The teammates I get can't stop getting picked, don't listen, die 4 times in 5minutes, don't ward, don't ping and only strap up and fight and stay at each other's throats 24/7. Granted, I'm part of the problem. I tilt. And I tilt hard. I play too many champs I don't know how and I struggled because of it. But that's beside the point. My point here is:

Due to all of these reasons, I've artificially dropped down and lost MMR not because I'm not GOOD enough, but because of the circumstances surrounding me that cost me to lose these games. See, you people may say "get good", but I'm here to tell you that I won't "get good" playing with people substantially below my skill level. You can't put me into a high silver/low gold game and expect me not to stomp these people. And that's exactly what's happening, and quite frankly not only is it a waste of my time, a poor experience for both me AND other players, but it doesn't boost the amount of LP I get. In fact, I get so little LP that I'm spending more time down here and my MMR is only going up VERY slowly to compensate. If I lose 10 games in a row, my LP drops harder than humpty dumpty from his great fall. And needless do I have to say, that all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't rise my MMR back again.

In order to counteract losing 10 games, I'd have to win 15-20 games. And we know what happens when you start winning too many games. See, the thing is, challenger and high elo players can climb and play through these lower elos because they play vs better players. But when you keep playing with people with the same skill set as you or even worse, nothing really changes. It's hard to change unless there are subtle differences in play styles as you go up. And the way this game is set up, that simply doesn't happen.

Here's a quick story you can skim through or skip:

Rant Start

When I was stuck in silver, I had a hard ass time climbing. I didn't know what to do or how to do it. I got plat and diamond friends, started playing with them and BOOM. I hit gold the next season. Silver was a breeze, so easy... Then, when I was stuck in gold I had to do some soul searching. --I'm on those "steady progression" routes, you know? Silver Season 5, Gold season 6, Plat season 7 (I started season 4 and did like 50 ranked games, so I don't count that). I expect to hit diamond in season 8. Moving back on topic, in gold I felt the changes from silver. It was subtle, I didn't understand it at first, but people were DEFINITELY better. It hit me hard, it was tough and I was losing at the beginning. A LOT. But, as it went on, I started getting use to the elo and how people played. It got easier and I started doing better and feeding less. Eventually, I started getting good enough to even carry some games.

Skip forward a few months, I'm now gold 1 getting ready for plat. Failed that shit 8 times (my promos) so figured I wasn't good enough. Season 7 rolled around, and in 1month after the start of the season, boom, I'm plat. I played for another month and had the same issue. This time, I wasn't so ready to go through my platitudes, so I made some smurfs. Got a few smurfs, lvl'd them up and after awhile, boom, 3 smurfs in plat. From there, I started just spamming plat games on my main acc. Because of school, I couldn't hit diamond this time around (sad life :c). But, I was good enough to carry in plat now, got used to how people played. It was there that I tested to see how much I improved. The smurfs were for that reason:

Started silver 5. Went through silver real easy like. I understood so much more and was use to playing people so much better, that most of the people there felt dry and stale. In gold, it wasn't really much difference. I felt people understood how to position better, but that was it. They didn't understand the process of grouping or trading or even when to concede cs or the lane. In plat, you have to learn those things to move on. And after playing in plat, I no longer could be stuck in silver or gold due to the player difference.

End Rant

(if you didn't read the rant)Basically if I spent 5-6months in challenger elo, just playing challenger players and move back down to plat I would be playing at a MUCH higher level and understand way more things and have no problems climbing through the plat ladder. As it stands, the game has no real progression nor indication of subtle changes for the levels in which we play. Honestly, I no longer feel a difference between silver - plat level players aside from game knowledge and the way matchmaking works. It's BECAUSE you don't actually get MATCHED with those players that makes the biggest difference as well.

So here's a quick suggestion:

You have a division system. Do away with MMR completely . Once that is done, enforce a +3/-3 tier difference for each tier. So, for example:

• Bronze 5 can only match with Bronze 5, 4 and 3.
• Bronze 3 can match with Bronze 5-1
• Bronze 2, however, cannot be matched with anything higher than Bronze 1 and nothing lower than Bronze 4

You can do it where every minute, if the timer gets too long, you can add +1 and overcap it so for instance:

1 minute without finding a game +1 tier, Silver tier unlocked for Bronze matchmaking so now Bronze 2 can match with up to Silver 5

As for the 1 tiers you can make it so it works something like this:

• Bronze 1 can match with players up to Silver 4 (you're preparing to move up a division, so you should be expected to play with the people in that division) and nothing lower than Bronze 2. Reason being you want to prepare these players for higher level gameplay. You should have a set number of games people need to win to get out of a division.

You can do a few things here:

• Placements between tiers removed
• Because of the removal of MMR, LP gains are static for wins and losses (this makes it feel so much better and smoother as well and allows for progress)
• With the removal of placements, however, that means you can fall back down to a lower tier that much more easily (to keep the grind going)
• Or, if you keep placements, have LP gains above 100 be transported over from placement wins. Starting from 0 after placements is pretty demanding and annoying. You're already playing in a higher tier, so I don't see why this would be such a bad thing
• Smurfs linked to higher tiered accounts should gain more lp appropriately. I already know you have a system in place with this. I encourage you to start encouraging people that just "must" smurf (sorry, I already admitted to it :c) to link all of their smurf accounts to one email. This can be an attempt to keep the game clean and better. Basically, 50 lp per win would be nice along with the division skipping so they quickly get out of the elo they clearly don't deserve or rather should not even be in. This lets smurfs climb quickly and really discourages smurfing to begin with

Those are all my thoughts on the matter for now. If anyone else has anything to add, please, feel free to do so.