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Just realized why Riot might want a forced 50% win rate on people

CarameI Frappe·4/21/2019, 8:30:47 AM·3 votes·1,307 views

All the time, I hear people going "Yea, after so many wins- Riot's matchmaking system punishes me and causes me to go on a losing streak" and while I actually believe it to be true ... the question is, why though? Why would a company like Riot Games implement a system that notices win rates, and then causes that player to have harder match ups / being paired with low winrate allies?

At first, I assumed it was a way to encourage players to continue climbing, giving them a reason to continue playing League. After all, if you win too much ... you lose interest right? But if you think about it, that doesn't make sense. People who win often get motivated even harder to see how far they can climb, feel good about themselves and truly believe League is the game for them. I mean, if you ever played any other video game ... what is more likely to get you hooked- being good at the game and continuing to shine, or being forced to lose time after time, no matter how hard you try?

So what gives then? Clearly there's a reason for people suffering this fate all too often (apart from the obvious screw up of Riot adding a new tier like Iron then removing ranked roles) ........................ So then it hit me.

What if, and hear me out .... what if Riot wasn't trying to hurt good players with this method? Instead, what if it's a way to help players with low win rates ... have a chance to win? Think about it, Riot wants as many people as possible to play this game, but if new / bad players continue losing, they're going to lose interest in the game. So what's the solution? Place them in games with high elo / good players in hopes they get carried, enjoy the win and continue to play from there.

It makes a lot of sense actually. Someone who's doing poorly will be tempted to quit, but then that one game comes in ranked and they ... stomp the enemy team because of their fantastic allies. Whether they did bad / decent / good that game, it matters not. The fact they won causes them to look past their bad luck (or look past their failures) and continue to climb in hopes to hit Silver / Gold / Plat, ect. Riot already knows that people who have high win rates are likely addicted to the game, so they don't have to worry about them. What they do feel concerned for, is how hard it'll be to draw new people in and keep them around long enough to draw their $. This is why new players get favored with this system, and it'll 'reward' them for sticking around long enough.

It makes perfect sense guys, come on .... it's not a crazy theory is it??

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5a0f5d7c3dbef482008b6df6-750-375.jpg

8 Comments

Jamaree4/21/2019, 8:42:38 AM10 votes

Reminder that most people don't want good matchmaking, what they want is bad matchmaking slanted in their favor.

CarameI Frappe4/21/2019, 8:56:31 AM2 votes

Did bots just storm my thread and downvote it into oblivion .. ?? Or did people really hate this theory that badly?

[sg-janna]

(tbh this thread has only been up for 20+ minutes soooooo ...)

JuiceBoxP4/21/2019, 9:56:14 AM2 votes

Dat downvote bot tho

DuskDaUmbreon4/21/2019, 8:38:35 AM1 votes

I mean, it's mostly just how any decent MMR system works - the better you do the higher you get matched, and you eventually hit (or exceed) your actual skill level, which means more losses until you're back to where you can win.

Although I have heard a few times that the system does sometimes put you in unfair matches to see if you really deserve to climb or fall, to prevent just a string of bad luck causing you to demote significantly, or a string of good luck causing you to promote too far.

I do have a counterpoint, though - Losing a lot feels shitty, yes, but winning every fight feels shitty too. It makes the game boring if there's no fights that put up a challenge. That's one of the key points of a boss fight - It's supposed to feel challenging, and ideally you'll lose a time or two against it (or, at the least, come rather close to it), while the mooks leading up to the boss should make you feel like an unstoppable badass.

Dope Solo4/21/2019, 5:12:46 PM1 votes

You're assuming that riot is competent enough to affect the game in a desired direction. Most of the issues with the matchmaker this season are due to the shifting of tiers to include Iron and GM. In the process, they broke it. In short, they haven't purposefully steered your games into total not worth a shit territory, they're just really really bad at maths.