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What is the point of the current Ranking system?

A Certain Guy·9/19/2019, 5:42:20 PM·3 votes·1,440 views

So, let me get this out of the way real quick: I was gold 4 after a long struggle to get half decent teams in silver 1 and finally broke the barrier and got gold. Continued to try to climb, and i've hit a plateau. Naturally, I went on a losing streak (yes, i took breaks between games when I got frustrated, didnt change anything for the most part.). Some games I lost due to others trolling, some games due to bad players and some we just got outplayed and it was an actually good game. So after my promotion shielding expired, I demoted back down to silver 1. This being said, It dawned on me the moment I was demoted. [slayer-jinx-unamused]

The current ranking system doesn't make any sense. Follow me on this:

If you are gold 4, And are on a losing streak with the shielding on, you are at a severe disadvantage, as opposed to having an advantage of being shielded from demoting down to the lower tier.

Why is this? Because your Physical rank wont be touched, but your MMR still tanks.

Why is this relevant? Well for example, you can be "gold 4" But due to your MMR being trash, you can end up with players not just in silver, but a team of full bronze players. If you climbed to Gold, you should rightfully be playing with and against players of your skill level.

If you are gold 4 but playing with bronze players......why are you not just bronze? The systems defeat the purpose of one another. MMR is one "ladder" and Tiering is another "ladder" entirely. They don't line up. Being "gold 4" is just a fancy title, your MMR is still all that matters as that is what influences your matches.

So the title of this post comes into play here: what is the point of the current ranking system? Your MMR is all that matters.....isn't that just a fancy way of saying "Elo"? I thought this system was meant to abolish the Elo system and improve upon it, but in turn it just turned MMR into Elo. In fact it made climbing harder overall as a result of this since you have to play promotional games in sets of 3 or 5 depending on what you are promoting to.

On top of this, It seems since the systems are not working together at all, the Tiering system is just straight shiny plating on a play border with no actual purpose. This system barely functions when you are actively climbing and making progress. What happens when youre struggling or plateauing?

Well lets get into part 2: Functionality of the system

So, when you climb, you naturally gain elo and maintain decent players/games as a result for your elo (i am now going to say "elo" instead of "MMR" because thats exactly what this is, Elo.) This is passable when climbing steadily and making progress. When youre plateaued or struggling? Well here is where the term "Elo Hell" gets its definition because this is when this system fails hard and falls flat on its face in the most ungraceful manner possible.

If your Elo is lower than your ranking, you naturally have lower quality games if you are actually improving at the game but happen to be losing, and this can add a multitude of other things that bog you down further such as: Trolls, AFK's, Inexperienced players (not their fault but you still gotta deal with them). All of this just snowballs further and further out of control until you have "Gold 4" in Tiering but "Bronze 4" in Elo, which begs the question again: Why am I not just Bronze 4? My Elo is all that matters, so what purpose does this tiering stuff actually serve other than to somehow make climbing even harder for literally no reason?

Some simple fixes that would promote higher quality games (but lower quantity, i.e. queue times would be longer as a result):

Remove Elo entirely from the system and Place people in games based on their actual rank. If you are a gold player, you get put into a game with other gold players with some flex room of say, 1--2 ranks just to keep queue times relatively shorter overall. If you are Gold 4 You can be placed in games with players of silver 3 to Gold 2 as a result. Keeping in mind this would be difficult to balance due to higher ranked players like challenger and there only being a handful of them, you would need some type of system in place to manage that issue because Challenger players dont deserve to wait for 16 hours for 1 match lmao.

Or the other option:

Just accept the elo system as the dominant system (because currently thats exactly what it is) and remove the tiering system entirely like the old ranked system was. I dont think this would be the best or preferred way of doing it but that is an option.

Just had to vent this because the more I actually stopped to think about it the worse the system looked and actually is. [slayer-jinx-unamused]

12 Comments

5050BS9/19/2019, 7:06:15 PM3 votes

None.

I just had a Game in S2 where my jungler was B3 Yi who at 8m was 0/6 and 8 CS. He didnt do camps and just tried to gank over and over feeding lanes.

He was Duo with the Mid laner who was S2 and 75% win rate over ~60 games.

Guess who you will see in gold as a jungler thanks to Riots stupidity.

Saezio9/19/2019, 6:01:55 PM2 votes

Riot's way of putting it was something along the lines of.

"Due to the nature of the Elo System, half the Player base will see their MMR(or elo) drop during a season even if they improve as players" And also "It feels more rewarding to climb from gold to silver than be in the top 30% compared to the top 45%" (numbers are obviously random)

So, riot based the ranked system on feelings. That's why it's trash. Also, I don't even know how riot are refusing to hard reset MMR and rank after 10 years. Soft resets are just stupid imo. Just hard reset the whole thing once a year and everyone starts with a clean slate.

Darkdemon6539/19/2019, 6:18:27 PM1 votes

You get demoted from a tier when your MMR goes too low. So while you certainly can have an MMR that's lower than what it should be for a given rank, the difference is capped.

Inkling Commando9/19/2019, 7:13:52 PM1 votes

ranks are just glorified ego points. you never get matched with players of your ranks and players use their rank to flash their ego and gloat that they are better than you. and then a low rank player pushes just the right buttons to make a high rank player snap and end up losing rank, and ego, which will make them even more toxic.

Kai Guy9/19/2019, 9:03:31 PM1 votes

Titles mean nothing with out being accurate. They function as a benchmark, a set goal for players. Top of the ladder is unreachable for most, so having the mini benchmarks of going up X divisions or Tier is a realistic goal for a majority of the player base. It keeps folks engaged.

The issue is, MMR is hidden, Far as I can tell it got rebranded to MMR because people where to stupid to understand why Elo worked for more then chess and how to adapt it for team games. So they use the same concept, gave it a new name and everybody was like. Aight sounds good. (not just riot. Most devs use the term.)

Titles are given dam near instantly. 10 games and BOOM title. Titles are what Players use to grade skill. There is an expected Calibration period, you expect high uncertainty on accounts when they have low Games. Your title is given and changes pretty fast.

Plus Positional MM sets your account to have 5 individual MMR values, makes a title even less accurate when considering how MM interacts with that. (I am not 100% on positional MM existence. They only removed ques and stated Positional MM was something they like. Hell the preseason patch notes implied that Positional MM rolled out to every serverat the start of the season. I cant find confirmation it did, just that that was a stated goal and all Posts by Sap magic are very positive on their view on Positional MM)

You demote from div 4 when you drop into low Div3 or div 4 MMR I believe. Few years out of date from when I had it happen trying to help some friends get out of their MMR. Learned abit about riots system and a lot about how fking hard it is to help friends who refuse to listen.

Anyhow, you don't end up sitting at B4 games with G4 title.

Elo wants to sort skill. it does this off Averages. Your Elo/MMR is a Mean average that represents performance and its only significant when accurate. Comparatively, they are the best systems to use currently. Statistical endeavors that add further complexity run into some real issues for implementation and that's largely because subjective systems are exceedingly difficult to automate with any degree of accuracy.

People are expected to get stuck in a range, its called a class interval. You don't break away from the standard deviation expectations for that class you don't go up or down from that range. The end goal is to try and separate skill accurately enough so that properly placed accounts do not get used by MM to build games where a players Strong performances are outclassed by an enemies weak performance's.

There is no # of games that will make you climb unless your able to break out of the standard deviation. Time to top for an average skilled player is by definition eternity.