Ranked

When the game places you everywhere, and not just anywhere, it clearly doesn't know your skill level and doesn't know where to place you. In Starcraft 2, I can get a rank, and if i go on a winning streak or a losing streak, I expect to end up higher or lower in the division. If I do this for multiple days, then I expect to be promoted or demoted, as my skill level has obviously changed.

But in League, just a few losses can place me at the lower end of the division below me, and this is easy to do in a team game. Getting 3 or even 4 matches with trolls is common. The same goes for wins, and better players. This ranking tosses players up and down the ladder like rag dolls. There are definitely players in silver and above who are good enough to win the majority of their matches and get out, even with winrates just over 50%.

Everyone else is left to wonder what their rank is. They know they aren't as good as those players yet, but that's ALL they know. It's already a little unfair because it's a team game, and the system is ranking players individually. Strategy does make up a huge part of the game, and for example, a player can get an amazing amount of kills, but be so lacking in strategy that the team suffers. It is a team game. That means that a player is reliant on their teammates in part, and even more reliant with more teammates (4 others make quite a few).

However, the system takes into account the team's outcome heavily when it decides what an individual's rank is. So a player could (and often does) do decent or even pretty good compared to their teammates, and still end up at the bottom of the division. Even if they're doing well, (remember that I'm not necessarily saying they're good enough to be out of bronze, just that they're not at the very bottom of the trash can) their rank and mmr can take a dive.

This makes it practically impossible to tell where a player belongs in low elo, and may very well be the reason people complain about being in a wonderful place called "elo hell", and not just about being low elo. There could be a big difference between a place that looks inescapable, and a place that shows the honest skill level of a player, so that they can see if they really are at the bottom of the barrel, or if they're in the middle of the road.

I hope that Riot takes this seriously. I know that it's the very lowest ranks, and that to better players, it may not seem like distinguishing between the not-so-good ones matters, but to the not-so-good ones, I think it really does. It might alleviate some toxicity and make playing the game a more enjoyable experience for the community.

EDIT

On actually balancing the system

At the extreme ends, some problems that arise:

A) If the ranked system calculates an individual's rank based entirely on wins/losses:

The fate of a player's mmr is decided by trolls.

B) If the ranked system calculates an individual's rank based entirely on kda/stats:

Players go kill crazy and don't strategize.

What I suggest is a system that finds a point between these two. It calculates based on the outcome of the team and kda.

For example,

a player who does well comparatively but still loses a game, will lose mmr, but less mmr than their teammates.

a player who does poorly but wins a game, will gain mmr, but less mmr than their teammates.

So players who do well in a game will end with a higher mmr, those who do worse will have lower mmr. Effectively, a player's mmr aligns with their skill level. Rank becomes apparent.

Be gone the days of being matched up with players of the same mmr that clearly have no clue compared to you, and obviously aren't your skill level.