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A question on Matchmaking in Normals (Blind/Draft Pick)

Québec··2 votes·3,080 views
League of Legends Match History

I have a genuine question for anyone that might have the answer; a question that has more then likely been asked before, and more then likely will be asked again, but honestly:

"How does the matchmaker decided who should verse who in Normals"

Is season rank a contributing factor? Maybe player level? Is it more to do with recent or overall Win Rates? I honestly couldn't guess. I've linked a match of mine here, and it won't tell you the level or rank of each individual player, so I'll put them in writing for ease of reading:

** Jump down and read the list **

Now if I'm not mistaken, one team is considerably more experienced then the other one. It's easy to see which. Now, I know a lot of people discount rank as we've all seen what should have been a high elo player get squashed by a Low Elo one on occasion, happens all the time. But in terms of player level, there is a clear difference. The total level of Red Team combined is 215, the combined total of Blue Team is 348. That's a 133 Level " experience (air quotes) " deficit on the Red Side, and understandably, Red gets its butt pretty much kicked.

So, to come full circle. How is it calculated? Does anyone actually know? I imagine it considers a multitude of hidden stats and statistics.

Thanks in advance!

Red Team: Braum (Player Level 44): Last Season: Unranked, Current: Silver II

Rengar (Player Level 26): Last Season: Unranked, Current: Unranked

Jax (Player Level 30): Last Season: Silver, Current: Unranked

Sivir (Player Level 27): Last Season: Unranked, Current: Unranked

Ryze (Player Level 88): Last Season: Gold, Current: Gold V

VS.

Blue Team

Illoai (Player Level 67): Last Season: Silver, Current: Gold III

Jarven (Player Level 65): Last Season: Platinum, Current: Unranked

Soraka (Player Level 81): Last Season: Platinum, Current: Platinum II

LeBlanc (Player Level 46): Last Season: Unranked, Current: Unranked

Kai'Sa (Player Level 89): Last Season: Gold, Current: Platinum V

3 Comments

YoNightmare71 votes

MMR decides (in unranked games) who plays against who. Basically it's your hidden elo for norms that matches you up against people with an MMR that is relatively close to yours. Your MMR goes up with wins and down with losses.

Sadly, Riot's system has been kind of shit recently.

YoNightmare71 votes

Yeah level doesn't have an impact on who you play against tho

Mysticman891 votes

It's based on normals mmr, which is independent of ones ranked mmrs. Just like in ranked, it goes up when you win, and down when you lose, and by how much depends on how your mmr compares to everyone elses in the match (which if everyone was solo, they'd all be fairly similar, but premades can really throw a spanner into things).

Since ranked play doesn't impact normals mmr and vice versa, the two numbers can get wildly out of sync, as theres plenty of people who primarily play ranked and so their normals mmr doesn't increase as their skill increases (so you will absolutely see diamond+ ranked players at a ~silver ish normals mmr), and similarly there exists players who may be unranked or relatively low ranks, who play at a relatively high normals mmr if they don't bother with ranked (or stop at gold or d5 or whatever).

That said, it is appropriate that they aren't linked, as people frequently use normals as a place to play off-role or learn new champs, and generally play less competitively than in ranked where sensible people are almost exclusively on their best champion and best roles. If someone plays normals enough they'll end up settling at an mmr where they win ~50% of the time, and if they don't play normals that much then it doesn't impact that many players in the big picture so isn't really an issue.

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