Why ranked is broken : Ranked matchmaking should be elo/devision based and not mmr based.

MisterJulia·1/16/2017, 4:58:18 PM·5 votes·595 views

I see alot of people complaining about ranked lately and I think a large part of the problem comes from ranked matchmaking being mmr based.

The thing with mmr is that nobody but riot uses it and when looking at a player skill level we look at his elo not mmr since mmr is hidden from us so people normaly want to gain elo not mmr but this is where the problems start : lets say you're at a plat level of skills and you play ranked and get placed silver 5. So you probably are going to stomp and carry most games and your mmr will rise alot but after a few games even though you are still silver you'll notice you are being matched with plat players that are at the same skill level as you but hey they are plat and you are silver so you are expected to beat plats to get out of silver wich is absurd and it just keeps people from getting to their right rating and start climbing. Now in the usual case people are not that far from their right ratings but it is here where the problem really shows specialy with low elo players I see alot of people in bronze 2/1 getting matched with silver 3/4 after winning a few games wich is stupid. for a bronze 2 to get to bronze 1 he should be able to beat bronze 2 players not silver 3/4 and in my opinion he should not be matched even with bronze 1 unless in promos.

I understand that the mmr system maybe effective against smurfs but there are other ways to handle smurfs like increasing the lp gain cap so that the people stomping most their games can get out of their devision in 2 or 3 games and make them skip devisions.

Another problem I've seen lately is people getting worst team mates as they go on winning streaks , again the mmr system is the problem : if you are winning alot of games your mmr will increase and when looking for a game the matchmaking will do one if 2 things : 1/ look for a teams around your devision with similar average mmr and because you have an mmr better than you devision's you will get team mates worst than your devisins skill level to even out the average mmr wich means you probably are better than all the players in the game but your team mates are worst than all of the 5 enemy team players.

2/ match you with players higher than your devision wich brings us back to the first problem of beating higher elo players to get out of a lower elo

So in my opinion the ranked matchmaking will be better off placing people with players of the same devision while mmr should only be used to determine how much lp a player gets and if he should or should not skip devisions.

3 Comments

S0kaX1/16/2017, 5:13:03 PM2 votes

This is a really great idea, but it's getting downvoted for no reason. This should be implemented.

Musicianking11/16/2017, 5:17:58 PM2 votes

I agree man, i was climbing in silver around my early rank days this season. Silver5 and was getting silver 1 and gold 4 players. How in the heck is the skill level anywhere near the same? it isnt. It should be around the same league you are in now. If they place you in Silver4 then you should get people around silver 4, not in gold, not in bronze, not in silver 1 (100LP). I feel your pain and i know this is an issue. When i was in bronze i was getting rekt by silver 3 players when i was bronze 3 (like wtf).

dunder kill1/16/2017, 5:15:41 PM1 votes

Neglecting to mention that if you're silver and have plat MMR, you'll be gaining like 30 LP for a win and only losing like 10 for a loss. You would even be skipping divisions at this point. Even if you only maintain a 50%win rate, you'll still be catapulted through the ranks.

It's almost impossible to have a full two division difference in MMR and actual rank though because of this. The threads you see where plat players are placed into low silver are players who had extraordinarily bad MMR for their division. For example if you were plat 5 and had gold 5 MMR, you could easily be placed in low silver. This is a good thing because it punished the people who got their peak rank once then decide to acre around because they can't get demoted. This can happen because Riot has made it insanely difficult to get demoted between full tiers.