Why have divisions and ranks when MMR is really what matters?

metaworldpeace10·May 22, 2015·33 votes·1,656 views

I mean seriously? I can't find the motivation to grind myself out of Gold 1 into Platinum, especially when I'm playing against players from Platinum 3 to Diamond 5. There is no reason that I should be playing players that are obviously much better than I. I want to play players who are at my skill level or slightly better. This ranking system needs some QoL changes. I know that this doesn't just happen with me, but for many players who are trying to grind out of their respective tiers and can't because of this MMR shit. It's annoying and it needs to be fixed.

26 Comments

Mandang0May 22, 20154 votes

Promos are the biggest problem.

If you do the math, you need to average a 60% winrate to have a 50% chance to get into & pass promos (win 1, then win 3 of 5). It's completely ridiculous, because it keeps players who should advance down (35% chance to pass promos if you have a 50% winrate), and the players who do advance likely blow through the next tier's V division (because they have around a 60% winrate). Worse still is that you're matched with people with demotion immunity in the V division, who often don't play seriously.

LP is a pain, but at least Riot sorta accounts for it by having the amount you win/lose depend on where your MMR is. Promos? There's nothing redeeming about promos.

Spacesuit SpiffMay 22, 20153 votes

I can kinda understand why they switched to tiers, but it really does need smoothing out. Especially since it creates cesspools in division 5 of everything where people are more likely to troll because they think losing doesn't matter. And then there's good old diamond 5, where you're gaining 8 points and losing 30 every time you get one of the aforementioned trolls.

ImFromMexicoMay 22, 20153 votes

If your MMR is much higher than your division, you will skip divisions and get gain 25~ and only lose 10~. Which makes things easier. If you don't actually belong where your MMR is placing you, you'll lose more and it will all balance out.

In the end it really doesn't make a difference.

Aurelius MaximusMay 22, 20152 votes

it used to be that way. This feels better to rank up in for the majority of people.

NoMonkuMay 22, 20152 votes

Ya you can skip divisions. In S3 when I got into gold 5, I jumped to g3, then to g1. If your MMR is higher then where you should be, you will rise quickly.

Also part of the reason for the league system was for a cushioning mechanism if you went on a losing streak. Back when it was just MMR, I had plenty of friends who would drop from 2100 to 1500 in a day because they had a spree of losses. Of course they could rise back up quickly as well, which they did, but it was very demoralizing for them and very frustrating to have to get matched with teammates who had a huge gap in skill.

jDVL20eCYsMay 22, 20152 votes

you cant have diamond mmmd and be stuck in gold 1. just saying

ApolloclipticMay 22, 201513 votes

...I think his point is that he doesn't want to be going up against Plat-Diamond players?

jDVL20eCYsMay 22, 20151 votes

then he can troll. btw why would he not want to improve him self?

ApolloclipticMay 22, 201517 votes

Because you don't improve when you're getting steam rolled lol

Dogs might train with wolves, but puppies should train with dogs or they'll just get eaten :P

jDVL20eCYsMay 22, 20151 votes

who cares we all going to die anyway and not go to heaven

TMITMay 22, 20151 votes

It's not really valid. Anybody behind the keyboard who makes the correct choices consistently will perform well. Maybe a random 12 year old girl doesn't have Faker's reflexes, but if she were to apply his knowledge and make similar decisions in similar circumstances that he does you'd have a 12 year old challenger.

You don't learn or attain elite play without analyzing it and then ironing out your own mistakes until your play resembles elite play. Not everyone enjoys the process of doing that, but anybody who can stomach it can and will improve rapidly.

ApolloclipticMay 22, 201510 votes

Are you negating my point? I'm not really sure? Your entire first paragraph doesn't seem to relate to what I said, though half joking, my point was, if your opponent is TOO much stronger than you, you don't learn much from them. Your point about a 12 year old challenger or faker level reflexes doesn't say anything in regards to that one simple point I made. So I'm not sure if your replying to someone else and me at the same time or something along those lines?

If I use martial arts as an example, you don't match a white belt against a black belt, ever. They always try to get something along the lines of white to blue belt. The reason is, that if your opponent is outperforming you to the point then you can't even comprehend what it is they did to beat you, you won't be able to improve much as a martial artist and will more likely give up.

Same applies to school, teachers never jump straight into Physics until you've learn basic maths. You won't understand the benefit of space fold over FFL even you don't know the requirements on FFL (faster than light travel) which comes down to pretty sophisticated mathematical equations.

In terms of league, if someone is still learning how to itemise and which skills to unlock in what order, they will struggle to master counter picking, counter plays and the mechanics of poke vs burst vs sustain etc. If someone has not got the grips of 1 v 1 laning, they will struggle to master team fights. My examples are not great because I am no League Pro, but the point stands. You learn in stages, and if you try to jump to far ahead, you will struggle.

To be clear, I am not saying that silver 4 should only play silver 4, or even that a silver 2 will only improve against silver 1, but a bronze won't learn anything in a game against a Gold, and gold is unlikely to learn much going up against a diamond, Because you will lose so hard you won't be able to isolate what you did wrong. Or things you did right you might think you did wrong because they didn't work. Maybe your last hitting was perfect, but you lost in farm due to lane freezing? Maybe your item build was great, but lost in damage because of the timing of instigations, or the enemy always poked you when you went to farm and kept out of your range so you couldn't poke back.

Until you've mastered "your" level of play, you shouldn't try to skip 2 or 3 levels because you won't know what's going on, except for occasional exceptions of course (like people who are better at map awareness than trading might have better decision making even if they lose in 1 v 1 or lane phase)

I hope my point has been made more clear. and you if still disagree, please try to keep your arguments in the context of what I've said or i may go completely off topic with my rebuke

TotalJerkMay 22, 20155 votes

{quoted}

Maybe a random 12 year old girl doesn't have Faker's reflexes, but if she were to apply his knowledge and make similar decisions in similar circumstances that he does you'd have a 12 year old challenger.

Untrue. Faker makes his decisions with his own reflexes in mind. You should never attempt to Insec if you can't reliably pull it off.

TMITJun 1, 20151 votes

People have surprisingly good or bad reflexes and you'd never know, because knowledge and experience comprises the vast majority of gaming reaction time. The reason is that you can react more readily to expected or predicted things than surprises, and a lot of the game's combos are muscle memory/knowledge, not reflexes.

If you took Faker's knowledge and put it in anybody with normal ability to control their arms/hands/vision that person would be an extremely high level player. Maybe Faker himself has inordinately good reflexes (IE can react in the 100-150ms range instead of the more average ~250ms range), but while that difference might be decisive at the top end of the pro scene, that theoretical 12 year old would still be challenger for certain.

@ OP:

Sure, you need some basic level of gameplay knowledge to be able to do anything. A person who is ranked silver (or has ranked at all) is someone who has at least played to level 30 if they didn't buy an account. That means this person has played the game for a pretty solid chunk of hours already.

To overcome perpetual intermediacy, you have to take concrete steps towards reaching elite play. Yes, getting smoked by a master player and then analyzing what he did against you and why he makes the choices he makes, adjusting, and trying again is the way to fast-track skill improvement. It's not easy going at first, but unless one tempers their play expectations and adjustments to high levels they're likely to stay average-ish forever.

Overcoming perpetual intermediacy is costly, so we can't do it with everything because of the time and effort sink. Even daily tasks like typing, driving, and spoken communication fall under this category. If you want to be really great at something, you have to target that goal and then make dedicated steps to pursue it. If you don't care and just want to enjoy doing it/be able to do it okay, then you just do it a lot and you'll stay at an intermediate level.

Not everyone is going to be willing (or able) to put this effort into League, or any other singular thing.

TotalJerkMay 22, 20151 votes

You very much can if you a repeatedly unlucky during your promos.

jDVL20eCYsMay 22, 20151 votes

No. You mena you can be hold 1 and have mer dimond 1 and only play with dimond 1:s ?

COWmanLordMay 22, 20151 votes

Well I am gold 5 and playing consistently against people from gold 2 - plat 5 even having plat 2 drop into my game one time. It isn't quiet as unbelievable as it sounds.

jDVL20eCYsMay 22, 20151 votes

...

metaworldpeace10May 22, 20152 votes

I honestly would just prefer a smooth transition from Gold 1 level to Platinum 5-4 level, then onto platinum 3-2-1 levels. That's all I'm asking for.

BakedLotionMay 22, 20152 votes

I have a high mmr and get matched against people in high plat/low diamond when im gold 1. Makes it hell for me to pass promos. The LP gain/loss isnt a problem since i gain alot and lose very little, but when it comes to promos oh dear

SwordGruntMay 23, 20152 votes

So you don't want to play against better players, you want to play against people in your skill level.

So why do you expect to rise to Plat if your skill level is admittedly Gold 1? You're upset that you can't "grind out" of your tier? So the system should allow people to be placed higher than they should be simply by grinding? Yeah, sounds great... for bad players, I guess

KazaLyn ShaoJun 1, 20151 votes

We're in a teamfight meta. It doesn't matter what level I raise my skill to if my allies are all of my league, but my opponents are leagues above.

TotalJerkMay 22, 20151 votes

It's a deliberate artificial grind. Normals has MMR based matchmaking as well, so if you really don't care about a label you show of to people for e-peen, just play normals and let the quality of the players that you are matched with speak for itself.

EggstealerMay 23, 20151 votes

I am in silver 3 and the majority of players are silver 1 or gold 5 with some people near me because of my mmr. just means I have to carry harder. Kappa

metaworldpeace10May 23, 20151 votes

Let me use an analogy of how I feel about the ranking system in league. Imagine if you're playing basketball and you're in 7th grade. Your eventual goal is to play for the high school varsity team. You want to improve enough to be able to be selected on the varsity team by the time you're a senior. You start by playing the best 7th graders in your local area, maybe you start traveling around your region and you continue to play the best 7th grade players. If you're good enough, your team can enroll in the 8th grade only league in order to see how you fare in the league. If you're good enough to compete, playing above your skill level helps accelerate learning of the skills necessary to play in high school as a varsity player. Some players improve so quickly that by the time they're a freshman or sophomore in high school.. They are ready to start for the varsity team. Most players, however, need a gradual level of competition increase and need to play on the sophomore team, then JV, then Varsity. This is how ranked should be. There are a few select individuals who can skip divisions quickly and with ease, but the majority of us need baby steps in order to reach our final goal. That's all I ask, I don't want to be matched with players who are playing at a varsity level when I'm playing on the freshman team.