The real reason the matchmaking system is so bad - and why Riot has zero intentions of changing it

As we all know the matchmaking system is in a rather weird and not exactly positive spot right now. And for outsiders its kinda hard to see through, given the weird interaction of League, Rank, Hidden MMR, LP, etc. I remember back in the old days where you had the old ELO system. Not perfect, but at least you knew where you were at with it.

And then they changed it for a simple reason: because the "new" system is INTENTIONALLY FLAWED and with the old system it would be way more noticable.

But why would they use this flawed system? What gains does Riot have from this?

Well, the effect of this systme is very simple: to making climbing harder while holding up an illusion. Instead of just ranking up your ELO-number you now have the carrot stick in form of a division promotion in front of your nose. But it would be horrible for Riot if people would just climb into the rank they were comfortable with - after all the biggest number of players in ranked are those who try to climb with blood sweat and tears. If everyone would easily reach their skill level in terms of rank and get comfortable there and seeing that this is where they belong and be comfortable with that, THEY WOULD PLAY LESS.

And that is why you sit on your low rank and get matched with people leagues above you - or why you have these weird patterns of losing streaks right after win streaks as the system forces your winrate to 50%. Generally that already sounds fishy. After all the matchmaking is supposed to achieve 50% through indirect means, giving you stronger and stronger opponents and teammates until you find the level you belong. HOWEVER, what the league system does, is that it sees you are above the 50% and intentionally sets up unfavourable games for you.

All so you don't increase in rank and you PLAY MORE TO GET THAT RANK YOU WANT, EVEN WHEN IN TERMS OF HIDDEN MMR YOU MIGHT ALREADY BELONG THERE. Think about it. If you had ever true 50% win chance, you wouldn't climb, you'd just sit on the rank you belong - as the rank where you belong is ideally the one where you don't climb or drop from. Yet the system ENFORCES the 50% regardless of rank.

And in a pure PvP game, PLAYERS ARE CONTENT. They are the most important content to be honest. You can have champions, visuals, items, mechanics... but nothing of it works unless you find 10 people for a match. So it is Riots utmost priority to make sure that there are as many people playing as possible.

At the same time veteran players with countless hours are more likely to spend RP. I'm not sure how many years I had been playing this game when I first bought a skin, but my mindset was more like "Eh I got so many hours with this game already, might even pay 10 bucks for that now" and not "ten bucks for a virtual costume? Holy shit I could eat three Döner Kebabs from this!".

This is not really a conspiracy theory, but simple psychology and marketing. When you think about it, it's really so obvious, and I feel like a fool for not really noticing it sooner. I mean, I am a Master-Student in Media Studies who wrote his BA-Thesis about League of Legends - NOTICING THINGS LIKE THIS IS PRETTY MUCH MY JOB. And I failed. God that makes me so angry.

Everything is just set up so people do not stop playing. And that sickens me: a good game is played because it is GOOD, not because of some psychological traps hidden inside of it.

However, that system only works as long the illusion is kept up - and here the true genius lies: people who actually managed to climb WILL AUTOMATICALLY DEFEND THE SYSTEM. "I had it hard as fuck, so why should it be any better for any of you low-ELO scrubs? Git gud!" Humans can be disgusting sometimes, really. But as of right now the number of people complaining has increased with every season. I've been with this game since season two and frequented the boards (back then the forums) and observed the trend since then, and sooner or later they will have to change the system.

If you had asked me some years ago if I'd ever quit league I would have told you you were crazy while tending to my lore-fandom/fanfiction blog. But this game has so many flaws that go unadressed for years (RNG crit as the root of all damage creep for example) and now we have Riot INTENTIONALLY screwing up the gaming experience for the sake of profit and binding players through psychological tricks (Key-Hunting for Hextech crafting is one of them, just another incentive to NOT STOP PLAYING UNTIL YOU WIN ENOUGH, which is obviously blocked by a system that keeps setting up bad games for you at times, resulting in having to play even more).

So the only consequence of this was to stop playing until stuff gets fixed. It's a shame, really, but the only way Riot will ever change something is when they stop profiting from this. As long as people keep playing ranked and take the system seriously Riot will not change anything no matter how many complain.