Promotion/demotion in ranked

Moriddin·Aug 14, 2014·1 votes·1,136 views

this may be stupid to talk about, and may have been brought up already as I don't frequent the forums.... but why in the world do you have to win 2/3 games to get promoted, don't get any points for those wins, but you get demoted if you lose with 0 points and you end up in division below with less than 100? Seems to me that for the promotion system to work more fairly, there should be a demotion series also. I mean everyone has been there when they lose a game, then someone leaves in the next one, all of a sudden they're demoted with 75 points, now it will take 2 wins to get INTO the promo, then 2 more wins- just to get where they were one game ago.

6 Comments

XyjiryoAug 14, 20141 votes

You can lose a couple of games at 0 LP without being demoted.

MoriddinAug 14, 20141 votes

Sometimes that's true, but my recent experience has shown me that it isn't always the case. Which also brings up the issue of consistency- it should be the same every time**

Jinxed AmuletAug 14, 20141 votes

There is a demotion series in place, it's just not shown visibly to you. Once your hidden MMR reaches below the division you are in, that's when you get demoted. Even though you don't visibly see yourself failing the 'demotion series' it is in place. Perhaps Riot could make it visibly shown that in 'X' amount of games you will be demoted, but as of now it is in place but just not aesthetically available.

MoriddinAug 14, 20141 votes

I guess I don't understand the point of physically showing a promotion series that you have to win vs. the hidden MMR that demotes you. Some sort of visibility with regards to demotion would provide more clarity to the ranked system- which is something they've been all about lately- and a change that wouldn't really take much effort, as in your example with just letting us know how many losses until we're down the ladder

ArmySquirrelAug 14, 20141 votes

The lack of transparency on demotions can be a little frustrating, but it does try to leave you there as long as your hidden MMR doesn't fall too low. Personally I don't know which I would like better, or at all, if I were at 0 LP, a few games of "If I lose this game, I might be demoted" or one game of "If I lose this game, I WILL be demoted."

VeratuuDec 4, 2014

I agree that there should be a demotion series. I've been Gold I 4 times just in the past couple months. Now I am Gold 5 because I went on a 15ish game losing streak (at least 10 of which were because of AFK's on my team). I've never lost more than 1 game in a row at 0 LP. I usually have a record of something like win-loss-win-loss then I get demoted. I think the best approach would be to allow the LP people would have gained during their promotion series to carry over to the next division. Then if they lose a game at 0 LP they should be put into a demotion series which would be the same as a promotion series, except if you lose 2 of 3 you get demoted, obviously (This would theoretically require at least 2 losses to even be put into a demotion series, and 4 losses to be demoted). I guess the reason for physically showing whether a person is in their demotion series or not would be to eliminate the confusion of why the person got demoted in the first place (I know I've definitely been demoted on a loss immediately after a win and don't understand why). Now that I've pitched my idea for how to fix this problem, that a lot of players seem to have a concern about, I would like to bring up another issue. I think if a player is AFK it should affect LP gain/loss. Such as if you lose with an AFK on your team then you should lose less LP and if you win with an AFK on your team you should gain more LP. A potential addition to this would be that a player would also gain less LP if they are on the winning team with an AFK on the enemy team. As well as losing more LP if a player loses with an AFK on the enemy team. This would be really easy to implement because it could be determined the same way a player's name highlights red in the game statistics screen. I don't know if the mods read these or how often (I hear they are actually pretty good about it), or if there is a way to directly submit an idea so I guess I'll just leave this here and hope it receives some acknowledgement and potentially some backing.