Why is ranked so frustrating

Mr Tim·Aug 29, 2016·1 votes·2,375 views

Does anyone else fluctuate between 3-4 divisions regularly? I feel like its kinda absurd who streak-y my experience with ranked is over the past few months... Even with individual skill factored into the equation, I think its a bit ridiculous that its possible to go on a 9-10 game losing streak. Yea I do get win streaks as well occasionally, but it is super frustrating to climb so high, only to fall back down because of a bad streak. It honestly makes playing ranked so frustrating and unfun to play. I'm not even asking for a better win rate (51.2%), I'm just asking that my match history look more reflective of it instead of being 7 game streaks 80% of the time.

10 Comments

Nameless VoiceAug 29, 20163 votes

Basically, ranked is frustrating because it's random. Especially if you are playing in solo queue, your chance of winning is heavily based on which players are randomly assigned to each team. Sure, your own individual skill has a significant impact, but if you have five random players who don't play well together, it's really hard to win against five players who do, even if those five are each worse individually - and that's not even getting into the fact that sometimes actual trolls or toxic players are assigned to one team or the other.

If you play enough games, your skill will eventually put you at roughly the place where you belong, but even so there's so much noise in terms of other factors that can decide games that it takes a lot of games to get there, and you'll have a lot of unfair / unfun games along the way.

That's the magic of solo queue.

Is there a solution to the problem? I have no idea. Playing ranked in a team would help to make your games much more consistent (and should therefore be much more fun), but how could that problem be solved in solo queue? Adding far more factors into the matchmaker would help, but even then I'm not sure if the problem can really be solved.

Mr TimAug 29, 20161 votes

#magicofsoloqueue

Whenever I can, I try to queue up with people that I know/am on voice chat with. It definitely makes the game a much more enjoyable experience, even through losses. The only problem is I only queue up with the same 3-4 people (of whom usually only 1-2 are on at a time), so its hard to get a full group together to venture into the dark wilderness of ranked. The problem is also finding people who won't tilt after a 3 game losing streak, at which point, if they can't control their emotions, become a detriment to the team.

iTzYaBoyJohnCenaAug 29, 20161 votes

I agree it's pretty frustrating to just lose but you know that's just part of the game

Mr TimAug 29, 20161 votes

Yea no one wants to lose, and I don't get frustrated over losing one game, but losing 8-9 games in a row takes a beating on one's morale.

iTzYaBoyJohnCenaAug 29, 20161 votes

Tbh losing 1 game just pisses me off so much because that was probably a game that we didn't need to lose + waste of like 30 minutes

EndlessSorcererAug 29, 20161 votes

I've never really suffered fluctuation divisions, but I've haven't played ranked game until I hit my skill ceiling either.

Last season, I just played about 110 games to hit Platinum 5 and stopped there.

This season, I did pretty much the same (55 games) until doing a few more last week.

Emerald FangAug 29, 20161 votes

I fluctuate between 0 and 40 LP. It's physically impossible to win 2 games in a row, and it's not me hitting my skill range, because most of my games we are just about to win and then throw for the most BS reasons.

catastrophicSkilAug 29, 20161 votes

ranked is like spinning a roulette wheel you get streaks and you get patterns. this is Speaking from a probability standpoint not much you can do but try to improve your own game play and the more you do the more likely you will be to win. You can always improve even on seemingly perfect games you most likely made some sort of mistake

Mr TimAug 29, 20161 votes

If you wanna talk from a probability/statistics standpoint, lets just say the odds are against someone and you have say a 40% chance to win each game (and assuming im not a dumby at maths), the chances of someone going on a 9 game losing streak is 1% (If you assume 50% winrate the probability actually drops to about 0.2%). Unfortunately, for both of our arguments, ranked and this game is anything but a roulette, there are too many factors to consider when attempting to predict the outcome of a game (champion matchups, team comps, player skill, etc.). And I agree, I think one of the most important things that players forget to take from a loss is what mistakes they made and how they can improve as a player. It is also frustrating, though, looking back at a game, and realizing that the game changing moment was another player's mistake, with everything out of your power. At the end of the day, you just gotta learn from what you did and move on.

KVbqbFsC8eAug 29, 20161 votes

Its frustrating because you are punished for teammates playing poorly. Its a system that judges you based on whether your team won/lost in a 5v5 game. Thats where the frustration stems from.