Does This Make Much Sense To You?

I’m going to describe my 2019 solo queue season here in as much detail as I can, outlining everything that has happened, and explain to you why there is likely good reason to be skeptical of the League matchmaking system. Keep in mind that this is not intended to be any sort of emotional rant; this is intended to be an actual discussion, where I’ll be providing evidence to back up what I’m saying. I strongly believe that there’s more going on behind the scenes than Riot has ever admitted (and likely will ever admit) to us, and hopefully by the end of this you’ll begin to see what I mean.

I didn’t start playing solo queue until late April. This was because of the positional ranking system, and the fact that several YouTubers were recommending everyone to avoid solo queue for a while (because the new system was experimental and it was likely that it would be reverted). I took their advice and spent the early part of the season playing flex queue only.

When I finally did begin playing solo queue, my season got off to a very disappointing start, going 3-7 in placements (this despite getting ACE or MVP in almost every game). The frustration continued, as I had only 5 wins to show for my first 15 games overall.

Then, for some strange reason, everything changed. I won the next 6 games in a row... and it was a sign of things to come! After the first frustrating 15 games, I went on to win 62 of my next 103 games, for a 60% win rate over that stretch. In doing so, I climbed from Silver 3 0LP to Gold 3 100LP, on the verge of Gold 2. I was feeling amazing, thinking that my frustrations from past seasons were finally over with, that the system had finally stopped rigging teams against me, and that I could finally look forward to climbing. However, sadly, this is where the train went completely off the rails.

I have won only 21 of the 60 games since then. Yes, you read that right, just 21 of 60 games, which is a 35% win rate. Over this stretch, I can confidently say that I’ve been teamed with at least 3 griefers/trolls in virtually every game; the wins have come in games where the enemy team also had 3+ griefers.

The thing is, I can pinpoint the exact moment where this turnaround happened. There was a game where I made the mistake of not /muting all, and a teammate had managed get under my skin. I made the mistake of getting into an argument in the chat with that teammate. Yes, it’s true that I should have known better, and that it was my fault for getting sucked into that argument. However, little did I know that, in that moment, any hope I had of having a successful ladder climb in 2019 had gone up in smoke.

What I want to put major emphasis on here is not only the drastic difference in the quality of my teammates since that game, but also the drastic difference in their overall demeanor and behavior. There has been nothing short of a night-and-day difference in the type of teammates I’ve had, before and after that game, in a number of different ways.

The first thing to note is how chatty my teammates have been, not only in the volume of chat, but also in the type of chat. When I was on my 60% stretch, I almost never had to /mute all, because my teammates seldom typed anything into the chat (maybe the occasional “wp” or “gg”, but nothing other than that). However, during this recent 35% stretch, my teammates have been constantly spamming chat messages, and it usually begins in the pre-game lobby (usually extremely immature, barely intelligible jibberish), continues as the games starts, continues throughout the game, turns to flaming once we start losing, and continues on for the rest of the match and into the post-game lobby.

The second thing to note is how easily tilted my teammates have been recently. As soon as one or two things go wrong, they either type ff into the chat and start griefing, or they start flaming teammates in the chat. This type of thing happens in almost every game recently, but was almost unheard of when I was on the 60% stretch.

The third thing to note is how often people are trying out new champions in ranked that they have little to no experience on, and predictably play extremely poorly. This type of thing almost never happened while I was on the 60% stretch.

The fourth thing to note is how little attention people pay to team compositions. People see me hovering Karthus, and, disturbingly often, they seem to want to lock in all AP champions in response. I wouldn’t be bothered by this, of course, if they were locking in their main champions… but alas, their op.gg shows them using an ocean of different champions, and not really focusing in on a handful of champions. More than anything this just shows that these people treat ranked like it’s a complete joke, and they don’t take it seriously in the slightest. I’m being teamed with people like this in almost every game – which wasn’t the case when I was on the 60% stretch.

And the fifth thing worth noting here is the tendency of my teammates to refuse to move in when I’m ganking their lane – they literally don’t even try to help when they very easily could – they instead just leave me to die. Then, of course, later on in the game they’ll try to fight when clearly outnumbered, and predictably die. In other words, they avoid fights that they should participate in, and they participate in fights that they should avoid. This is a problem I didn’t encounter very often when I was on the 60% stretch.

So, let’s take a step back and try to make sense of all this. I was winning 60% of my ranked games over a 103 game stretch… then suddenly, out of the blue, started winning only 35% of my games despite changing nothing about my gameplay. The type of teammates I’ve been getting have been strikingly different, in all the ways I’ve outlined above, after the big turnaround, as compared to before it. Furthermore, there was one heated discussion that I got into with a teammate, and it was at the precise time that my winrate began to take a huge nosedive.

So it seems like there are two competing explanations here. The first explanation insists that this is all dumb luck, random chance, luck of the draw. These overt, striking, vivid, blatant, persistent trends being apparent over those two stretches of games, is nothing more than sheer happenstance. Nothing to see here folks, move along…

The second explanation is the one that, to me, seems far more likely. I honestly believe that there is some correlation between the post-game reporting system, and matchmaking itself. To be more specific, I believe that those who have had several reports sent against them recently, only get teamed with other people who have also had several reports sent against them recently. This type of system would immediately explain the drastic change in the quality/behavior of teammates, before and after I likely got gang-reported following that one game. I also do believe that I’ve been reported in many games since then, because teammates have complained about me in chat on a regular basis, often complaining simply because_ I chose Karthus as a jungler_, and they don’t think that Karthus is a jungler. They also often complain that it’s my fault when they die to ganks, even when they didn’t set up any vision.

So yes, what I’m describing is a “prisoner island” or “penalty box” type of system. Despite Riot’s constant denials, I honestly do believe they do have such a system actively in place.

Another thing to mention – it’s not just the trends of this season that leads me to believe that this is happening – similar things happened all throughout last season as well; after getting into an argument with a teammate, I would go on an insane losing trend, and the matchmaking would not go back to normal until I took 3-4 days without playing any games. It was like clockwork. The same observations that are present now were present then – the night-and-day difference in the quality/behavior of teammates, before vs after the heated discussion (and people likely reporting me).

Let me be perfectly clear here, I very badly want to be wrong about this. I don’t want there to be some sort of hidden “penalty box” that people are put in without even made aware of it. I don’t want to have to incorporate some sort of “don’t play any games for several days when consistently teamed with griefers” strategy for climbing… but I’m afraid that I might have no other choice.

Some of you reading this are going to ask the question “why don’t you dodge?” Well, the answer is that I have dodged games in clear cases of low-win-rate teammates, or people on long losing streaks. However, no amount of dodging ever seems to alleviate the problem.

There is one other thing to mention here that is pertinent to this discussion. In late June/early July, I had a stretch of about 6 or 7 games where, in 3 of those games, someone on my team left the game and put us in a 4v5 hole. All of those games looked somewhat winnable if we had all 5 players, but in all three cases, we lost the game because the enemy team knew how to take advantage of the 5v4. In any event, I sent a ticket to Riot to report the AFKers. When I logged in the next day, I noticed that not only did Riot respond to my ticket, but also a small change had been made to my account that I myself never actually made; the item shop was switched from list mode to grid mode. I noticed this change but thought nothing of it at first, but then I noticed that I was getting decent, non-griefing teammates on a consistent basis, and was winning a bunch of games and climbing relatively easily. It was like someone at Riot had touched my account in some way… perhaps did some sort of soft reset or something… because the change in matchmaking seemed very apparent – instead of getting AFKers, I was suddenly getting sane teammates on a regular basis. That general trend continued, of course, until the dreaded aforementioned game which sent everything spiralling in a downward direction.

So I’m curious to hear your feedback. Do you honestly feel that there’s nothing suspicious or strange about someone holding down a 60% win rate over 103 games, only to nosedive to a 35% win rate out of the blue, despite not changing the way he plays? Or does it seem nonsensical to you that someone’s winrate could change that drastically with no apparent explanation for it?