Why RIOT Should Get Rid of Provisional Games

So, we all know the pain of provisional games. You play ten games and then receive a placement into one of the divisions. For the majority of players, if you get lucky, you get a good placement and if you get unlucky you get a poor placement, but either way you usually get a placement substantially below your past placement and have to grind up. Player dissatisfaction: players get placed and wonder why they got placed where they did. The system isn't transparent so players often don't understand why they are placed where they are. RNG: luck is a factor, players can be placed higher or lower based on these ten games and this could depend on how lucky you got rather than particular displays of skill. Silver: doesn't feel like as great an achievement when new players whose MMR starts at Silver get placed there after ten games. Bronze: has a bad reputation because players have to lose games to get there. Players shouldn't feel bad about being in Bronze V, but the current system leads naturally to that.

So why have placements? Why not have all new players come in a Bronze V and work their way up to Silver. If all players actually have to grind through Bronze to get to Silver, then Silver seems like more of an achievement for the players who get there. They know that some new player didn't just log in, get ten lucky games, and wind up there. Because players actually have to grind through Bronze, the reputation of Bronze will improve. Instead of being the League that players had to lose games to get to, it becomes a League that all players have to grind through anyways. Player Satisfaction: players don't have to wonder how their first ten games are affecting their rank. They will know from the start that they are grinding from a particular point in the ladder. The system is clear that way: you know where you stand and how each game affects your standing. RNG: it's always there, but we know that players who achieve a certain rank in the game had to play more than lucky games to get there!

MMR is hidden and the rank that is displayed superficial anyways. The whole reason the League/Division system was introduced was to make it so players could feel rewarded when they grind out a few hundred games, rather than starting at an ELO number that had very little context or sense of achievement. Because the system is all about the sense of achievement, Silver players with hidden MMR at Silver level should feel the sense of reward that comes from playing the games necessary to climb to Silver rather than taking it for granted that they will start there because they got a lucky set of provisional games.

Otherwise, what the point of the Bronze League? When you have to lose games to be there, it takes away from the sense of achievement when you go from Bronze IV to Bronze III. Instead of saying you worked your way up, you sort of say that you aren't as bad as you were (but your still bad). You might as well get rid of Bronze League and start at Silver, because basically everyone has to pass through Silver anyways. And that adds a greater sense of accomplishment in going from Silver V to Silver IV that climbing from Bronze V to Silver I (sure, players can feel achievement in going from Bronze IV to Bronze III, but that's only after they've gone through the disappointment of dropping to a low rank).

The only objection I can see is that players might get upset that there are Bronze borders in their Silver games (or Silver borders in their Bronze games). But that's already something players get upset about and also one of the silliest things to get upset about. The change wouldn't really affect the higher ranked players. They all had to actually win games (not lose games) to get to their ranks. They already understand that they need to play more than ten games to get where they want to be. If anything their anxieties at lack of transparency of ten games should also be reduced too.

TL;DR The reality is that many Silver players get placed in Bronze anyways after their ten games. It just seems silly to have a system where players can't actually see their progress or lack thereof game to game when that's part of the whole point of having the League/Division system in the first place!

Is there any real function that provisional games serve in the League/Division system other than contribute to player anxiety?