Riot, Please review your matchmaking tool's analysis
First off thanks to the matchmaking history not being visible (still shows a blank space), I am unable to link directly to the game I planned to reference. So, wall of text:
The other team's roster and some stats (from na.op.gg): -kimhwanbit: 1232 mmr rating, 49% win rate overall, 41% kill participation, S5 Silver 4, S6 Silver 4, S7 Silver 5, and 7.8/4.9/5.6 KDA. -Adipose Fitness: 1278 mmr rating, 46% win rate overall, 52% kill participation, S6 Gold 4, S7 Silver 4, and 7.9/5.1/8.8 KDA. -yua sakuya: 1315 mmr rating, 49% win rate overall, 46% kill participation, S4 Gold 5, S5 Gold 5, S6 Gold 5, S7 Silver 2, and 6.4/7.8/8.7 KDA. -iamumz: 1406 mmr rating, 48% win rate overall, 54% kill participation, S6 Silver 3, S7 Silver 4, and 6.2/4.6/9.8 KDA. -maxine0u0: 1236 mmr rating, 52% win rate overall, 50% kill participation, S5 Silver 4, S6 Silver 5, S7 Silver 5, and 2.3/5.7/13.7 KDA.
My team's roster and some stats (also from na.op.gg): -PyrotekNick: 1232 mmr rating, 51% win rate overall, 44% kill participation, S5 Silver 3, S6 Silver 3, S7 Silver 3, and 6.1/3.3/8.0 KDA. -RaizenDaTank: 1210 mmr rating, 51% win rate overall, 34% kill participation, S4 Silver 3, S5 Silver 4, S6 Silver 4, S7 Silver 5, and 5.9/6.6/5.5 KDA. -SoPrimaL: 1276 mmr rating, 49% win rate overall, 47% kill participation, S5 no rank, S6 Silver 5, S7 Silver 4, and 8.4/6.9/7.5 KDA. -Titsmcgee4lyfe: 1253 mmr rating, 53% win rate overall, 54% kill participation, S5 no rank, S6 Silver 5, S7 Silver 4, and 10.3/4.8/8.3 KDA. -itsyahiko: 1294 mmr rating, 52% win rate overall, 56% kill participation, S5 Bronze 1, S6 Silver 3, S7 Silver 4, and 2.5/4.3/16.4 KDA.
"Hey Nick, why am I looking at a bunch of stats, some of which have no relationship with ranked?" Short answer is, I am requesting that Riot revamp their system. The reset from S6 to S7 left a lot of Gold level players in the Silver bracket. The skill differential is enormous. I tilted the Ezreal in this match by ganking to counter his skill advantage and he died to 3 back-to-back ganks...it ultimately had no effect, the Gold jungler ganked successfully elsewhere and we still lost the game, Ez still outfarmed and outplayed my Yasuo, and my team.
Another point that frustrates me, I have a 51% win rate. I would think that I should be climbing the ladder, slowly, but climbing. I'm not. I lost 20 LP for this match. My whole team is outclassed by two of the players on their team. But according to the matchmaking system, it was a match in our favor, even though by skill we're outclassed. The only visible stat that explains a predicted loss is the overall win rate. It appears that the current matchmaking system is either placing heavy emphasis on that, or exclusively reading win rate to provide it's rating for each player. At the same time, most folks who're in the Silver 4 to Silver 2 ballpark will tell you that a Gold 5 to Gold 4 player has more skill in the champs they play, and will have had the advantage in this matchup from second 1 of the match.
There are an infinite number of useful factors that determine outcome in any given game of league. I'm just sick of having to beat my own team's willful throws, over-zealous bloodlust, afk-ing, intentionally feeding, queuing into ranked with literally no experience on their champion, no runes, an inability to cover more than one role, an unwillingness to buy wards, an unwillingness to assist in objectives, or follow shot-calling onto carries (instead of tanks), in addition to having to win matchups that shouldn't occur, but were anticipated by the matchmaking system as being 'easy' wins.
By now you're thinking, "wow, this Nick guy is a bitter, shit, silver player". Yes, sure, I am. I'm queuing into ranked, with a 50/50 shot of winning any given match based on two things: the feed likelihood of my teammates and whether or not they're willing to buy control wards. Riot has started moving the game to more team-based gameplay (instead of the solo-carry matches). The game is moving away from your Irelia/Jax/Akali monsters going straight to Diamond and more towards, 'if your team doesn't function well, you lose' a lot more of the better-skilled players (than those in the Silver bracket) are stuck in Silver due to a (what used to carry games) mentality of, "my 1 for 1 tower dive to get first blood, and these additional kills is a good trade-off for me" which then means that their lane opponent is losing to them, but is ahead of the the rest of your team in gold, and then kills you off by surprise every time your 'fed' teammate isn't around. That doesn't float you into Gold anymore, because the damage output per gold spent is down for a lengthy list of champions.
Okay so...why waste your time with my rant? There are more stats. Stats that can be measured, have value to the team, and are crucial to victory. I win games as jungle/support when the other team doesn't ward. I lose games as whomever I'm playing, when my team doesn't ward. God forbid I ask teammates to buy a control ward. So what did Nick do to "git gud"? I started buying too many. I buy between 3-7 control wards a game, ahead or not. Does it help? some. Usually, the matches I buy 3-4 in, my team was buying and using vision tools well. The 5-7 ballpark are usually losses and my team wouldn't ward.
Every good 'complaint' has a solution provided. So here is the solution I've concoted, the traditional Elo system was meant for chess. 1v1 only, and with 1000 game sample size. We're not dealing with a 1v1, its always a 5v5, and rarely 1000 games...what do?
A complete overhaul of the base matchmaking/rating system's evaluation capabilies, look at the very very top: the official teams (TSM, Liquid, Immortals, NRG, SKT, SSG, etc.). Use their stats as the benchmarks for your Challenger Tier players, since Challenger tends to be the seed for the official teams. The bottom of the Challenger Tier is the benchmark for the Master Tier, bottom of the Master Tier is the benchmark for the Diamond Tier, and so on down to Silver.
Hey Nick, you just said, "stats" but didn't include any details...yes, so here are some of the stats that seem to matter victory: -Kill Participation % -CS -KDA -Wards -Objective control with unique value on: Rift herald Baron Dragon (different emphasis for each type of dragon) (All of these would be measured against other players in the same role, not against the general populous.)
Why would/does Riot want to do this? They have said that they're trying to encourage team gameplay. Which I'm all for; However, they've trained players for multiple past seasons to be solo-carry to progress. That solo-carry mentality generated a lot of the toxicity and hostility within League, having to carry 4 people while fighting 5 more for a victory made people particularly hostile towards their teammates. This revamp I'm suggesting will provide incentive to the team to participate, stop farming for a short time to secure an objective, or teleport down from top to help bash a tower, or...pick a team play to insert here. How? Integration can vary, I suggested a more potent integration HERE, however, after my experiences in the last few days and revisiting the fact that I'm still losing more LP rating for a loss than I'm gaining for a win (which is why I'm not climbing in ranked with a 51% win rate), I've come up with another offering that may be easier to implement.
Instead of adding additional criteria that are either averaged, or weighted to render a player's accurate LP per match: Use the 'team behavior' analysis (based on game-winning behaviors, objective control, control wards placed, trinket wards places, dragons, etc.) to cushion the net gain or loss.
So for an arbitrary match, say a Support player, 40+ wards isn't unusual, 3-4 control wards isn't crazy and a high kill participation % is expected. Say he loses, down with the Support's LP, but, include a +LP bonus because they exhibited good team gameplay behaviors. At the after-match screen where we see our LP loss, the number is smaller, maybe include a note saying that instead of losing 20 LP our intrepid Support only lost 17 LP because of his team oriented activities within the game. For a 'win' condition, same exact thing, measure the player's team oriented behavior and reward them for it with an LP bump of a point or two for the good behaviors they've exhibited.
What does this do besides potentially bloat the top-end of gameplay? It directly encourages the gameplay style that we see and enjoy in the arena between the pros. It also trains the 'solo-carry' mindset out of the community, and will gradually drive new players (who will theoretically already exhibit the behavior we want to see) into the Challenger level of gameplay and onto the stage. As to the 'won't there will be too many players at the top?' question, short answer is no. The tiers are still established. Riot already has a method in-place for regulating how many players hit Challenger and Master. Assume for a moment that they implement this, because the bottom of the tier you're working towards sets the bar for your required behavior, you're always working to hit the benchmarks that players who're better than you have set. Simultaneously, for those '200 IQ plays' folks who're naturally gifted, they can still progress with or without exhibiting 'good' behavior.
Riot, I am re-approaching this because with the S6-S7 reset, and the rapid Summoner's Rift changes in the last 3-4 patches, any practice, watching the pros, and emulating the good behaviors seen there has no bearing on the outcome of any given game a player participates in. The current 'Elo' system that is used is evaluating a statistic that is abused starting with the placement matches at the beginning of every season, more so from S6-S7 (due to all tiers being pushed down multiple brackets within tiers). As it stands, with the current system only evaluating (I'm assuming) simply the win/loss rate, it does not encourage the personal behaviors that are desired for enjoyable games, or the team behaviors that we enjoy watching in the arena.
-Nick
