Season 7

For quite a few seasons now instead of having a mmr based ranking system we have had a leader point based system. So instead of being placed based on skill or mmr we have been placed based on how many leader points we can accrue by the end of the season.

Riot stated some arguments for this new system when they released it, mostly they were superficial, such as the"neatness" factor of being able to see some of the people in your Ranking. They said it gives a challenger tier feel to all levels of play since you can track who's winning/losing and such in your league (i.e. Zilean's Travelers). Also they stated you could learn who's who in that division so you could end up playing that riven main again later since you are in the same division.

Either way none of the above factors actually matter or effect anyone's ranked play decisions. Instead all it did was hide your player skill measurement (MMR) and replace it with a points grinded (lp) number.

This has caused issues for a lot of people as you can see on the boards and also punishes players that can't grind hundreds of ranked games in half a year. You can see it in frustration on the boards with posts "silver and matched with gold/plat players" etc. It's an unintuitive system that doesn't favor or measure only skill, but instead it measures time investment. The only benefit over the old mmr based ranking is the "feel good" you get from promos. But even that only counteracts the frustration with promos.

Now that we covered the perceived pros of the lp based ladder. Let's talk about the cons.

First promos. The gate keepers to advancement. Let's just be simple here if you want to be a gold player you should have to beat the worst gold players to get there. Sounds simple right? Gold v players should be the gatekeepers preventing silver 1 players from getting to gold. But if your mmr is low enough and you go on a winning streak in this system you can be silver 1 in promos and beat silver 2 players in order to advance to gold. Or flipped around you could be a silver 2 with high mmr and a silver 1 player could be you to be promoted to gold. Then the other problem you could be a silver 2 player with high mmr and have to beat golds 4s to get into silver 1.

Clarity Ever have an opponent in your ranked game that's leagues above you? Do you know why he was in your game? Of course you don't because you can't see his skill level, only his grinded leader points. You can't tell if he's solo with bad mmr, a duo with someone lower than you, or just a product of matchmaking just not being able to do its job. Now with DQ this is even harder to tell. Am I that good that I'm drawing players multiple divisions above me? Are they terrible boosted animals? This is comparable to setting up a game of basketball, having someone divvy up the teams based on perceived skill. Then notice they have LeBron James. You can Google him and see he's perceived as better than you by Riot, but you don't know why he's in your game. It's frustrating if you lose to him, since you're suppose to lose to someone higher than you and you have no reason to believe the game was fair at all.

Now last but not least Riot had stated they have problems with the free flowing structure of MMR based rankings. It is to easy to be 1500 and Gold then plummet to silver over a few games. Hence why they say we need the promotion system. I strongly disagree with this as even with only a couple dozen games played you don't very in mmr that drastically unless you tilt and lose 10 games in a row. But let's say they are right. If you take an mmr based system that ranks you on skill. Why not just have to promo out of your mmr. Cheering and applause. What a novel solution. If I'm 1400 mmr when I hit 1500 unlock my promo games. Make me win 2/3 to be able to continue to raise my mmr. Then same for demotion to 1400 from 1500 make me lose 2/3 to drop down.

Wow now when I play a game I play with similarly ranked people since our ranking is our skill rating. Silvers play together, golds play together, etc. Now when I want to get to a 1200 mmr division I don't have to beat 1400 mmr players. Now I can look at players in a game and see there actual skill level.

TLDR You get matched on a mmr based ladder, but are ranked on a leader point ladder. LP system doesn't rank you based on skill. Instead it hides your skill rating and only shows how many ranked wins you have grinded out. Please change this.