Opinions on the new ranked system
To preface, I'm a top/adc player in mid-silver elo trying to climb back up to gold, and I have been having a LOT of issues with toxic teammates/opponents.
Out of the last 15 games I've played, I would say that 3 or 4 have either had a teammate who was extremely toxic to the point where I had to mute them (I normally never mute teammates, only enemies), or someone on either team went afk. I'm not sure what to attribute this to, but I have a feeling it has something to do with the new ranked system.
One of the reasons I think this toxicity is spreading through my games is that people are playing off roles and simply don't care whether we win or lose. Your main role will gain/lose 3 to 5 LP for winning/losing on an off role, which is not enough to encourage a player to be valuable to the team. I've seen weird and dumb support picks like Swain and Illaoi, and my friend told me about when he had a Kha'Zix support who fed away the game. This kind of attitude towards winning and losing is extremely toxic for the community, because it means that sometimes only half your team is actually making an effort to win the game.
Another thing I've noticed is some MASSIVE skill disparities between players in my games. This may just be a product of me being silver and this being the beginning of the season, but compared to last season its terrible. I have a feeling that this is due to players in a much higher elo than me (a good guess would be high gold/low platinum) getting autofilled. This throws them into a lower elo with worse players, which means they can roll over everybody in the game and win. I've had players like this both on my team and on the enemies team, who get so incredibly fed that nobody can deal with them. I've been matched with and against players who have high gold in one or two of their roles in silver 3, which is not okay. It's frustrating to play against someone whose much better than you, and it's boring to get carried by your 13/0/3 midlaner whose at their nexus by 5 minutes.
The last thing I want to talk about is how this affects me as a player. Before, I would jump around between top, mid, support, and adc, because I would either fill for a teammate who got a bad role for them, or I would simply go play a champion I enjoyed (Tahm Kench is the best support don't @ me). Now, i'm not only discouraged for playing my off-roles, I'm basically punished for doing so. I've only done my placements for top and adc, and even then it felt like a massive waste of time, if I want to rank up in both my roles, I have to play double the amount of games because LP splashing doesn't feel like it helps me in any way. Not to mention that if someone wants to get a placement in all roles, they have to play 32 GAMES!!! That's ridiculous.
While writing this I decided to look into what the community has to say about it, and it seems like the community is split down the middle. I'd love to hear about what you guys and gals think about the new ranked changes, especially from any high-elo players who want to put in their two cents. Good luck out on the rift, and remember to always ban Karthus.
