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'ELO Hell' isn't about Not Being Able to Climb

Zaryelle·4/3/2017, 1:06:52 AM·64 votes·3,539 views

It's about being in a place where matchmaking is absolute shit. Anytime someone mentions ELO hell, everyone replies 'get gud' type responses, but I don't even see most of them complaining about that, I see them complaining about the horrible matchmaking (Which sometimes can in itself make it harder to climb) but people automatically assume this means they're blaming their team, when they're actually blaming the huge imbalance in team skill levels. They want the wins and losses to be decided by who gets outplayed, not whoever has the more golds+ or smurfs on your team.

It's about the huge skill gap Bronze/Unranked can get with random people on your teams. If you took a random person who never played LoL, and gave them enough AI games to reach PVP (level 6 i think), and then matched them against Golds, you would call this unfair right? Wrong, matchmaker says otherwise. Any person with common sense can see these players should not be in the same game for a very long time, but this is the common experience for brand new players. A bunch of brand new players scattered with silver and golds and plat+ smurfs mixed in makes the first 30-40 games of their experience a hugely imbalanced joke.

The thing is people always laugh at the guy who is Bronze and gets a bunch of golds+ on enemy team and just say he needs to carry harder.. but when it's a Plat with a bunch of Bronze on your team you're not laughing anymore, this matchmaking is much too lenient and instead of blaming your team we need to blame the matchmaking for what it is doing.

I for one don't give a shit about ELO hell, or climbing, I play for fun alone, but I do care about matchmaking being epically broken and matching new players with Gold+.

85 Comments

Marshbouy4/3/2017, 1:13:25 AM31 votes

Pretty much this. ELO hell isn't "my teams are shit" anymore it's "my teams are b5 and the enemies are gold 3"

MagicFlyingLlama4/3/2017, 1:15:57 AM18 votes

ELO Hell is more like ELO Pandemonium now, complete with gibbering mouthers.

420 grams4/3/2017, 4:54:11 AM6 votes

The worst part is when you notice that each team could've had each other's junglers and the teams would've been balanced. Too many times I've seen games where there could be 2 equal teams but one team gets stacked with the 3 highest mmr/win rate / games played/ rank instead and stomps the whole time.

Velzard of Koz4/3/2017, 4:06:41 PM5 votes

Wrong, matchmaker says otherwise.

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/disney/images/9/99/The_matchmaker_Mulan_.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20151211005045

Zelorxon4/3/2017, 4:13:20 PM4 votes

Elo hell is where you play godly yet you lose not because the enemy team was better but because those 4 retards on your own team managed to do everything was in their power to intentionally lose the game giving a free win to 5 incompetent idiots that otherwise wouldn't have won a game against intermediate bots.

AKA, any elo below D2, at least up there they troll in creative ways and they have a little pride to at least try to play the game and not have autistic meltdowns where they start squealing and screeching because things are out of their comprehension.

Warlord Scrap4/3/2017, 2:21:46 AM4 votes

Some of the problems are fixable with work some arent though. For actual golds vs actual bronze riot needs to look into that maybe make ranked and norms only allow you to go against people in your ranked tier. For pre 30 and unranked i havent thought of a solution yet but suggestions would help. As for smurfs this is difficult my first instinct instead of the integrity check when you make an account do a 1v1 placement game against a bot and see were u land on a spectrum. A challenger smurf should crush a bot right. Well the answer isnt as simple people can game this system and purposely do bad to be lower on the spectrum than they really are.
My second suggestion for this is make mmr gains more based on your performance in game rather than just flat out win or lose. If you lose with a d you deserve to lose a lot of mmr you probably fed and have horrible cs and did not contribute to the team having a chance to win (not saying im perfect and never had a game like this dont take it like that just being honest) if you lost with a s lose significantly less mmr because honeatly if you got an s and still lost and are not the sup you team probably fed and your carry wasnt greater than four feeder. Same with wins if you win with a d you only gain a little mmr and lp. But if you win with an s+ you gain a lot.

Khadaver4/3/2017, 9:00:33 PM3 votes

It would all be better if mmr was gone and we just faced people in our ranks. People with bad mmr would just go down to the rank they belong in, vice versa.

dunder kill4/3/2017, 1:34:45 AM3 votes

Not it's not. "ELO Hell" and "bad matchmaking" are two completely separate complaints. If you have an issue with matchmaking, then make a point about matchmaking. Don't clump other issues into it for absolutely no reason.

Gankerjack4/3/2017, 4:48:23 AM3 votes

The amount of games you have to play in order to actually climb can be pretty demotivating too. "Yeah great I got from bronze V to gold I with 86% win rate on this account, getting plat should be a breeze!" - insert rito matchmaking - your opponents are now plat III where you probably belong while your teammates are gold III to compensate! Enjoy a 40% win rate until your mmr drops to the league you're at so you can climb again! But wait, there's more! Let's throw in a free 6 troll games in a row! You're welcome! XDD

On a more serious note, given enough time ofc you will climb etc. But with emphasis on time.

Frightning4/3/2017, 5:36:37 AM2 votes

Problem: Game-to-game variance.

Basically, even among good players, you will have some games where everything is on point and you're smashing it, and others where not a damn thing you do seems to work out in your favor. (Experienced both sides of this enough first hand to know.)

So while you might feel like your teammates were garbage at the game, the reality is probably that they played poorly that round (even though they probably didn't intend to, sometimes you just mess up...more than once...in a row), and they probably know it, even if their pride won't let them admit it. If you played like 5 more rounds with those same people, you might win 2-3 of them, maybe even in blowout fashion.

five oh tree 4/3/2017, 3:58:06 AM2 votes

Players are matched and placed based on skill level, not rank. What's interesting is that you believe someone in bronze elo will ever face a plat or gold smurf in his life. They're going to place at least mid silver and never be seen by bronze. Anyone in bronze who claims to be a smurf is 1. Playing on someone else's account or 2. Having a good game.

It takes work to be placed below silver IV. If the system sees the new player is good at the game, he'll be placed with people near his level. I've seen people new to ranked in mid-gold elo games. They didn't necessarily carry or do super well, but they weren't just burdens either.

When people complain about elo hell in this way, they ARE complaining about their teams. About how they're not as good as the enemy team. Well, guess what, your mmr says that you are equally matched, so you are. The concept of good games and bad games seems to not reach the boards memebers' minds.

If we're just talking about normals where mmr is sometimes weird, who actually gives a shit?