What climbing the ladder is really about. An analysis of why people never learn in league. +Solution

I heard it from a challenger the other day. "You know when you are in the jungle 2/3 lanes are supposed to loose. Thats how it works. The jungle sucks. Dont play the jungle." Hes talking about matchmaking. They set you up to loose based on your relative elo and if you win you get what might be called as "climbing elo". The other team (the one set up to win) gets something that sort of washes out over many games. It isnt supposed to help them climb.

That might be best for something, but it isnt best for players or the state of the game. I can sort of tell you what it does do:

If it were only possible to gain elo for winning a game with the elo discrepancy against your favor, then eventually the "best players" would have the highest elo. That is the only equilibrium point in the system. It is very stable. In order to surmount the elo of the best players, you would have to beat them at some point. In order to beat them you would be better. If you beat them you would gain elo and eventually you would be recognized as "better players" than them.

However, the stability of the system works against new players because there is a learning curve and because of the truth in a philosophical saying that I really like: "If you roll in the trash you get dirty". What that means for new league players is that while you are new, you are learning the mechanics and habits of people who are not good at the game. You dont have access to the high elo learning environment. Whats worse is the nature of the game. If you need to learn by playing against someone better than you, you are shit out of luck because as soon as you do play against that better person, the lane will soon snowball to a level that the actual mechanics of the game become obscured by a stat differential.

Im not sure if I am explaining this in the best way possible, but I am very sure that the only way to get better at this game is to play against people that are exactly as good as you. If you play against bad people, you will snowball to an unrealistic point and pick up lazy and bad habits of diving renekton as vayne bc you actually can in that game. If you play against really good people, they will quickly snowball and you will have the same effect on your learning, with the added frustration of being facerolled which can make you toxic and cloud your reasoning.

THERE IS YET A THIRD MECHANIC WORKING AGAINST YOU. Your very teammates might do a very good job of giving away the gold and levels and stats another champion needs to shut you down for the rest of the game!

Psychologically, that frustration can completely defeat any gains in learning you might have made by playing better than you ever have before in lane. Because it just wasnt good enough. Rekekton is lvl 12. You are lvl 8. His ultimate is a rank above yours and he has hp ad and armor. You know you have to do something. Playing smart and safe like you did in lane results in loosing three towers in a row and dying once. Its not working. Fuck your teammates. Fuck what you practiced and learned in lane. Time to play vaynespotting. Yolo. Fuck this game. Holy shit that dmg. Then you spend 30 minutes doing a ton of bad habits because no-one will surrender whereas you could only spend 8-12 minutes practicing good habits in lane. That is BAD FOR YOU!

TL;DR

I want a game mode where there is a time dependent cap on how fed a champion can be in terms of the number of completed and component items and a time dependent lvl cap. Should replace or go alongside normal draft as a prep for ranked. Everyone will love this mode. You can still get fed, just not stupid fed. I want to actually need my skill and decision making even when I get fed. And I need to actually be able to identify when applying good skill and good judgement is having a positive effect when the enemy is fed. My brain wont learn otherwise.

Basically, the one thing you cant do in this mode is reward bad play by boosting the gold per minute of people who got crushed in lane. I would try implementing this game mode with a level playing field. What you can buy can be loosely based on what perfect farm alone can get you. You cant spend more gold that what you could get with perfect farm (10 cs per minute). You can accrue extra gold as normal with kills and assists, you just cant spend it unless you want to spend it on a ward.

But maybe there are some champions who should have access to more slots earlier than others. Like assasins. It might be more "realistic" according to the balance intentions of riot if assasins or other champs can get a certain item early. I dont know how that balance would work. That sort of thing might need tuning. Small stuff like that isnt as important to me.

I just know that the people who need this mode wont get perfect farm and the gold barier will not cause play to become too passive in my elo. You might think that this will turn all games into farming competitions, but farming isnt fun enough for most people to really abuse that strategy. They will go for kills and cs denying tactics. It maintains the reward of aggressive play in the absence of perfect farm, but prevents snowballing too hard. Good players will also have the benefit of not gaining bad habits and expectations during the after effects of an unrealistic laning phase.

And if we give an interest accrual mechanic on gold you cant spend, it allows players to try new things without fear of falling behind. Once they hit that cap they get increased gold per minute based on your excess gold. They cant spend it so it doesnt increase their power, but it does allow them to maybe try a new item or try some harder plays given that they have gold to fall back on if that item or strategy didnt work out. Its a good alternate mode. Its less toxic. Its less bad for you. Its a good practice warm up for ranked. League needs it.

I will probably play this mode exclusively for a while, if it ever comes out, but eventually I will want to try a different mode. Draven doesnt feel rigght unless you can two shot lux :)