riot if you're going to match silver 1s against plat5's why have the rating difference?

Very Hard Engage·Mar 12, 2017·142 votes·16,824 views

oh right, its too force people to play more games, heavens forbid people get an accurate ranking on the ladder which matches their MMR.

you're not promoting being competitive, you're not making league any better, you're just pissing people off.

nobody should have to play over 100games, have well over 50+hours on the game, (more if you include queue dodges, remakes, and champion select) to still be climbing up the ladder.

league should be fun, not a chore.

if a silver 1 can ever be matched against someone in plat it disparages all of gold all while making the system look bad at doing its job.

102 Comments

Sraeg2013Mar 12, 201735 votes

You would be surprised. When I got on a really bad losing streak in Plat 5 last season, I ended up playing with Silvers.

And yes, the ladder system is a "feel good" overlay garbage developed by Riot.

An addon to the ELO system, like a parasite.

Nothing more, nothing less.

FlitcheeMar 12, 201720 votes

Why downvote this guy? He's 100% correct. The ladder system means nothing. Silver 1 50 lp or gold 2 50 lp can have the same mmr, and thus be matched into the same games. Who has the low and who has the high? be my guest to take a stab at it, either the silver 1 can be much higher mmr, or the gold 2 can have much lower mmr.

Sraeg2013Mar 12, 20176 votes

Maybe they got triggered, because "I'm plat and so boosted, that I played with silvers"?

Who knows.

idontgiveabotherMar 12, 201714 votes

In my time climbing through gold I have had a range of plat 1's and silver 5's. So far my peak mmr was plat 5, low point was gold 5. Great fucking system. I would like to climb thank you very much.

LexyyMar 13, 201711 votes

Riot made climbing feel like a full time job

ParcevalMar 13, 20179 votes

Going to be honest, a multi-billion dollar company with laudable goals of developing the defacto esports scene has performed woefully at two core things.

Onboarding of new players. It's atrocious. Like, really, really, bad.
Ranking. The algorithms they use to determine your skill are archaic and lazy. They have the funds to hire some brilliant data scientists that could easily develop a far superior classification system, but they either lack the will or the foresight.

I love this game, I've spent years playing it with friends and family.

But. Sometimes Riot's lack of motivation to make the clearly correct choice on core principles baffles me. Without investing heavily in these two essential features, they will, eventually, just be putting better band-aids on an unsustainable 'esports' platform.

They're trying all these "new" "ranking" categories to bridge the gap between "ladder" and "LCS."

The problem is, yes, coordination.

BUT. It's also how skill is identified.

Maximum MordeMar 12, 20178 votes

It all stems from how Riot made it easier to climb rank. The changes to lp gating, promo helper etc all further pushed mmr away from rank and made it possible for these kinds of things to happen. It's very hard to get demoted. For things like plat 5, you basically have to have silver/low gold mmr to get demoted back to gold. People actively climbing from Silver 1 into gold generally already have goldish mmr. This means, when queue timers get really long, it's possible the system stretches a bit and grabs them both, calling it close enough.

It's most noticeable at the X 5 level where people who should have been demoted long ago haven't been yet.

ValyrianBladeMar 12, 20179 votes

[{quoted}](name=Maximum Morde,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=vsV4NN1V,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2017-03-12T12:50:37.696+0000)

It all stems from how Riot made it easier to climb rank. The changes to lp gating, promo helper etc all further pushed mmr away from rank and made it possible for these kinds of things to happen. It's very hard to get demoted. For things like plat 5, you basically have to have silver/low gold mmr to get demoted back to gold. People actively climbing from Silver 1 into gold generally already have goldish mmr. This means, when queue timers get really long, it's possible the system stretches a bit and grabs them both, calling it close enough.

It's most noticeable at the X 5 level where people who should have been demoted long ago haven't been yet.

I always see these comments for the X5 rankings, and as true as that may be the system is still broken beyond recognition.

In each of seasons 5 and 6, I got to gold 5 by season end (and just stopped). In both cases I was playing against Plat 3s and 4s in my promo series to get from silver 1 to gold 5. In the latter season I even had a plat 2 in one of my games. I was gaining 26LP per win on average, but never skipped a series or a division in either of those seasons. That's just disgusting - a player should not need to beat high plat in order to get IN to gold (let alone climb within gold).

I haven't done ranked solo yet this season, but I've played ranked flex as a solo player (climbing from my bronze 1 placement to gold 4 so far). I actually DID skip a division (silver 3) in that process, but have never skipped a series or another division outside of that... pretty sad given that again I'm gaining 25-27LP per win and I'm playing (and winning) some of the most lopsided games I've ever seen (I've been on a team where my highest ranked ally was gold 5 in solo queue and I had bronze teammates as well, and beat a team that was full plat. I've also played games where my highest ranked ally was gold 1 and the enemy team had 2 diamond players and minimum rank gold 5).

You're blaming that there were changes that made it easier to climb, but I think those are helping if anything. At least from my perspective. It took me three tries to get through my bronze to silver promos - meaning the third try I got 2 free wins and only had to win 1 of 3. Without promo helper maybe I'd still be in mid silver, which would be disgusting when I'm playing with flex MMR in high gold / low plat (an ally had his 10th placement match on my team and got placed plat 4 out of that win, so I have to be in that ballpark).

I agree that the demotion pattern makes it a bigger difference. They need to make it harder to demote from X5 to not encourage people to stop playing ranked at that point (people want to keep their borders) though. It's really not reasonable to go so far as they have, because it's pretty rotten that a plat 5 player on your team is feeding and clearly isn't even gold quality but will get a plat border at the end of the season, meanwhile you're unable to promote to gold 5 because you keep getting these plat 5 players on your team. A few divisions and an actual warning message when a loss or two will demote you would be a better approach.

As for climbing - they need to make skipping series / divisions a much more frequent occurrence. People always argue that these plat players I'm complaining about had to win their way in to it just like I do, but in reality they didn't. I guarantee you, >90% of people in plat got there by winning against people at the same MMR (i.e. got out of gold 1 by beating gold 1s). They didn't get in to gold 5 by beating plat 4s, and projecting would get in to plat 5 by beating diamond players. Most people aren't getting >25LP per win, they're getting 20 for a win and losing 20 for a loss (I'm speaking about the first time through to a division, not when you're recovering ranks after the reset). I think the real frustration comes from players who know they're more than a full tier better than their current rank (because they're playing against people in that division) and they're still only doing a slow climb because a single lost promo series really slows you down, you can never skip when in X1 or X2, and they're being forced to play against much higher ranked players when they could have a much higher win rate if playing in their own division...

SkorchMar 12, 20171 votes

Honestly i think it is hard enough to climb thank you. It also isnt THAT hard to demote.

Maximum MordeMar 12, 20172 votes

It's not that hard to demote from 1 to 2, 2 to 3, etc, but demotion from 5 to a lower rank is actually really tough to do unless you spam a ton of games while on tilt.

SkorchMar 12, 20173 votes

I feel like that might be countered by the fact that it is harder to climb out of 1 too.

Finn Teh HumanMar 12, 20175 votes

I don't give a f*ck how high that Silver 1's mmr is. They should never be with/against Platinums in ranked.

FlitcheeMar 12, 20173 votes

Imagine that lp and your actual rank means fuck all. Because it does mean fuck all. It has absolutely nothing to do with your mmr, or your match made games. If you are being matched with platinum players in ranked as a silver 1, i can assure you they are either on tilt, or are quite frankly boosted, or got on a lucky win streak and do not actually deserve to be there. I also want to mention what you said about mmr. If you're a silver 1, and have the mmr of a gold 1 player or something like that for whatever reason, Why should the system match you vs other silver players? That would not be good match quality, as if it were to do that, you should theoretically never lose that game. Like i said, imagine your rank and lp mean nothing when it comes to match making.

Finn Teh HumanMar 12, 20171 votes

Most people who get to their rank earned it no matter what their MMR is. What you just said still applies to Silvers and Golds. They also can get on a winstreak lol.

FlitcheeMar 12, 20171 votes

I don't think you understand how mmr functions.

Finn Teh HumanMar 13, 20171 votes

I don't think you understand how skills = elo = rank. MMR can show how good you're doing at the moment. People go on tilt and get lower MMR, does that mean they didn't earn their rank?

FlitcheeMar 13, 20171 votes

MMR working as intended then, The ranked system functions off of consistency, if you can't consistently play at a rank, then no, you do not deserve that rank. Btw, ELO is MMR. If you play at a diamond level game in and game out, theres no reason you shouldnt be diamond. Now if 1 out of every say 5-10 games you play at a diamond skill level, does that mean you are a diamond player? No.

Finn Teh HumanMar 13, 20171 votes

I know how MMR functions and just because a Silver plays gets on a winstreak doesn't make them a Platinum or even a Gold player. MMR is effected by wins and loses so basically anyone could be carried a few games and have better MMR.

FlitcheeMar 14, 20171 votes

Ah but see here, this is exactly what you tried to tell me in a previous post. If that silver player reaches gold 1 on a win streak, by your logic, they deserve that rank, even if they go right back to silver the next week. You are now just contradicting yourself.

Finn Teh HumanMar 15, 20171 votes

I said people who reach a rank usually deserve it. And that people who somehow get into a game with Golds/Plats/Diamonds who aren't even Golds/Plats/Diamonds themselves, just have high MMR, shouldn't be in games with them. #Reading

Very Hard EngageMar 12, 20174 votes

you're right it means nothing, but its not fair to the player to have to consistently be paired up with gold 3~plat 5 players in order to enter gold 5. it makes 0 sense. that player should at least be already situated at g3.

MeritasMar 13, 20171 votes

{quoted}

If you're a silver 1, and have the mmr of a gold 1 player or something like that for whatever reason, Why should the system match you vs other silver players?

Why aren't you ranked Gold 1 then? That's the whole point of this thread.

FlitcheeMar 14, 20171 votes

Like i said in a previous post, the ranking system si garbage, your actual rank has nothing to do with matchmaking.

PurejoyceMar 12, 20175 votes

True, having leagues while matching people by invisible mmr is counterintuitive, makes climbing to 'your deserved rank' harder and just feels bad.

AllThoseInFavorMar 13, 20175 votes

A few months ago i watched a bronze fizz get his shit kicked in by a plat talon that had been diamond 2 last season. That kind of shit is just depressing, he went like 0-11 out of lane and got hard flamed. That guy didn't learn shit, the talon just spammed mastery and laugh then dove him over and over again after getting an early lead. Pretty obviously we lost that game and nobody on our team came out a better player for it. Just down some elo.

ArticalityMar 12, 20174 votes

For alot of people league IS a chore. I mean, just look at lcs

option paralysisMar 13, 20174 votes

Yeah, it's bad everywhere. I was in d4 and I played against challengers and masters. Why would I need to play against a challenger to get out of d4. Doesn't make sense, and coupled with autofilled, this makes very unbalanced games.

SlythionMar 12, 20173 votes

That's why I just don't play rank until near the end of the season. I got to gold easily last year, but at the start of this season I was placed in silver 1 and playing in games against plats

like...why is my silver 1 game at a plat 3 difficulty? That's not proving that I'm better than silver players, it's having me play against plats to prove im better than silver...wtf kind of logic is that :(

SintamaMar 13, 20173 votes

It's so weird, League of Legends is the only game that has this problem. If you have 1500 MMR on World of Warcraft (that's how the rating system works) you fight other players who are at 1500 MMR. If you are in Bronze on Guild Wars 2, you fight other Bronzes. In League, you can queue against Plats while in Silver and get destroyed making it impossible to climb to a higher rank, because you're not fighting silver vs silver, you're fighting silver vs plat.

Hello I am BirdMar 13, 20172 votes

I think the biggest thing that differentiates league is that it's 100% 5 v 5 100% of the time The other games (Not sure about guild wars 2 I've never played it) each have some sort of 1v1 aspect to them That makes League's MMR a challenge because not only do they have to account for the individual player and their win streak, losses, ect... But they have to account for the effect it will have on their and the enemy's team.

ParcevalMar 13, 20173 votes

It's because their system is awful. Blizzard has, for well over a decade, had better methodologies for determining skill.

Riot? They're drunk.

CircleKat1Mar 12, 20172 votes

It can actually be good to play vs better opponents occasionally. They punish you for your mistakes and make you actually improve. If however, it becomes the norm to play vs much higher ranked opponents, that is a flaw.

Maximum MordeMar 12, 20172 votes

Hmm, I'm gonna have to disagree because that isn't how ELO is supposed to work. It's supposed to sort players into rank by having them play against opponents it thinks are equivalent. If you win consistently, then it adjusts you up because clearly those weren't equivalent opponents. Likewise if you lose too much. To do otherwise is to intentionally create bad matches which is bad game design.

RFPSHBYQl7Mar 12, 20172 votes

Imo you shouldn't get higher than gold enemies if silver and idgaf what the system says. I want to prove being worthy of gold, not plat. And they dare to match you against play players as silver? Well.. Why are you not allowed to duo with platinums then???? Screw rito.

2Charmnot2CharmMar 12, 20172 votes

match silver 1s against plat5's

Honestly sounds more like those plats were boosted af to be pared with silvers cause riot made it so damn hard for division 5 of every teir to drop out.

Thats why people trash talk diamond 5 all the time.

Usernamehere1235Mar 12, 20172 votes

Agreed! Also, what's up dude?

LlamaSpeedMar 13, 20172 votes

I am SO surprised that a post like this wasnt downvoted to the next dimension. Not because it was a bad post, quite the contrary actually, but mostly because I have seen (and made) dozens of posts JUST like this one that just get hated and obliterated. Props for getting one up there, No matter what methods ;).

GelmousMar 13, 20172 votes

i can't leave silver one on my main, so after making a smurf i made it all the way to plat 3, both ranks play almost the same i don't see whats wrong with matching silvers and plats together it's not like they're diamond one or anything

DJMason88Mar 13, 20172 votes

I heard riot tries to match smurfs with other smurfs, idk if that's true tho.

Best Ekko NAMar 13, 20172 votes

Lol I've been matched against Plat players multiple times, here's one guy I got matched with randomly:

https://i.imgsafe.org/6235809944.jpg

I've had a Diamond V player on my team once as well. I didn't complain. Never understood Riot's matchmaking but hey, it is what it is. Sometimes you get fucked and other times you get pretty lucky.

ProzzakMar 13, 20172 votes

Looked at your games, didn't see this happen once and no, you cannot count flex as the same as solo/duo rank in order to make it count.

Very Hard EngageMar 13, 20171 votes

never said it happened to me, if it did i would have given examples.

http://i.imgur.com/QkRkI62.png

how do you feel about my silver 3, silver 2, and unranked team mate going up against that plat 5 yi. this game was solo q

ProzzakMar 13, 20172 votes

Why would you be complaining on behalf of others? Also you don't need to block out the other peoples names here, you are not calling them out or complaining about them at all so no need (for your future reference).

Also I will give you this, you are the first person ever to actually show proof of what you are saying. Every other time I call someone out for above they are referencing a different queue which invalidates their entire point.

Now as for why the above happened. I have no clue. The guy's winrate isn't that good and moreover in the guys previous 29 games going into that game he had 9 wins and a whopping 20 losses. So his mmr had likely tanked hard. Checking the silvers (and the unranked guy) shows the unranked player was Gold 1 last year and was 2-1 going into that game. Makes sense to play against that yi after seeing yi's previous ~30 games. The silver players were about what they have done all year. With one losing slightly more then normal and the other losing slightly less.

My guess is that the previous 30 games tanked his mmr because he was consistently going against or with silver players during that time. If you check his games now that he started winning a bunch again he is no longer going against or with silver players.

Very Hard EngageMar 13, 20172 votes

the point is that if everyones MMR was at a current season gold 5 ~ gold 4 level, why isn't everyone also holding a gold5 ~ gold4 rank.

the LP system holds players back from achieving their ranks.

those silvers should move up, that plat player should rank down.

unfortunately yi snowballed and literally shreked all over our poppy/thresh/lucian, it was a disgrace, i didn't feed until 30~minutes in when it was literally overflowing into mid because its the only tower left to take.

ProzzakMar 14, 20172 votes

You will never make everyone happy. Unfortunately what you just described is what LoL had for years but then people complained about it so the current iteration was in place. People did not like that they could sit in "gold" elo all year and then drop out with days remaining because they went from 1510 to 1490 on the last day and the but off for gold was 1500 elo. So Riot put in this system where once you make a rank it is extremely hard to drop down.

Of course, when you do that you also need to add some artificial difficulty to the game in order to move up, so they made it so that MMR changes quicker than your rank in general. So, you go on a winning streak and quickly move up to playing at a higher tier of skill, but your rank doesn't move up as quick.

I preferred the original iteration, was nothing wrong with it you got exactly what you deserved and could see exactly where you ranked at all times, but I doubt Riot ever goes back to that.

Lock OnMar 14, 20172 votes

It has gotten to the point where queuing with multiple people and promo helper has helped saturate enough mediocre players into higher elos by pure statistical chance. No, nobody has to play 100+ games to climb (a few divisions,) unless you're 1) utter dog shit or otherwise don't know how to play for objectives 2) a toxic bitch who projects their mistakes upon others constantly and writes in /allchat as if the enemy team cares about your feelings 3) surrenders when games don't snowball in your favor. Hell, I don't consider myself to be an amazing mechanical player, just a slightly wiser one than most. Hence why it took maybe 90-100-something games to go from mid silver to plat 5 in season 5.

High silver and the plats I've seen don't differ much from each other. Both often play hundreds of ranked games a season for some godforsaken reason to get to where they are, both can be toxic pieces of shit, both could spam pings at you because they did something incredibly stupid and blame you for it. As far as I'm concerned, the match up was probably really balanced after all.

But they should really revamp the system altogether, hard reset, and base a new system off their old system (no divisions/promos) with some improvements like incorporating their rating system into wins/losses somehow.

Very Hard EngageMar 14, 20171 votes

if MMR is working, you can only climb with 100+ games.

only if your MMR is rising with your rank will it be done in fewer games played. (where you would have a much higher win rate than 50%)

even with large 25+ LP gains you still have to play at least 6 games a division, thats assuming 100% win rate.

DanzhoJun 15, 20181 votes

http://prntscr.com/jv5vwj I had a game where my support was gold 4 in a high plat game. How the hell did that even happen? No offense but how is this gold 4 brained Janna supposed to go up against their team. Turns out the Plat 2 Singed was his duo, but everyone else was near plat 3 elo, why didn't they get placed in a high gold low plat game? Matchmaking, please.

Pencil PenisNov 11, 20181 votes

So I'm Silver 1 in my Gold 5 promos. I have an 82% winrate with Udyr in the last 25 games played, and overall in Flex. I've been getting 30 LP after every game.

But...

Why am I being put with and against Diamond 4 players? I'm in Promos to Gold. I was against a Diamond 5 Elise. Was up on her 120 Cs most of the game.

I just don't really understand why I'm being put with them. I get that I'm playing well... but I AM SILVER STILL. Nothing changes that. Doesn't make sense to me lol.

I'm only Gold 3 in Solo Duo.