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Problem with bronze level ranked: Riot response requested

Quil Evrything··9 votes·1,199 views

Recent discussions reminded me of a long-term contradiction in the nature of League Ranked games.

Riot likes to market LoL as primarily a "Team Based game".

It gives rewards based on "team results", effectively. And in many cases, that makes sense. However, it **provably does not make sense, in bronze **(or at least in LOW bronze).

Many many people have posted wisdom on how to get out of bronze. The cumulative advice can be condensed into this: Screw team play, play a "carry", be selfish, get as many kills as you can, and solo carry your way out.

I would like to point out two things here:

  1. This is provably true, as evidenced by all these guides predominantly saying the same thing
  2. This is counter-productive to the higher level goals of the game, which are supposedly to promote team play. Don't we want to encourage new players to become better (unselfish) team players? Yet most new players get put in bronze, which teaches them to be the opposite if they want to advance.

I have a few ideas on how to fix this, but rather than getting this post rated down because someone doesnt agree with my specific ideas, how about voting this up on the merit of the problem, and then we can have civil discussions on the best ways to fix it?

26 Comments

Urgonnalearn2day3 votes

Bigger issue is that you run into crazy stuff trying to get into silver. Tons of unranked players with no runes. Tons of really crazy bad silver players. 3w/18l silver.... how?

Kitten of Evil3 votes

I'm still confused by how ranked placement even works. I won 7 of 10 games and placed into Silver 5, my brother wins 5 and loses 5 and places into Silver 3. Another friend won 2 and lost 8 and got Silver 5.

Some summoner 13 would be nice

Lm1uliVXAg1 votes

it depends on your elo/mmr from last season

Kitten of Evil1 votes

I didn't play ranked last season, nor the season before. My brother just started league this year, so he couldn't have played in prior seasons either.

RisenDarkKnight1 votes

Yeah I read a riot post recently that said they only look at your ranked mmr not your normal mmr, but that makes no sense. People who haven't played ranked before get wildly different results with the same number of wins in their first 10 placement games.

Lm1uliVXAg1 votes

it also depends on the order you win your games. if you win your first two games and then lose the 3rd it places you higher than if you lose your first game and win the next 2

xBushx2 votes

I believe that Ranked MMR should have two stats.

Team MMR: Based on Wins Loses could also incorporate objectives Individual MMR: Based on CS and K/D/A (Includes objectives)

Then it averages those stats with say a 60% Team MMR 40% Individual MMR (Ratios, weighing Team higher to promote more team activity)

IMO, the above would work much better for lower ELO's. Bronze-Gold

Quil Evrything1 votes

I like. Plus, they now already have algorithms to calculate individual performance. The "Mastery Score" grades, of S,A,B,C,D,F that you get.

So now just assign those grades an MMR weight, and... Done!

Although now that you mention it.. I think some amount of LP should be awarded in ranked based on that. Not just MMR. it's tempting to suggest negative LP as well. your team won, but you went 0/10/2? NO LP FOR YOU!!!! :p

Singing Lark3 votes

The problem to that is that KDA doesn't always mean everything.

Ex, I went 0/6/2 once as Orianna in a ranked game. My KDA looks really shit, but I was participating fully in the entire game and anyone on my team could agree that my ults were a big part of why we won that game. (Won through backdoor. We couldn't kill any of them, but the Nasus straightup just deleted their base while we were stalling.) But how is the game going to know that? It just looks like I was being a non-factor midlaner who got my ass carried while I fed the other team.

Not saying it's a bad idea, but just suggesting the counter arguement.

Quil Evrything1 votes

i dont really think that's a counter argument. To sum up your game there: overall you played badly, but you made some contribution, so your team still managed to win, regardless won.

That means you would get SOME benefit, but not as much as you would have, if you didnt feed so hard. lets be honest here: yes you "contributed"... but you also assisted the enemy team a lot as well by your deaths. So with the new system bush proposed, you might get a reward of maybe 10-12, instead of 20? Sounds fair to me.

To use the counter-counter argument:

In the current system, someone could feed HARD, but still be carried by a high ranked smurf duo to the higher tiers. That is simply not deserved. So, adjusting the system would make that smurf have to play twice as many games to carry the deadweight up to a higher tier. I hope we can all agree that is a good thing.

Singing Lark2 votes

I don't think so though.

Every death that I died, I died saving my teammates who were all worth more gold than I was.

If the 3/1 Vi is in trouble and I go in to disengage, and give them a new target to allow Vi to get away, I think that death is worth because I'm denying them shutdown gold and I'm worthless because I have no kills and 2 deaths on me. I don't think that's assisting the team by giving them kills, because they could've gotten the kill on Vi instead and gotten more gold.

However, at this point I'm just playing devil's advocate and being nitpicky. :P

The question is how do you balance feeding with getting kills? Would you get less LP if you went 0/9/15 compared to something like 15/15/3? What if you just had a real crappy laning phase and gave up 5 kills, but never died after that and even won with multiple kills? (true story too)

Quil Evrything1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Livia the Rose,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=w0bY9fvz,comment-id=00030000000000000000,timestamp=2015-09-28T19:43:43.056+0000)

I....

The question is how do you balance feeding with getting kills? Would you get less LP if you went 0/9/15 compared to something like 15/15/3?

As mentioned: they already have a grading system for that. So your point is moot.

Singing Lark1 votes

I'm pretty sure even Riot themselves have stated that the grading system for champion mastery is just to give you a general gist of how your doing according to your numbers compared to others, not an actual rating of your performance that game. It's goal is more so to give you a small ego boost for doing well rather than actually grading you on your performance.

Of course, in general the two numbers should be relatively similar if it's just another normal game, but there are plenty of games where the two don't match, and that occurs way too often for that grading system to be used for something like LP gain.

Kitten of Evil4 votes

The grading system is a bit wonky, especially if you're a support -- I've had strong support games where I got a B grade. I would not trust it with LP.

Fiveofswords1 votes

the game is about objectives, not kda. sometimes you have to do things that you know could result in an unavoidable death to have a chance of winning. For example you have to try to backdoor. Or you have to try to farm when you know that you couldnt escape if someone shows up, and theres no vision. Or you are the tank and you have to initiate good engagements, but know you wont survive it.

want a good kda ratio? thats not hard...jsut play for picks the whole game and never risk your butt for actual objectives.

kda doesnt even tell you what your income is. Ive had plenty of games where i was by far the most fed person on the team even though i had few or no kills. I just farmed better than everyone. And importantly, i farmed miniosn that were about to push to and kill towers. Meanwhile my teamates were irrelevantly wanderign the opponent jungle or something, hoping to win a random 4v5, and maybe even managing to...but ultimately lost the game because they never got objectives and never got income.

Quil Evrything1 votes

The stuff you write about is half relevant. Examples: If you are initiating as tank, then if you are doing it Right, you'll get one are two assists. that counts in proper KDA calculation. And cs counts in mastery scoring as well, I believe.

but there's no excuse for "pushing where you have no vision". that's just bad play.
that's why everyone gets a free ward, and smart players do the upgrade for 2

Ralanr1 votes

What works? Teamwork!

The Sword Saint1 votes

Riot didn't 'put the new players in bronze', that's just the label we give to the weakest / least experienced players of the game. It's true that different tiers require you to learn different things to ascend, but you need to learn those things.

I think climbing out of bronze is less about 'fuck the team selfish carry all day' and more about 'you need to learn how to build a lead and snowball it, and you have an easier time doing that if you're snowballing yourself rather than someone else'.

Selfish non team oriented play will only get you so far, but you DO need to learn what it feels like to have a lead, how to gain a lead, and how to use that raw power to force objectives and close out a game.

When you have that skillset down enough you can climb to elos where people have learned how to shut down or minimize the impact of any one super fed enemy, and you will have also learned the same thing, so at that point you will be forced to learn other things to advance.

This is the point where you can start to specialize - do you practice the same tactics as before until you learn how to be a one man carry even with an enemy team who is competent enough to be planning on stopping you specifically, or do you learn team tactics to try and win fights through coordination, or do you aim to get everyone equally fed so that they can't just focus one guy down, or do you splitpush and take objectives wherever people aren't there to stop you, etc.

Bergk1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Quil Evrything,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=w0bY9fvz,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-09-28T17:03:54.857+0000)

Screw team play, play a "carry", be selfish, get as many kills as you can, and solo carry your way out.

Unfortunately the reason this works in low elo is because not many people in low elo know how to work as a team. So you can't count on your team to have your back, but the same thing goes for the other team. They probably have just as many people who don't have good team work. So if you pick a hyper carry, you can usually pick off the other team one-by-one to victory. I agree what you described is a problem, but I don't have any ideas about how to fix it. Because I learned my sense of teamwork just over the course of thousands of games of experience.

This is generally how I feel about the players in the divisions (not true for all the players, just a lot of them) Bronze players: Still learning the mechanics of the game. Silver players: starting to figure out how to fight as a team, but they often want to over-do it and just group mid. Silver elo's mid game often consists of two teams duking it out mid lane. Gold players: conceptually they know what to do, but they often have lapses in judgement and make bad calls.

Sona Ping1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Quil Evrything,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=w0bY9fvz,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-09-28T17:03:54.857+0000)

However, it **provably does not make sense, in bronze **(or at least in LOW bronze). ...1. This is provably true, as evidenced by all these guides predominantly saying the same thing

A common opinion is not, nor is ever, evidence that something is true. Otherwise, it's "provably true" that Napoleon was short and a cow caused The Great Chicago Fire.

BeMyFriendPlease1 votes

"If your team fails its YOUR FAULT" - Everyone on the boards

You can play your game, but you can't play for the other 4. Yes, if you play 100,000 games or more per season you can apply the "other team is more likely to get a troll" bs logic, but good luck :).

The game needs to stop being about "blame and shame you're the greatest, carry your way!" It needs to be "Let's work together as best we can, pick UP the weakest link to make them relevant"

Then again... considering what you usually see in ranked... hopeless thinking

disregardable1 votes

Most of the games that I won while getting out of Bronze were just "Win lane, win game". It's not that I hard carried, it's just that I wasn't dead weight.

https://i.gyazo.com/7311ca735c44b0b21e73613a51605a64.jpg

Quil Evrything1 votes

If so, then you must have started in bronze 1 or 2, and got lucky on teammates. The true bronze experience is: "win lane hard, lose game anyway."

RisenDarkKnight1 votes

I don't think that's necessarily true. I mean sure it's easier to get out of bronze by playing champions like tryndamere, yi, katarina, and leblanc than like janna, soraka, and bard, but I don't think just trying to get kills and solo carry is really what most people advise to climb. Usually people recommend upgrading your vision game, shot calling for your team, and getting everyone to work together. Unless you have platinum lvl mechanics, you can't 1 v 5 everygame, so you're better off leading your team and keeping good vision on objectives than just trying to split push or assasinate for the win. Sure some people will ignore your calls or afk/rage regardless of what you do, but lol IS a team game and improving your teamwork will return better results than just improving your mechanics/playing selfishly.

Quil Evrything1 votes

When was the last time you had to play in b4 or b5? or, EVER? Sometimes, communication works. Most times, it's just massive feeding, and ignoring all advice. Lol should be a team game. But at that ELO, it's.... broken. So progression should be adjusted.

SEKAI1 votes

I don't know about you, do you really think Bronze is a place where people make sense?

A game's design shouldn't be revolved around either dumb or the "0 fks given" crowd, that would be called a "dumb down" and it's never good.

Also don't read too much into guides, they are almost always after 2 things anyway:

  1. Abuse broken things.
  2. Click bait.

So yer that's that.

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