Normal Matchmaking

Hi!

I am not very familiar with the forum here, my apologies. I would like to bring up an idea that I think could be effective as League continues to progress. Normal matchmaking is a way that I typically try and dissect patch changes that are released. I know many players typically jump into ranked and begin trials. I would prefer not to risk my ranked mmr when trying out recent patch changes.

My issue is that normal matchmaking seems to be really bad from an algorithmic stand point. One game was SO lopsided recently that I had to submit a ticket and talk to a game specialist about the issue. I was matched in a game 3 Diamonds, 1 Plat, 1 Gold vs 1 Diamond (me), 3 Golds and 1 Silver. I could not understand how this happened. We nearly got perfect gamed, taking no objectives and only finding a couple kills. After talking to the specialist, he ran the numbers and said the mmr was close. "Thank you for pointing out that match. After running it through my game stat tools it does seem that your teams were only 12MMR apart. Crazy, I know. All the medal rankings are of course correct as that information is much easier to pull and verify. Overall though I'd say anything close to 10 is a fairly close match."

After reading this response, I am honestly shocked. I just don't see how the mmr is so close when looking at the rankings. I understand that Normal games have different mmr than ranked. But, to me this doesn't make sense. If I'm going to Q normals to get a read on patch changes, I would prefer to play in games with and against opponents of similar ranking. Although after the support specialist ran the numbers, I think we can agree by looking at the rankings this game was no where near close. Outside of me, my team is essentially 2 Divisions lower than the enemy players.

This brings me to my idea. I would support a change that would give players an OPTION to Q normals based on their ranked mmr. I know that this could drastically increase Q times, specifically those at higher ranks. I personally would prefer to wait longer in Q when trying to get a read on patch changes, if I could ensure that the players will be relatively close to my ranked mmr. Additionally, I understand that many people play normals for fun or with friends of much lower ranks. I have no issue with this, in fact this is the main reason I would say normals are a game mode and I don't want to take that away.

My idea is quite simple. Add a Check Box in the lobby that would allow the normal Q to put restrictions on the matchmaking server to find a game within your ranked mmr. This way people who would like to use normals as a tool to prepare for ranked whether that is warm-up games or testing patch changes have the ability to do so in a relatively equal skill environment. I don't know the algorithms used to find matches or anything, but I hope this is a realistic change? I think normal Q population would increase because people could ensure games of their skill level. I know many players who won't Q normals because the skill difference on the teams is quite drastic typically. In fact I would say out of my last 30 normal games, about 2 were of close ranked skill level.

Thank You!