When you get that 0/9/0 teammate in a carry spot
TLDR: how to reduce the numer of salty players and impossible to win (due to crazy hard feeders/trolls) ranked games; average a player's skill across the various roles they play in ranked games
I'm sure like me, many of you regularly find yourself in a game where a teammate is feeding so hard that your ganks or tp's to their lane don't matter, your lead vs your lane/jungle opponent doesn't matter, your pings and wards to help others don't matter, and your POLITE request that they stop forcing fights vs their fed opponent are ignored. I've been very confused for some time now about how I can regularly be put on the same team as these players while only ever facing an opposing team with players like this in about 1% of my matches. I get that sometimes you screw up and maybe find yourself down 2 or 3 kills in lane -- especially if the enemy mid or jungle picks up on the fact you can barely surive 1v1 or 2v2. I get that people forget to not facecheck a drag or baron maybe 1 time in a match -- we're all human. But to see the same poor choices made time after time after time in the same game by the same player(s) is going beyond this. Bot lane should be the lane with the least problems despite difference in skill level since they have a teammate theoretically there or nearby to bail them out if they make a minor mistake. When one, two, or even four of these people end up on your team though; they can literally make the game impossible to win.
Let's review the options you tried before determining the game to be unwinnable -- and the problems that arise:
- non-salty advice/encouragement -- ex: hey vayne, you don't have to carry, just focus on farming for now ex: pinging enemy jungle is headed to their lane or is at blue/red buff on that side and they should play safer ex: let's leave drag go, we can get mid tower instead
- gank/tp play -- either you've tried to set it up or you have done a few ganks, but your teammates keep ruining any chance for it to work (giving it away, not giving tp ward, bailing after you tp in etc.)
- snowball your lane and hope to snowball harder than fed enemy -- problem, your opponent has enough intelligence to recognize they are feeding and listen to teammates. They wait to go aggressive or bait you in until they can get backup from fed teammates. So you have 2 options: a. base race/tower trading b. stall enemy push at your tower -- giving teammates a chance to catch up free farming while their opponent and yours try to take the tower you are defending a. you have a valid chance here if you start it at the right time, but too often your teammates freak out that you are losing a tower too and back off. You lose the tower anyways and now those who stayed to kill the enemy tower (or those who backed) get dove and killed -- giving a further lead to the enemy team b. they bring enough to dive you successfully without you trading kills and/or your teammates finally play "safe" by sitting at their towers not pushing the waves -- even when there's 2 or 3 people sitting sieging your tower vs just you.
Players that are bad enough to fit most of the problems mentioned above and fail to utilize any of the potential comeback options should really not be at certain levels of ranked. When their teammates are clearly playing at a much higher level -- think bronze vs gold or gold vs platinum, then we have a problem. I'm not saying these people should be banned from league. But we face the fact that they are either trolling and throwing the game on purpose or that they cheated the system to get to their current rank and should be playing at a much lower level. Either way, action should be taken. I personally would like a temporary ban from ranked for such players -- not a ban from league overall, just ranked. I know this could be abused though. Alternatively, since we have the mastery rank 6 and 7 now, we could possibly look to use a system like this to better analyze how people perform in the five different roles: top, jungle, mid, bot, sup. Now say a player mains bot and performs around a silver 1 level with that role. If they get their secondary role of jungle, they tend to perform closer to a silver 4. Taking the averages of these and any other roles they've played we could get a better overall rating for them and match them better with their opponents. In the scenario I gave, it would average out to be somewhere between silver 2 and silver 3. I think this has the potential to be implemented without massively changing how ranked works as well as removing many instances of players being put in games vs opponents of a much higher skill. I personally would like to see some sort of action taken on this in the very near future. I don't appreciate having 50-80% of my losses in a week be due to having teammates that make the game impossible to win regardless of how well I play and work with my team. It is especially frustrating when you as an individual outperform anyone on the enemy team. When people are faced with 7 or 8+ game losing streaks due to teammates' poor play and decision making, it highly increases the level of saltiness of players and possibly leads to worse. I know some who read that last sentence will tell me that i'm clearly just not that good and the fault lies with me if I lose 8+ games in a row. To which I reply -- read what I mentioned above as tactics to help a teammate who is feeding in lane. Can you honestly tell me that I'm not giving them a fighting chance if I try all those options? I know I'm not the only one who deals with this, and I want it fixed for all of us. It would make the game better for those who have to deal with impossible feeders and it would make it more fun for the feeders to be put against people closer to their skill level.
Do you have a better idea?
