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Flawed after-match ranking system? "How was that not an S rank?"

Aetheriant··1 votes·1,122 views
Gyazo

As seen above, I finished a match as tank Kha'zix with a score of 22/6/23. I was entirely anticipating an S-rank as I had just carried our team back from a huge disadvantage and won the game. I was also very excited to finally receive the chest that I had not earned on Kha'zix yet.

But to my surprise, this performance got me an A rank. Not even an A+, an A rank.

Even more to my surprise, the Lux support got an S rank. (Yes, she did play very well.) But comparing our scores, I had earned more gold for our team and participated in grabbing more objectives. On top of that, in-game I was more active in teamfights and took down runaways.

Lux only surpassed me in assists as seen above, and destroyed 2 more towers then me.

Can this possibly be right? I've had several times where I have carried as ADC with a near-perfect score and participation only to feel like an S rank was robbed from me. Is this system rigged for Supports? (Because damn, it's really easy to get chests on supports if you haven't realized already.)

Anyone else having this same feeling?

EDIT: Thanks for explaining this judging system to me, learning quite a bit about how I should play to fit the system. That being said, this system still seems very flawed, see my responses below, and give me your opinions. =)

21 Comments

Zielmann3 votes

122 CS in 41 minutes is really low.

Aetheriant1 votes

The Lux had 4 more CS.

? ? ?

Zielmann2 votes

She's support. Her CS for a support is quite high.

Remember, it's comparing her to Lux supports. It's comparing you to Kha junglers.

Aetheriant1 votes

Should a support be judged more for CS or more for total assists?

Navarune1 votes

This is usually the answer to these questions, isn't it?

Zielmann1 votes

Typically yeah. High KDAs but with low CS and wards placed/killed...

Karunamon2 votes

Hmm.. I was about ready to make a remark about how dying 6 times generally means you won't get an S-anything, but that is a franky absurd KDR. 7.5? Yowzers, congrats!

Lux's KDR is 6.6, only 4 more CS and less gold.

Yeah, this is weird. How is an extra 0.9 KDR, 4 creeps, and 2 towers worth a 2 major grade steps?

Zielmann1 votes

Lux was support. She'll be compared to other Lux supports. She went a full offense build which means she's going to wind up with higher kills and damage dealt than a more support-y Lux would. She also clearly started just taking farm at some point, so she's also got quite high CS for a support.

Aetheriant1 votes

If your performance is compared to that of other players playing the same champion, wouldn't that restrict you in some ways? I went tank Kha'zix which clearly isn't conventional, so I assume my more supporting KDA was considered poor compared to people who play him as an assassin and score higher ratios.

Zielmann1 votes

It'd be nice if they could analyze the build path taken to determine things like that, but it becomes a question of where you draw the line. You can't compare to identical builds because there are far too many combinations. But where do you draw the line on where you start to use the different criteria? You could be a glass-cannon AD Kha. You could be mostly damage items with one or two tank items thrown in for survivability. You could go the more tanky bruiser route. You could go one damage item into tank items. Or you could just go full-on derptank.

The best method they have to determine your score, which is what they use, is Champion+Role. Unfortunately, sometimes what the team needs you to do may not allow for the highest score possible. But honestly, I'd rather have a W than an S any day if I had to choose between the two.

And I feel your pain. I play a lot of ARAM, and often find myself going less conventional builds because it's what the team needs, rather than what'll give me the best grade. Full tank Lissandra can be extremely effective (and has won me games before), but it certainly isn't going to give me a high score at all.

Aetheriant1 votes

And yet, even playing a conventional role like Varus ADC I still feel cheated out of S ranks when I go 12/2/10 with high CS massive participation and the game ends at 20 minutes due to an enemy surrender. Yet a 2/8/28 Taric support game with 24 CS gets me an S+ rank EASILY even though I thought it was a poor score considering the game was nearly an hour long.

Sometimes the system feels very inconsistent and perhaps it needs to be tweaked a bit in the future.

Zielmann1 votes

Yeah, it feels like the system is a bit skewed towards longer (and bloodier) games. I think they do somehow take game time into account, but it doesn't feel like it's quite enough of a factor right now. It's kind of another complexity problem, really. Stats across the game aren't going to be linear, so you'd have to actually break it down into several game time checkpoints and compare to that. But then some champions might have large swings at different times (like late-game Vayne might suddenly start picking up a larger amount of kills after a point). So you might need to resolve it down to checkpoints every 1 or 2 minutes. That'd be a lot of extra checks.

But remember, an S is supposed to be something like the top 5% of games for that champion/role combo. They're supposed to be rare. You basically have to perform to where your game is a complete outlier, not just above average.

Aetheriant1 votes

Then why should the system attempt to judge so specifically? If a player performs exceedingly well in the major factors like kills, deaths, assists, and objectives, why shouldn't they deserve an S rank? Perhaps the system should be simpler, and smaller factors like CS and warding could count less towards the evaluation.

I hardly think this game was above average, it went exceedingly well for me and we recovered from a massive early game disadvantage. I participated in 45 of our team's kills, and grabbed several dragons. Yet other games where I felt I didn't even come close to deserving an S rank or chest, it's merely handed to me. (S rank on Taric with 2/8/24)

Iceember1 votes

Likely warding. Not to mention that's a support lux (which generally on average would have 50-60cs a game)

Aetheriant1 votes

I frankly believe the S rank should be a tad easier to accomplish. Deaths are sometimes necessary as the tank role I was playing, and no doubt the enemy team did their best to focus me down, surprised I won with merely 6 deaths when I was their biggest target. S ranks should be earned more through team participation and less through a perfect KDA. Often people get so focused with achieving that perfect S-rank worthy KDA that they are so careful to make mistakes they don't assists allies as much as they could in fear of dying.

Navarune1 votes

Your first mistake is comparing your stats with those of another champion in another role. Lux support is scored on an entirely different set of criteria, and is rated only according to the performance within those criteria of others also playing Lux support.

Secondly, the way i understand it is that criteria scores only go so far per category. For instance, say I as support have a game as Taric with 1.5 wards per minute; this is an above average stat, and for the sake of argument let's say this is worthy of an S+ rank (in this particular category). Let's then say that I have another game as Taric where I score a crazy w/m line of 2.5 (cause I dumped a bunch of wards on the enemy fountain as we killed the nexus). This is still only good enough for an S+ rank, because that's as high as it goes. A solid KDA of 6.0 may earn you an S rank in that category with Kha'Zix, so the 7.5 KDA is only going to earn you that much in that category as well. You've hit the ceiling, so to speak.

I said all that to say this: KDA is not the only determining factor in mastery rating. Creep score, objective kills/assists, wards/minute, etc. all play into it and (likely) with heavier weight on certain aspects according to the role you played in the game.

Aetheriant1 votes

That's an odd way of judging performance, if there's a ceiling to certain determining factors, then really I should have been spamming wards and farming minions instead of participating in fights and it would have achieved me the S rank.

Shouldn't an S-rank still be earned via performing extremely well in one aspect? Our team was constantly picking fights, and as such I was always participating in them. But clearly with this awkward judging system i'm just now learning about, I could have received rewards if I had ditched my team while preserving my KDA.

Navarune1 votes

It's the same system used by nearly every other composite scoring system I can bring to mind. Just because I aced the English portion of my ACT doesn't necessarily cover up the fact that I only scored a 15 in the science portion.

At the end of the day, you have to decide whether winning the game or getting that S score is more important to you. You missed the chest this go round, but you'll get it eventually; and then you won't be able to get anymore with Kha this season. You can still take this as a learning point, though, that there are still aspects to your game--even when you think you've mastered the situation--that can still be improved upon, and that's not a bad thing at all.

Aetheriant1 votes

Comparing this to an ACT doesn't seem appropriate. Many champions excel at performing a specific role and performing very well in that role. You have 4 other people on your team who fill other roles that you aren't suited to take on.

I was playing tank Kha'zix, my job was to participate in fights and peel for my allies. That is what I did. I don't think warding or farming minions the entire game should have been remotely close to my goal (as people keep pointing out as the reason Lux received her rank.)

Under this system, it is also restricting if you are compared to other people playing the same champion. If you play something unconventional like tank Kha'zix and you are compared to people playing assassin Kha'zix, it is an unfair representation of your performance in a game considering they are two ENTIRELY different roles and will likely have ENTIRELY different scores in each of the determining factors towards you overall rank.

Aetheriant1 votes

Now understanding more about how this judgement system works, how would it be an accurate evaluation for a Kha'zix tank to be compared to a Kha'zix assassin? If there's a max cap for some of the determining factors, why should I focus on continuing to get kills and assists and risk death rather then farming minions and being useless when a fight breaks out? Why is it so ludicrously easy to get a chest on support roles just by throwing in a few hits on enemies and farming assists? (Seriously, 6 chests on 6 supports took me less then 3 matches with each.)

Looking for legitimate insight here, I thank all of you for explaining how this system works, but surely there must be a better way of evaluation for the reasons stated above.

Aetheriant1 votes

Also pardon me if i'm wrong, but don't teammates get chests if another teammate scores an S rank? If so, why wouldn't I receive the chest this game? Does this only apply to S+ ranks?

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