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ELO Hell - Finally Realized Root Cause

Cats Are Food··2 votes·1,789 views

So. I was explaining to someone else why they are having an issue, and in my rambling I figured it out. The basic reason for the ELO hell.

Jay Sea, and a few others, have released videos of what trying to climb in Bronze is like. (Jay gave up after one match.) Even despite what your rank IS, match making has always attempted to somehow give a deviation based on performance.

Issue 1:

You are bronze, and so is your team, but two of you did really well in your last couple games so the enemy team is solid silver or low gold... the 3 poorly playing bronze members of your team lose it for you.

Or

Issue 2:

YOU are the one on your team that might be doing poorly. You're being thrown into teams above your rank. They are tossing you against players that arent exactly top tier, but have far more experience. Therefore the entire team is upset with you, and now THEY are doing poorly, or just want to FF, and their odds of victory just shrank into nonexistent realms.

Both have never worked, but there you have it. They also create a cycle of people never able to climb because either

A: They have teammates far below their skill, and the skill of their enemies, all due to a hidden algorithm. Or B: They are being put against people they stand no chance with, pulling 4 others down with them.

Is this the same for everyone? Quite obviously not. Many people DO manage to climb. Mostly due to either luck of the draw, or they are not Solo. It's fairly easy to climb at the beginning of a season, drafted upwards on the wings of everyone re-placing themselves, but most people that complain of Hell came in mid or late season.

7 Comments

Saevum2 votes

Easy solution for those struggling in low elo:

Just duo.

Try to catch a friend to play on your schedule, or catch a random guy (any will do) on your solo Q to duo with. What does this accomplishes? the system seems to be less capable of "clamping" your performance accordingly making it unstable, therefore, you might be able to cheese your way out with less effort.

Cats Are Food1 votes

Right.

I was mostly making this for the pure solo's. Duoing shifts the metric by a great deal, and is good advice.

Silly Neeko1 votes

A: .... heres the question. They are obviously not going to put 3 bronze 5s with 2 silver 1s and then have them fighting against golds. So how did you come up with situation A?

B: .... they do not pitch bronze 5s vs Silver 1s just because they won a few games. Also, there will generally be a win streak and a loss streak. thus, as long as your win rate is over 50% you will slowly climb.

honestly the reason that most people cant climb is because they watch streamers who go and say "well, this match is pointless. lets ff" and then they contribute that to "oh we lost first blood so we should ff and flame the person for losing the game for us". Heck, its been a while since this happened, but i remember a time that i had just 1v4ed vs the enemy team and won and my team surrendered. People have gotten too caught up in "the more games i get the better it is" rather than "im going in and im going to play and learn and better myself so even if i lose i will win the next one"

So many people get upset about losing a 40 minute to an hour long game. When those were more common, i enjoyed those games a lot. win or lose, the enemy team did as well because it was a fairly even match, and the only reason it was lost was because there was one thing the enemy team did better. which then they got a honorable opponent stuff for that and everything else (which i wish that they would bring back).

But ever since the new client its like the farmers of other games seemed to come to here and go for "im just going to ff any game i dont forsee us winning, and if they dont ff im going to leave because i have better things to do" (honestly, why play if you are going to be like that? if you wernt going to play till the end if your team wants to, then dont darn well play.) but yes, it is like people are farming games rather than playing games. It has nothing to do with the game itself, but the mentality of the people in general.

Cats Are Food1 votes

Mentality plays a huge role, but:

A: There are posts, with pictures provided, almost daily of these examples. Mostly players of B 1-2, their opponents ranging from S 3 - G5.

B: Again you reached for the furthest possible deviation.

Silly Neeko2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Cats Are Food,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=xUjmPRyq,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2018-12-29T11:51:13.472+0000)

Mentality plays a huge role, but:

A: There are posts, with pictures provided, almost daily of these examples. Mostly players of B 1-2, their opponents ranging from S 3 - G5.

B: Again you reached for the furthest possible deviation.

I put numbers to your "bronze" "silver" and "gold". Yes, there is the occasional bronze in a high silver game, but i dont think i had any bronze in a gold game yet.

Ive fought some bad golds and plats, and ive fought good or atleast decent silvers and bronze.

Generally it wasnt that they are bad persay, though thats what others kept saying they were, but then i add them and play with them and they do pretty good. (The silvers and bronzes that is) and while they have stuff to learn still, they have good potential.

You notice how much of a time lapse there is between people posting about their "bronze players in my high silver game"? Looong time lapses. The main reason this happens is because of the prelims. The other is that the player is actually pretty good. Yes, they can be ending up being bad in some games, but they do good in others. That will happen no matter what.

In the game there will ALWAYS be one person who beats out another person. Otherwise, nothing happens. Impatience or lack of playing to strengths often are why people lose. Seeing as challengers vs masters is a much more drastic difference i hear than bronze and silver.... what you are saying is that master tier should not vs challenger. (Or grandmaster if you want to go that way, shouldnt be fighting challenger). Because obviously the challenger is going to win. Why should any challenger get paired with a noob grandmaster or master tier.

That arguement seems a bit silly right? So does the fact that low bronze shouldnt be paired with high silvers. Heck, you pretty much said bronze 1 shouldnt be playing with silver 5s in your arguement if you dont want me to go to drastic S1 vs B5.

You can come up with as many arguements as you want and debating, but in the end the main differences i see between bronze players and any other player is debatable on a person by person basis. The majority of the time it is mentality that is the issue. They know how to do the stuff, they know the info, but they dont utilize it as well because their mentality is gone to heck.

For example i was chatting with this one person who was on a losing streak. I told them to put on some music and the next game they did they got a pentakill, had one of the highest cses they had in a long while, and won. The music switched their mentality from watching the chat and focusing on others, to playing the game.

I may be an idealist, but i enjoy playing the game when i can, win or lose. It may be my fault we lose, could be because of me we won, could be someone elses. No point in bringing others down, its much better to cheer people up. If only more people would realize this, it would make things so much easier and nicer for everyone. I dont expect it to happen, too many people want to be the farmers with the pitchforks and torches going and invading shreks swamp. But perhaps one day.

Cats Are Food2 votes

I like you.

Silly Neeko1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Cats Are Food,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=xUjmPRyq,comment-id=0000000000000000,timestamp=2018-12-30T14:26:16.884+0000)

I like you.

Thank you. Sorry if i seemed to get a little off track, but to me it all seemed to fit what i was going for. To be honest, the only hard stuck bronzes are those that dont want to climb, or who put no effort into it.

Pretty much anyone who puts some effort into it with good mentality (isnt tilted just by first blood, and doesnt go surrendering 24/7 just because they saw some streamers surrendering when the game turned south) can be silver at least. After that, each rank has various skill requirements, but silver you just have to put in an effort and not get tilted.

Mute the harrassers, play to win, dont flame. After that, youll notice you are slowly climbing.

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