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Quitting League.

Longtowel·10/7/2019, 8:09:13 AM·10 votes·5,250 views

I have finally made the decision to quit league for good. After some six seven years of playing league, I finally feel compelled to put this game behind me.

In these past years playing league on and off, I have had a lot of fun. This, no doubt, is a great game. Even though it is plagued with terrible systems and toxicity, it is still one of the best games on the market.

However, having devoted much time and energy to the climb this season, there were a few things I realised about the game, matchmaking, and the experience of players. In short, playing the game now, playing to win, playing to climb, has become a constant source of frustration, and it frustrates me probably more than anything else in my life. That is saying something.

While I spent some time climbing in past seasons, I am perhaps most serious about it this season. As I suddenly found myself with a few months to spare, I decide to try and achieve Platinum rank this season, knowing the magnitude of the undertaking, and understanding that the matchmaking is bad. As a mediocre player through and through, I do not have the mechanics to make flashy outplays, no crazy map sense to stay 5 steps ahead of the enemy, nor am I a stone faced god who will not tilt in even the worst situations.

After a few bumpy weeks, I managed to put myself in Gold 1, and smashed my head against the Platinum Promos 5 times or so. Having mained top lane yorick for two seasons now, I am fairly confident in knowing what I can do. Yorick is a great champion, he feels powerful under the right conditions, never gets banned, and can influence the game in a big way, should he ever get the chance. I breezed through low gold, struggled a bit in high gold, but eventually managed to hit platinum promos.

This is when I realized the ugly truth about how the game works, how riot thinks, how frustrating the matchmaking system is, and how it really doesn't need to be.

I'm sure everyone whose ever done promos know this. They are a lot harder than your normal games. Not so much in the sense that they enemies are more capable -- that is certainly a part of it -- but your team just always seem to be so bad... No matter how hard you try to help the team, maybe you even started with a big lead, it just feels like a hopeless undertaking. We all know that Riot attempts to force a winrate of 50/50, but I have come to realise that the way they achieve this is through the exploitation of our human weaknesses, as players, and as competitors.

Now I don't know the maths. I don't know what algorithms they have in the system. What I do know, is that in Promos, games are far more likely to be decided before they even start. You would think that in plat promos, riot would put a team (your team) of gold 1 players against a team of plat 4 players. If you can overcome that gap, then you belong in the next division. Sure, sounds fair. Promos should be a challenge. But on closer inspection, things are not so simple. There is a couple of things that happen here:

First, you might have hit 100 lp off a winstreak. This happens very often. If you are a player like me, with a 50-55% winrate, its very likely you managed to hit 100 lp thanks to a couple of easy wins. This happens to me 80% of the time. But guess what comes after a winstreak? A loss streak. Riot decides you are winning too much, and starts giving you bad players.

Secondly, a sneaky combination of players riot uses to ensure you either win or lose the game. At a glance, you may think you have a good shot of winning by looking at the OP.GG profile. Your team averages a 50% + winrate, the mmr seems pretty balanced. But if you look closer, you will find this: your adc is on a loss streak. He is starting to tilt. Your support is autofilled. He is normally a jungler. There, with that combo, its going to take a miracle for your bot lane to come out ahead, against an enemy bot who is fresh into the game and prepared to win. This happens very often, in your promos, you are very likely to get someone whos tilting hard and an autofill together.

Thirdly, someone is playing a new champion. His mmr is on point, his winrate is good. But what is this? He has been playing katarina the last 15 games, and only won 2 of them. Now, if he was playing his main, he might stand a chance against the enemy zed with 300000 mastery points, but not when he is playing a champion he is unfamiliar with. High gold low plat feels like its players need to know the matchup well enough. If you don't know the match at all, its very likely for you to make some bad calls.

Lastly, people in promos, or has someone on promos in their team tend to get their secondary roles more often. Not sure why this is the case, might be my biased opinion, but I get my secondary role as jungle so much more frequently than my normal games. Every time I am in promos, I have a 70% chance of getting one game as a jungler. Now, a lot of us only play one role. While getting our secondary role doesn't mean insta loss, but it decreases our effectiveness quite a bit, and making carrying the game that much harder.

These factors above are 'artificial difficulties'. It has very little to do with the skill of the players involved, but a mechanism the game uses to determine a game's outcome before the match even starts. We are all human, so tilting on a loss streak is sadly unavoidable. But on the same token, having a good day and playing better than usual is also a thing. The game seems to take all this into account, and actually uses this knowledge against us, the players. Given how snowbally the game is now, a few extra kills in the hands of a experience player can completely turn the game around. I can do it too, if I get a few kills for free.

Looking back at the 20ish games I have played in plat promos, only 1 or 2 of these games felt like I had influence over the game, in a good or bad way. The rest of these 18 games is generally a one sided slaughter. Putting a plat 3 player playing his main against a gold 1 who is tilting out of his mind and an autofill support means 5 kills in lane, first turret and dragon, all in one. So all of my promo series I have lost quite convincingly. People argue that I lost because I cannot carry hard enough. That is very true. I can't do it.

I don't main a hard carrying champion. I cannot play riven irelia or fiora. I do not have the mechanics for it. Instead I play my game as a scaling sidelane pusher. If I get to late game I will become much more powerful. But without the ability to outplay the enemy top lane, without the option to hard shove and chip away at the tower, without the option to 1v2 the enemy jungler every time they gank, it is very hard for me to impact the map in the early game. Often by that time, the game is already onesided. Perhaps if everyone can keep their cool, avoid getting caught, and play it out, we might win later on, but we all know those scenarios are super rare. The flaming and blaming begins far earlier.

If I were a diamond player, none of this is a problem. That why those streamers seem to overcome these promo games with such ease. But I am not diamond. I am a gold 1 player who is trying to get into plat. And frankly, whenever I play the game, and whenever I play promos, it is starting to feel like I am playing against Riot, and not the players sitting across from me.

I'm sure if I keep playing, I will hit the promos again and again. Eventually, I will reach a series where the game isn't as stacked and the teams aren't as imbalanced, and I do my job well, I might win it and end up in plat. Eventually it will happen. But that is going to take god knows how many tries, god knows how many coin flips. If I wanted that sort of game, I would be in a casino. It is absolutely exhausting.

I cannot expect Riot to do anything about it. They wanna make money, keep people playing. That's fine. I just feel like we as players are exploited. The game does not celebrate our success and our strengths, but it stomps us into the ground as soon as we mess up. It punishes our mistakes and uses it as tools against us. It breeds negativity, builds it up, and throws it back in our faces.

I am tired of it. So here it is. I'm done with league of legends.

39 Comments

Kitty Girl Laura10/7/2019, 10:14:56 AM5 votes

You cant give up now, your so close to platinum!!! D: You should totally find a duo partner pref. someone around gold 4 or gold 3 to make things easier You should also take a break for a few days you seem to be mentally exhausted. Don't stress over things you have no control over. [slayer-jinx-catface]

Knight Seíya10/7/2019, 10:53:45 AM5 votes

Wow you really hit the nail in the head. I'm a gold 2 63% winrate irelia main so a lot of my games i almost literally 1v5 them but some games look unwinnable even before they start just by simply comparing teams. For example early this season in a G4 game i had a 43% winrate master yi with only 7 games in placements projected to place iron 2 by opgg... to further prove my point he is currently silver 3 29% winrate, even if you put him in the same match as a silver 3 he doesn't belong in that match at all especially with that winrate. Here is a link to the teams, yes i screen shotted it because that's how bad matchmaking is https://imgur.com/a/0FCKgkI

Now you can clearly see which team is going to win before even getting into the game. not only is their team higher overall winrate and higher rank but also our best player is the fking support... Their worst player is silver 1 38% winrate while our worst player is projected iron 2 43% winrate who is currently silver 3 29% winrate...

Get210/7/2019, 4:20:42 PM4 votes

There will be naysayers, but let's clear the record here.

We all know what it is like to stomp a match super hard.
We all know what it is like to get stomped super hard. And we all know what a good "even" match feels like.

The first system starts to happen after a losing streak, especially if you lose a tier. The second system happens in promos way more than not; in fact, if I win my promos, I usually get carried if I am being honest. The third system happens about the middle of a new tier.

The ratio, as I see it, on average, is something like 3:5:2 in that order. Almost like clockwork. The matchmaking is so laughably bad and antagonistic.

Let's be honest here. This game is carrot on a stick. But the carrots are rotten. And the stick beats you across the head. And you have no idea what the carrot really is nor why there is a stick. It's counterintuitive as all get out.

If we can make any of these stereotypes happen, then we know we can balance the matchmaking.

I guess the only technical issue is the vast number of players who seem to be trying to scam the system so they can enjoy the game on their terms. That's the people who figure out how to stay in a low ELO so they can stomp when they feel like it and feel in control of the destiny of 4 other people and try to get them to fail when they feel like it.

And those guys are here in mass numbers. But god forbid you actually say ANYTHING about it in chat. Ban to you, friend.

So. Eh.

7thHeaven10/7/2019, 10:44:11 AM4 votes

Wall of Text, didnt read. Bye

Reticent Panda10/7/2019, 12:24:48 PM3 votes

Its all good. I mean I've pretty much put this game behind me as well. I just only play it out of boredom. Go to the gym. Focus on your life. You're better than this game. Good Luck fellow summoner

Tomoe Gozen10/7/2019, 1:20:23 PM3 votes

I have issues with your statement so let me address a few things:

I'm sure everyone whose ever done promos know this. They are a lot harder than your normal games.

Promos are only psychologically harder because you know what the stakes are. You're either promoted in a higher Tier or you're dropped down, just a few games shy of 100LP and have to try again. The psychological factor here is that you're going to give these games more weight simply because they are like a test to see whether you should be promoted this time or not. So these games end up being more frustrating and the ones you tend to focus a lot more on how you play and how your team performs. You're more sensitive to their misplays as well as your own.

We all know that Riot attempts to force a winrate of 50/50, but I have come to realise that the way they achieve this is through the exploitation of our human weaknesses, as players, and as competitors.

Not attempting to balance a 50/50 chance ends up with people constantly bitching that the other team had better chances at victory, hence the match was rigged from the start. And attempting to get close to 50/50 is also bad, because you think you get worse players...? What? This all comes from a delusion that Riot's matchmaking is singling out individual players to put them in a worse spot, for some unknown reason.

Secondly, a sneaky combination of players riot uses to ensure you either win or lose the game. At a glance, you may think you have a good shot of winning by looking at the OP.GG profile. Your team averages a 50% + winrate, the mmr seems pretty balanced. But if you look closer, you will find this: your adc is on a loss streak. He is starting to tilt. Your support is autofilled. He is normally a jungler.

Your promos have nothing to do with other people. You being in promos guarantees you either primary or secondary role because Riot doesn't want you being autofilled in your less optimal positions, when it's time for you to rank up. You are not queuing up with other people in their promos nor is the matchmaker made to look for people in the same position as you are, in order for you to play the "perfect" rank up games. It's about putting you in the optimal spot to play your matches, it's not about literally setting up a universally balanced game without any external influences. It's not you having special treatment and everyone else falling in line for your sake. Your teammates can be autofilled because your promo games don't have to be their promos and the same matchmaking rules apply.

So what if people play Ranked on their loss streaks? It's their choice whether they want to/are able to continue with more games or they'll take a breather for a while. It's not about you picking your teammates and controlling what/how they play in your promos. The more and more you put weight in these matches (as opposed to normal Ranked games), the more and more you feel like you need to control the entire environment in order for you to have a "perfect" game and as such, you always feel let down because there is no such game. We're going back to psychology of it all. I'm not saying that you shouldn't care but i am saying that trying to be a control freak is only going to stress you out even more than usual. And as such, you tend to go overboard even if the smallest things are not in order and you give them a lot more importance than they should have.

If I were a diamond player, none of this is a problem. That why those streamers seem to overcome these promo games with such ease. But I am not diamond. I am a gold 1 player who is trying to get into plat. And frankly, whenever I play the game, and whenever I play promos, it is starting to feel like I am playing against Riot, and not the players sitting across from me.

So you admit that higher ranked players don't seem to have the same problem as you. How is then Riot out to get you personally? You're either imagining and opponent that doesn't exist or you're clearly trying to get over an obstacle that you can't see yet. You don't play a hard scaling champion, you play a sidelane pusher that can potentially scale into the late game. But the game doesn't depend on your actions alone, it depends on the actions of your teammates. If the game never lasts to the minutes you need in order to be relevant, you never get to play out your power spike fantasy.

It is completely possible for you to play the game and do everything right and still lose it. The expectation that if you do everything correct and that it should get to win for that, is faulty at its core. What i've noticed in my games is that if i play a support perfectly, the better i perform, the worse my Marksman plays. Why? It's simple - they think they can get away with playing worse because i'm some kind of a miracle worker in their eyes. So their eyes are as big as saucers and they're hard as diamonds just at the prospect of them being the carry that wins the game. And this turns to a complete clown fiesta when they give away their lead and guess who's fault is their bad decision making - MINE.

Shit happens, winnable games get lost all the time. I'm not a perfect player, I'm not untiltable. The things you're seeing in your promos, i'm seeing in mine as well. The point is realizing the psychology of Ranked in general and not get so frustrated by hitting plateaus. Hell, sometimes i don't play Ranked games for a week or more because i get so paralyzed by over analyzing whether or not i'm up with the meta.

Lęmon10/17/2019, 9:03:27 PM2 votes

Rammus

Hentai Džinks10/8/2019, 12:33:20 AM2 votes

Ure not alone bro.. ima gonna join you soon enough. I'm not even upset about bad teams anymore, the fact that whether you get that 0/12 Yasuo on your team or not, it's pre-determined in the queue. One adc or one jungler will reign supreme over the other by a massive lead all because of that unbalanced shit Rioters throw. it's not about small skill differences anymore that determine who is better. One will simply dominate regardless of skill level because of his champion is an absolute one scaled versus his rival.

And with every patch they toss, you just have to read through patch notes like a death certificate - in the hopes of not seeing some weird shit balancing team has come up with after hitting crack with pipe

I will make my final push to try to get Masters before the end of the season (currently d1 38lp) to mb leave a mark that I was indeed decent at the game. after that...

ebay [sg-ahri-2]

ExcaliburX10/7/2019, 9:24:03 AM2 votes

Nice constructive rant. Have you try duoing with someone? Let me know if you want help with the promos. Who knows maybe i can show you that maybe, just maybe, your promos isnt as crazy as you think it might be and that its base on your own skills, abilities and little bit of luck that can help you win the promos.

We have a tendency as a human being to look for fault other than ours, especially when they are obvious and very easy to blame others for the fault. At that point, it picks up every reasoning and evidence to try to explain why we cant do something. Conditons, enviorment, probability isnt something you can control nor does it care about your win streak or you as a player, to go out of its way to personally attack you. You have to work with what you have and figure out what you can do to help win the game. Own up to what YOU can do to improve and learn to understand you LACK the skills/abilities to help win the game. By focusing on your self, you will improve gradually or eventually which will results in being able to give your team higher chance of winning.

stop with the whole parade with bad teammates, eveyone understand that, everyone knows it, and everyone deals with it... well nvm, some cant, wont and dont know how to. Guess what, your one of em that dont know how to deal with it. Your not the only person that gets dealt with thse kind of match ups. So how do other people do it? They dont win their promos by complainting on the forum, i tell you that muc. Sure there might be lucky players who got carried and whole bunch of other reason but the fact is they made it and so can you.

I am serious about my offer, if you want to duo, reply to me here and send a friend request. But be warned i have conditions to duo q together, and no they are not pay me to duo q. They are conditons to give us a better chance to win the game for example, muting all chat. So tell me, you dare?

Edit: i just realize your in oce server. Rip. In that case, find some to duo with. Thats one less player you dont have to worry about. If you end up quitting well, take care, if you end up trying again with new mindset, good luck.

Subdue10/17/2019, 7:04:54 PM1 votes

Okay, I'm just going to be blunt here because these rant threads are just ridiculous. For every statement, you've got to ask yourself "HOW?"

Riot rigged your promo so that your teammate would tilt? **HOW ** would Riot know who is going to tilt?

Riot matches a much weaker team against a much stronger team during your promos? HOW does Riot determine who is stronger and who is weaker to rig the game if rigging the game distorts the only metric to determine who is stronger and who is weaker?

Riot gives you bad players on your team when you're on a winstreak? HOW (Again) does Riot determine who is good and who is bad if the only metric for who is good and who is bad is being rigged?

Once you're done asking yourself HOW, ask yourself WHY?

Why would Riot be better off if players felt they were being artificially held back?

And if you really want something to think about, ask yourself WHAT?

WHAT would your ranking be if matchmaking was perfect and your skill was Gold 1 quality? What naturally happens after a winstreak if everyone in the game is statistically better than everyone in the game 10 games ago?

FioraWillCarry10/16/2019, 5:40:03 AM1 votes

This whole idea that Riot is out to get you and stacking teams against you to make you lose is complete and utter bullshit.

Bot Zilean10/17/2019, 5:38:48 PM1 votes

Skimmed through briefly.

Get ready for some tough love, but here's my 2 cents.

If you're failing promo's over and over again, you've essentially hit a plateau, whether you believe it to be true or not, it is.

Promo's are DEFINITELY more difficult than your average game, the system/algorithm will usually place you with lower % WR players on your team. There's also the psychological aspect of the fear of failure and starting all over again that always puts a strain as well. But yes, for the most part, the system does rig your game - and with good reason! Imagine they didn't, everyone would be flying past the ceiling wouldn't they?

It's a big test my friend. You've reached a rank that's got your name on it, and it's called "plateau".

You've got literally only one option here. Get better at the game. Or you can do what I do, have a small arsenal of one-trick pony champions that have good carry potential.

Source: I've been playing this game for 9 years, and I've had my fair share of frustration's of feeling rigged by the system. I was a Silver-Gold player for the longest time when I started out. I'm in Masters now and I've hit my next plateau as I cannot advance to Grandmaster without significantly changing my mechanics/skill.

ExcaliburX10/7/2019, 2:55:10 PM1 votes

Tomoe made some good points. In regards to promos being lot harder than your regular rank, i kinda agree and disagree. I seen it both, where i breeze through my promos or exreemly struggle to get the win. So tomoe might be right that its just all in your head but even with my experiences i had games where promos has been lot harder than a norm ranks. Not sure if this is becuz there happens to be smurfs in those games, who knows.

I admkt that match making system is not the best and its lot more worst in flex ranks but that doesnt mean the riot is out to get you. Like i said, work on your weakness and improve yourself. If your thinking i got nothing to work on because its all about my teams fault than you need to get someone thats better than you to look over your games to see what you can improve on. Preferably another yorick main thats in high plat or diamond.

nUcLeAr KeTcHuP10/7/2019, 4:29:46 PM1 votes

servers broken rn.