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What if we went back to the Elo System for ranked?

P0IS0N IVY··30 votes·2,847 views
Matchmaking

Hi! I spent the last month grinding from Silver III back into Plat V. I did badly in my placements and got put into Silver. I noticed quite a few interesting things while I was climbing back up - namely that the matchmaking is completely skewed. Riot has told us multiple times that our MMR is used to decide matchmaking.

Why then, is the division we are currently in not reflective of our MMR at all? What then, is the point of a division system other than to stress players out when they reach their promos?

The picture I linked are examples of incredibly odd matchmaking I have seen in the past few days. I did not screenshot all of them because I got to the point where I would roll my eyes and move on.

I'd like to point out something. Having a good winrate does not mean that you can climb divisions faster because of the way this system works. The system pits a person against harder and harder opponents beyond their division until it is supposedly (not really) evened out by them losing.

Let's take Image 1 and 3. Riot has put limits that do not allow people more than a league away from each other to play together. Yet, they use MMR for matching, not division. The Ezreal in Image 1 has a 60%+ winrate and because of that, he now has to fight people in PLAT to get to GOLD. Now, he was likely in a premade judging by the disparities on both teams (i.e the Gold V Gragas with a negative winrate) and so the system placed him with people in much higher divisions even though Riot said they wouldn't allow that. Similar case in Image 3.

Image 2: I can only assume that the two Plat 2's were premade with the Darius and there was a premade on the other team. The disparity is insane. No one on the blue team is anywhere near plat 2. Three players are an entire league or more away.

Image 4: I'm the Zyra. I was playing solo. This one truly baffles me.

Why does the game not simply just show our MMR? Why keep the inaccuracy of divisions that are what determine ranked rewards?

The current system is flawed. This division system is highly inaccurate and practically pointless. Divisions mean NOTHING if they do not reflect MMR. Riot has proved inconsistent in that it disallows players more than a league away to play with each other but matchmaking is not gated from that restriction. It raises player hidden MMR to a ridiculous point but does not allow their division to keep up.

A player must lose in order to climb to the division they want. That goes against the fundamental core of ranked.

Edit for some clarity: Matchmaking is based off of hidden MMR while season rewards are based off of current division. Those two are very inconsistent with each other (with division often lagging behind MMR) and thus create a dampener for the ability to climb in ranked as well as rob players of the rewards they deserve.

52 Comments

Randomonium3 votes

This was something that always bothered me with the current ranked system. Your rank nearly always lags your MMR when you are climbing. What I mean by this is that your MMR can be a full division higher than your actual rank but you don't get any of the benefits of being that higher rank. Instead, your climb becomes that much harder. For example, during my promos to gold 5 I was getting placed against plat players. How does it make any sense that a silver player needs to beat plat players to get into gold?

What this essentially does is put a huge damper on the ability of people to climb. Because I have plat MMR I'm placed against plat opponents but I'm only low gold. This makes it extremely difficult for me to maintain a positive win rate. I know people will say keep playing and your MMR will equalize. But why should I have to wait for my MMR to equalize in order to climb? All this system does is increase the number of games I have to play to reach where my MMR is. That in my mind is a poorly designed system. A well designed system would minimize the number of games it takes for your rank to match your MMR, not maximize it.

P0IS0N IVY2 votes

Pretty much this. I feel like I waste so much time in ranked fighting people way above the division I want to get to.

ChargeItDownMid2 votes

[deleted]

P0IS0N IVY3 votes

This is correct. I would be playing the exact same game. However, there would not be divisions blocking people from ranked rewards that they clearly deserve if they are in that game (Image 1 again as an example).

The problem I stated was that a player's hidden MMR is much higher than their division. If someone is Silver I, should they not have to beat Silver I/Gold V skill level to get into gold? This is not the case. A person with higher MMR would have to beat mid gold or maybe even higher just to get into gold. Therefore, in order to lower their MMR to an acceptable level, they must lose.

Randomonium's comment above did a good job of summarizing the problem:

{quoted}

This was something that always bothered me with the current ranked system. Your rank nearly always lags your MMR when you are climbing. What I mean by this is that your MMR can be a full division higher than your actual rank but you don't get any of the benefits of being that higher rank. Instead, your climb becomes that much harder. For example, during my promos to gold 5 I was getting placed against plat players. How does it make any sense that a silver player needs to beat plat players to get into gold?

What this essentially does is put a huge damper on the ability of people to climb. Because I have plat MMR I'm placed against plat opponents but I'm only low gold. This makes it extremely difficult for me to maintain a positive win rate. I know people will say keep playing and your MMR will equalize. But why should I have to wait for my MMR to equalize in order to climb? All this system does is increase the number of games I have to play to reach where my MMR is. That in my mind is a poorly designed system. A well designed system would minimize the number of games it takes for your rank to match your MMR, not maximize it.

ChargeItDownMid4 votes

[deleted]

P0IS0N IVY2 votes

From what I understand, it's the other way around. The player is placed in a lower division than their current MMR. That's why the LP gain is so great when you first get placed.

And I agree, dynamic q does not help the ranked environment.

ChargeItDownMid2 votes

[deleted]

P0IS0N IVY1 votes

Source please? I've always seen large lp gains and small lp losses right after placements.

ChargeItDownMid1 votes

[deleted]

P0IS0N IVY1 votes

That link doesn't explain how it relates to the division system. I understand that elo varies greatly in the first games (placements), but there is no explanation for the relationship to LP gains and losses.

ChargeItDownMid1 votes

[deleted]

P0IS0N IVY1 votes

Oh. I finally see where you misunderstood me.

I'm talking about if you were not at 0 LP. Say you win one and gained 25 LP. If you lose one right after, the LP loss is only 12.

ChargeItDownMid1 votes

[deleted]

P0IS0N IVY1 votes

Every case I've seen after placements shows people gaining more than they have lost. The situations where players lose more is when they've played and lost so many games that their MMR is lower than their current division.

Talisid2 votes

The Elo system is still there. Its just buried under the league system.

Your MMR is still there in the background controlling your league advancement by changing your LP gains and doing all the matchmaking.

The League System is just a layer of fluff that's there to obscure the Elo system behind it and make people feel better about their placement.

P0IS0N IVY1 votes

Correct. There is however, no need for the elo system to be hidden. As it stands, advancements to a division a player belongs to is gated by their MMR being too high.

By elo system, I meant the system that was in place beforehand.

Talisid2 votes

Well my point was, the entire purpose of the League system was to hide people's real MMR and reduce ranked anxiety for players at the bottom of their elo bracket (safety net at Silver/Gold/Plat 5 for example).

Why would they backpedal on that when the system is doing exactly what it was intended to do?

P0IS0N IVY1 votes

I can't say the current system reduces anxiety since there is now a promo system in place.

Tbh, if the issue was that people were afraid to fall from a certain elo because it would pull them out of a certain League, I find it much simpler if players were to receive rewards based on how far they got each season as opposed to where they currently are.

Zielmann2 votes

I'm confused. First you say:

Riot has told us multiple times that our MMR is used to decide matchmaking.

Then there's:

(Large block of text that acts as if matchmaking uses ranking instead of MMR)

There's also false statements such as:

Having a good winrate does not mean that you can climb divisions faster because of the way this system works. The system pits a person against harder and harder opponents beyond their division until it is supposedly (not really) evened out by them losing.

So let's break it down.

First off, you're totally correct that ranking is not directly related to MMR. And the statement that MMR, and not ranking, is matchmaking uses to put together games (hence the name matchmaking rating). But the two are loosely related through LP, namely LP gains/losses.

Riot has an 'expected' MMR for each rank. Let's say for a given rank. It's generally well known that if you are at that rank, but your MMR is higher than expected for that rank, LP gains/losses will be skewed so you earn more LP for a win and lose less for a loss. This is why some people are able to climb faster than others, and helps better players rocket through lower rankings. On the flip side, if your MMR is below what is expected for that rank, you'll lose more LP for a loss than you would gain for a win. So it either forces you to bring your MMR up closer to expected for that rank, or else risk getting dropped down a rank so it'll be closer to your MMR.

With that in mind, let's address the false statement pointed out above. What really happens when you go on a winning streak? On the most fundamental level, your MMR goes up. It could go up by quite a bit. So what happens when your MMR goes up? You'll get placed in games with people of that new, higher, MMR, of course! So regardless of whatever ranking they are, the system has them all rated to be around the same level as you.

So you're kinda right in that the system matches you against harder and harder opponents. But it's not some attempt to even things out or to force you to lose. It thinks you're now this new higher MMR, so it put you in a game with others at that MMR. Simple as that. And since the MMR is higher, you'll see even higher LP gains for wins (with lower for losses). So even if you do reach an MMR where you're going 50/50 (in theory this would then reflect your actual skill level), if it's still higher than the expected ranking for your division, you'll still be climbing until you hit the division expected for your MMR.

Why can this sometimes be perceived as being forced to lose games? If that's how it feels, it means that the win streak resulted in your MMR actually getting inflated above your own skill level, so you find yourself suddenly in a couple games in a row where you feel rather outmatched until your MMR falls back a little to something more indicative of your skill.

Looking at your screenshots, I see pretty much nothing that surprises me. When you're seeing players ranked below you (the low gold or silvers), they often have a relatively low number of games played this season, and their records for the season are pretty heavily skewed towards wins. That means their MMRs are going to be significantly higher than their rank indicates. On the other hand, when the low plats are getting pulled in, they generally have a pretty high amount of games played, and below a 50% win rate. So their MMRs are probably lower than what they really should be for a low plat player. This is where many people in the community would probably start crying 'boosted'.

But let's circle back to the main point of your post, because there is validity to it. The system, as it is now, is generally reliant on people playing a large amount of games, such that their ranking eventually gets normalized due to the LP gain/loss ratio mechanic and everybody ends up with an MMR that actually reflects their skill level, and their ranking is actually the one expected for that MMR.

So yes, in practice, the ranking isn't really all that reflective of a player's skill level, unless they dedicate enough time to playing ranked for things to level out (seems to be a few hundred games, from what I've seen).

Would a raw ranking based on MMR system work better? I guess it depends on what you want. Back in season 1 when they did that, you could argue that it made the rankings more valid (and back then since it was percentile-based, bronze still actually was an achievement). But having the ranking mostly decoupled from MMR makes ranked feel more accessible (reduces what Riot called 'ranked anxiety').

In the end of the day, it all comes down to what you want to make of it.

P0IS0N IVY1 votes

Let me start first by clarifying your first two quotes. I was not implying that matchmaking is based on division. I wanted to draw attention to the disparity between the ranking of players in the same game when it is clear that their MMRs are quite similar. It makes the division system pointless and gates players from ranked rewards that they should already get based on their MMR.

You addressed the fact that MMR and division eventually even out. I agree that this should happen in theory. But, how long does this take? And more importantly, why is it necessary? Why does a player have to go through X number of games so their MMR and division even out? When I ask myself these questions, I fail to see the purpose of the division. I've played from Silver III to Plat V and my MMR and division have still not evened.

RogueWill2 votes

Two things my friend. Did you update everyone of your opponets data? Websites like OP.GG or Mobafire or other need users to manually hit the refresh button to update the profile otherwise they just use the last one regardless of how old it was. So if a player changes his runes and masteries constantly the site woudl get them wrong, even level and rank. I have seen people with profile that hasn't been updated on over a month so you can take the information of those sites as 100% accurate.

Second, unless someone his on weird groups (silves with a gold and a plat, where the gold made the lobby) the system will never put you with anyone over a whole division/tier ahead of you (if are silver 1, the most you will get placed at is gold 1), I had 87% winrate for over 50 games on Bronze and I can tell that for sure, never went against a gold and hence I could keep the ridiculous winrate. That I think is the only use of the current ranking system thatis not ruled by MMR, and that is the main reason why they made demotions from the 5th tier possible, it was screwing their coding.

Dundai3 votes

the system will never put you with anyone over a whole division/tier ahead of you

Remember the bronze player who has Masters MMR and plays with Masters every game?

It's MMR based, not division based.

RogueWill2 votes

Can you link me? because honestly i don't remember such a thing

P0IS0N IVY3 votes

I can confirm that there was such a thing. It was a Janna main that dodged all the way to Bronze V. Dodging lowers your division ranking but does not affect your MMR in the current system (I think).

RogueWill1 votes

Well that is obviously a bug my friend not something that happens regularly, nobody expect a master to drop more than one division so the system wasn't sure of what to do...... You can't criticize systems on the abnormalities and odd numbers because that wouldn't be objective.

P0IS0N IVY1 votes

I wasn't.

A serial feeder1 votes

when i was in silver i was matched against plats because my really high mmr

P0IS0N IVY5 votes

Op.gg actually updates automatically. At the very least someone may be a few games off but I find it accurate for the most part.

Riot does not want players more than a league away playing with each other but it's no use if matchmaking doesn't follow that rule. I have seen silvers and plats on the same team (not a premade obviously). It further emphasizes the fact that divisions are pointless.

Tik1152 votes

I mean to be honest the only difference between the Elo system and the current system is... Elo system doesn't have promos

you just get to a certain Elo and....boom, you're plat

Frankly I'd rather them use an Elo system but still have the "Divisions" to show your Elo range (EG 2100-2400 Elo = Plat Division)

Catch2 votes

That is the system right now. They just have promos added. It's hidden, but it's there. LP = Elo.

P0IS0N IVY1 votes

There is also the difference in which our elo does not determine the rewards we get in ranked. Our division does.

Tik1151 votes

Which again is why I'm saying scrap the promos system, keep the divisions to mark the progress of how your doing and settle with that

The Deckowner1 votes

rito removed elo system because it might be frustrating tobe a few elo away from the next elo range.

and their response was to bring this mmr system that frustrates more by having your elo(aka mmr) hidden and only show a division system that has no apparent relationship with your elo.

Mojihito6661 votes

Wow you are lucky you didnt get unranked adc/jungle with 6 games losing streak like i did in plat game.

P0IS0N IVY1 votes

I dunno about unranked ppl with losing streaks, but I have gotten unranked and plats in the same game. Whether they do well or not is generally 50/50.

An Unseen Rengar1 votes

I think the reason for an MMR system is so that way low elo games wont be ruined by high elo's smurfing. If MMR was removed you would see alot of high elo players with acounts in silver dodging promos to continue smashing silver players.

P0IS0N IVY3 votes

That's an entirely different issue tbh. I also never said to remove the MMR system.

Pierce The Veal1 votes

{quoted}

That's an entirely different issue tbh. I also never said to remove the MMR system.

MMR is already the elo system. Elo never left, just we don't get to actually see what it is.

P0IS0N IVY2 votes

I know. It's problematic that it is hidden.

Pierce The Veal2 votes

[{quoted}](name=An Unseen Rengar,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=yzhuH5Lz,comment-id=0008,timestamp=2016-11-05T19:11:05.890+0000)

I think the reason for an MMR system is so that way low elo games wont be ruined by high elo's smurfing. If MMR was removed you would see alot of high elo players with acounts in silver dodging promos to continue smashing silver players.

You do realize MMR is literally the elo system renamed? It hs nothing to do with high elo players in silver. Elo didn't have that in the first place (outside of when people from a wide elo gap duoed, which could be fixed by requiring two players be within 200 elo of eachother).

An Unseen Rengar1 votes

{quoted}

You do realize MMR is literally the elo system renamed? It hs nothing to do with high elo players in silver. Elo didn't have that in the first place (outside of when people from a wide elo gap duoed, which could be fixed by requiring two players be within 200 elo of eachother).

MMR is match make rating, not the elo system.

Pierce The Veal1 votes

[{quoted}](name=An Unseen Rengar,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=yzhuH5Lz,comment-id=000800010000,timestamp=2016-11-06T02:39:42.609+0000)

MMR is match make rating, not the elo system.

Your MMR is your elo. The MMR system and the elo system are identical (as far as matchmaking and everything else goes, though there may be something special added in for promos, but that has nothing to do with MMR).

I was around when elo left and the league system came in. They're literally the same system, just without elo visible in the current one.

Banuvan1 votes

I've made similar arguments for years. Riot isn't going to change their stance on ranked....ever.

Pierce The Veal1 votes

I miss the elo system. Being bronze actually meant something, and your rank was a solid hard number, something you could quantify and comprehend.

ltmetal1 votes

I would love to go back to the elo system, but only if the two problems that got it removed in the first place are addressed first:

  1. Ladder anxiety (too scared to play after hitting a medal because you are afraid of losing it).
  2. Ego bruising (making it very obvious to players when they have MMR that they consider poor).
P0IS0N IVY1 votes

For one, I really wish Riot would just reward people for the highest rank they've achieved. Then people don't need to worry about losing anything. Two should not even be a consideration.

Pierce The Veal1 votes

{quoted}

I would love to go back to the elo system, but only if the two problems that got it removed in the first place are addressed first:

  1. Ladder anxiety (too scared to play after hitting a medal because you are afraid of losing it).
  2. Ego bruising (making it very obvious to players when they have MMR that they consider poor).

  1. You kept the rewards for the highest rank you hit in the elo system (was something they introduced a whillle before they removed the system).

  2. Simply make the mmr/elo not visible to other people bam.

Leonerdo1 votes

The reason they switched to the "Leagues" system from just using MMR is because MMR is much too swingy. The fact that one's current division always lags behind their MMR is entirely intentional, and it's most (if not all) of the reason that the Leagues system was put in place.

For example, let's say the cut off for Gold was 1500 ELO. If you were, on average, a 1550 ELO player, then you would be Gold for most of the season. But regularly, on a bad day or just a bad luck streak, you could lose 5 games in a row, and end up at 1450 ELO and be in Silver. Imagine that happening at the end of the season, and suddenly you would lose out on the Gold rewards despite being having Gold ELO 80% of the time.

The Leagues system was made to make ranking less erratic, and thus less frustrating. To be more specific, Leagues were made primarily so that people could have protection from Demotion. (I could be wrong about that statement, but IMO at least that is the best thing the system does for us.)

In order to balance out the fact that losing rank is now harder, promos exist to make gaining rank a little bit harder as well. And supposedly they also provide spikes of excitement to the climb.

As for why people start each season so far beneath their natural ranking? That is because the system needs time to be confident in your skill before giving you the ranking. Especially because lots of people get their ranked goals early in the season and then stop playing as much, letting thier skills decay. To be clear: At the beginning of every season, players' MMR confidence intervals are reset (i.e. the system becomes less confident in peoples ranking, so more MMR gained/lost per game), their Leagues ranking is reset, they have to go through placements, and typically they will be placed below the division they deserve. So that they have to _earn _ their rank again, in case their skills have atrophied from the previous system.

If someone is Silver I, should they not have to beat Silver I/Gold V skill level to get into gold?

Pardon my language, but fuck no. If that Silver I has Gold I MMR, but they just finished their placements, then they should still be playing against people of their skill level, Gold I. Otherwise the matches would be unbalanced stompfests. Players need to be matched based on their MMR, not their Leagues ranking (which, as we have established, is not as accurate at indicating skill), in order to ensure good match quality.

Having a good winrate does not mean that you can climb divisions faster because of the way this system works. The system pits a person against harder and harder opponents beyond their division until it is supposedly (not really) evened out by them losing.

Having a good winrate is always good. Winning is always good. Wins obviously get you LP and MMR. But that MMR gain also increases how much LP you gain, in order to counteract the fact that you will be facing harder opponents.

Let me explain. Every division has an intended MMR. i.e. The system attempts to bring people into the division that matches their MMR. If your MMR matches that of your division, you will gain equally as much LP on a win as you lose on a loss. If your MMR is higher than that of your division, then you will gain more LP on every win, and lose less LP on every loss. Thereby, if your rank is lower than your actual skill level, you will still gain LP over time, even with a 50% winrate. And of course, if your MMR has dropped below that of your division, the opposite will happen.

Additionally, the higher the discrepancy between your current rank and the rank that your MMR correlates with, the greater the difference between your LP gains upon winning and LP losses upon losing. So if you are a Silver fighting against Plats, you will be gaining 20+ LP on each win, and only losing 10- LP on each loss.

Therefore, every win is doubly good for you. You get LP, and you get MMR which increases how much LP you gain.

You addressed the fact that MMR and division eventually even out. I agree that this should happen in theory. But, how long does this take? And more importantly, why is it necessary? Why does a player have to go through X number of games so their MMR and division even out?

Firstly, it takes so long because Riot wants to be confident that people only earn their rank when they truly deserve it (getting 10 lucky wins in placement matches shouldn't give a Bronze-level player Gold rank and rewards). Because there is a lot of random variance in matches, it takes a lot of games (~100) before there is statistical confidence that a player's MMR is correct. (After all, the ELO/MMR system is actually a never-ending, one-game-at-a-time statistical analysis.)

Secondly, if your main problem with the Leagues system is that it takes so long to reach your deserved ranking, then just say that. Don't beat around the bush. Don't mislead people with overreaching statements about how division system is entirely inaccurate. Just make your complaint about it taking too damn long to get Gold/Plat/whatever, get your upvotes, let Riot have that feedback, and move on. This didn't need to be a long discussion about the sham that is the Leagues system.

Thirdly, and this is just a personal opinion, 100 games isn't a lot. Plenty of people play over 1000 games in a ranked season. I don't think it's asking too much to require ranked players to play 100 games in 10 months before the achieve their deserved rank. It's meant to be a competitive ladder, so if you want to climb, you should have to put in the time to prove your skills.

Valexfor1 votes

The problem aren't divisions, but the matchmaking itself. If you have hig win-rate/mmr, the game will place you against better opponents and worse teammates so that the game can understand exactly where your skill level is by making you carry an entire team.

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