I recently "normalized" according to player support in ranked and am no longer allowed to earn LP like I deserve so I can reach gold. I had reached gold promos 3 times before this happened and yet that doesn't matter to the system as it has decided that it knows where I should be. Now I only seem to earn 16 lp a match and lose 20 a loss with VERY rare occasions being the reverse. This is considered fair for some reason.
I want to know why this is fair.
Sneak Dog3 votesYou went on a losing spree right after you reached a promo series, dropping your mmr and now your lp gains are following?
League of Legends' ranked system is all about consistently winning more than you lose. If you don't, first your mmr will drop, then your visible rank (your lp) will follow (this makes your visible rank more accurate since it doesn't swing as much with random win/loss streaks).
When starting a season the system gives everyone insane mmr gains/losses and then slowly lowers these after every game before stopping to do so after probably like 100 games. This is done so that the system can first make a decent guess of where you belong with a low amount of data to get by. However, after this, you can still easily climb/drop your mmr and therefore visible rank. The system never 'decides' you belong at a certain rank and get you stuck there arbitrarily for the rest of the season.
RiotPhreak3 votesBasically what happened is there's two systems at play:
So what's happening is that your MMR is actually slightly lower than your LP would indicate. In order to not have the system lie to you and place you at 99LP, hitting your head against the wall until you reach the right MMR, it's guiding your LP gains down a little bit until they line up again.
OL DlRTY BASTARD1 votesI'm winning something like 65% of my games for the last 25-30 games. This is STILL happening to me. I gain like 14-15 and lose 21+ a lot of times. Either I'm so wildly talented (unlikely, given my league)and playing, and losing, against such poor teams or I'm so god-damn terrible that it is trying to sandbag my score to something even worse than Cardboard VII (unlikely, I wouldn't be winning so many games).
At what point does this even out? I was in Silver at the start of my season, and then my games started getting a really disparate value between wins and losses, which tanked me out down to Bronze 4 eventually, I think. Given that I am currently winning well above my season average, I'm not sure when this stops being so absurd
Jingerbeardman1 voteswhile this may be occurring right now for me, this was not the case when this started happening. I was on a winning streak and positive wins to losses when all of a sudden my gains and losses go bat shit crazy. I tried explaining this to support that there may be something wrong in the system, which I really think there is, because this suddenly started happening to many people I played matches with at that time. What aggravates me most is that this change is actually making me more toxic in game because now it takes 2 wins just to break even for one loss. That is why I feel this system is terrible as it is. If you are winning its great but the instant you hit a losing streak it punishes you so hard its nearly impossible to bounce back.
How the decision was made to make it this way baffles me. This is a leading cause to aggravation and toxicity in ranked. If I were only losing 2 points more than when I win I would not get nearly as irritated but I am losing 5+ points over what I am winning and that is complete BS. I get the system holding you back a little when you are behind but it shouldn't beat you down with a lead pipe until you are a broken mess.
Here is some food for thought. Player A has good standing MMR when compared to his rank and LP in the brackets, they only have a deviation of about 3 points from the average when they win or lose. Player B however has poor standing MMR compared to his rank and LP in his bracket and has a deviation of 5+ points in his gains and losses. Both player A and player B lose their next game in which they are favored. Player A loses 19 points and averages 17 points a win, player B however loses 22 points and only seems to average 16-17 a win. Which player is going to feel less affected by their loss when they are favored compared to the other.
This is the problem with the current systems dual ratings. Since we players are 100% unaware of what MMR we have and how it actually works and correlates to our winnings, the instant something out of the ordinary that is a negative experience happens you are more likely to flip your lid over it because you don't know WTF just happened and why. There is no way to see that, Yeah my MMR does look like it is lower than where I am in regard to my current rank so I guess this result is understandable and I know what I need to do to recover it. Instead since there is NO way to figure out how the hell MMR works, how much is gained or lost with each game, and just how it determines your changes in LP we are left confused. Confusion leads to frustration, frustration leads to an irritated state resulting in anger if things escalate and ultimately toxicity toward the game that is typically vented on teammates and other players.
I understand the reasoning for keeping one rating in the dark. If it were revealed, figuring out ways to cheat the system would be easier as you notice certain patterns to each of the ratings gains and losses. Truth is their are already simple and proven methods to do that anyways because of the way that you climb the ladder currently. I am not going to actually point them out but they are there, I know of them and know if I did use them I would likely get punished which is why I don't.
A simple and ambiguous indicator of MMR like a colored bar under your rank in your profile that is red when you are lower than your current standing green if you are in good standing and blue if you are beyond your current standing would even be enough to alleviate so much confusion about this system.
Sneak Dog1 votesWinning streaks are actually not efficient in gaining lp. You just need a constant win/loss ratio above 1. A winstreak will boost your mmr significantly, but you will suddenly hit a point where you are put against stronger opponents and you will go on a losing streak, losing your mmr again and leaving your lp mildly higher than your mmr, meaning your lp gains will lower.
If you go on a losing streak, you get easier matches and you should be able to just climb back up with your increased win/loss ratio, leaving your lp probably a bit below your skill level.
These streaks are quite random and your skill does not significantly in- or decrease with these streaks, but your mmr does. Your lp however doesn't. If you consistently have a lower or higher than 1 win/loss ratio, your lp will follow your mmr relatively closely. This makes your lp more accurate than your mmr and random win/loss streaks ineffective.
I am not sure why you say the mmr system is unclear, it seems quite clear to me. You have two ratings, an invisible mmr and a visible lp. Your lp rating is the more accurate and less swingy one and will follow your mmr rating. I'm not even sure how anyone would find new ways to cheat the system if they knew their mmr, it's just that the mmr is irrelevant to the user. They hide it to make it clear to everyone that they should be looking to the more accurate lp rating.
The only exception for this is the whole promotion series system, which I think is a terrible system anyway. It matches you with players of your mmr level to see if you should be allowed into a league/division. However, your mmr value could be higher than the mmr value of the division/league you're trying to enter, because for example your win/loss ratio is somehow a perfect 55%. This makes it incredibely luck-based, because the system tries to give you a 50% win ratio but you need either a 75% in 4 games or a 67% in 6 games. In the long run it's mainly tedious, it's just a matter of time if you belong in the higher league/division anyway.
On a sidenote, we should be talking about over 40 games to even raise suspicions about whether system is broken or not, below that there is just not enough data. Games' rating systems are very inaccurate with low amounts of games because the only valid data point we have is whether you win or lose a match, your kill/death ratio/gold advantage/minion kills are all irrelevant.
Serpents Embrace2 votes"Earn lp like I deserve"
Critkeeper1 votesyou can circumvent the system by getting into promo series (does't even have to be a promo series to the next league) and then dodge until you fail the series.
Then win and get placed back into the series, raising your hidden MMR. Then dodge again to get thrown out of the series (MMR doesn't lower when you dodge, only LP does)
Keep doing that until your MMR and your LP are very very far out of sync, then go through with the series and win it. The system will try to recallibrate where it thinks your LP rating should be. I've skipped entire divisions by using this technique.
Be careful not to do it for too long. RIOT has issued penalties in the past to people who intentionally kept themselves in bronze with diamond MMR. So if you use it, use it sparingly and never for more than a week.
Sneak Dog1 votesThere is legitimately no point to do this in the long run. You might be able to dodge a series or so, but your mmr is no different than if you hadn't dodged and your visible rank will always follow your mmr. You don't get easier matches either, because those are based on mmr too (which, Imo, breaks the idea of promotion series and makes them luck-based, but you should be able to just repeatedly get them if you belong in the higher league anyway).
Critkeeper2 votesActually your MMR doesn't follow your LP, your LP "follows" your MMR. LP can't change unless you win or lose, so what actually changes is your LP gain/loss per game. Your LP provides a rough approximation to your MMR, and the gains and losses to your LP per win or loss is adjusted to bring your LP closer to what it "should be" in order to match your MMR.
What I'm talking about is abusing the fact that the system is critically damped to slingshot yourself. Think of the coupling between MMR and LP like a spring.
Now think about what would happen if you raised your MMR to extremely high levels but locked the LP in one place-- you'd stretch that spring. You release your lock and allow yourself to create LP gains, and the system will give you vast LP gains until you are where it thinks you ought to be in accordance with your MMR.
In any case the assertion: "you could have done this without using this technique if you truly belonged where you want to be." is false.
You can actually overshoot by riding the LP gains, the same way a spring will resonate and dampen until eventually it comes to a stop. You just need to be able to quit when your LP gains / losses per game finally equalize, and not be greedy and keep playing otherwise you will fall since you don't actually belong in that tier.
If you do it enough you can slingshot yourself far beyond where you belong, and if you continue playing you will eventually fall back to where you actually belong.
Don't assume the system can't be gamed or abused to acquire placement in a tier that you don't belong in. It can be, and there isn't anything that can be done about it. When RIOT decided to add a layer of indirection with LP and MMR, they also voluntarily made it susceptible to abuse. Its a mathematical trait of any damped proportional-integral-derivative feedback system. Any such system can only be critically damped for one set of parameters.
The best they can do is have the system make an educated guess about where you should be (hence skipping divisions) and work from there as if it were your LP before "releasing the lock" so that when you do slingshot, it won't cause you to overshoot quite as much.
Sneak Dog1 votesWhy would it overshoot you for more than one match though? It's not like you get easier games, so your lp gains will just normalize again when you reach your mmr.
Critkeeper2 votesYou have to remember that it is your LP gains/losses per win or loss that is changing as your MMR and LP move away from eachother, not your actual LP that is changing.
That is what causes the overshoot.
Think of it another way. The LP system is a close approximation to your MMR if you don't force it to do unusual things. If you do force it to do unusual things (like what I stated above) then it no longer is a good approximation. The system wants it to be a good approximation, so it makes guesses about where your LP should be. It can't directly change your LP, so it changes your LP gains per win, and LP loss per loss, but ultimately it is just a scientific and educated guess. A guess is still a guess, an approximation is still an approximation. You can abuse that.
Your lp gains will normalize once you peak, but why continue playing at that point? The system can't remove LP except slowly through decay from not playing. Why make it deplete faster? Why not just stop playing ranked after reaching diamond this way?
Sneak Dog1 votesBut what makes you peak significantly above your mmr? Won't you just peak slightly above, a couple of matches you could've gotten with a random win streak the normal way?
Critkeeper1 votesread this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damping
the problem riot has is that their system is critically damped for the average player so underdamping occurs when you abuse it.
How much overshoot depends on how far apart your MMR and LP are. If you are in bronze LP and diamond MMR, you could overshoot into challenger.
Sneak Dog2 votesThis is going to be a long and possibly silly explanation why the rating system does not have to behave like a box on a spring, basically, it boils down to lack of inertia:
A box on a spring will gain speed as it reaches it's intended point (the point the box on the spring would be stable), then overshoot it because he still has speed and can't get rid of it. Then he will be pulled down again and gain speed yet again, but he will cross his destination with a bit less speed due to friction. This will repeat until friction took all it's speed away, because there is no other way for the box to lose it's speed.
Imagine, the box attached to a spring wants to be at 150m, but is at 50m. The string will pull the box towards 150m. The moment the box is at 150m, the spring stops pulling, but the box still has speed, so the box will shoot upwards, to say 200m (friction reducing its speed). Then, the spring will push the box downwards towards 150m again, it has speed and overshoots and this will repeat until the box is steady at 150m.
I'm going to use lp to describe your visible rating including league division etc.
The system however, does not have a limited amount of friction. The system can just pull your lp with an arbitrary speed to your mmr and then stop you on the spot with an arbitrary amount of friction. The system however, limits its speed relative to the distance between your lp and your mmr.
Imagine, your lp is 50 and your mmr is 150. The system therefore thinks you belong at 150 and starts pulling you. Assume you do belong to 150 and you manage a neat 1:1 win/loss ratio. The moment your lp is at 150, the system stops pulling. However, since lp has no speed because it's not a box, it will instantly even out at 150.
There is one way the system dampens you though. Imagine, you have 100 lp, 100 mmr and 100 mmr is your skill level. A huge win streak will significantly increase your mmr to 150 but your lp only to 120. Then the games after, you will probably go on a loss streak because you play against better players, your mmr drops down to 100 again, your lp drops to 105 because it was lower than your mmr for most of the loss streak. Now you start consistently winning and becoming better, your mmr will slowly grow to 150, but your lp will be following below this, 130.
Your mmr is much more sensitive to win/loss streaks than your lp and lp always follow behind it, dampened. This makes lp more accurate because it's less prone to random win/loss streaks but still accurately represents actual increases in skill.
Dozr1 votesI won't be doing this, but I love how smart you are. <3
Jingerbeardman1 votesyeah, I wont cheat...