(POLL) I'm going to run some experiments on the relative sizes of the gaps between ranks. Guesses?

Poll link: Click here to take the poll.

How do the different gaps in game-winning power between the different ranks compare? For instance, is the Diamond-Plat gap bigger or smaller than the Silver-Bronze gap? Obviously, there are a ton of confounding variables here, but I'm starting with what seems to me to be the most basic question.

Let's start with a concrete example.

You have 5000 RP riding on the outcome of a match. You don't get to play in the match yourself: you only get to decide the rank composition for your team, on the Tier level. They'll be random Summoners from that Tier, they won't know each other, and you won't get to coach them. A "Plat" slot might be filled by a Plat V or a Plat I.

You have two options for team composition:

• Plat - Gold - Silver - Silver - Silver

or

• Gold - Gold - Gold - Silver - Silver

In other words, would you rather replace a Silver with a Gold, or replace a Gold with a Plat? Which upgrade would give your team the biggest boost in chance to win?

I think it's a very interesting and potentially difficult question. It's relevant to me in that Factions relies upon mixed-rank matches for most of its games. For fairness, it's important to decide, e.g., how many points Bandle City should get if 5 Bandle City Silvers beat a Demacian team of 3 Golds and 2 Silvers. They should probably get more than the usual five points, but how much more? How remarkable was that victory?

I'm going to be running some test matches, but I'd love to find out beforehand what the community's expectations are, not only to guide my investigation but also because perceptions of fairness are pretty important.

So anyway, I'd appreciate your thoughts if you have a couple minutes. I will compile and share the data from both the poll and the test matches.

If you want to volunteer to be a lab rat, join the rank-appropriate chat (e.g. "SILVER", "GOLD"), using the higher of your S3 and S4 ranks. Set it to autojoin (gear icon in the upper right corner) and be on the lookout for random custom game invites.

http://i.imgur.com/VwhdlYe.jpg

For that matter, feel free to run some matches — instructions here — and submit the results using the form linked in the instructions.

(Note: I'm mostly on NA, but if anyone wants to run some EUW matches and submit the results, that'd be awesome! I've added a field on the results submission form to indicate server.)

Poll link: Click here to take the poll.