Why division promotional series aren't fun
To start with, let me openly say I am new to playing league competitively and am currently ranked in Bronze. I recently was promoted to Bronze II from Bronze III in a promotion series. One would expect me to be very excited, and feel a sense of progress, but I find that my actually experience with the league system is quite the opposite. Promotion series are 100% stress, 0% excitement, even when you win. You see, I've already been promoted to Bronze II before and then lost it.
Now, in a competitive game someone has to lose for someone else to win, and demotion between divisions is important. That being said, the combination of demotions, promotion series, and MMR create a depressing and frustrating environment.
Lets start with the match making system. As we win and lose games we have a ELO score which allows the system to put us into competitive matches completely independent of the league system. During normal league play, if we are being matched above our league we are rewarded by gaining more LP than we would lose if we lost the game, and so our league status gravitates towards what our ELO says it should be. This is important, because if there were no way to weight your LP games, a system that matched you on a different, hidden metric would be antagonistic. This counterbalance does not apply to promotion series however. In an environment where any win is as good as any other, and a lose just as detrimental as any other, the matchmaking system placing you with equal opponents is incredibly frustrating. To make it even worse, we completely lose the ability to avoid toxic games with the zero tolerance dodging policy, while our opponents are unlikely to have the same restriction, making us more likely to be paired with toxic players.
There is something to be said for having to overcome higher than usual odds to accomplish something, and that making your accomplishment more meaningful, but this is mitigated by the simple awareness that what you are 'winning' can be taken away again by even a short losing streak after you get promoted. And if you are demoted, you have to go through that same stressful process over again. Ultimately, the league system creates a stressful barrier to advancement, while providing no sense of relief afterwards.
With demotion being so easy to trigger, we then have to rely on our hidden MMR to make getting to promotion series faster and easier, and even hope that we might get to skip a division. But ultimately, if we are just praying for the MMR system to start flat out override the league system, why do we even have that league system at all?
Ultimately, the league system was introduced so that those advancing through ranked could have short term goals that are achievable, and to provide milestones where you can feel like you have earned your advancement, but currently accomplishes the opposite, and diminishes your sense of advancement because you are always aware of how fast your hard earned advancement can be unceremoniously stripped, and we will have to 'earn' it all over again.
This being said I don't think that having a high stakes promotion series is a bad thing. It was very fun and exciting while I was naive to it's insignificance, and that insignificance should be addressed. Once you have won a promotion series, you should never have to do a promotion series for that same advancement again that season. If you ever are demoted, being promoted again should be as simple as reaching 100LP. You should only ever face a series if you are advancing to a place that you hadn't accomplished before. This would mean you have actually earned something when you succeed for the whole season, yet can still face demotion through MMR weighted LP loses, and reclaim your spot through MR weighted LP gains.
(Also, let us dodge once or twice. When you are in a promotion series and people start insulting each other 15 seconds into the lobby, any hope of 'fun' is long gone.)
TL;DR: Promotion series are stressful, and should only have be won once per division
