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Can we get a red to readdress the idea that promo series should be removed?

Calderweiss·10/19/2013, 2:19:14 AM·2 votes·417 views

Riot's reason for promos is to have a visible obstacle that you have to climb over, and that when you get over it, you feel more rewarded.

False. I feel rewarded when I am actually able to see progress happening. I feel less rewarded then before because I remember the times when we didn't have promos.

Most players are going to have a 50% win rate if they are somewhat decent. However, promo series force you to have a 66% win rate, an absurd increase in win rate, all in the span of 3-5 games. Oh, you failed your promos? Now you have to win another game to get back in them, and then you still have a best of 5 to get through!

Promo series are also completely uncooperative with mmr. Let's say you have a high mmr and lose about 3 lp a loss. Well, you fail your promos, which is 3 games, and it drops you to 50 lp.

If you had lost 3 ordinary games, you would have been at 91 lp. How on EARTH did the system punish me so hard for games that don't even affect my mmr?

why should all the work I spent getting to 100 lp be decided in 2-3 games?

Just tell me HOW these are productive to the league environment. We can't even see our active mmr/elo to determine the skill level we are actually playing at. If a bronze V dodged his promos repeatedly but had a great mmr, he could potentially be playing with diamond players. I think one guy actually did this.

We want them gone for season 4 riot. The community wants you to realize that one factor of feeling more rewarded for getting over an obstacle is not true for everyone. If anything, we are usually frustrated that an unnecessary obstacle is there in the first place.

(not being able to drop tiers also encourages elo boosting, but that has nothing to do with promos)

@zileas @morello @lyte @volty @xelnath

rioters don't seem to realize how these promo series are coming across to their playerbase, please respond, reds!

8 Comments

ploki12210/19/2013, 2:29:48 AM1 votes

Actually, your maths are widely erroneous. To go from Silver III to Silver II, you need to peak at 75% game, AKA win (get into series) and then win 2/3, totalling 3/4 game won. The same applies with 4/6 (or 66%) for Silver -> Gold

Still, that's exactly the goal. The series aren't to determine "Are you able to be on par with a Silver II player", it's "Are you at least as good as a Silver II player". If you can win 3/4 games against ~Silver II players, you belong in there, if you can't, you may end up getting carried you there if you're close enough to that skill level.

DocSmoothJew10/19/2013, 8:39:25 AM1 votes

I agree. How does the promo series prove anything? What was the point of gaining the 100 LP if you then just have to prove yourself again? If they want it more accurate make solo queue actually solo (no duos) so you can't have a diamond or platinum friend carry you there. Frankly, if they decide to stick with an Elo rating (which I hope they don't) then they should make it where you get matched against all the other guys at the top of various Silver 2 divisions (for example) and if you can hold it for a certain amount of time or games then you get promoted.

My preference though is to remove Elo and use an actual skill rating for solo queue. It's simply not logical to base a person's individual rating off of a score based on wins/losses when the win/loss is determined by (currently) 3-4 complete strangers. You can sit there till the cows come home claiming over time the statistics prove out and people that belong in bronze/silver stay there and people that are better rise above but that's bogus. Unless you get matched with a group of players at the beginning of season and then have to play all of your ranked games with then it is simply a fact that you cannot play consistently.

Regardless, the point is that tons of users are complaining about this; and, yeah, you could try to claim it's a bunch of "angry kiddos" but the simple fact for Riot as a company is that they have many customers upset over a feature and that means it should be changed regardless of how it's changed.

Just for anyone who's unclear, Elo rating was created for Chess, a 1v1 game. Trying to convert it to a team based game was really a fool's errand unless it was strictly for ranked teams (5's and 3's).

I realize it can take time to design a reliable skill-based rating for LoL but I really hope Riot devotes the time to do it.

I'll conclude this post with a summary of my situation in ranked. I'm currently Silver 1 vying for Gold. I've consistently played with diamond and plat friends such that my Elo is quite high so when I actually go solo in silver I get ridiculously huge LP rewards for winning. Yet, I get the shaft in promo series' at least once or twice before promoting since it's luck if I get good or bad players or trolls/afkers for the promo games. The system needs to change.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far. :)

PS- I encourage you guys (as much as I hate to do so since I also work in customer support) to write a ticket to Riot support providing thoughtful, detailed feedback about the Ranked system. They will tell you to go post it on the forums but simply explain that everyone knows the forums are packed with frequent, pointless ranting that pushes down thoughtful feedback and you'd appreciate them forwarding it to the dev team.

RoyEMunson10/19/2013, 10:00:06 AM1 votes

I'm actually realizing that elo is a fair representation of skill level. As I have evolved in skill and learned the tricks to winning in lower tiers, I've moved up and am back in Silver IV.

The key to winning at low elo levels is...wait for it, wards.

I try to main support now just so I am in control of wards and also I try to focus my team on one task in the mid-late game by calling out "all mid", etc.

Billyboyjoe10/19/2013, 2:15:00 PM1 votes

I do not mind the promotion series. They add a little bit of excitement while improving rather than the constant grind of increasing your mmr. However constantly making them and losing them repeatedly is very frustrating. Id like to at least see something like if you made 3 promos consecutively without dropping a division you get put up with out having to play the 3rd promo or something along those lines.

DocSmoothJew10/21/2013, 8:03:53 PM1 votes

Can we get an opinion on this?