Riot, I am calling you on your shit.

Alright Riot, enough is enough. As the title says, I am calling you out on your shit. League is a wonderful game, it has the potential to be very fun, challenging, engaging, strategic and innovative. But this ranked system is not ok. What you have set up, is a system where beginners are punished simply for playing with other beginners, and are often unable to climb the ranks, simply because especially at bronze, sometimes playing well does not mean winning the game. After this evening I have now had 3 friends who have quit the game simply because they are wonderful players, but simply can not guarantee they will win games on their skill alone, and do not want to play the roles that seem to be the requirement for carrying games. You've created a system that does not adequately reward individual talent until a point where individual talent is not the main focus of the game.

What do I mean by that? Well. In bronze, and I would surmise to say even up to gold, often times a single strong player can not guarantee that his team will win the game, no matter how good he or she may be. There are certain hyper carries that can pull this off, but not everyone wants to play them, or the role that they take on. Now this is really true in any rank, sometimes one good player isn't enough. That means that victory relies on a competent team working together to win. The problem, is that at lower ranks, like bronze and silver, often times the team isn't fully reliable or competent. And there's a higher concentration of factors at these ranks that could cause a player to lose through no fault of his own. Firstly, as stated earlier they may simply not play a role which is suited to just carry games, and may not want to. A support or top main for example might have serious problems carrying a game on their own simply because those roles are often not put into a position where carrying is realistic. Another reason is of course trolls, ragers, or people unwilling to try or work with the team. This is completely outside the ability of any player to control or prevent, and happens more often than one would think even at higher ranks. Yet another is skill gap. While all players at bronze, silver, gold, etc. tend to fall into a similar level of skill, there are undoubtedly players in every rank who are above average in skill or mechanics for that rank, and players who are below average. This makes it entirely possible for a team of all above average players to be pitted against a team of all below average players. Or for there to be an unbalanced mix. Now this changes at higher ranks for certain reasons, but I'll come back to that later. The bottom line is that it is very possible for a even a strong player in bronze, silver, what have you, to lose a game through no fault of his own. Now. This wouldn't be a problem, everyone loses sometimes. But the thing is, there is a problem.

The problem is that your system gives and takes LP away almost SOLELY on whether or not the team wins or loses. Now, at the higher levels of play, like platinum, diamond, etc., this is realistic. All players by this point should have near perfect mechanics, a working knowledge or even mastery of many, many champions, and at least three or more roles. That means that for the most part, at that level of play, the whole team should be competent enough for the victory to come down to which team executes correctly, decision-making, proper build adaptation, so on and so forth. LP being given based on how the team does makes sense. But at the lower ranks, it doesn't. As stated before, a player in these ranks who is average or above average for his rank can still lose through no fault of his own, and therefore lose mass amounts of LP despite his best performance over just a few games. The fact that players are being punished for losing games in a scenario where their contribution may not be enough to win is unacceptable, and it makes it difficult and sometimes downright unpleasant for beginners to try and start their climb through the ranks. For this system to be fair, it would make much more sense for LP to be granted differently depending on what rank you are currently at. For example, at ranks bronze though gold, it could be made so that a small LP bonus is given to winning team players, and a reasonable amount is deducted from players on the losing team. But the primary source of LP should be based on criteria that measures each player's contribution and overall performance; criteria perhaps such as cs score, towers taken, kills, assists, presence at objectives such as dragon and baron, etc. In this way, players would be gaining rank and LP based on them improving as players and performing well. Players who choose not to perform well, who need to spend more time in whatever their rank is, or throw games for their teams are still penalized and take longer to climb, perhaps getting no LP at all or losing LP on some games. Perhaps increase the amount of LP needed to increase rank to compensate for the faster rate at which LP would be being obtained.

Then, when the player reaches platinum and higher, things change. Now LP is given or taken away almost solely based on whether or not the team wins, forcing players to take those skills that they honed in the lower ranks and use them in concert with a team of competent players who have received that same practice, and really focus on team work, objective control and winning or losing together. THAT. Would make sense. And it would promote players enjoying learning how to play competitively, and doing so without the annoyance, the painful and discouraging irritation of losing rank, LP, based on things that they could not possibly have controlled. What you have right now is a system where, at best, by and large a person must play a certain role if they want to climb to a rank where they can play the role they actually want to safely and at worst, good players are being discouraged and driven away from ranked by an unfair system that barely rewards and harshly punishes.

I do realize that most likely no one from Riot will ever see this, and I apologize for ranting you guys. I'm honestly not angry about my rank, or the rank of anyone else. I just really love league, and I see what's going on with the ranked system. And I honestly think that things need to change for more people to enjoy the experience of playing and learning this game.