Just a thought i had about ranked.

ILikeEatPie·4/6/2015, 8:46:55 PM·89 votes·4,547 views

Am I the only one who thinks it's strange that the matchmaking system in ranked is based on your mmr, and not your division? Doesn't that completely defeat the purpose of having divisions? I personally think that you should be matched with people actually in/around your division, a b1 player shouldn't be matched against like, s2, or s1 players, just because he went on a big win streak, and his mmr is high because of it. Eh, I don't know, maybe I'm weird for thinking that the matchmaking system contradicts the actual ranking system.

Edit: Something I forgot to type in was, I think riot should just bring back the old ELO system. At least with that, you could see EXACTLY where you stood, who you were matched with wasn't determined by some number you can't even look at. I think this kinda clarifies my thought a bit more.

79 Comments

Gavran4/7/2015, 1:35:50 AM15 votes

You've kinda got it backwards. MMR is the actual measure of your skill, and thus is what matchmaking needs to be based on. Leagues are a measure of your win/loss with an element of clamping/accelerating when it is respectively far ahead or behind of your MMR.

What you want is for Leagues to adjust more to your MMR, that would make Silver 1's fight Silver 1's far more often.

Coincidentally that is the #1 complaint about the League system - "Why are my LP gains smaller than my losses?"

phirestarter4/6/2015, 8:54:31 PM13 votes

uh oh, you just made a post which makes complete sense.

please hold, an elodelusional nut will be with you shortly, to tell you how you don't understand anything and your idea is dumb...

Narasimha4/7/2015, 1:02:53 AM7 votes

The issue here is that a great deal of people aren't really at the division they're supposed to be. If you're consistently winning or consistently losing, then that means that you're not at the right level. So the system has to constantly adjust to find where your win/loss ratio becomes more even, and then it can help you get there, or make it easier to fall.

wizdro4/6/2015, 10:50:32 PM5 votes

Cant upvote enough. I wish this division thing were gone and we could go back to transparent ELO.

iainB854/7/2015, 2:42:26 AM4 votes

Used to be like this. Riot told us that we were suffering from too much ladder "anxiety", so they came up with a convoluted system where people's true MMR is hidden and you can sit in safe little buckets like "silver" and "gold" despite if you go on tilt or not.

Worst Mid Ever4/7/2015, 3:57:52 AM4 votes

this only matters to people who care about their profile, which is why the league system and its accompanying reward system was introduced in the first place

if you just play the game, get better and win more than you lose, the new system won't magically stop you from getting diamond, leagues or divison have no affect on your matchmaking or true mmr gains, just ignore it because it isn't even real

Burgee4/7/2015, 2:47:50 AM3 votes

Division is a false gate to prevent you from having a seamless climb.

The division - in my opinion - is put in place to slow down progression, put a graphic indicator of your position (usually lower than it should be) in place, and make you want to make it better only to be held back by factors that are somewhat out of your control (promos, trolls, matchmaking, etc)

By making you play more instead of getting gold and going AFK for the season, riot expects you to purchase more RP.

WeFlyNoLie4/6/2015, 11:21:10 PM3 votes

I don't really have a problem with the division system, but I feel as though it should have more of an impact on who you are matched against. A lot of my games in ranked are fairly closely matched games, with the occasional stomp because there are people are either team that are clearly not at the skill level of the rest of the players.

I'm currently Platinum IV. I played a match a few days ago where I had 3 golds on my team (Each between Gold IV and Gold I) and one other Platinum IV.

The enemy team was mostly between Platinum II to IV.

Needless to say, we lost. It was a such a hard stomp I had to look at my teammates ranks because I honestly couldn't believe they were the same as me. I was right. Their champion choices were ok, but their mechanics and map awareness were well below what I would have expected. I was top and both mid and bot were crushed. I tried to roam, but our jungler was also gold and he could not keep up.

I realize I'm not going to win every game. I queue ranked knowing this. But I feel like I should be able to queue up with a team and have a moderate chance of winning.

The odds were just so stacked against me it wasn't even fair.

This is definitely a rare occurrence and not an example of what I usually experience, but I wonder if I checked my allies' ranks each time I was on the receiving end of a stomp, would they also be this low?

Jungle Lux God4/7/2015, 2:38:31 AM2 votes

Your MMR is where your skill level is at, while your division is where you are currently placed at. If you had matches against others in your division, then you could get a full team of players with a high MMR fighting against a team of players with a low MMR, leaving the match extremely one-sided.

Being based on MMR allows for fairer matches, even if the division placements don't say it. In your example of the bronze 1 playing against a silver 1/2 player, the bronze player might be considered at a high enough MMR and the silver player being considered at a low enough MMR that even though they have almost the entirety of silver between them they still find that it's a fairly even game.

JLaww4/7/2015, 3:41:49 AM2 votes

Think about it this way:

If you're in Silver 2, only facing Silver 2 players, how much does it say whether you're actually better or worse than those players in your division?

If you're constantly losing to Silver 5 players, then it says your MMR isn't up to par with your current division, and that you should be placed lower. Likewise, if you're constantly beating Gold 3 players, it says your MMR is higher and you should be placed in a higher division. If you're just facing people in your own division, it's hard to actually say whether you deserve to be advanced or lowered.

Riot makes it so that you can be teamed with/facing players in higher and lower divisions to assess your own skill and make the most accurate measurement of your accurate skill level.

Sammystorm4/6/2015, 11:00:25 PM2 votes

They don't fit but I prefer the elo system personally.

Gati4/7/2015, 12:05:57 PM2 votes

Yeah same here, im a bronze 4 (call me scrub if you want), and when I play normal games i play against silver 3's and 4's, (and I usually beat them), but in ranked I only play with bronze 3,4, and 5 players

(BTW why is ranked harder than normals if your playing lower ranked players?)

Soft 004/7/2015, 12:50:32 PM2 votes

i think that the MMR is just a load of c**p.

lets put it simple: you are S1, you play vs S1, If your skill is lower you will lose more than win, you will go down, if you win more than you lose then your skill is higher and you will go up. but you always play vs players in the same division as you, this will result in a mid/long term adjustment of the skill per division, may take a full season for ppl to be placed under the correct division, or it can take alot less considering the average amount of tanked games done per player.

now lets put mmr into this: you are silver 1 and get carried 7/8 games in a row, which isnt that uncommon at low mmr, ur mmr goes up u are matched against some g5/4 players instead of still play vs S1 only, you lose your lane since thir skill is eventually higher, their get fed due to the diference in skill, and their 5 gold players proceed to win vs your 4 gold players and a booster silver. result? 4 gold players lost mmr to the mmr system, but the positive thing is that the system will adjust the silver player mmr... does this system have any logic? no, it doesnt, since regardless of your division (which is the ultimate thing that you get to see and compare) your matches will never be against persons within that same ultimate comparison badge but instead against ppl that share a hidden factor you cant measure and you cant see and leads to rly weird diferences in skill inside the same team because the average mmr of your team matches the average mmr of the oposing team. in fact, if u see the tools from lolking/op.gg and anything like that to check your team before game start its very very normal to see full tier discrepancies inside teams, most of the time leading to the team with less discrepancies to win (aka your team having s1, s2, g1, g2, b1, and oposing team having s1, s1, s1, s1, s1 for example. usualy the team with the low end will lose it on the back of that b1 player be so much less skiled than the g2 player in the oposite lane).

also the fact that during champion select you cant see division/tier from your team and oposing team doesnt allow your team to adjust and put the lower skilled players in the same lanes against their lower skilled players, leading to the random fator of random 0-8 lanes that fed that jax on the other side that leaded to a 15m loss... which in turn cause skilled players to lose mmr, be paired against lower skill player and keep this system going.

now, IF you only played inside your division, it would take longer for you to go up a division and tier, but you will always be playing against the same skill players. lets imagine you get 5 lp per win, 5 per loss inside divisions, this would still alow for a 5 game winning streak to start winning 10 lp's instead of 5, and thus a more skilled player will still go up as fast as they would, and reach their ideal division/tier. currently you get high MMR, you get paired against same mmr, and you will be winning at a 50% win ratio more sooner than your intended division/tier most of the time. unless ofc your skill is so much diferent, like you start s2 but your a high plat player, in that case you will climb close to platinium untill ur mmr puts your win % near the 50% but even so your win % stanbilizes under your actual skill. if your skill is a gold 3 one, and you are in silver 1, then by the time you reach gold 4 your probably already at the 50% win ratio, making it rly hard for your division to actually state your real skill level and division, since your not playing against your division, but against your mmr, regardless if you re silver or gold.

having a division/tier system, that is only for show because it doesnt reflect your actual skill isnt good, specially one that doesnt take into account your individual play inside the game, but instead if your team wins or loses.

the game calculates the mmr based on your team performance, thus reducing the chance of mmr being right by ALOT. making the chance for mmr to be near 100% right at more games than most player actually play in a season.

the division only system isnt by any means perfect, but at least doesnt put in a team that has such levels of skills inside it every single season, after one season you should be placed inside your division already, and all division should be stable, consider it the SEASON ZERO. the enxt seasons will start from the division you were last season, allowing your skill to have grown and still be able to go up, or less skill and go down. whereas atm your new season start with ur MMR reseting to a average of the original mmr every1 starts with the mmr you achieved last season, making you start much lower and witha higher possibility that players lower than you got carried some placement matches higher than they should and actually lose you more placement matches than you would normally do.

also 10 placement matches arent a real indicator of the skill, considering it take 100 to 150 games for the mmr to be adjusted properlly most likelly, making ppl start in higher skill mmr or lower skill mmr, leading to even more and more of this cases. in the end the mmr doesnt reflect your skill level, but your luck to play with ppl from higher skill level.

Grompish4/7/2015, 3:39:06 PM2 votes

Wow, I love that someone brought this up. The matchmaking system is totally screwed up in ranked. I used to be gold and I would get punished for going on win streaks and put against platinum players, even previous diamond players.. Granted, I am talking about like fifteen game win streaks. Either way, it makes zero sense to just constantly put you against higher level players, because you are punished for doing well and you are given extremely unlikely odds to winning as you start getting matched against opponents that are divisions higher than you. Let's say there is a challenger player that purposefully landed in bronze, if he shits all over the players in that division... He will easily roam out of bronze in days, because that is not where he belongs. Instead, his MMR will go up and he will be matched against players probably in challenger once he lands in silver and he has to fight that to get to gold. Perhaps this isn't the exact way that it works, but it doesn't make any sense to pit players against opponents that are divisions over the player. It makes the odds of ranking up outrageously unlikely. Sure, post MMR... Don't use it in a system that already has a ranking system though. There is an overlap and it is totally senseless.

Yandere Carry4/7/2015, 7:12:16 PM1 votes

I agree with what you say..... but, how you say it is wrong. You, and pretty much everyone here is implying you play against people like 5 divisions higher than you... Like this guy:

Yes, I've thought this for years. If the system knows I'm high Gold or platinum skill, but I haven't ranked up there yet, why should I have to fight platinum or gold players to get out of silver?

Sadly, this is obviously logical, and Riot doesn't like that. They would rather troll their players more.

Bullshit you're playing against plat ranked players when you're in silver.

GoingASHEtoMouth4/8/2015, 2:06:01 PM1 votes

Complained about it before. Got Flamed out by people who had sunk enough hours to the system to get to their matching mmr/league. I find it dumb as hell that my games are consistently against people who are 2-3 leagues above what I am currently. What is the purpose of the league system if your league doesn't determine who you're being matched against? I have been up and down the bronze spectrum and I'm 80-90% of the time the lowest rank in the 10 of us. Why? Place me against my rank if you want to use your color ranks. get rid of it if its just something shiny to look at.

Incoming downvotes and flames from people who claim elohell doesnt exist and scream about being good enough to carry 3v5.