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Ranked Decay sends the wrong message

Sauzeles·11/13/2013, 3:19:30 PM·3 votes·925 views

Take this example scenario: Someone plays the game somewhat seriously for several months, and is super excited that they make it into Gold tier. After working their way halfway through Gold V, they get a new job halfway across the country and shortly after moving their wife has a baby! A few months pass while the focus on the more important aspects of life when finally their life calms down and they boot up League again. They're super excited to get to play some more, and after a few non-ranked practice games to warm up they go to look at their ranked. This is the point where they are told quite bluntly something I don't think Riot means to be saying: "If you want to take part in this non-professional competitive arena, you must not let life get in the way. Each time you do, we will punish you." Well since this person did let life get in the way, and they know life may get in the way again, you have essentially told them, "This game is not for you. Don't even bother with ranked."

Now I understand in the top couple tiers things are extremely competitive, and without the decay people would sit up there without worry, and that you don't want this. But for everyone below platinum, the decay does not say "You still have to play games to keep your high and prestigious rank." It says "if you want to keep the results of your hard work (play), you must put League before all other life events." I'm fairly certain this is not the message you mean to send to 90% of your community.

What I would propose is simple: get rid of Ranked Decay for everyone below Platinum (or Diamond) tier. Bronze, Silver, and Gold tier players are not so prestigious that it matters if they sit on their rank for a few months. It is also true that truly serious players will still find time to play one game a month even in the most demanding times in life. However, the large majority of your player base are casual enough to where having a baby, moving across the country, taking care of an ill family member, and focusing on school for the few months before finals will take precedence over this game. In fact, the person who forgoes studying during finals week to keep her ranked stats up, or the guy who makes his wife wake up for the ump-teenth time when the new baby starts crying because he needs to get that ranked game in before he decays... these are the people you are catering to with ranked decay. So unless you mean to send the message that League is more important than Family, School, Work, and life in general, I highly recommend that you stop punishing people that have their priorities straight. I know for me personally getting thrown down a couple divisions killed all desire in me to bother with ranked. I know I felt that I was punished for taking a few months off while I lived in an apartment with bad internet reliability. I look back now and think, "Had I just played even though I would have lost internet during half of my ranked games, I'd have been better off." Of course, playing ranked games when I know there's a high chance of losing connection mid-game would infuriate a lot of people in the community. So if you don't want to eliminate lower-tier ranked decay from the system, please answer me this: what message do you want us to take when we drop divisions (or tiers!) because we let life get in the way?

14 Comments

Daen11/13/2013, 4:50:38 PM4 votes

Decay has a couple of reasons for existing.

First and foremost, it becomes much easier to earn ranks you don't deserve because it's impossible to fall below that point by just not playing any more ranked. This season even with decay there was a large amount of boosting and people were not necessarily earning the Tier they received. Without decay there'd pretty much be no integrity to the system whatsoever, someone could just get boosted to Platinum/Gold and then not play ranked for the entire rest of the season.

Secondly, decay allows the ranks to be more accurate to the active playerbase. Without decay standings would stagnate and metrics would be showing a lot of completely inactive players as being ranked. This isn't necessarily an issue without the comprehensive ladders, but something to consider.

Decay is relatively forgiving for what it is. I was ranked Silver 2 upon finishing my promotional series, at which point I left ranked for about five months. When I returned to taking ranked seriously I was Bronze 1. That's only 3 Divisions that I dropped through in a five month period. I reattained Silver 2 in about a week of solid play, and I would assume that anyone who legitimately deserves the rank they had before decay could re-obtain it relatively quickly.

CounterSnipe11/13/2013, 8:47:43 PM3 votes

This post is just..... wrong. You would have to afk from this game for roughly one month to start to decay and even then the decay happens over time, it's not instant.

If playing LoL is something you enjoy doing then I don't see how it's possible for you to not be able to set aside 1 hour every month to maintain your ranking.

I mean, you're making it seem as if every hour of your life is booked, yet you still found the time to write this rant? Please...

DeathBringer War11/14/2013, 2:52:06 AM2 votes

I tend to agree with the post, late in the season I dropped from Silver II to Silver V over a period of time that felt VERY quickly do to decay. I don't remember exactly how long I went without playing ranked, but it wasn't long. I don't think that limiting decay would be any more damaging to ranked play then making it impossible to drop tiers based on play. Someone who gets boosted to Gold can go on to play ranked and feed every game, and never drop to Silver. However, someone who earned their way to Gold can drop to Silver because they sit too long without playing. I like the idea of requiring players to play a certain amount of normals before playing ranked. While its true that normals are different than ranked, they aren't TOO different, and if you play normal drafts instead of normal blinds they are extremely similar to ranked...

eKatSS11/13/2013, 8:49:14 PM1 votes

While I must say I agree that most people cannot afford to put league before everything else in their lives, I have the same opinion as Daen on that matter. If you stop playing during some time, you will not be as skilled as you were before; it would hurt your higher skilled team to have you play at the same rank, hence decay is needed. Also, the decay is not so exagerated that you get to Bronze 5 within a month either, which is fair for the more casual players.