Matchmaking

My theory? Riot earns more money off advertisements and playoffs than anyone below diamond ranking. Why bother making it a game of skill when the lottery that is league is already making its bucks. Better matchmaking would require better programmers obviously.

ELO is based on who you won against/lost against, which means it's based on the randomness of 5 players vs 5 players team , and therefore is only slightly related to individual skill.

So 2 players on a winning team gain the same amount of ELO based on who they won against:

1 Player : 12/2/10 , 200 cs, 40 wards placed 1 Player: 1/5/1 , 40 cs , 0 wards placed

it doesn't determine any difference in skill between these 2 players, so they both gain the same amount of score in that game, roughly, based on their current ELO.

So matchmaking only works as intended after playing 100s of games, on a per game basis it's terrible and these 2 players will be in the same ELO group for a long time.

As long as matchmaking doesn't include some sort of individual skill metric, it will forever be too random to ever be actually balanced on a per game basis. It's the same reason smurfs can stay in games with low level /beginner players for a long time before they're ever in another player group.

The only real way to get rid of smurfs ruining low level play is to account SOMEWHAT for individual skill level when calculating ELO Gain/Loss, otherwise Smurfs and beginners stay in the same player group for a long, long period of time.