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It seems Riot has a hard time matching even teams. Why is that?

JohnnyPrimate·10/20/2014, 2:26:28 PM·2 votes·377 views

Why is it that i consistently win a game 30-10 and then lose a game 30-10?? What kind of algorithm is being used to match these teams? I've been playing this God forsaken game for 3 years now and the main issue i've seen in my THOUSANDS of games logged is that the matchmaking sucks. Forget afks forget feeders forget bad teammates... Why is it that 9/10 games, one team is 10-0 to start the game. The 1/10 games is fucking awesome. Nothing like a game with first blood 10+ minutes in. But that is literally 10% of my games. The rest is one team completely fucking itself in the 1st 5 mins. Most of the time if one player was switched with another it would be a balanced game. WHY CAN YOU NOT FIGURE THAT SHIT OUT!??!?! PLEASE GET ON YOUR GAME RIOT AND FUCKING COME UP WITH A FAIR WAY TO MATCH TEAMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How long have people been posting things like this?!??! Ive been on here for a while and i KNOW ITS A LOT!

7 Comments

Hyrum Graff10/20/2014, 2:33:18 PM1 votes

Because snowballing is a thing and people don't know how to play from behind. Jungle gank comes, one laner gets ahead, and then gets repeated kills because the laner who died tries to play like they're still even/ahead.

Additionally, there's a mental aspect to it. When your team gives up the first 2 kills, often somebody starts raging, or even if they don't rage they're frustrated, which means they play worse, and start feeding, themselves.

Keep your cool, tell your teammates to calm down and play defensively (but don't yell at them if they don't listen - that'll just get them even more upset and playing worse), and do your best to keep playing well, and I think you'll find it's not a stomp quite so often.

The Mormonator10/20/2014, 3:09:20 PM1 votes

People who think that matchmaking is only good when they win.

Matthias911910/20/2014, 5:42:42 PM1 votes

League is a snowbally game by nature. You can't look at a lopsided final score and conclude that the match was lost that badly at champion select. Most matches end up fairly lopsided, especially at lower MMRs. There have been LCS games where a team got shut out and didn't score a kill.

Some factors that make matchmaking hard:

Inconsistent players. If half the time you play at a gold level and half the time at bronze, you'll end up in silver but you'll either dominate or get dominated most matches. Most players are much less consistent in Normal matches.
Group queues with significant skill differences. Again this is worse in Normal matches because there is no limit on maximum skill differential, and smurfs really mess things up.
Specialists. If you get a team of 5 players who are all midlane mains, you'll probably lose against a more well-balanced team at the "same" skill level. (This can also be viewed as another form of inconsistent play; if you play horribly every time you have to jungle or support, your MMR will be lower than if you got your best role every time.)

Aithos10/20/2014, 7:42:47 PM1 votes

It's actually a couple things, but it's not because matchmaking sucks. Riot's matchmaking is fine, it does exactly what it's supposed to...

However, what Riot is tracking is setup in a really stupid manner. In a nutshell when you queue you're just saying "match me with 4 people my MMR to face 5 people my MMR". So what is MMR? According to Riots system it's what your general skill as a player is, but it doesn't take into account what roles you play or the disparity in skill between them. So when they match 10 for a game the teams can be wildly different in "real" skill vs "rated" skill. Or more simply: if your team has less people in their preferred roles than the enemy then you're at a huge disadvantage. Every time you have 3 people who main mid you end up with two people who probably suck at whatever they end up playing.

That's why so many games are stomps, because the system doesn't match or track skill based on role. If it did it could match each role evenly and games would be a lot closer. Snowballing would still be a thing but it would be a lot less common and drastic.

Also, because Riot also lacks voice communication in a genre that virtually requires it for any kind of competent play. Every time someone tries to type you're giving the other team an advantage.

Also: anyone who says "play every role" is an idiot. Even if you can play every role it doesn't mean you should, or that you should be matched vs the same level of enemy. If you're equally good at all five roles then you're mediocre at all of them instead of being really good at a couple. There is a reason high ELO players rarely play more than 1-2 roles and pros almost never change roles successfully.