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Can someone explain how this is remotely fair?

InsaneSamurai··1 votes·1,531 views

Two examples:

I play a game, fail at everything miserably, losing my lane and feeding, performing horribly in teamfights and accomplishing absolutely nothing for my team, but due to them being extremely good players we win anyway. I "won" so my ranking goes up accordingly, but why? I did absolutely nothing right this game. How can it make sense to increase my ranking when I didn't help my team win in the least?

Ok, new scenario, I play a game, win my lane massively, help other lanes successfully, and take several objectives. Everyone else on the team argues, insults each other and feeds the entire game, refusing to listen or to help, and gets the inevitable loss because one man cannot win a 5v5 game under realistic circumstances. If I had a nearly perfect game and tried to stop the in-team fighting as much as I can, why do I lose ranking just as much as the rest of the team?

Added: Sorry if you posted in my last one, it was deleted and I may have missed it since Riot won't simply move posts where they want them :(

24 Comments

12tales5 votes

Because ranking systems aren't supposed to draw conclusions from single games. The point is to evaluate your skill relative to other players, using hundreds of games as the data to do so. Obviously you get some wacky conclusions if your sample size is literally one.

InsaneSamurai1 votes

My sample size of two is to show how the system is flawed without being long winded because long posts get downvoted without being read. Also, this happens alot more than one game from time to time.

12tales4 votes

That's like trying to eat soup with a fork to show how eating utensils are flawed. A system tailored to drawing conclusions from extended patterns is not going to yield accurate results from two data points - it's not a flaw, it's simply the nature of the tool you're using.

Anyways, suppose you win 60% of the time when you play extremely well, and win 40% of the time when you play like trash. If you're consistently performing well more often than you're tilting or whatever, your ranking will rise. The opposite will happen if you're consistently under-performing. Which seems fair.

Hypothetically, though - would it be better if Riot withheld data on your LP, and only gave you updates every ten games? Nothing would functionally change, but it would presumably mitigate how apparent the effect you describe is.

bbbbates1 votes

Im with 12Tales here, the idea is that if you are a higher skill than where you are placed, after many many games you will move up, and if you are about at that level you will stay roughly where you are. You always have to keep in mind that the system can never be designed to use single games as data because of the scenarios you described above. The 60-40 thing he brought up is a very good point. The system has no way of going through game data and saying "Oh this guys had a good KDA and we didnt detect any toxic speech from him so lets boost his LP" So it has nothing to go off of win loss ratio, which not matter how you look at it will be higher if you are better and lower if you are worse.

InsaneSamurai1 votes

That's not really the case with inconsistent players, such as myself. I have days where things just aren't working and I fail left and right, I also play way too many different champs, so my familiarity levels are all over the place. Combine that with the idea that all it takes is a few bad games in placement to get you in Bronze, where losing because of trolls keeps increasing your chance of losing because of trolls. It seems like after a huge losing streak that dropped me to Bronze 3, even if I make sure to only play ranked on good days, only play my absolute best champs, and try and be as positive as I can, more often than not, there is at least one player on the team who makes the game a waste of time in one way or another. It really feels like once you get low enough, its a total crap shoot to get out, because you aren't playing the game anymore, you're just wasting 30-60 minutes on a random chance of which team got more trolls. That is not even close to fun.

The idea that I should play hundreds and hundreds of games with spoiled raging children just because the system isn't designed to accurately place me until then doesn't really justify the process.

Frosty Tibbers1 votes

If you're good enough you don't have to play hundreds of games to rank up. I've placed this account into Gold 1 with a higher than 80% win rate over 20+ games. I've had my fair share of trolls and feeders. If you're truly better than the competition you can carry. Sure, I can say some of those wins I probably played less than stellar (although I still assisted the team because I understood my place in the team and how to handle it), and that 3/4 of my losses were sadly due to dcs or feeding, but even with those I am still climbing fast. It's also very possible to win 4v5s.

The point of the ladder isn't how good you are at killing, roaming, or whatever. It's about how much you can win a game. You could be 0/15 everygame but if the enemy team wasn't smart enough to execute and you got their Nexus first it doesn't matter.

FYI: I've climbed pretty much all but the very top of the ladder in the past year. People act like children at every elo. Ignore them and focus on improving yourself.

IMO, it sounds to me like you don't know how to translate leads into objectives and close out games, since when your teammates are fed you win but when you're fed you don't.

InsaneSamurai1 votes

If one guy is fed and the rest of the team isn't, that generally doesn't mean all that much if the enemies know how to deal with the one fed guy, or if the team refuses to get together for teamfights. Some champs are much harder to deal with in this case than others, but I don't really play them very often(I also play support more than most do I suppose). I am trying to practice Nasus alot for this reason, but he's pretty easily countered so I can't go for that all the time.

Frosty Tibbers2 votes

It is harder to carry with one fed person on your team, but in lower elo it honestly doesn't matter as much because people execute focusing you so badly it's easy to outplay them anyway.

I agree with Nasus getting countered easily. Once again though, at low elo it's really easy to outplay. I taught my friend Nasus when he was in Bronze 3 and coached him through every game and he carried himself out of Bronze in one weekend using Nasus, Annie, and Nami. If your team doesn't group -- that's great as Nasus -- use the chaos to splitpush and get some inhibitors much like Zion did this weekend. Just remember to ward and farm Q stacks. Also, don't be afraid to 2v1 if a jungler ganks with low health. Oftentimes my friend would be getting ganked by a jungler with like 200 health and would kill the jungler with a Q and then kill the enemy laner as well, and that's a HUGE advantage for your team as you can tell everybody else to go to dragon and then take a tower or two top.

EDIT: Also, I'd like to mention that everytime that you lose a ranked game, you should take a 15 minute or greater break. You can get messed up mentally from losses and not even notice it sometimes.

InsaneSamurai1 votes

Thanks for the input! I never really considered that I may actually be too focused on grouping at times, and Nasus tips are appreciated :)

bbbbates2 votes

I agree to the only play on good days, I too often find myself thinking "I won't play ranked because I'm too out of it right now" so props to you for recognizing that.

To the other point you brought up, I know how it feels to have trolls in games, I was in bronze last season. But honestly, if you approach positively than you can really bring your team up without realizing it. I used to go into every game going, welp gonna get trolled and lose LP again. A friend of mine I duod with once basically switched my mind set by dropping this on me: "Dude just go into every game thinking I will do the bet I can this game and have fun, because really you can blame trolls and feeders all you want but the only common element in all your lost games is you" I took his advice and started playing more positively and I have now almost gone up an entire league from when he said that. Yes there are trolls in league, yes there are feeders. But at the end of the day if it comes down to you, you have to be the level headed guy on the team. If nothing else, by trying to refocus the team on the game you will gain your teams respect, and that means more than most people think in solo que

InsaneSamurai1 votes

I think this is an awesome mentality, and I was trying to look at things like that until recently. I just realized that the vast majority of my ranked games amount to which team had more people actually trying to play the game properly, not which team worked together better or was more skilled. Maybe it's not like this for everyone, but to me winning a game because the enemy had a leaver or troll isn't very fun, and since losing for that reason is obviously no fun either, ranked is rarely enjoyable(at least in bronze or low silver, as that's all I've experienced).

bbbbates2 votes

Although this is often true, and games that I win have the enemy team going "This guy sucks report pls" I do still enjoy playing ranked, as it brings out more of a will to take the game seriously and improve myself than casuals do.

Keep on trucking and dont be negative in games and you'll get to that group of nice players.

To be fair, it seems that playing at different times during the day affects this hugely. Playing at 5-7 has so many more trolls than playing at 10-11 for me. So I only play later usually.

InsaneSamurai1 votes

I really think the problem is what it's doing behind the scenes(which is not much), not how it's displayed to us.

Wullf1 votes

I must say I like the idea of the last paragraph.

It feels similiar to being given the rank after ten games (is ten games?)

Hoi Im Temmo3 votes

And how does riot program a evaluation protocol based on your performance? KDR? Kill stealing = LP. Assists? deliberatly not killing = LP. Helping other lanes? How do you track that numerically? "Winning" lane? How do you track that?

Second discussion, stemming from that last point - what is "winning" lane? Many say More kills than deaths = winning. Others say taking tower first. Others say who cares, mid is the only lane that matters by end game. How does riot numerically value you this without deliberately DEFINING the way to play? I feel its best to simply maintain a "Sorry you got screwed every now and then, but at least it averages to fair" mentality.

InsaneSamurai1 votes

I don't know about any of this for sure, because I'm not paid to design matchmaking systems for a living, but stats could at least be used toward those things:

KDR- How much damage did he do? if it was just the last hit and he didn't help with CC, then maybe that kill only counts for the game score, not your rank.
Assists- I don't think very many players ever want to purposefully not kill someone apart from supports, and even then they generally just go for it :) Helping other lanes- When he entered the lane, did he join combat and cause his team to get kills? Did he go in alone and die? Did he only come in to take some cs and leave? Winning lane- Not sure how this could be tracked properly apart from did he take/lose a turret before laning phase ended. Perhaps also comparing the gold gained in lane.

The game seems to be tracking more and more data as they update things, so it shouldn't be all that far fetched anymore.

My point though, is that simply tracking 'did they win or lose?' is not accurate, and can be just as skewed, if not more, as the things you mentioned.

LordVeral2 votes

There is a problem with that though. It's a team game for one so being ranked on how you played alone will cause others to forgo teamwork and steal kills, towers and other objectives just to boost their ranking which will actually make the problem worse in the long run.

Now I don't know exactly how the ranking system works but I do believe that it should change somewhat so that even if you lose because of a troll or two it shouldn't punish you as heavily.

An example is idk say on a regular day a lossn would lose you 10 lp... Now if there was an afk in the game or you see someone who deliberately fed (being say 5 kills and 25 deaths or something) you would instead lose 5 lp

InsaneSamurai1 votes

Well that's why being a team player should also be considered somehow, since that is often more important than individual skill. I do like the idea of having losses cut in cases like that, but it may cause an imbalance in points since the enemy team would have still gained the same amount.

Hoi Im Temmo1 votes

See, my point is this; its not that you are wrong. If they could implement such a system, it would be a great improvement. But the feasibility of it, as well as the headache of explaining this to players (especially new players) is just more than it is worth, at least in my opinion. The system we have is far from perfect, but the win = points losing = -points, is straightforward, and still averages to being a working system, if flawed in some cases.

InsaneSamurai1 votes

I think it's worse than just flawed. If the system is designed to accurately place you only after a long time, than why do you play so few placement games? 3 games with trolls during placement will drastically ruin your entry point, causing you to play with trolls almost every single game. I don't see how that's even remotely close to acceptable. I have done nothing to deserve playing on basically "prisoner's island". It doesn't exist in the technical form, but the system is designed so that bronze is basically that. All the players who do nothing but cause problems gravitate here, and they don't get banned because riot thinks a spoiled raging child can be reformed with chat restrictions :(

If the game is full of toxic players, and you don't separate them from the reasonable players who just want to play with mature level headed people, guess who ends up leaving? The spoiled raging kids sure don't seem to care. People like me, on the other hand, get fed up being forced to lose LP over and over just to babysit a bunch of horrible trolling kids, and leave. If you let this go long enough, the only things left will be problem players and a few groups of friends. Is that what anyone wants?

Hoi Im Temmo1 votes

As another bronzer - I get what you mean, but I have been able to make some great progress this season, and hope to make it to silver before the end (dat border. I must haz it) - its not that there are not frustrating games, its that it, statistically cannot be all of them and only on your team.

Let me give an example - if 2/5 players in bronze are trolls, and you queue for a game, then 4 of the players in your game will be trolls (on average) - but there is just as much chance of them being on the other team as on yours. So, yes, the team is bad. BUT - so is the other one. just accept that, and keep trying. and if you just cant take it, do what i did for the first 2 months after being stuck in B4 - Cry and play normals. The game is supposed to be fun, competitive is an option.

InsaneSamurai1 votes

Yeah I hear that alot, but it doesn't really matter which team they are on. At that point the game itself barely matters because trolling players already decided the outcome before it started.

And when you lose a game for every one you win in this madness ranking, it seems like there is no progress at all.

Shrikesnest1 votes

Well, this is what happens when people play a game designed for teams primarily by themselves. World of Warcraft had problems when they implemented a random queue for their dungeons and raids, too. It turns out throwing strangers together is no substitute for actual teamwork.

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