Recently league is becoming or at least it feels like it a coin toss the impact you bring yourself is not that important. Of course im not saying league is just luck and only luck a good player will always climb but since i hit diamond i dunno if i hit my limit and im just a d5 player i try to look for my mistakes and improve but all my games seem pretty decided on luck.
It's the matchmaking; almost every single game is one sided in lower Elo's. My wins/losses are rarely based on my solo performance, but rather who I'm matched with. Sadly it doesn't balance out till higher up the ladder. I remember I had easier wins in Gold 2 Last season than I did in all of Silver from the consistency of players alone.
I'm seeing team scores going 30-8 most games, with every single lane dominating by almost double performance. Half my wins I don't even feel like I deserve. I've gotten S+ games for doing less work than I did in games I got B ranked all on the basis of who I matched with.
The reason you notice it more this season is that Riot wants 20 minute long games, and most champions snowball of one kill now. Put a game that rewards you with being ahead on top of a really "Outdated" system and yeah you'll notice it a lot. Even a slight inconsistency in player skills can decide the game before it even begins. Your solo performance means a lot less this season compared to others.
It's not a coin toss but I definitely think it's much more similar to poker than people let on. You can play great but if your opponent gets a good flop there's not much you can do. In reality I'd bet that 40% of your games you win even if you play poorly and 40% of your games you lose even if you play well. That just leaves 20% of games where you really impact the outcome. However that 20% of games determines if you have a 40% win rate or a 60% win rate so they are extremely important. So while a lot of your games essentially are a coin flip there are a small amount where your play affects the outcome and that really shifts the balance on whether you climb or fall in rank.
This is why I am happy to be in low gold currently. Games are chill and feel even for the most part. But fuck man.... sounds like low diamond is a mess parts of plat sound like a mess. I personally hate mid & low silver because it's the same... a fucking mess. Like yea people are bad so if your good you will carry but if you only slightly better (like me) then it can feel like a complete luck of the draw. You never know when you going to get that new player just starting placements who can't even compete in bronze 5 but is in your silver 2 game (happened multiple times this season).
Reality, it's 5v5 and part of mming is luck of the draw. As sad as it is it's a reality. Only counterpoint is to play many games and have the most impact you can each game and in time you should reach your actual rank. It's not the best system but it's the one we got.
That's the main issue I have with the "play enough games and it will balance out".
Yes; I'm capable of hitting Gold 2-3 every season, but next season even if I go 7-3 in my placements I'm still going to be bumped back to Silver 1-3. It takes roughly 200 games a season to climb to your max potential. If a player can only play a few games each week in ranked it's near pointless to do the climb each season. Your basically forced to spend 50 hours climbing back to your previous position before attempting to go higher.
No matter how good you do most games you'll have 1-2 people going 0/9 in lane cause they just don't understand "Huh, I've died 4 times already flashing in on them under tower. Maybe this time I'll get them!" isn't the way to play. I can count on my one hand the amount of times I've seen a losing lane let the enemy push and try farming under tower. It's disgusting having a great lane phase just to lose it all cause top and mid or mid and ADC/support fed 25 kills in 8 minutes
