RRR - Ranked Russian Roulette

WARNING! - Wall of text ahead. proceed at your own risk! - WARNING!

Ranking up in silver and bronze can ofthen feel a bitt like playing russian roulette with how a lot of players behave. For many it is hard to get a game without a teammate that leaves the match or stumbling across a troll/griefer. The ranking system is all about gradually improving your skill by climbing the ladder and facing gradually stronger opponents. The skill discrepancy in bronze and silver is massive. The smurfs are not helping whith this matter. But they are not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is players not caring if they win or lose thier games. I feel like this needs to be adressed somehow.

I know about the changes coming to the new season. However, I have another softer change I belive might solve the issue with the large amount of leavers. I belive that for ranked games, and ranked games only, you should impose a stricter penalty for leaving a game.

Example: A player leaves mid game. The player in question gets the normal leaverbuster penalty. However, the player allso gets an extended ranked cooldown that will not allow the player to play ranked on the given account for a week/month/season.

I do know that seems very strict. But when you think about it, is ranked not the competitve gamemode. Is this not where players try their hardest to winn no matter what. This penalty will make people think twice about leaving before the game is over and remove those that do not take ranked seriously from the queue without removing their option to play the game with their friends in other modes. Afterall, if you just want to play for fun is that not what the other gamemodes are for?

In addition if a game with a leaver on your team was automatically changed from loss to "pardoned loss", and a "pardoned loss" meant that you do not loose LP or your promo then that would remove the feeling of bad luck from the loss. To avoid abuse, because we all know someone will try to abuse this, one could make it so if your premade left the game then that game would not be a pardoned loss for you. Afterall if you go into a ranked with a premade then that means you trust the guy?

I belive something alonge these lines would improve the competitive environment on the rift and make more players feel like they have a legitemate chanse to climb and improve. And help players understand their actuall skill level and what they need to get better at in order to climb to the next rank. At least that is how i feel about it. I have studied enough large scale projects both in IT and gaming to understand that a change like this would have to be a long way down the roadmap. However, i would love to see somthing like this implemented somtime during the two next seasons as it is a problem that has been plaguing the game for a long time now.