Boards›Player Behavior

So Trading Lanes Is Bad?

Dexler·2/24/2019, 11:22:07 AM·2 votes·2,131 views

Another Top lane main such as myself was auto filled to Support, my secondary role. I figured I'll trust this player on their preferred role and play support this game to better our teams chances. I thought I was being a good person, nothing wrong with trading right? Wrong. After the game I received a notification. It stated that Riot noticed I did not play my assigned role and that doing so further will involve punishment. This punishment was described as not having role selection. So you're telling me that being a good person and playing my secondary role so someone else can have their primary role means i'm auto filled every game? (Chances are i'll get support anyways, jokes on them) but that isn't the point. I did something for the better of my team, and i got threatened with punishment for it. I didn't boost, cheat, or anything of the sort. I'm totally fine with the fact they gave me the LP for Support, but to threaten me with punishment?? I'm really disappointed Riot would do this to people trying to help one another out. We can love thy neighbor, but not help a LOL stranger is what i'm hearing from them. It's such a small matter to some, but i'm livid since when does a game threaten you for being a good player, a good person?? I wasn't toxic, no flame, no inting or trolling, just helping a teammate out and I get threatened for it.. Way to out do yourselves with this executive decision Riot. Happy climbing right? Just don't lane swap or we'll take away your choice of Primary and Secondary.

11 Comments

Umbral Regent2/24/2019, 11:54:29 AM3 votes

If this was in Ranked Solo/Duo queue, then the penalty that they're warning you of isn't a mainline punishment, and would be a penalty unique to Ranked due to the Positional Ranking.

See, with Positional Ranking taking into account your MMR for various different roles, there is the possibility that some people will queue up for off-roles and swap out for their main role to abuse their lower, off-role MMR to get easy wins, which harms the competitive integrity of Ranked. To combat this, players who swap roles frequently from off-role to main-role or vice versa have their Positional MMR's tightened, so that even if they're in a lower MMR in, say, Support, they would be playing a match meant for their higher MMR role.

From /Dev: Addressing your Feedback on Ranked for 2019:

##You’re worried positional matchmaking can be abused.

SOLUTION: THE MMRS FOR ALL YOUR POSITIONS ARE LINKED TOGETHER. OCCASIONAL POSITION SWAPPING DOESN’T HAVE ANY EFFECT, BUT REPEATED TRADING TIGHTENS THE LINK, MEANING YOU’LL GET MATCHED IN HARDER GAMES WHEN PLAYING OFF-POSITIONS.

Positional matchmaking can help us make huge improvements to how fair games feel when you get autofilled or decide to challenge yourself in new ways. Having said that, there are clearly some big problems to solve—players could consistently trade positions with a duo partner or queue up in new positions and stomp lower-skill players.

Similar to splashing, we can mitigate these problems by linking the MMRs for all your positions. To start, that link has some slack, but we tighten it if we’re less confident about the position you’re playing.

EXAMPLE — PLAYING A NEW POSITION

Imagine you’re a Gold mid main. If you decide to go play a new position like top, matchmaking will look at your MMR in mid and other positions to estimate your initial skill. That means instead of getting put into a Bronze game, you’ll likely play a Silver game.

EXAMPLE — FREQUENT TRADING

Let’s say you’re the same player and your duo hits you up. They play top and suggest you queue up for each other’s positions and trade so you can get easier games. It takes a game or two for us to see a pattern of trades, but for those games we’ll detect that you traded positions and adjust accordingly—you’ll have decreased LP gains and increased losses since your team was favored to win. After that, the link between your MMRs will tighten and you’ll get matched in Gold games regardless of the position you’re playing.

While it does take a couple games to tighten the MMR link and stop abuse, those games should be about the same quality as today because we don’t currently consider position skill in matchmaking.

DuskDaUmbreon2/24/2019, 11:35:05 AM2 votes

Yes, it is. Because the newly designed system is so that you're matched based on your skill at that role.

If you play ADC 2 divisions higher than top, get assigned top, then swap to ADC, you're effectively playing a match 2 divisions below where you were matched.

Riot punishing you for swapping lanes helps hold together the integrity of the skill matchups.

Dexler2/24/2019, 12:15:32 PM1 votes

First off Ranked is Ranked of course it's competitive. It makes no sense to swap for easy wins, you cant just off role and lane swap. You need a person to actually agree to lane swap. Mind you in my situation this was not a duo, but a complete stranger. The people that play together better win. People can somehow abuse lane swap all they want eventually they will hit a wall, eventually they will get beaten by better players and better teams. And again It doesn't matter If they swap, yes that lane may have a better chance, meanwhile the other lane may have a worse chance it evens out would you look at that. Also and again With a level head and a belief to win anything can happen. stop shoving useless ridicule of information at me that has too many variables. As if one games win conditions doesn't have enough to consider while you give a broad overview. No game is 100% determined by trading lanes with someone nor should it be punished. If you believe that I truly pity your thought process and your belief in how games are won.

spirit cooking2/24/2019, 3:37:19 PM1 votes

That's brutal.

I feel like we should swap positions like we swap characters. Then smite can be locked to the jungle position, and if you swap for jungle you also get smite. This way there's always a smite on your team.