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The biggest problem of the LP/MMR System

Foxxell Senpai·11/26/2019, 12:46:06 AM·4 votes·2,132 views

Yo guys, this is Foxxell. Playing since season 1 and today, I'd like to talk about why the current ranked System is very frustrating and why I'd love having back the one from the early 2 seasons.

So, lets get started with a little imagination: Imagine a ranked system in which you would just have a 4 digits number, starting at around 1200. Basically, after the first few rankedgames, you would gain around 12-15 Points for a Victory, directly added to your number. In case of Defeat, you would lose 12-15 Points. The exact ammount will be determined by the average of their numbers compared to yours. That's it. It's about as fair as possible, isn't it? If you win a game, you get around as many points as you would've lost, and if you lose a game, you lose around as many points as you could've won. Your Number will be your Elo. You will be categorized into Iron-Challenger determined by your number. Wouldn't you like playing in a ranked system like that, where every Game weights the same, every Victory feels equally important, and every well fought but defeated battle would not have been a waste of time?

If you answered both questions with a "yes", you would be a huge fan of the ranked system back then in season 1 & 2. Because it was just like that.

So, before I get started, one little disclaimer: The exact behaviour of the current MMR system is tough to talk about, but it should roughly work as the system I described above with a x-digits number, increasing and decreasing by victory and defeat.

The current system basically works like this: You have the hidden MMR, at which the player has no really accurate way to take a loot at, and the League/Division System, which I will call the LP system from now on. The closer your MMR matches your Tier (means League and Divison combined), the evener will be your LP Gains and Losses (you will basically get +-16-18 LP). The way Tier and a Number can Match must be determined by some factors which are not completly clear, but the common guess is its about the MMR average of the players in the respective Tier. However, the higher the difference between your MMR and Tier is, the higher are your LP Gains and Losses. You will notice that being the case by having way higher LP Losses than Gains, like -21/+15 or +24/-12 and the sorts. While that would make sense in case of boosted players or smurfs**, it should not happen to common players,** no matter how much they play, since that would massively change the value of each game. Many people here know that super frustrating feeling of getting a solid -21 while only getting +13 for a Victory I assume. Since that Situation occurs quite often, especially around platinum/diamond elo, its safe to say there is something wrong in the system. It might be the way the MMR and Tier are connected but its difficult to say since Riot does not release information about stuff linked to MMR (WHY?!). Also I'd like to add that there might be systems implemented in the MMR system which stop you from getting too much gain out of a winning streak by reducing the gained MMR by victories and vice versa for losing streaks (making you drop less). This is a huge problem which also accurs in a more common case besides the winning streaks: Promotions.

This is the critical Part of my post. You all recall this beautiful thing called something like "dropping protection"? How you cannot drop right away after being promoted? Its great, isn't it? No -grumpy cat meme- This is my paint illustration of what happens if you lose some games at 0 LP after being promoted. As you can see (atleast I hope so) the dropping protection causes your LP and your MMR to desync, resulting in higher losses than gains. For a really long time. The time it takes for the MMR and the LP to align again is way too long (can only judge my experience since you cannot see the MMR anywhere so no real numbers here sadly), resulting in massive frustration for the player. But really, who is not frustrated if they win 2 games, each for +12 and then get a solid -21 and sit there with +3 LP for one more victory? This should never happen to common player, no matter how many ranked games have been played before.

This is a fundamental flaw of the system. One might say "but if you lose games on 0 LP you have to lose something, otherwise the defeat would be meaningless", and that is true, but the way it is right now is not a good solution because of stated reason. This problem needs to be addressed. I personally would love the old system back, but I do more easy ways to fix that problem. The easiest way to fix it might just be giving people some LP after their promotion. You might have noticed people usually get around 18 LP if everything is fine per game and lose the same ammount. Very often though, people dont get exactly the ammount they need to get into promotion. Those LP are basically wasted and will be justified with a "its good for your mmr". Then you're at 100 LP and need 2 or 3 Victories to promote. Why would you be at 0 LP after winning 2 or 3 Games (or 1 or 2, depending on how many you lost in that promotion series)? Where are your LP? If they're calculted into the MMR, there should not be a fix ammount of games you can lose without dropping (which should be 3 as it is right now). Removing the dropping protection and adding some simple LP would be a massive fix to that problem. Also there shouldnt be anything interefering with winning and losing streaks. If youre on a streak, you gotta ride it. Every game should be worth the same. Therefore I do not like promotions either, but that be obvious by now.

So thats it. I do also think that this entire situation massively increases toxicity due to the imbalance of game importance, but since toxicity imo is poorly handled thats another topic for another time.

TL;DR: Tier and MMR should be as synced as possible but due to mechanics concerning winning-streak/losing-streak and dropping protection after being promoted, MMR and Tier get desynced by force without the player being able to prevent it (unless to not lose .. but.. well..), resulting in frustrating feelings and differently valuable ranked games while every ranked game should feel equally important (a +13 victory feels like nothing compared to a -22 defeat, does it?)

I sincerly look forward to discuss this topic and hope you guys were able to understand everything as good as possible since english definitly isnt my mothertongue.

15 Comments

Cõmega11/26/2019, 1:10:04 AM2 votes

Imagine a ranked system in which you would just have a 4 digits number, starting at around 1200. Basically, after the first few rankedgames, you would gain around 12-15 Points for a Victory, directly added to your number. In case of Defeat, you would lose 12-15 Points. The exact ammount will be determined by the average of their numbers compared to yours. That's it. It's about as fair as possible, isn't it? If you win a game, you get around as many points as you would've lost, and if you lose a game, you lose around as many points as you could've won. Your Number will be your Elo. You will be categorized into Iron-Challenger determined by your number. Wouldn't you like playing in a ranked system like that, where every Game weights the same, every Victory feels equally important, and every well fought but defeated battle would not have been a waste of time?

No i would not like a system like that.

Lets say i'm rated 1800 and the other 4 people on my team are rated 1500

Then everyone on the enemy team is rated 1800-1900

When i lose that match i SHOULD NOT lose the same amount of lp as a game where i was 1800 lp and everyone else on my team was 1800 lp but all the enemies weer 1400

Cõmega11/26/2019, 1:12:53 AM2 votes

Since that Situation occurs quite often, especially around platinum/diamond elo

Riot does this on purpose to increase competition in the higher ranks,

a guy with a 50.01% wr should not qualify to be masters, Yes he wins more than he loses, but hes just flipping a coin and hopping it lands on the right side at that point

Cõmega11/26/2019, 1:14:14 AM1 votes

This is the critical Part of my post. You all recall this beautiful thing called something like "dropping protection"?

Personally never experienced this, i would demote after first loss at 0 lp, no matter what, even if i just came off a 11 game winstreak

Subdue11/26/2019, 3:49:55 AM1 votes

So just the clarify, what you'd rather have happen is you reach Gold, with your LP and MMR in sync, and then you lose 5 games in a row and instead of staying in Gold with out of sync LP and MMR, you drop all the way down to Silver 1 with 0 LP?

The above situation is what current drop protection prevents. I don't necessarily care one way or the other, but it seems to me if you're someone who gets frustrated by uneven LP gains and losses, you would be even more frustrated if you dropped out of Gold and all the way back to Silver 1 0 LP right after getting to Gold.

CominTowardsYa11/26/2019, 4:33:43 AM1 votes

I know, MMR is trash.

Mr Voidling12/2/2019, 7:19:18 PM1 votes

Honestly, I don't see why most people can't see how stupid the current system is. The only fair way to have a ranked system is basically to have it how you mention. Number from 0-XXXX determines your rank, and winning/losing games increases/decreases your number depending on the average number of the enemy team compared to your team. Meaning you have a few different scenarios:

Enemy team avg. of 2,000, ally team avg. of 2,000: Win = +40 | Lose = -40 Enemy team avg. of 1,800, ally team avg. of 2,000: Win = +36 | Lose = -44 Enemy team avg. of 2,000, ally team avg. of 1,800: Win = +44 | Lose = -36

This is just my interpretation of how it would work. Basically for every 50 points difference you lose/gain 1 more point (this makes a bigger difference once you reach higher levels). Matchmaking could be as simple as your number +/-100 +-10%. So a 2k could go against 1.7-2.3k players, but a 5k can get matched up with 4.4-5.6k players. (technically only 1,727-2.3k and 4,455-5.6k since you must also meet the requirements of the lower rank players) Anything exceeding that would drastically change the amount you gain/lose, so a team of 2k avg. against a team of 3k avg. would gain/lose the normal max of +46/-34 and then +1/-1 for every 25 avg. difference thereafter(basically x2) for a total of +74/-6. We'll just cap that out at +80/-10 or +10/-80 max, so you always have to lose something for losing and can't gain too much for winning(max of double). I mean, you shouldn't get matched with people outside the limit in the first place, but just in case it manages to happen a fallback is nice. And winning against higher skilled players should be REWARDING.

In this case I imagine 2k to represent a starting silver player and 3k to be a starting gold player. (0-999 = Iron | 1k = Bronze | 2k = Silver | 3k = Gold | Etc.) Every 200 points could place you in the next bracket, I II III IV V (I still like 5 brackets), brackets are good because they incentivize climbing as getting 1k points would take like 25 straight wins (or 50-ish+ games) so players would lose interest and just settle.

I do like the idea of placements, that's a good way to stop better players from over-running low level games while climbing(or smurfing), so 10 games for placements and 1-3 games won = Iron, 4-5 = Bronze, 6-7 = Silver, 8-9 = Gold, 10 = Plat.

So yeah, that's how I would run a ranked system. It would also show the total avg. of each team during the loading screen and after the game, so nothing is hidden. I chose higher numbers so I could fit in 1k point divisions without it being TOO grindy, but smaller numbers (like 15 per win) can work too if properly adjusted.

No clue why Rito changed over to a dual system involving MMR and LP, it just makes everything seem unfair/unbalanced.