Why people who play almost exclusively normals need a 1000+ win normal queue

Xedrawn·3/31/2015, 6:48:34 AM·3 votes·1,858 views

I'm going to set something straight here for the record:

  1. RANKED games are League's premier place to play COMPETITIVELY.
  2. NORMAL games are the place to play game CASUALLY.

Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't take normal games seriously (as over 75% of the community plays EXCLUSIVELY casually (or I believe that's the most recent statistic)), but at the same time there is big difference between the two. From my experiences this is what I've learned:

  1. In ranked, (unless someone trolls) generally people try as hard as they can to win the game with what they can offer (regardless if it creates a positive or negative outcome based upon verbal/physical representation)
  2. Ranked translates to normal games on the premise of that 1, the team is actually making an effort to play. 2, that the overall skill difference between players in normals is within an acceptable boundary (elo/tier)

Differences in tier and/or elo in normals is SIGNIFICANTLY more skewed because of a number of things that may or may not affect game play that's different from ranked.

  1. You can invite ANYONE you wish to a normal game, but if say a challenger level player and a bronze team up, there is really only so much the game system can do. (either over compensate on higher players on the other team, or under compensate for the rest of the team playing, or both.)
  2. The amount that a person plays ranked/normals (traditional elo) vs the ACTUAL experience that the person has playing the game. The current system isn't perfect as is because it doesn't account for the actual physical and psychological experience gained in physically playing league. The human body and mind learn from repetition and studies have shown that doing something repetitive SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASES the retention learned, and once learned can be recalled almost immediately which is called procedural memory. Granted staring at a computer screen for hours isn't the actual human body, and the science of computers vs long term effects isn't well documented yet.
  3. The availability of players. Depending on your server you might get matched up with people who fall way outside your boundaries for your normal elo because in the overall grand scheme of things that they balance out, when in reality and the physical aspect they really don't.
  4. Because the person might play exclusively one or the other that the system will be very exact/less exact. For instance I have 1500 wins, my normal elo will be SIGNIFICANTLY more accurate then someone who has 100 wins and less physical experience than I do (unless it's a secondary or smurf account that is)

My big concern for the entire system is point two and four of that last statement. I can't tell how many games I've played where because I have over 1500 normal wins on my main account (which puts me in the top 1% of players to be exact) that I'll get placed with people who have either below 300 wins, or over 2k wins. It physically isn't fair for my team for the game to match people with significantly less experience than myself or more than me. Which is why it balances out and causes in hence a loop of a problem.

So to clear this up I have a solution to have a 1000+ normal wins queue that can only be joined or invited by accounts with 1000 or more wins.

How would this work? Essentially by adding a secondary normal queue with a restriction you would be playing with people who are generally:

  1. More dedicated to playing the game.
  2. People taking normals "more" seriously, but at the same time still being causal in the sense that there aren't the pressure of rankings/being ranked.
  3. Letting people who have more experience (who don't compete at the ranked level) to be able to play with a (hopefully) more mature crowd without getting frustrated by the game play of newer/less experienced players and creating a less toxic environment (let's be honest here... sometimes people have bad days, but at a certain point there has to be a line.)
  4. A reward for getting 1000 normal wins since these days not many people get to play with dev's. :)

Cons:

  1. Longer Queue times
  2. Players complaining about unavailable game mode (because they don't qualify for it)
  3. Makes it seem kind of exclusive.

tl;dr We need a new game mode to reward dedicated players who've bothered to spend time on normal games in order to play with other more mature and experienced players.

10 Comments

Tsugaga3/31/2015, 7:14:21 AM4 votes

1500 wins is the top 1%? I have over 3000, would be cool if there was a most wins list. I thought normals were changed back in season 3 to be based on wins, I was always in games with others who had 1000-2000+ wins, but I haven't payed attention this season because I've been playing mostly team builder. Amount of wins should be a main consideration for match making.

FDru3/31/2015, 9:53:59 AM3 votes

This is pointless. Normals have matchmaking already. And it works fabulously for the most part. The only problems are A) premades which always fuck up the algorithms and create lopsided matches (and there's really nothing that can be be done about it) and B) extremely long queue times at high-ish elo (which your suggestion would probably just make worse).

There's plenty of good players with low win counts, and I'm perfectly happy to have them on my teams.

Xedrawn3/31/2015, 2:12:25 PM1 votes

If you read the original post you would notice that I covered that. =)

Kazaashi3/31/2015, 2:31:08 PM1 votes

It's all based on MMR. Normals and Ranked have the same matchmaking system. Normals just has a larger sample size so they tend to be more accurate.

Xedrawn4/17/2015, 9:27:13 PM1 votes

bi-monthly bump