TFT Ranked: The Story of a failed BETA test.

So its been a couple of weeks since TFT came out, and with it the first-ever attempt at a Ranked game mode based on a not yet finished game mode. Everyone has established some sort of meta for items, team compositions, buying paths, RNG manipulation, etc. its actually kind of surprising that they managed to do so, so quickly. So why does the title say "the story of a FAILED beta test"?

Well after a fair amount of casual gameplay and a brief climb from Iron 4 to Silver 4, I have a few problems that ruin the entire experience of what RIOT claims to be "their goal for how they want Ranked to feel".

Let us start with the main problem here: The bugs. Now every new gamemode will have bugs, glitches, etc. so please don't think that I'm saying this is what ruined TFT for me. Some of the bugs that exist are very minor, pathing errors, visual glitches, strange interactions (have you seen Rapid-fire Kassidan with Guinsoo's?) but these aren't the "game-breaking bugs" I'm referring to. I'll start with the horrifying transitional glitches I've experienced (by transitional I mean glitches that occur during the round transitions). The worst one many of my fellow Leaguers and I have experienced is the Item swap glitch, this glitch takes all items not equipped on a champion and places them in another players inventory. The items then become un-interactable and therefore lost, I'm not joking when I say I have lost more than one ranked game to this glitch. Not so bad you say? let us paint a picture of a player waiting for a certain champ or item to equip and they have 4-6 items in inventory. They now lose all those items to this glitch. Some other transitional glitches come in the form of losing the gold, mystery boxes, invisible champions you are unable to move or equip.

Then there are the card pool glitches, these glitches have to do with the shared card pool and how it interacts with multiple players. The worst I've seen in this category is by far a glitch that prevents you from buying certain tiered champs. Sometimes this glitch restricts 1 gold champs, sometimes 4, they still show up in your hand but you cant click them. My roommate and I generally play next to each other and can often see each other screens, more often than not after a transition him and I will have the exact same 5 cards presented to us, same placement and such. When this occurs, we still have the same champs even after rerolling.

Now, why is this so horrible for a new game mode to experience this level of glitchiness? It isn't. What is horrible is that riot would decide to release ranked while these glitches still occur 1 in every 5 games. Take the normal frustration of the climb aside and forget it exists and we are still left with the game-breaking glitches that still occur after 1 full patch, a hot patch, and an absolutely crazy amount of feedback from the high-demand Team Fight Tactics.

Does this mean the game mode won't improve? of course, it will get better with time and through patch after patch. As of where it stands in patch 9.14? I won't be playing Ranked TFT until these minor quality of life improvements take place.