Bronze Experiment

Godhri·Mar 27, 2015·2 votes·2,375 views

Ok guys. I just wanted to say I will be initiating an experiment. I am a Gold 2 Mid Main .

In my experiment, I will be making a new account. I will level it up to 30 and then try to play at a Bronze level to place in Bronze 5. I want to see if someone starts playing at a Gold level, would it be possible for them to get themselves out. Everyone claims it is but no one has actually proven this. I want to demystify this age old issue. Plus many bronzies claim they are silver and even gold skill level players who are just stuck in "elo hell". Let me be clear though I will not purposely lose a game just so that I will place in Bronze! What I will be doing is; I will be playing at a skill level that I think Bronze players play at until I reach actual rank games

Unless of course, Riot disapproves of this experiment then I won't do it as I realize that in doing so, I may ruin the gaming experience for some players. If I do go through with this, it will go on for at least a month. I want to see where I can take the account within just one month of play. (unfortunately, leveling it up will be a pain in the butt). Heck, I'll even try to do it with one champion only (probably one who is versatile enough to fill 4/5 of the roles like Nidalee)

23 Comments

rth2Mar 27, 20156 votes

It has been mentioned, but this experiment has been done before by players of all different levels. I think the important thing to note to new players is the concept that the results of this experiment prove.

Elo Hell does not exist but glass ceilings do exist.

Elo Hell as defined as your team holding you back (either because they are poor quality teammates or due to afk's / trolls/ feeders ). This is because both sides can be assumed equal in Solo Queue MMR wise, where you are the variable you control. Symmetry arguments show that on an average both teams will have equal amounts of feeders, leavers, etc... except with you able to make your team have less of those types of players. While unlucky streaks can happen, climbing the ladder is supposed to occur over many games, not just a select few or small number.

Glass Ceilings are your lack of skill / understanding holding you back from victory. A glass ceiling is a point where you may play above your current MMR on most occasions, but you do not play above it high enough to carry the game single handed. This means you are more reliant on your team, which means if your team is playing poorly you cannot compensate. Hitting a glass ceiling means that there is something you must learn / understand about the game (whether it be mechanical skill, game-play concept, etc....) before you can proceed without being reliant on your team. Once you gain this new ability or understanding it suddenly becomes clearer what tools you need to use to effect the game (especially when your team is losing) and you are able to carry your team again and break through that glass ceiling.

The main lesson from glass ceilings is that if you are consistently stuck somewhere, it is because you have something to learn. If you are stuck in Bronze 5, then yes you may play at a higher level, perhaps bronze 4 - 2 (or whatever range) but are you playing at a skill level that can compensate for your team? There is also a consistency issue, do you consistently play at a higher level? If you do consistently play better (but only a little better) that means you will be able to carry slightly weaker teams but may not be able to carry if you team falls a certain amount behind.

As far as I can tell, this problem only gets harder as you reach higher levels of play. This is because as you get to higher levels of play, your team becomes more necessary as it becomes harder to solo carry. This line of thinking is mainly due to "The Gatekeeper of Challenger". This was during season 3 (no masters tier). Players would get into promotions for challenger, but a player (Fabbbyyy) played so often that he was generally in your placement matches. Fabbbyyy would play ultra aggressive no matter what (there are youtube video's). This means Fabbbyyy would either win hard or lose hard (be fed or feed). With the caliber of teams at the challenger level of play, it is much harder to solo carry a game (by this I mean without any of your teams help). So with this style of play Fabbbyyy almost became the deciding factor in the match. Did he rock? His team will probably win. Did he feed like a beast? His team will probably lose.

Instead of thinking of elo hell (where you cannot get out due to your team) think of a glass ceiling (where you are missing some critical piece of information / skill that will allow you to win independent of your team). The more knowledge / skill you have compared to those around you, the easier it will be for you to work with teams of less skill.

DinchtMar 27, 20154 votes

^ This is a great reply!

GodhriMar 27, 20153 votes

I agree a great reply. Thank you. I've learned a lot from this post.

Elite VoidMar 27, 20151 votes

Ok http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1773792380/205300424?tab=overview what skill am I lacking to win a game like this? o wait it's just the fact that it's unfuckingwinnable...

rth2Mar 28, 20152 votes

Ok, so it feels like you missed the point here a bit or you are just angry that you lost a game.

So let's reiterate a core principle of the glass ceiling / ranked system in general :

While unlucky streaks can happen, climbing the ladder is supposed to occur over many games, not just a select few or small number.

There is also a consistency issue, do you consistently play at a higher level? If you do consistently play better (but only a little better) that means you will be able to carry slightly weaker teams but may not be able to carry if you team falls a certain amount behind.

A glass ceiling is a point where you may play above your current MMR on most occasions, but you do not play above it high enough to carry the game single handed. This means you are more reliant on your team, which means if your team is playing poorly you cannot compensate.

This boils down to 1 game is not going to explain the whole story. I never claimed that every game was winnable (even those pro players lose solo queue games). However, if a pro player was put in bronze 5, I can guarantee you they would lose a lot less games climbing the ladder until they got to probably high diamond. This is because they play at a level much greater than those around them (if they were hypothetically in bronze / silver / etc...) that they would win a lot more and would do it consistently.

I took the liberty of looking up your recent match history (not just the one game) on na.op.gg. It looks like of your past 40 ranked games you went 22 wins - 18 losses. This isn't bad, it is a little better than 50-50. Which means you are probably at your skill level or playing slightly above your current MMR(lately). Which means you may have more difficulty carrying in games with larger skill disparities.

The idea is to look for area's where you may be able to improve your game play. An example would be that in 40 games you only changed your trinket twice, and you never upgraded your trinket (even though it is absurdly cheap now). So you may be able to improve your teams overall vision game if you either upgrade your item 3340 and place more wards or get / upgrade item 3341 .

In the game you posted. There are some things I can point out, but there are reasons why match history is really not too useful.

You have the most gold in the game, yet the least wards placed on the map. Even though you are the jungler and are moving around the map, so you have a great opportunity to keep some wards up and help prevent your lanes from getting ganked.
It looks like you got your last 6 kills ( 1 death) in the last 2-3 minutes of the game. This is kind of the base defense part where you guys are holding off the inevitable (at least it appears). So I would really put you at about 8-3 instead of 14-4. Still a good score but just to remind you that it doesn't have the impact it seems at first glance. (14-4 at 20 minutes has more impact than 14-4 two minutes before your nexus falls).

The real part of this that makes it pretty useless is that so much of improvement depends on positioning, timing, decisions, etc... Match history does not show what led to these decisions or fights, it just shows the aftermath.

So I can see "Hey, your bot lane died early and a few minutes later you helped them get return kills." But I can't see if you noted that you had a Blitzcrank Tristana vs Lucian Thresh or ( mid-late game adc / early support vs early bully adc / bully support). Did you note this and make sure you could be around that area at the beginning of the game just in case things got hairy? What were you doing 4 minutes in? Did you start your route so you were at top instead of bot at 4 minutes, b/c your top also died first (in fact all your lanes died first). Were you in position to counter gank or turn around fights? Were you just hard farming the jungle? Did Shaco push you out of your jungle so that you could not react? Were wards placed to catch any early invades that Shaco players make?

There are many variables that go into a match, and honestly the best way I've seen to analyze a match is to use a program that records your game so that you can re-watch it in spectator mode. This gets you the replay information about the entire game from everyone's point of view (not just your point of view). This way you can see not just what you did and what you didn't do, but you can see what the enemy did. This allows you to think, "What could I have done to stop this?" "What were they doing to affect this game so much?" "What should I try doing next time?"

It is easy to pull up a match history and point to it saying "I didn't feed! I got kills! I did work! I should have won!" But on the enemy team there are players who can say the same thing that did win.

All I can really tell you is to work on your vision game and practice your timings for counter ganks / ganks based on the enemy team composition and where they are likely to be at a given time.

If you really want insight into your games and where you can improve, you should consider getting recordings of them through some app (I liked na.op.gg's beta recording service, but it has not been working lately) and review your game a couple days after it happens (or have somebody else review your game and give you their feedback).

Good luck out there on the rift! And remember just because a game is

unfuckingwinnable...

that does not mean that you cannot find areas where you can improve!

disregardableMar 27, 20151 votes

You're better off just dodging until it demotes you to Bronze 5. A little time consuming if you're placed in gold, but I'd assume you'd be put in silver. And by the way, you clearly have not seen any bronze to challenger streams.

GodhriMar 27, 20151 votes

Oh I didn't realize those existed. Still I want to see it for myself. I'm not someone who is challenger material (yet) so it would definitely be different in that sense.

rth2Mar 27, 20151 votes

Dodging just takes your LP but does not take your MMR (as no game was played). Prior to the Tier/division system this would work, as elo was used. However, now you don't have elo, you have your MMR and your Tier/Division. MMR is the skill level of you (and where you should be matched) and Tier/Division is basically your prize structure. (Much the same way that demoting through inactivity will not change your MMR).

Here is this : http://www.in2lol.com/en/news/13487-the-bronze-player-with-diamond-mmr-i-just-felt-like-it

This is partially fixed by having players skip divisions if their MMR is high enough (no promo games to dodge) but I do not think you can skip division 1. So you can still be bronze 1 with X Tier MMR.

Tatsumi OgaMar 27, 20151 votes

Have you ever heard of a booster? don't waste your time it has been proven many times people who are good enough to be out of bronze will make their way out and a person who's mid gold elo can do it easily.

3tysonMar 27, 20151 votes

You should let me play your 10 matches i. Pretty sure im wood 2 division

KorkalekMar 27, 20151 votes

Not interresting. We have already seen this, even with "only" gold player.

Yes, you will get out of bronze. Might take a bit of time, cause you can't carry every game. Also, you'll make a few mistake in the begining, because you will be surprised by teammates not following obvious calls. But after a while, you'll get used to not relying on teammates reacting logically, and if you persist you will win more game than you loose.

And you'll get out of bronze.

Honnestly, don't do it. Spare some bronzies the frustration of getting crushed by one single out-of-is-league player.

Edit : This is just smurfing. Basic, usual, smurfing. Riot frown upon the practice, but can't really prevent it and don't punish it.

PiantissimoMar 27, 20151 votes

"challenger material (yet)"

then stay in gold you weren't learn jack in bronze there is a stream called SaltyTeemo that streams low elo games, and what you notice is every team that wins, is won by the team with the most solo carries.

if someone better than them plays in their division, then you just stomp lane so hard that what everyone else is doing is negligible, i remember seeing a fizz on that stream with 9 CS, his score was 9 kills something something, all of his CS were enemy champions, you think you'd have fun in that division? then you are insecure, 20 minute stomps are boring and any player that can carry a game knows how to stomp when ahead, that is the quintessence of soloQ

3tysonMar 27, 20151 votes

{quoted}

"challenger material (yet)"

then stay in gold you weren't learn jack in bronze there is a stream called SaltyTeemo that streams low elo games, and what you notice is every team that wins, is won by the team with the most solo carries.

if someone better than them plays in their division, then you just stomp lane so hard that what everyone else is doing is negligible, i remember seeing a fizz on that stream with 9 CS, his score was 9 kills something something, all of his CS were enemy champions, you think you'd have fun in that division? then you are insecure, 20 minute stomps are boring and any player that can carry a game knows how to stomp when ahead, that is the quintessence of soloQ

Thats his entire point will he be able to stomp harder and get out of bronse ? or will he be stuck in bronse cause someone dumb at his team will feed so hard that his gold skils dont matter annymore

GodhriMar 27, 20151 votes

I'm pretty sure everyone is missing the point here. I'm not doing this for the "fun" of it. Clearly this is for research purposes. I already stomp people I lane against in my own division. This isn't about stomping noobs. This is about experimenting and making it public on these forums for the purpose of reference. This is to show that those who are actually skilled enough will actually get out. Yes there are streams, but obviously since I didn't know about those streams, it means that most likely noobs won't either.

I just want to make accessible a more reliable resource that will show people that if they worked on their skills enough, they could also make it out. The thing is... casual gamers or even some new to gaming but hardcore gamers won't instinctively think "Oh maybe there is a stream about this issue that I can use!". The first place anyone would look would be the forums.

But if what Piantissimo says is true, then I might just look up links of the streams and post it up here as reference material.

rth2Mar 27, 20151 votes

This experiment has been done so often that it is not worth you going through with the experiment just to shed light to new players.

The second part you were suggesting, digging up the streams / youtube videos/ etc and posting those as reference would save yourself a lot of time and would get the information to newer players faster.

I personally think most new players go to google or youtube if they want to learn something, but it would be handy to have extra visibility on the forums (but that visibility will be temporary unless the thread becomes a sticky. If not it will get buried when inactivity sets in).

DinchtMar 27, 20151 votes

"I will not purposely lose a game just so that I will place in Bronze! What I will be doing is; I will be playing at a skill level that I think Bronze players play at until I reach actual rank games"

This is kind of stupid imo. It's like a high school basketball player playing against elementary basketball players. (sorry for the harsh example) I had an account of Bronze 5 and made it into gold 2. You shouldnt get placed in b5 and "play like that skill level." Basically you're ruining the experience for your teammates who want to win ranked games, for this "research" of yours. Imagine you're in your promo games and this challenger player "play like a bronze". I'm just saying man

GodhriMar 27, 20151 votes

That's the nature of research :)

But since so many people disagree with it. I don't think it will be a good thing to follow up on. One reason I posted it on here is to get the opinion of the community and to ensure that no one has done this before.

It seems apparent that people have done this countless times before (I'm not entirely sure why given that if you are challenger material, you'd likely get out easily). This is definitely different when it comes to Gold or below skilled players.

Commit SudokuMar 27, 20151 votes

everyone has proven this already

LoRdJeSuS6969420Mar 27, 20151 votes

Good luck. In my experience, dropping an account to bronze is nearly impossible. You have to actively try to lose and even then it's difficult, especially since you have to avoid being reported. It takes a lot of games.

On the other hand, I have played on other peoples' bronze level accounts, and the games are very easy to carry. Elo hell is not a real thing. If climbing rank seems like a struggle, it's because you're about where you belong.

Best Darius KRMar 27, 20151 votes

You are the reason some say ELO hell exists

People like you act like white knights saying that they will prove once and for all that ELO hell doesn't exist, and then people feed because, you know, they are against players much more skilled than them, causing the other people on their team to rage because their team feeds

Stop, what you are doing IS NOT good for the community and will NEVER be.

Elite VoidMar 27, 20151 votes

it's not that they can't get out. it's that you have to play an unreal amount of games to get out, because 40% of your games you cannot win, due to retarded teammates. The way I look at it is 40% you always win 40% you always lose 20% is up to you. So yes players who can't play a lot will be stuck.

COWmanLordMar 29, 20151 votes

Oh hey I saw you complain about this very exact game earlier in the week. Let reiterate some of what I said before to see if It gets through to you this time. NO GAME IS UNWINNABLE. I have won games when our team was literally 40 kills behind (it was awhile back so I can't link the match history but the end score was 55 kills our team and 90 kills their team. We managed to ace them without losing anyone at the end so thats why the final score is only 35 kills behind.)

At the point you lost the game is when it became unwinnable. At the start of the game and even 20 mins in the game when your team was behind 8k gold the game was still winnable. You cannot use this game s an example for every game you lose. If 40% of games are unwinnable, and another 20% rely on you then explain how I have managed to win nearly 70% of my games this season, even when I didn't do well.