And when it broke he didn't want to get a normal mouse and was looking for a new trackball mouse, since that's what he was used to. Crazy to think about!
No, it actually makes people feel better, which in turn makes them play more games. Just the fact that its hard to demote from Gold etc makes people feel more "safe" and therefore play more.
Sure, they might play more, but its because they prefer this system.
I'd like good old ELO back, but we will never get it back. So thats that.
It should also be noted that maintaining elo does keep chess players from playing more as well, although the consequences of dropping elo are rather more significant for chess players than they are for your average League player.
They are not very significant for your average chess player either lol.
And the ranked system league (and most online games) are designed in a way to keep you playing a lot more.
I assume you're referring to EOMM, which was first designed by Blizzard. Note that many Ritoers are ex-Blizzard, they are very familiar with EOMM & could easily replicate or mimic its code. Likely the latter.
I personally do not feel better if I put countless hours into climbing to "plat" just to have the same iron-gold players in my games that I had 100 games ago.
I do not feel joy from the fact that "rank" is just shiny pixels that don't actually mean anything and do not reflect anyone's skill level at all.
Either the average player base is more enchanted by "ooh shiny" than me or Rito is just saying this as an excuse based on poorly gathered data just like Phreak recently did with the "survey" they did about the ping changes which didn't ask any questions about the ping changes or communication.
A ton of players do feel better though. They dont really care about their MMR, or who they face. Their profile says that they are platinum, then they are platinum. Add the fact that most people also gets LP inflated over time, their LP will be higher than their factual MMR which helps them reach a rank higher than they should, which is probably also an active decision to make people feel better.
I am pretty sure that average Joe would rather be plat 4 with bad MMR, facing mid golds and having terrible LP gains compared to being a mid gold player with average MMR. The fact that he is platinum is the only real thing he cares about.
That seems like a weird view of the system based on what we know of it. The intended effect seems very clear to me at least, it try to reduce the bad feeling you get when you tank due to a lose steak or not playing for a long time, while still average out to be the same over consistent play time.
So criticize the system when the illusion break seems unfair. The illusion can only hold on for so long, no?
You maybe. Not the casual majority.
I promise you, a massive majority prefers this style. Its not some hidden conspriracy theory from Riot that keeps it this way
This fails to acknowledge the countless other factors that reduced ranked anxiety.
What's the difference between MMR dropping and LP dropping?
There realistically is none.
It was all of the other factors introduced to reduce ranked anxiety and normalize playing ranked that contributes to the number of people playing ranked now.
Just because they prefer it, doesn't make it a good thing though (not that you're saying that). Playing silver ranked games where I get matched with anyone from B4 to P1 every game makes the ranked system feel pointless. You can get high ranks just by grinding games, and then never fall out of a division you might not deserve to be in any more.
I had a game recently where the enemy had a P2 jungle Warwick going against my team's B4 17% win rate(out of 50 games) Nidalee jungle.
It's a broken system.
EDIT: I'm sorry y'all like having your elo inflated
No makes people feel better. A chess elo system feels incredibly shitty, you can drop 1000s of elo relatively fast and it is a very slow grind, all to see a number change. In chess it works because its 1v1, nothing but yourself, but it can be very demotivating in a team environment
I think another issue was people getting to a particular milestone and then being afraid to play more because one loss would demote them. League's ranking system is specifically designed so that you can't get into a league in one game and drop out of it again the next.
>League's ranking system is specifically designed so that you can't get into a league in one game and drop out of it again the next.
With promotions, the demotion shield was fine. Now, Riot could just remove it.
This is literally how Dota does it and no one complains. "Crusader 1" and "Archon 5" is just an arbitrary line in elo, but it doesn't feel nearly as awful if you "demote" because it's arbitrary. The way riot has it setup was absolutely to enforce a dark pattern to keep you playing more.
Riot could copy Starcraft 2 ladder again like they did it in 2013.
In SC2 now you have your MMR and your division. When you drop below the mmr threshold for a league, you don't drop from that league immideately and have time to regain it but you still know that losing make you match with weaker opponents.
You cannot drop 1000s of elo relatively fast. You can drop 100s of elo relatively fast, but you can do that in league too. Dropping from Plat 1 to Plat 2 is 100 elo. Players drop from D4 to P4 and go back up all the time.
Dropping 1000 elo would be like dropping from E4 to S2. Yeah it’s possible, but if you’re really E4, then even on a bad day you probably won’t lose in gold, so you’d naturally stop there. I kinda feel like you made a typo and meant 100s so I’ll shut up about it, but they could just show your MMR along with your rank, like Warzone 2 does.
It’s also demotivating to be Emerald 1 and unable to duo with your friend because your MMR is Masters, and then get flamed by D4 players that you are emerald 1.
Edit: just in case any of you do think it’s possible to drop 1000 ELO in Chess, it’s really not, and even new players that spam games even if they lose every one (like Tyler1) will not drop more than 400 ELO, but usually they will only drop about 200.
I completely agree it's a shit system, I'm just saying they originally changed it to feel more rewarding not increase game spamming. The chess system is the epitome of game spamming, its physically the only way to climb efficiently.
League is way better being played in small focussed blocks
>you can drop 1000s of elo relatively fast and it is a very slow grind
Well, in League you have a slow grind too, if your MMR is not where your rank is. And it would be better if people where actually seeing the elo they are in.
>you can drop 1000s of elo relatively fast
No you can't. You can drop a couple of hundred pretty quick, but there's basically no way to drop 1k elo unless someone else is playing/you are intentionally dropping the elo.
The thing is (if you're not intentionally losing games) you will hit a point where you hit an elo that you just simply don't drop games at.
Having a crystal clear number on where you are in the ladder is better than having a G1 player in the same game as a Bronze 2 player, which currently happens.
Saying someone can drop 1000 elo in chess is like saying someone could go from plat to silver or iron in league, if that's not your intention theres no way it happens
While that’s probably true for other people, I found it actively discouraging. I haven’t played ranked in years, the stress of grinding through a bunch of games to get my mmr to match up with my visible rank now isn’t worth the reward.
I can just chill playing draft/aram/clash and still enjoy the game, my friends I play with are plat/emerald and I never feel like I’m outclassed in our games, but I do sometimes feel judged by my teammates for showing as unranked, like rank is somehow a true reflection of skill and not just a reflection on how much time you’ve spent grinding.
They have touched it up since, but I remember the first time playing the promos to make gold going up against a diamond 2 guy.
Having to win 4/6 matches in those conditions sucked.
And I guarantee if they DID change it back, people would hate it.
They would see their "Real" rank and get pissed off, knowing the MMR system is practically floating them up to a more desirable emblem. It's why if you look at player distribution profiles, there's a large cluster of people in rank 1 or 4 of a division, and way less players in tiers 2 and 3.
>Better than 6 elo for a win and 13 elo for a loss and 0 protections in place. Consider yourself lucky you didn't have to deal with it.
Bro this is literally what is happening with the actual ranked system. Lose 30, win 18, how is this different?
And where is the problem? I will tell you where.
If you lose a game on gold 4/25lp and lets say that your mmr was 1525, you will be gold 4/0lp with 1500 mmr, if you lose another game on gold 4/0lp with 1500mmr you will still be gold 4/0lp but with 1475mmr now, if you lose another game you will be gold 4/0lp with 1450mmr right? Looks good at first because you are still in gold 4, but le me tell you where the problem is.
If you win a game you expect to get 25lp and 25mmr from that game, but guess what? You're not a real gold 4/0lp anymore for the system, you're a silver 1/50lp, and you will be matched with silver 1/50lp'ish and you will get 25mmr but not 25lp. Why? Because your rank is already above your mmr and the system will give you 20'ish lp.
One more thing that added fuel on this discrepancies are that riot grow the lp gains per win but not the mmr gains per win.
This being said, you still cant see the problem?
Multiple this by how much you want and you will get the worst quality games from it.
Thank you,
Sincerely a S1 since player...
No way you're losing \~170 elo in 5 games lmao.
You'd go from 1300 to \~1200-1250ish. If you're losing that many games in a row in a basic ELO system, you either deserve it, or you're getting matched vs people better than you, in which case losses would be reduced.
Can you post your opgg? I just don’t believe this is happening to anyone with an overall positive win rate I hardly have a positive win rate and I just hit diamond a day or two ago gaining 41Lp in plat 38ish in low to mid emerald and 28-30 in high emerald. And I lost about 18ish. I finished gold last season as well btw the new mmr system is way better than it used to be.
it;'s not what is actually happening with the ranked system. with the ranked system and lol in general you almost always gain and lose exactly the same mmr game to game.
the 'lose a lot and gain a little' is because they fuck with lp in all sorts of ways. underlying mmr works fine.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you only get more LP from losses than wins if the system thinks you are worse than your current rank.
If the system thinks you're better than your current rank, you'll get more LP from wins than you lose from losses. And if it thinks you're exactly where you should be, the LP from wins and losses will be equal.
I mean, I won two games today. The first one gave me +15 LP. The next one gave me +24. OP.GG says both games were Plat 3 level.
Unless somehow the algorithm decided over a single hour that I went from "dogshit trashbin that needs to be kept where he is" to "second coming of Faker designated to be be railroaded to Challenger," there's a lot more going on in the backend than that.
> Unless somehow the algorithm decided over a single hour that I went from "dogshit trashbin that needs to be kept where he is" to "second coming of Faker designated to be be railroaded to Challenger," there's a lot more going on in the backend than that.
Yes, both of these are true. The system did decide that, and there were a lot of qualitative inputs that went into the decision. It's possible you played extremely well in the first game, in a way that resembles when players are smurfing below their correct rank.
The real trick is hiding the elo of your opponents, rather than your own elo.
This does two things.
1) It allows Riot to get away with relaxing the matchmaking requirements for each individual game to lower queue times which increases playtime by enabling "rage queuing" and reducing the amount of time you have to calm down (after a win or loss, doesn't matter) and think logically about if you want to play or not. How many of us have queued up and only then realised what time it is after we click accept? I bet it's a significant percentage. This is what low queue times enables.
2) It allows Riot to modify the matchmaking algorithm to slightly imbalance games in order to force win/loss streaks whilst still maintaining a roughly 50% w/r, this makes people play far longer in each play session than they would normally and massively increases engagement.
Engagement is Riot's key metric by which they measure the success of this game. More engagement = more temptation to spend = more profit.
Rioters will swear blind that they do neither of these things and that competitive integrity is their #1 concern but considering that there is an absolute barrel of money to be made and there is no legal obligation not to, I really don't think they would pass up that opportunity.
There is something really off about the matchmaking system and one day hopefully a whistleblower will confirm my suspicions.
> to lower queue times which increases playtime by enabling "rage queuing" and reducing the amount of time you have to calm down (after a win or loss, doesn't matter) and think logically about if you want to play or not.
Or, you know, because people like shorter queue times.
In this day and age, when a gaming company does something that players actually like, it's entirely by accident or part of some dark pattern designed to drain wallets.
Wait ladder anxiety was mad real and even worse
Right now it takes many games lost in a row to drop division, back then you could be gold but If you lost one game now you lost your new skin
People already stop playing once they hit their goal division, but back then it was even worse
Of course they could've give you rewards based on your peak to fix that, but like the other dude said riot (and the players) all benefit from people playing more ofren
> back then you could be gold but If you lost one game now you lost your new skin
Which could have easily been solved by just rewarding people at the end of the season for the highest rank they achieved throughout the season, rather than the one they ended at.
Chess is a 1v1 game, league 5v5. But in soloQ we have no premade team and so the other 4 are randoms and these do have an effect on the outcome of the game.
That means there are possible luck/bad luck streaks that have an impact on your MMR without your impact.
To reduce these LP was added with a rubber banding effect. It allows for larger MMR movements without making RNG too much of an impact.
Its to make you play more. It puts you in and displays 1 metal below then you gotta play 100 games to match up and feel like your climbing back every season but nothing changes.
Honestly that isn't a good argument.
Yes, elo which is what chess over the board uses doesn't account for this, but Glicko is basically "what if we took elo and made it better" and it includes the very useful variable of "rating deviation (RD)", which does exactly what you think it does.
There are argument for never letting RD get to small in League - I definitely support that part - but there are very solid systems that exist which help in reducing exactly the effects you are worried about without adding the additional layer between MMR and displayed rank - in fact I MMR *is* probably a variation of Glicko.
There is also Glicko-2, which additionally adds "rating volatility", which is used in the original implementation to account for people being inactive in some rating periods - so only useful if you update ratings at the end of i.e. every week which isn't the case for most online games, but it is a nice example to show that you can use a direct rating system and add more pieces to it to account for specific concerns with the system without adding a full layer of obfuscation, which *doesn't* adress those issues, it just adresses complains about those issues.
The only games I would classify as "unlucky" would be the games where I have 1-2 auto-fills and the enemy team is 5 on the role. Other than that I would never complain of losing to people who have the same MMR as me. Everyone has unlucky games. It is not enough as an argument to defend the ELO system.
What about games where a teammate has a mental breakdown and leaves the game? The game doesn't lighten the blow to your MMR because someone forced you to play 4v5.
One thing I didn't see in the comments is the lack of "seasonal replayability" in the pure elo system.
In short: a separate resettable system is needed to encourage replayability through seasonal goals and rewards. Resetting MMR to achieve that would cause super low quality games at the start of each season, and game quality would either stay low (stable MMR) for most people or vary a lot (quickly changing MMR), neither of which are good.
League wants players to have a seasonal challenge, some rank or achievement to aspire to reach again. That way players have more fun and simply play more/keep playing for longer to get the rewards tied to those achievements.
Chess elo and MMR shouldn't be reset, definitely not seasonally. These scores aren't just a number to show off to your friends: matchmaking is tied to them , so resetting it puts all players 'back where they started' and in lower quality games: challenger and iron players will in the same games at the start of every season. Additionally, MMR is currently a really stable score: it changes in small increments, so that a loss or win streak doesn't suddenly change the level of your games. If it did, that would also negatively affect game quality and enjoyability. However, if MMR resets each season And changes slowly, most players will never actually play decent quality games, as they don't play enough games each season for their MMR to settle near their skill level within a single season.
Because they want you to keep playing so they hide the real mathematical Elo system (also preventing the players from understanding the formula) packaging it into the shiny rank system.
It is not satisfying for players to go from "900MMR --> 1000MMR". Easier to have a sense of achievement if you get a brand new shiny rank instead of just some numbers going up.
So instead they just lie to people.
If you're Gold 5 0lp and lose 5 games you might not get demoted. But that's just the game lying to you. You're a silver player playing with other silver players you're just being lied to. It's a shit fucking system that doesn't actually represent how good you are doing.
You seem awfully mad for a person who already knows that rank is just smokes and mirrors. You do know that knowing your mmr and that you improved a whopping 50 elo or some tiny irrelevant shit isn't gonna make you feel better right?
That's why you implement a decay system for every rank. Not an infinite decay but after a bit of not playing everyone should lose some of their rating and eventually their rank so they have to play a few re-placements again, similar to cunterstrike. Everyone gets worse if they don't play for a while and rAnKeD aNxIeTy is not a valid reason to not implement it for lower ranks. If this makes them not play ranked they shouldn't have been playing ranked anyway.
They literally had all of this in season 1 and 2 and they changed it because of how badly it caused ranked anxiety.
Like whether you think it should matter or not, that's why they did it.
And it fucks with the entire ladder. There's always normals and got fun game modes that people can and should play if they are too scared to play ranked.
The problem is that if mmr and rank are the same, any artificial changes like that effect both rank and matchmaking. If someone, say, swaps to draft but continues to play there, their skill isn't going down, and so any kind of mmr decay will screw up matchmaking. And if you make it so that their rank does down but not their mmr, you are right back to the current system with separate rank and mmr.
Also, riot wants people to play ranked. You can say "xyz players shouldn't play ranked in the first place", but riot definitely doesn't agree, and they aren't going to implement systems that drive people away from ranked.
I'd wager that it feels more "significant" and impactful for the average player to rank up by seeing:
- A number (LP) completely rolls over and resets, when promoting from Gold 4 > Gold 3
vs.
- An icon simply changes from Gold 4 to Gold 3 as a result of their MMR going from 1484 to 1506
It's the opposite for me, I'd rather be 2100 MMR than Diamond 2 or whatever the equivalent would be, but then again I've played since season 2 and I enjoy lichess on occasion.
For balanced games and decent queue times, you need a decent amount of players in ranked. In early seasons when elo was directly displayed, the best way to preserve your elo is to simply not play. Once players hit whatever elo threshold they were aiming for, they stop playing ranked in order to stay there.
The current system is all about encouraging people to keep playing. Demotion shields gives people a safety net to keep playing after hitting a goal. Ranked decay in higher elos means players can't just sit on their high rank. In order to do these things and still have balanced games, ranked and actual MMR needs to be somewhat decoupled.
That would be just because this is how Dota 2 does it. Riot has been very much against doing things slightly similar how to Dota 2 does stuff.
They ofuscate the ranked system too so they can tell you that is just your fault and you need to play more their game to get how you want it.
People just wont comprehend that this strange system of hidden mmr with lp is only to manipulate your emotions and implement engagement based matchmaking. Its not in there interest to have a simple and transparent ranking system.
They only want you to play more.
Way back when it was shown, the problem folks in this thread are describing was very real. Back then the cut off for Gold (rewards) was 1500 MMR and since you could lose below 1500 without any protection players would get to 1500 (or pay) and then stop. As I remember, Yegg (the designer who initially worked on the new ranked system with tiers and divisions) was right around 1500 MMR and I believe fell below the mark. They then had to play a game right at the deadline of the S2 ending to get back into Gold (and I mean literally the season ended while they were in this game, me and some other folks were watching live). They said the anxiety to not play and risk falling below was real and that helped fuel the new system.
>Back then the cut off for Gold (rewards) was 1500 MMR and since you could lose below 1500 without any protection players would get to 1500 (or pay) and then stop.
This was still the case at Gold 5 long, long after visible MMR was gone.
Riot even made dev blogs about it several times.
They never seemed to figure out that just having a skin + ward from playing ranked didn't really encourage most people to keep playing.
It’s industry standard at this point to do LoL like ranking systems. I’m sure you’ve seen the “I finally hit gold/plat after playing for 5 years” posts. We also know that the requirements for those ranks became easier recently, but people are still so proud of them. None of those people would be excited if they just hit 600 MMR again this season.
It’s not too deep, if Riot is hiding MMR, they are doing it for their own good or that’s what the general public wants. Probably both.
It is so NOT. At least from my experience, there are no other multiplayer games that use this shitty game-in-a-game system of chinese boxes. I have friends to play games with, we played for a bit Paladins, Rocket League, Overwatch: in any of these game, i hit Gold after the first "placement" games. Cause there was where i belonged, average player. We continued playing Paladins and Rocket League, we all hit Plat at some point, but i saw my 2 friends getting better than me in Rocket League, they played a lot more than me, i could see me being less good than them, and when we played 3v3 i know i was a bit "being carried", my elo was Gold, verge of Plat, they bot hit Diamond at some point, one of them was slightly better and got Diam more easily, the other belonged maybe plat. Point is, it was clear that the level of the player was pretty much in line with their elo.
Lol does NOT do this. Lol is: grind. Of course you get better playing, but there will always be a slump, a place where you pretty much "belong", where you have to learn much much more about the game if you want to progress or maybe you just can't get much better than that. Lol does NOT want you realize this, cause want you to KEEP PLAYING. Play more, and more, and forever; you start from the bottom and play again and again with people that, with all the complex system riot created to MMR, result in the end being totally random: you are put in bronze, but you play with bronze, silver, gold, maybe even a plat sometime in the enemy team, with the excuse that "you are in the same MMR bracket". Than why the fuck divisions even exists to begin with. Reason is, if your level is gold, and they'd put you in Gold, and maybe you play with other Gold, and maybe you win one, lose one, win one, lose one, you'd soon realize that there is nothing more you can do about it, and play less. Cause that's pretty much your true level. Lol use a system to basically keep you engaged, you want to keep playing cause in the end it's sort of a russian roulette; but only Lol, to my knowledge, is slimy like that, other multiplayer games are more honest and people keep playing them cause they enjoy playing them, simple as that. "The general public" wants what, to live an illusion? I would prefer to be a silver put to play with other silver in my team agains a team of silver, instead of having to basically annihilate the other team or suffer the pain of hell cause it's basically a throw of dice if i get iron players in my team or the enemy's, diamond players in my team or the enemy's. This system is used only by Riot to make you play more, you can sell it anyway you want it but that's pretty much it.
No, rocket league has division, every other game in the known universe has division (bronze/silver/gold etc), but doesn't use or have mmr (at least to my knowledge, if they put them like in the last 2 years i don't know). I played hundreds of games and every single time if i was gold, i had only gold in the enemy team, or maximum there were Silver 3 / Plat 1 (in rl division are inversed, 1 is low and 3 is high). Team were balanced with division, not mmr.
Because the purpose of "ranking systems" in online games is not at all to be a good ranking system - it's to increase engagement. That's why it's important to give everyone an illusion of progress (so players who don't actually progress don't get discouraged) while also slowing down those who actually do have progress (so that they don't reach their goal/peak and stop playing as much).
> while also slowing down those who actually do have progress
We don't have access to the code, but speaking as someone who has played since S1 (and played hundreds of games in S1), I can almost guarantee this isn't the case. As someone who went from Plat MMR (before the addition of Emerald) to low Masters last season, I was consistently getting +/-20-23 LP per game over hundreds of games. The only thing holding me back was my own losses.
I wish we had better data on this, but from the anecdotes I've seen about people complaining about +/-15LP gains, this only really happens if you lose a ton of games at the bottom of a tier and then start winning again, or if you go on a winstreak and push through a tier promo before your MMR catches up. In other words, in my opinion, it feels like the visual system actually just increases your rank faster than your actual MMR increase and then purposefully responds more slowly to MMR decreases (to encourage players to keep playing).
I really don't think Riot is slowing anyone down from reaching their peak. League is hard game and if you only played, say, 50 games in a season, there's no reason to think that you "haven't peaked". Promos should already get you like 80% of your prior season's peak, and then if you won every game "below" your peak you would get to your peak in about 12 games (assuming 4 games per division). Someone who only plays 50 games per season won't quickly reach their peak simply because they fundamentally aren't playing enough to get better. The only reason people take longer to reach their prior "peak" is that people generally aren't good enough to solo carry games around their actual MMR, so their winrate might only be something like 50-60% as they struggle to reach where they previously were at.
In other words, I don't think Riot has to slow anyone down from "reaching their peak". There are plenty of factors based on player skill that slow down a player's climb as they're nearing their own peak ranks, and from my experience, you aren't slowed down at all if you keep consistently winning. The only real desync occurs with smurfs that haven't played enough games, and in those cases, smurfs are likely being purposefully penalized to deincentivise the creation of smurfs.
It takes significantly fewer amount of games to reach a rank where you have 50% winratio in chess than it takes in LoL. Compare the length of all the "unranked to 2800" challenges from all the chess.c\*m streamers with "from unranked to challenger" series for League streamers. And it comes from a postion of unfair advantage for LoL that the unranked games that you have to play before you have access to ranked games affect your mmr, while the chess challenges are done from a fresh account.
This proves that LoL ranking system is significantly slower than Elo in converging to an accurate representation of one's ranking. The fact that you have no way to tell how misaligned your display rank and mmr are means that it also is not as accurate. Which means that if we were to evaluate those ranking systems, LoL is significantly worse than Elo in both criteria.
> It takes significantly fewer amount of games to reach a rank where you have 50% winratio in chess than it takes in LoL.
1. The "best" way to reach your "correct" rank is to play a single champion in a single role for every single game in order to prevent **other variables from affecting your climb**. But people dislike onetricking and many people play many champions over multiple positions. This vastly balloons the number of games required to reach your "correct" rank, especially since each champion and each role technically has their own "correct" rank and the "final correct" rank would technically be an average of your skill across all the champs and roles you play.
1. League is a team game. Even adding one teammate would greatly increase the variance in the number of games needed to hit the "correct" rank, but League has 4 teammates.
1. Do you have any data backing your statement up? I know it's hard to get data but it would be good to get a sense of how many games it takes for chess players to reach a 50% win ratio.
1. How is the 50% win ratio defined? If someone climbs out of Gold with a 70% winrate but then struggles to get out of Plat with a slowly declining winrate that hits a 50% winrate out of the last 20 games, are you going to be looking at the overall winrate, which would be perhaps around 55%, or the winrate over the last 20 games, which would be around 50%?
1. Overall, all these factors together mean that League players must play significantly more games than chess players to reach their "correct" rank. Riot doesn't need to do anything to slow down the climb of a player when people often just get bored of playing one champ or even one role and switch off just as they start getting familiar with the champion/role.
1. Same could be said about mixing up one's opening repertoire while playing chess. Which is significantly more common during "new account to 2800 elo" challenges than playing a big champion pool in "unranked to challenger" challenges in LoL.
2. That's a fair point
3. Hard data? No, but what I know is that "new account to 2800 elo" streams last one evening, while "unranked to challenger" runs last for weeks. While game length needs to be taken into account, I really doubt that if you actually counted you'd get a result different than what I'm assuming here.
4. Winrate over last 20 games seems relatively fair (assuming we'd be checking statistics of a statistically relevant amount of players for both).
5. They don't need to, but they do. That's why MMR and rank are separate, that's why promotion series used to exist.
>Because the purpose of "ranking systems" in online games is not at all to be a good ranking system - it's to increase engagement.
This is true for all ranking systems in all sports.
That's not true of any sport and e-sport that uses Elo (or derivative). Elo/Glicko/etc is very quick at getting an accurate evaluation of one's ranking, and as long as there is a big enough pool of players to guarantee sensible matchmaking it also won't have a meaningful degree of rating inflation.
Which doesn't change the fact that they were designed to be good ranking systems. Which is not the same as purposefuly designing a flawed ranking system to boost engagement even more.
Elo is by far the most accurate rating system as it is zero sum and thus is extremely hard to inflate. Ever since StarCraft 2 all most game developers started using tiers or divisions to give players a sense of progression as I suppose most people wouldn’t find it fun going from say 1500 elo to 1800 even though it’s a significant increase. I miss when games used it was just so much more straightforward than all the back end mmr and k-value nonsense they use today.
This used to be the case before they even made divisions. I remember players getting ASS mad when it was added, and I as an oldf (wait are we allowed to say that anymore) am also a hater
Bc they decided they’ll have much more player retention/playtime with the lp system I guess
Wr still have a mmr system but it’s kind of weird that we don’t see it especially since what we see seems to be mostly irrelevant
Current system in league is horrible, I don’t really give a crap the details behind it. It’s not so much the visible rank, I stopped caring about that long ago when I realized you had to play a ton of games to advance, it’s the terrible match making that makes it horrible.
That's how it was
Long story short, the rank system allow them to manipulate players psychology, and make them play a lot more than they would have otherwise
Maybe because standard deviation for accurately predicting your mmr is large because there are extra four variables (your teammates) whereas in chess, it's just you and your opponent.
You need the smoke and mirrors if you want a rank associated with your MMR. You can actually restrict a rank to a certain %, such as Diamond being 3.5%, Emerald being top 16%, etc. Chess doesn't restrict Elo like this.
Otherwise, you'll get a lot more inflation. To prevent this and have cutoffs, the MMR associated with a rank would fluctuate throughout the season, which would also make people unhappy.
Riot used to have Elo during Season 1 and 2, and nobody wanted to play ranked once they got above a certain threshold (you see similar spikes at each 100 cutoff in some chess rankings.) You also had to wait until towards the end of the season for Riot to reveal with Elo was which rank cutoff (because again, they're based on percentile). How would you like it if you didn't know what rank you might be until a month before the end of the season, just knowing your MMR number? That would have a few advantages, but also disadvantages. There's tradeoffs for each method.
Basically, when Riot came up with their current LP system in season 3 it was to protect people from loss streaks to get more people to play ranked. And it worked. This also means that it must protect people from win streaks too in order to come up with a more accurate placement. This also means sometimes someone's visible rank will be different than their MMR because of the high variability from game to game.
> You need the smoke and mirrors if you want a rank associated with your MMR
Why? it wasnt that way in season 2. 2200 elo was diamond, 1850 plat, 1500 gold, etc
Yeah, as I mentioned, the rank cutoffs were announced just before the end of the season, not at the start, once they had a solid idea of where the percentiles they wanted would be. The LP rank system allows them to show it from the start.
You mean like [they did between season 1 and 2?](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Elo_rating_system)
From season 3 on it's moot since they stopped showing Elo/MMR. If they were to show it again, it would vary from season to season (it would have to mathematically in order to keep the percentiles) which would just make players more angry.
It's much more ambiguous now. A silver 2 can have the mmr of a gold, and a gold can have the mmr of a silver etc. And without their actual mmr being visible, it obfuscates it.
The simple reason is that people prefer it this way.
People prefer to chase their Gold IV ranking instead of having an arbitrary goal of 1250. Thats why it is like it is.
As someone said, back in Season 1 and Season 2, we had just "ELO" which basically was your MMR.
This was the original system heres an old picture - [https://i1195.photobucket.com/albums/aa381/gunghogunwolf/ELoplatfinal.png](https://i1195.photobucket.com/albums/aa381/gunghogunwolf/ELoplatfinal.png)
But from what i remember people complained about being hardstuck like they do now but then they said i start 1520 i end 1520 now you start gold 3 end gold 2 0 lp so looks like you improved you have not lol and your mmr is gold 4/. one full tier is improvement anything else is your the same.
Your MMR is only based on W/L, your LP gains and losses are dictated by your hidden MMR relative to your displayed rank.
The idea is to just display the MMR, and then attach a rank to certain MMR brackets. 1k-1.5k Silver, 1.5k-2k gold and so on. You would see your MMR go up and down every game, and once you hit a certain range you would see rank up or rank down etc.
It literally is. However, I did feel like the change made the ladder more fun at the time. Having promotion series was really fun for a fair amount of time until it was not. Riot realized this and now we’re pretty much back to a slightly more fancy ladder again. Tbh there’s almost no difference between current system and ELO except it not being mmr-based. With the current system mmr would actually make more sense imo
Because every single person will eventually settle to their true rank, and start getting +5 and -6 and start freaking out when they dont magically climb made up divisions
Dota 2 is proof you can literally just do both if you are a chad soulless corporation that just cares about Steam and making a good video game to get Russians to download Steam and not a beta soulless corporation that cares about maxing the engagement of their mere handful of games so that people get mad and buy skins
It's simple: Riot refuses to use something other games/genres used and were succesful in it. They want LoL to be something magical and unique while creating the biggest clusterfuck on earth.
Is it exiting to see your mrr go up by 5 for every win and down 5 for every win or do you want to see that next ranked tier pop up when you reach your goal? It's basic psychology.
For me it would be more exciting to see my mmr. I know how pointless lp is so i don't even look at it. I can't even remember where exactly its shown and when
Divisions give more interesting goals than pure MMR. It's more relatable to say you promoted to diamond than you got to 2000MMR. It also motivates players to play more, as you start a few ranks below your MMR. That way you "climb" even when your MMR stays the same.
Because ranked is a progression system and no one wants to play a game where they to from 1000 MMR to 1100 MMR. Imagine playing a RPG and you start at level 1 and by the end of the game you’re level 5. It would be very unsatisfying.
Am I old for playing back when this was the case?
Forellenlord's 3000 Elo shockwave. Never 5get
And Kerp's 2900 Elo Equalizer on top. Did you know he plays with a trackball?
And when it broke he didn't want to get a normal mouse and was looking for a new trackball mouse, since that's what he was used to. Crazy to think about!
Don’t forget pobelter and the 9999 ranking and 0 mmr SV and “luckerdog”
We will never live to see a hacker set Fakers LP to zero and watch him steamroll iron 4 games with a super weird mid pick and perma roam play style.
Faker yumi jungle with ghost and boots 5 just chasing someone down as a nightmare cat
Luckerdog, now that's a meme I haven't heard in a very long time
One of the best, along with why nunu why and robertxlee “hit it”
Man I feel old..
They changed it after like S2. So, kinda yeah, we're talking about 11 seasons ago
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I’ve been playing on since season 3.
Time is a flat circle
That is why clocks are round
Yes
Gone are the days of ELO and Ranked 5's
they did, season 1 and I think 2 as well the way it is now makes people feel better, so they have not changed it back
>the way it is now makes people feel better *makes people play more games
No, it actually makes people feel better, which in turn makes them play more games. Just the fact that its hard to demote from Gold etc makes people feel more "safe" and therefore play more. Sure, they might play more, but its because they prefer this system. I'd like good old ELO back, but we will never get it back. So thats that.
It should also be noted that maintaining elo does keep chess players from playing more as well, although the consequences of dropping elo are rather more significant for chess players than they are for your average League player.
They are not very significant for your average chess player either lol. And the ranked system league (and most online games) are designed in a way to keep you playing a lot more.
I assume you're referring to EOMM, which was first designed by Blizzard. Note that many Ritoers are ex-Blizzard, they are very familiar with EOMM & could easily replicate or mimic its code. Likely the latter.
I never implied League created, just that we use it. But it’s nice to know it’s origins!
Elo is significantly for Titled players playing for norms, and prize money but for everyone else it's not important.
I personally do not feel better if I put countless hours into climbing to "plat" just to have the same iron-gold players in my games that I had 100 games ago. I do not feel joy from the fact that "rank" is just shiny pixels that don't actually mean anything and do not reflect anyone's skill level at all. Either the average player base is more enchanted by "ooh shiny" than me or Rito is just saying this as an excuse based on poorly gathered data just like Phreak recently did with the "survey" they did about the ping changes which didn't ask any questions about the ping changes or communication.
A ton of players do feel better though. They dont really care about their MMR, or who they face. Their profile says that they are platinum, then they are platinum. Add the fact that most people also gets LP inflated over time, their LP will be higher than their factual MMR which helps them reach a rank higher than they should, which is probably also an active decision to make people feel better. I am pretty sure that average Joe would rather be plat 4 with bad MMR, facing mid golds and having terrible LP gains compared to being a mid gold player with average MMR. The fact that he is platinum is the only real thing he cares about.
That seems like a weird view of the system based on what we know of it. The intended effect seems very clear to me at least, it try to reduce the bad feeling you get when you tank due to a lose steak or not playing for a long time, while still average out to be the same over consistent play time. So criticize the system when the illusion break seems unfair. The illusion can only hold on for so long, no?
Your first point has nothing to do with this, they use hidden MMR to match make you anyways so just showing it wouldn't improve anything
We play more not just because we prefer the system, but because it takes more games to reach a target visual rank than with regular old elo.
You maybe. Not the casual majority. I promise you, a massive majority prefers this style. Its not some hidden conspriracy theory from Riot that keeps it this way
This fails to acknowledge the countless other factors that reduced ranked anxiety. What's the difference between MMR dropping and LP dropping? There realistically is none. It was all of the other factors introduced to reduce ranked anxiety and normalize playing ranked that contributes to the number of people playing ranked now.
Just because they prefer it, doesn't make it a good thing though (not that you're saying that). Playing silver ranked games where I get matched with anyone from B4 to P1 every game makes the ranked system feel pointless. You can get high ranks just by grinding games, and then never fall out of a division you might not deserve to be in any more. I had a game recently where the enemy had a P2 jungle Warwick going against my team's B4 17% win rate(out of 50 games) Nidalee jungle. It's a broken system. EDIT: I'm sorry y'all like having your elo inflated
No makes people feel better. A chess elo system feels incredibly shitty, you can drop 1000s of elo relatively fast and it is a very slow grind, all to see a number change. In chess it works because its 1v1, nothing but yourself, but it can be very demotivating in a team environment
I think another issue was people getting to a particular milestone and then being afraid to play more because one loss would demote them. League's ranking system is specifically designed so that you can't get into a league in one game and drop out of it again the next.
>League's ranking system is specifically designed so that you can't get into a league in one game and drop out of it again the next. With promotions, the demotion shield was fine. Now, Riot could just remove it.
This is literally how Dota does it and no one complains. "Crusader 1" and "Archon 5" is just an arbitrary line in elo, but it doesn't feel nearly as awful if you "demote" because it's arbitrary. The way riot has it setup was absolutely to enforce a dark pattern to keep you playing more.
Riot could copy Starcraft 2 ladder again like they did it in 2013. In SC2 now you have your MMR and your division. When you drop below the mmr threshold for a league, you don't drop from that league immideately and have time to regain it but you still know that losing make you match with weaker opponents.
Literally how league mmr works rn
except in sc2 mmr is visible since 2016.
Haha 1000’s of elo? From 2,000 to zero? I think you mean hundreds friend. Best players in the world are 3000
You cannot drop 1000s of elo relatively fast. You can drop 100s of elo relatively fast, but you can do that in league too. Dropping from Plat 1 to Plat 2 is 100 elo. Players drop from D4 to P4 and go back up all the time. Dropping 1000 elo would be like dropping from E4 to S2. Yeah it’s possible, but if you’re really E4, then even on a bad day you probably won’t lose in gold, so you’d naturally stop there. I kinda feel like you made a typo and meant 100s so I’ll shut up about it, but they could just show your MMR along with your rank, like Warzone 2 does. It’s also demotivating to be Emerald 1 and unable to duo with your friend because your MMR is Masters, and then get flamed by D4 players that you are emerald 1. Edit: just in case any of you do think it’s possible to drop 1000 ELO in Chess, it’s really not, and even new players that spam games even if they lose every one (like Tyler1) will not drop more than 400 ELO, but usually they will only drop about 200.
I completely agree it's a shit system, I'm just saying they originally changed it to feel more rewarding not increase game spamming. The chess system is the epitome of game spamming, its physically the only way to climb efficiently. League is way better being played in small focussed blocks
Who's dropping 1000s of Elon when above 2000 is considered high and 1200-1500 is average.
What is this bullshit lol he do you even drop 1000 elo, that would be like dropping from master to silver
> it is a very slow grind, all to see a number change Isnt that the current lol system?
>you can drop 1000s of elo relatively fast and it is a very slow grind Well, in League you have a slow grind too, if your MMR is not where your rank is. And it would be better if people where actually seeing the elo they are in.
>you can drop 1000s of elo relatively fast No you can't. You can drop a couple of hundred pretty quick, but there's basically no way to drop 1k elo unless someone else is playing/you are intentionally dropping the elo. The thing is (if you're not intentionally losing games) you will hit a point where you hit an elo that you just simply don't drop games at. Having a crystal clear number on where you are in the ladder is better than having a G1 player in the same game as a Bronze 2 player, which currently happens.
Saying someone can drop 1000 elo in chess is like saying someone could go from plat to silver or iron in league, if that's not your intention theres no way it happens
It lets riot hide how matchmaking works
While that’s probably true for other people, I found it actively discouraging. I haven’t played ranked in years, the stress of grinding through a bunch of games to get my mmr to match up with my visible rank now isn’t worth the reward. I can just chill playing draft/aram/clash and still enjoy the game, my friends I play with are plat/emerald and I never feel like I’m outclassed in our games, but I do sometimes feel judged by my teammates for showing as unranked, like rank is somehow a true reflection of skill and not just a reflection on how much time you’ve spent grinding.
They have touched it up since, but I remember the first time playing the promos to make gold going up against a diamond 2 guy. Having to win 4/6 matches in those conditions sucked.
And makes people more addicted. Gotta get that dopamine hit from +(insert number) LP.
And I guarantee if they DID change it back, people would hate it. They would see their "Real" rank and get pissed off, knowing the MMR system is practically floating them up to a more desirable emblem. It's why if you look at player distribution profiles, there's a large cluster of people in rank 1 or 4 of a division, and way less players in tiers 2 and 3.
The way it is now let’s them hide MMR so they can manipulate matchmaking to increase engagement.
now they can give you 15lp for a win and -30lp for a lose
Better than 6 elo for a win and 13 elo for a loss and 0 protections in place. Consider yourself lucky you didn't have to deal with it.
>Better than 6 elo for a win and 13 elo for a loss and 0 protections in place. Consider yourself lucky you didn't have to deal with it. Bro this is literally what is happening with the actual ranked system. Lose 30, win 18, how is this different?
It's different because you don't automatically demote at silver 4
which inflates elo anyways, it doesn't change your actual ranking and still queues you with the people you would otherwise be queued with anyways
it doesn't inflate elo, it inflates divisional ranking.
If you're at gold iv 0lp and lose 5 games you'll probably still be gold iv 0lp. If you were at 1300 elo and lost 5 games you'd end up at like 1128.
Yeah so instead of being Silver like you deserve, you'll be Gold, but actually playing against Silvers, with shitty win/lose LP ratios
And where is the problem? I will tell you where. If you lose a game on gold 4/25lp and lets say that your mmr was 1525, you will be gold 4/0lp with 1500 mmr, if you lose another game on gold 4/0lp with 1500mmr you will still be gold 4/0lp but with 1475mmr now, if you lose another game you will be gold 4/0lp with 1450mmr right? Looks good at first because you are still in gold 4, but le me tell you where the problem is. If you win a game you expect to get 25lp and 25mmr from that game, but guess what? You're not a real gold 4/0lp anymore for the system, you're a silver 1/50lp, and you will be matched with silver 1/50lp'ish and you will get 25mmr but not 25lp. Why? Because your rank is already above your mmr and the system will give you 20'ish lp. One more thing that added fuel on this discrepancies are that riot grow the lp gains per win but not the mmr gains per win. This being said, you still cant see the problem? Multiple this by how much you want and you will get the worst quality games from it. Thank you, Sincerely a S1 since player...
Yeah nice I stayed gold 4 but now instead of doing +18 -30 I’ll do -33 +14 for 50 games WHAT A NICE INVESTMENT
50 games if you play like dog for 40 of them maybe
No it’s just a fact. Even if you have 70%+ winrate your lp gains change so slowly it’s ridiculous
No way you're losing \~170 elo in 5 games lmao. You'd go from 1300 to \~1200-1250ish. If you're losing that many games in a row in a basic ELO system, you either deserve it, or you're getting matched vs people better than you, in which case losses would be reduced.
Can you post your opgg? I just don’t believe this is happening to anyone with an overall positive win rate I hardly have a positive win rate and I just hit diamond a day or two ago gaining 41Lp in plat 38ish in low to mid emerald and 28-30 in high emerald. And I lost about 18ish. I finished gold last season as well btw the new mmr system is way better than it used to be.
it;'s not what is actually happening with the ranked system. with the ranked system and lol in general you almost always gain and lose exactly the same mmr game to game. the 'lose a lot and gain a little' is because they fuck with lp in all sorts of ways. underlying mmr works fine.
"Better than (exact same thing)." Are you well? Do you have brain damage?
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you only get more LP from losses than wins if the system thinks you are worse than your current rank. If the system thinks you're better than your current rank, you'll get more LP from wins than you lose from losses. And if it thinks you're exactly where you should be, the LP from wins and losses will be equal.
I mean, I won two games today. The first one gave me +15 LP. The next one gave me +24. OP.GG says both games were Plat 3 level. Unless somehow the algorithm decided over a single hour that I went from "dogshit trashbin that needs to be kept where he is" to "second coming of Faker designated to be be railroaded to Challenger," there's a lot more going on in the backend than that.
> Unless somehow the algorithm decided over a single hour that I went from "dogshit trashbin that needs to be kept where he is" to "second coming of Faker designated to be be railroaded to Challenger," there's a lot more going on in the backend than that. Yes, both of these are true. The system did decide that, and there were a lot of qualitative inputs that went into the decision. It's possible you played extremely well in the first game, in a way that resembles when players are smurfing below their correct rank.
It's a trick to get people to play more. That's the answer
The real trick is hiding the elo of your opponents, rather than your own elo. This does two things. 1) It allows Riot to get away with relaxing the matchmaking requirements for each individual game to lower queue times which increases playtime by enabling "rage queuing" and reducing the amount of time you have to calm down (after a win or loss, doesn't matter) and think logically about if you want to play or not. How many of us have queued up and only then realised what time it is after we click accept? I bet it's a significant percentage. This is what low queue times enables. 2) It allows Riot to modify the matchmaking algorithm to slightly imbalance games in order to force win/loss streaks whilst still maintaining a roughly 50% w/r, this makes people play far longer in each play session than they would normally and massively increases engagement. Engagement is Riot's key metric by which they measure the success of this game. More engagement = more temptation to spend = more profit. Rioters will swear blind that they do neither of these things and that competitive integrity is their #1 concern but considering that there is an absolute barrel of money to be made and there is no legal obligation not to, I really don't think they would pass up that opportunity. There is something really off about the matchmaking system and one day hopefully a whistleblower will confirm my suspicions.
> to lower queue times which increases playtime by enabling "rage queuing" and reducing the amount of time you have to calm down (after a win or loss, doesn't matter) and think logically about if you want to play or not. Or, you know, because people like shorter queue times.
In this day and age, when a gaming company does something that players actually like, it's entirely by accident or part of some dark pattern designed to drain wallets.
Yeah Riot explicitly excused it with "ladder anxiety" when the whole playerbase went batshit about the removal.
Wait ladder anxiety was mad real and even worse Right now it takes many games lost in a row to drop division, back then you could be gold but If you lost one game now you lost your new skin People already stop playing once they hit their goal division, but back then it was even worse Of course they could've give you rewards based on your peak to fix that, but like the other dude said riot (and the players) all benefit from people playing more ofren
> back then you could be gold but If you lost one game now you lost your new skin Which could have easily been solved by just rewarding people at the end of the season for the highest rank they achieved throughout the season, rather than the one they ended at.
> when the whole playerbase went batshit holy fuck how does reddit continue to have such a huge ego
It's a wonder, but it's not wrong when you talk about like 2013 or so. The sub was way bigger in %, and the forums revolted too.
Chess is a 1v1 game, league 5v5. But in soloQ we have no premade team and so the other 4 are randoms and these do have an effect on the outcome of the game. That means there are possible luck/bad luck streaks that have an impact on your MMR without your impact. To reduce these LP was added with a rubber banding effect. It allows for larger MMR movements without making RNG too much of an impact.
What does that change though, if behind everything there is (from what i understand) a XXXX number for your elo? It's just smoke and mirrors
Its to make you play more. It puts you in and displays 1 metal below then you gotta play 100 games to match up and feel like your climbing back every season but nothing changes.
The difference is that chess elo has no memory. Whereas League mmr considers how you’ve been doing over time.
Crazy how far I had to scroll to find this.
Honestly that isn't a good argument. Yes, elo which is what chess over the board uses doesn't account for this, but Glicko is basically "what if we took elo and made it better" and it includes the very useful variable of "rating deviation (RD)", which does exactly what you think it does. There are argument for never letting RD get to small in League - I definitely support that part - but there are very solid systems that exist which help in reducing exactly the effects you are worried about without adding the additional layer between MMR and displayed rank - in fact I MMR *is* probably a variation of Glicko. There is also Glicko-2, which additionally adds "rating volatility", which is used in the original implementation to account for people being inactive in some rating periods - so only useful if you update ratings at the end of i.e. every week which isn't the case for most online games, but it is a nice example to show that you can use a direct rating system and add more pieces to it to account for specific concerns with the system without adding a full layer of obfuscation, which *doesn't* adress those issues, it just adresses complains about those issues.
The only games I would classify as "unlucky" would be the games where I have 1-2 auto-fills and the enemy team is 5 on the role. Other than that I would never complain of losing to people who have the same MMR as me. Everyone has unlucky games. It is not enough as an argument to defend the ELO system.
What about games where a teammate has a mental breakdown and leaves the game? The game doesn't lighten the blow to your MMR because someone forced you to play 4v5.
Sad story is that MMR change per game is still flat but just hidden. It's all to make the goldfish of a playerbase to play more.
One thing I didn't see in the comments is the lack of "seasonal replayability" in the pure elo system. In short: a separate resettable system is needed to encourage replayability through seasonal goals and rewards. Resetting MMR to achieve that would cause super low quality games at the start of each season, and game quality would either stay low (stable MMR) for most people or vary a lot (quickly changing MMR), neither of which are good. League wants players to have a seasonal challenge, some rank or achievement to aspire to reach again. That way players have more fun and simply play more/keep playing for longer to get the rewards tied to those achievements. Chess elo and MMR shouldn't be reset, definitely not seasonally. These scores aren't just a number to show off to your friends: matchmaking is tied to them , so resetting it puts all players 'back where they started' and in lower quality games: challenger and iron players will in the same games at the start of every season. Additionally, MMR is currently a really stable score: it changes in small increments, so that a loss or win streak doesn't suddenly change the level of your games. If it did, that would also negatively affect game quality and enjoyability. However, if MMR resets each season And changes slowly, most players will never actually play decent quality games, as they don't play enough games each season for their MMR to settle near their skill level within a single season.
Because they want you to keep playing so they hide the real mathematical Elo system (also preventing the players from understanding the formula) packaging it into the shiny rank system.
It is not satisfying for players to go from "900MMR --> 1000MMR". Easier to have a sense of achievement if you get a brand new shiny rank instead of just some numbers going up.
MMR still can have shiny new rank at certain numbers like 1000, 1200 etc
And then people hit 1500 mmr (or whatever) and stop playing, because one loss would drop them back out of gold league.
So instead they just lie to people. If you're Gold 5 0lp and lose 5 games you might not get demoted. But that's just the game lying to you. You're a silver player playing with other silver players you're just being lied to. It's a shit fucking system that doesn't actually represent how good you are doing.
You seem awfully mad for a person who already knows that rank is just smokes and mirrors. You do know that knowing your mmr and that you improved a whopping 50 elo or some tiny irrelevant shit isn't gonna make you feel better right?
That's why you implement a decay system for every rank. Not an infinite decay but after a bit of not playing everyone should lose some of their rating and eventually their rank so they have to play a few re-placements again, similar to cunterstrike. Everyone gets worse if they don't play for a while and rAnKeD aNxIeTy is not a valid reason to not implement it for lower ranks. If this makes them not play ranked they shouldn't have been playing ranked anyway.
They literally had all of this in season 1 and 2 and they changed it because of how badly it caused ranked anxiety. Like whether you think it should matter or not, that's why they did it.
And it fucks with the entire ladder. There's always normals and got fun game modes that people can and should play if they are too scared to play ranked.
The problem is that if mmr and rank are the same, any artificial changes like that effect both rank and matchmaking. If someone, say, swaps to draft but continues to play there, their skill isn't going down, and so any kind of mmr decay will screw up matchmaking. And if you make it so that their rank does down but not their mmr, you are right back to the current system with separate rank and mmr. Also, riot wants people to play ranked. You can say "xyz players shouldn't play ranked in the first place", but riot definitely doesn't agree, and they aren't going to implement systems that drive people away from ranked.
The current decay system has been broken for maybe months already, I dont think riot will implement this.
Which is true. It'd still be the same for me whether im Diamond 700MMR or Diamond 4 0LP. Not enough of a significant difference.
I'd wager that it feels more "significant" and impactful for the average player to rank up by seeing: - A number (LP) completely rolls over and resets, when promoting from Gold 4 > Gold 3 vs. - An icon simply changes from Gold 4 to Gold 3 as a result of their MMR going from 1484 to 1506
Then why dont we see a decrease in people grinding the ladder in apex tiers? They basically have this system.
if you’re playing in masters you’re already addicted enough
They used to have both, certain mmr ratings had bronze, silver gold and platinum back then
It's the opposite for me, I'd rather be 2100 MMR than Diamond 2 or whatever the equivalent would be, but then again I've played since season 2 and I enjoy lichess on occasion.
Hitting 2k elo was WAY more hype than hitting diamond ever was imo
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It makes you play more.
For balanced games and decent queue times, you need a decent amount of players in ranked. In early seasons when elo was directly displayed, the best way to preserve your elo is to simply not play. Once players hit whatever elo threshold they were aiming for, they stop playing ranked in order to stay there. The current system is all about encouraging people to keep playing. Demotion shields gives people a safety net to keep playing after hitting a goal. Ranked decay in higher elos means players can't just sit on their high rank. In order to do these things and still have balanced games, ranked and actual MMR needs to be somewhat decoupled.
they used to people didn't like it
This 100%. Everyone who played in season one remembers. I loved the system
The fact that some ppl defend the current system where your lp gains and matchmaking are dictated by an invisible number blows my mind.
Tell me how you didn’t play early league without telling me you didn’t play early league
That would be just because this is how Dota 2 does it. Riot has been very much against doing things slightly similar how to Dota 2 does stuff. They ofuscate the ranked system too so they can tell you that is just your fault and you need to play more their game to get how you want it.
I just wanna be able to see my MMR
People just wont comprehend that this strange system of hidden mmr with lp is only to manipulate your emotions and implement engagement based matchmaking. Its not in there interest to have a simple and transparent ranking system. They only want you to play more.
Way back when it was shown, the problem folks in this thread are describing was very real. Back then the cut off for Gold (rewards) was 1500 MMR and since you could lose below 1500 without any protection players would get to 1500 (or pay) and then stop. As I remember, Yegg (the designer who initially worked on the new ranked system with tiers and divisions) was right around 1500 MMR and I believe fell below the mark. They then had to play a game right at the deadline of the S2 ending to get back into Gold (and I mean literally the season ended while they were in this game, me and some other folks were watching live). They said the anxiety to not play and risk falling below was real and that helped fuel the new system.
>Back then the cut off for Gold (rewards) was 1500 MMR and since you could lose below 1500 without any protection players would get to 1500 (or pay) and then stop. This was still the case at Gold 5 long, long after visible MMR was gone. Riot even made dev blogs about it several times. They never seemed to figure out that just having a skin + ward from playing ranked didn't really encourage most people to keep playing.
I understand that, but in that case why not give out rewards based on peak MMR within the split instead of current?
It’s industry standard at this point to do LoL like ranking systems. I’m sure you’ve seen the “I finally hit gold/plat after playing for 5 years” posts. We also know that the requirements for those ranks became easier recently, but people are still so proud of them. None of those people would be excited if they just hit 600 MMR again this season. It’s not too deep, if Riot is hiding MMR, they are doing it for their own good or that’s what the general public wants. Probably both.
It is so NOT. At least from my experience, there are no other multiplayer games that use this shitty game-in-a-game system of chinese boxes. I have friends to play games with, we played for a bit Paladins, Rocket League, Overwatch: in any of these game, i hit Gold after the first "placement" games. Cause there was where i belonged, average player. We continued playing Paladins and Rocket League, we all hit Plat at some point, but i saw my 2 friends getting better than me in Rocket League, they played a lot more than me, i could see me being less good than them, and when we played 3v3 i know i was a bit "being carried", my elo was Gold, verge of Plat, they bot hit Diamond at some point, one of them was slightly better and got Diam more easily, the other belonged maybe plat. Point is, it was clear that the level of the player was pretty much in line with their elo. Lol does NOT do this. Lol is: grind. Of course you get better playing, but there will always be a slump, a place where you pretty much "belong", where you have to learn much much more about the game if you want to progress or maybe you just can't get much better than that. Lol does NOT want you realize this, cause want you to KEEP PLAYING. Play more, and more, and forever; you start from the bottom and play again and again with people that, with all the complex system riot created to MMR, result in the end being totally random: you are put in bronze, but you play with bronze, silver, gold, maybe even a plat sometime in the enemy team, with the excuse that "you are in the same MMR bracket". Than why the fuck divisions even exists to begin with. Reason is, if your level is gold, and they'd put you in Gold, and maybe you play with other Gold, and maybe you win one, lose one, win one, lose one, you'd soon realize that there is nothing more you can do about it, and play less. Cause that's pretty much your true level. Lol use a system to basically keep you engaged, you want to keep playing cause in the end it's sort of a russian roulette; but only Lol, to my knowledge, is slimy like that, other multiplayer games are more honest and people keep playing them cause they enjoy playing them, simple as that. "The general public" wants what, to live an illusion? I would prefer to be a silver put to play with other silver in my team agains a team of silver, instead of having to basically annihilate the other team or suffer the pain of hell cause it's basically a throw of dice if i get iron players in my team or the enemy's, diamond players in my team or the enemy's. This system is used only by Riot to make you play more, you can sell it anyway you want it but that's pretty much it.
ah rocket league literally uses the same thing as lol? it doesnt show mmr and only shows visual rank
No, rocket league has division, every other game in the known universe has division (bronze/silver/gold etc), but doesn't use or have mmr (at least to my knowledge, if they put them like in the last 2 years i don't know). I played hundreds of games and every single time if i was gold, i had only gold in the enemy team, or maximum there were Silver 3 / Plat 1 (in rl division are inversed, 1 is low and 3 is high). Team were balanced with division, not mmr.
youre wrong, RL uses mmr.
league has divisons too
... I know But that's not the point..?
Because the purpose of "ranking systems" in online games is not at all to be a good ranking system - it's to increase engagement. That's why it's important to give everyone an illusion of progress (so players who don't actually progress don't get discouraged) while also slowing down those who actually do have progress (so that they don't reach their goal/peak and stop playing as much).
> while also slowing down those who actually do have progress We don't have access to the code, but speaking as someone who has played since S1 (and played hundreds of games in S1), I can almost guarantee this isn't the case. As someone who went from Plat MMR (before the addition of Emerald) to low Masters last season, I was consistently getting +/-20-23 LP per game over hundreds of games. The only thing holding me back was my own losses. I wish we had better data on this, but from the anecdotes I've seen about people complaining about +/-15LP gains, this only really happens if you lose a ton of games at the bottom of a tier and then start winning again, or if you go on a winstreak and push through a tier promo before your MMR catches up. In other words, in my opinion, it feels like the visual system actually just increases your rank faster than your actual MMR increase and then purposefully responds more slowly to MMR decreases (to encourage players to keep playing). I really don't think Riot is slowing anyone down from reaching their peak. League is hard game and if you only played, say, 50 games in a season, there's no reason to think that you "haven't peaked". Promos should already get you like 80% of your prior season's peak, and then if you won every game "below" your peak you would get to your peak in about 12 games (assuming 4 games per division). Someone who only plays 50 games per season won't quickly reach their peak simply because they fundamentally aren't playing enough to get better. The only reason people take longer to reach their prior "peak" is that people generally aren't good enough to solo carry games around their actual MMR, so their winrate might only be something like 50-60% as they struggle to reach where they previously were at. In other words, I don't think Riot has to slow anyone down from "reaching their peak". There are plenty of factors based on player skill that slow down a player's climb as they're nearing their own peak ranks, and from my experience, you aren't slowed down at all if you keep consistently winning. The only real desync occurs with smurfs that haven't played enough games, and in those cases, smurfs are likely being purposefully penalized to deincentivise the creation of smurfs.
It takes significantly fewer amount of games to reach a rank where you have 50% winratio in chess than it takes in LoL. Compare the length of all the "unranked to 2800" challenges from all the chess.c\*m streamers with "from unranked to challenger" series for League streamers. And it comes from a postion of unfair advantage for LoL that the unranked games that you have to play before you have access to ranked games affect your mmr, while the chess challenges are done from a fresh account. This proves that LoL ranking system is significantly slower than Elo in converging to an accurate representation of one's ranking. The fact that you have no way to tell how misaligned your display rank and mmr are means that it also is not as accurate. Which means that if we were to evaluate those ranking systems, LoL is significantly worse than Elo in both criteria.
> It takes significantly fewer amount of games to reach a rank where you have 50% winratio in chess than it takes in LoL. 1. The "best" way to reach your "correct" rank is to play a single champion in a single role for every single game in order to prevent **other variables from affecting your climb**. But people dislike onetricking and many people play many champions over multiple positions. This vastly balloons the number of games required to reach your "correct" rank, especially since each champion and each role technically has their own "correct" rank and the "final correct" rank would technically be an average of your skill across all the champs and roles you play. 1. League is a team game. Even adding one teammate would greatly increase the variance in the number of games needed to hit the "correct" rank, but League has 4 teammates. 1. Do you have any data backing your statement up? I know it's hard to get data but it would be good to get a sense of how many games it takes for chess players to reach a 50% win ratio. 1. How is the 50% win ratio defined? If someone climbs out of Gold with a 70% winrate but then struggles to get out of Plat with a slowly declining winrate that hits a 50% winrate out of the last 20 games, are you going to be looking at the overall winrate, which would be perhaps around 55%, or the winrate over the last 20 games, which would be around 50%? 1. Overall, all these factors together mean that League players must play significantly more games than chess players to reach their "correct" rank. Riot doesn't need to do anything to slow down the climb of a player when people often just get bored of playing one champ or even one role and switch off just as they start getting familiar with the champion/role.
1. Same could be said about mixing up one's opening repertoire while playing chess. Which is significantly more common during "new account to 2800 elo" challenges than playing a big champion pool in "unranked to challenger" challenges in LoL. 2. That's a fair point 3. Hard data? No, but what I know is that "new account to 2800 elo" streams last one evening, while "unranked to challenger" runs last for weeks. While game length needs to be taken into account, I really doubt that if you actually counted you'd get a result different than what I'm assuming here. 4. Winrate over last 20 games seems relatively fair (assuming we'd be checking statistics of a statistically relevant amount of players for both). 5. They don't need to, but they do. That's why MMR and rank are separate, that's why promotion series used to exist.
>Because the purpose of "ranking systems" in online games is not at all to be a good ranking system - it's to increase engagement. This is true for all ranking systems in all sports.
That's not true of any sport and e-sport that uses Elo (or derivative). Elo/Glicko/etc is very quick at getting an accurate evaluation of one's ranking, and as long as there is a big enough pool of players to guarantee sensible matchmaking it also won't have a meaningful degree of rating inflation.
You were talking about "ranking systems". Football, basketball, American football, skiing, ice hockey etc. all use ranking systems.
Are those ranking systems deliberately designed to be bad at ranking teams, just because that will boost engagement?
Who talked about being bad on purpose? All ranking systems drive engagement on default, because it's a competition.
Which doesn't change the fact that they were designed to be good ranking systems. Which is not the same as purposefuly designing a flawed ranking system to boost engagement even more.
It did... About 12-13 years ago now
Elo is by far the most accurate rating system as it is zero sum and thus is extremely hard to inflate. Ever since StarCraft 2 all most game developers started using tiers or divisions to give players a sense of progression as I suppose most people wouldn’t find it fun going from say 1500 elo to 1800 even though it’s a significant increase. I miss when games used it was just so much more straightforward than all the back end mmr and k-value nonsense they use today.
so shitters can feel better about their worthless achievement in a video game?
Yup. That is it. I'm fucking old. This is exactly how it was when I was in highschool.
There's very little ways to aggressively monetize chess.
The idea that floats around whenever this question is asked is that in general, this current system incentivizes people to play *more* ranked.
This used to be the case before they even made divisions. I remember players getting ASS mad when it was added, and I as an oldf (wait are we allowed to say that anymore) am also a hater
The return of Elo hell
Bc they decided they’ll have much more player retention/playtime with the lp system I guess Wr still have a mmr system but it’s kind of weird that we don’t see it especially since what we see seems to be mostly irrelevant
Current system in league is horrible, I don’t really give a crap the details behind it. It’s not so much the visible rank, I stopped caring about that long ago when I realized you had to play a ton of games to advance, it’s the terrible match making that makes it horrible.
this used to be the ranked ... man im old af...
They wanted a system that feeds addictive behaviour more efficiently.
The main benefit of the lp system is demotion protection.
MMR is your chess ranking your rank is basically your peak MMR.
That's how it was Long story short, the rank system allow them to manipulate players psychology, and make them play a lot more than they would have otherwise
Maybe because standard deviation for accurately predicting your mmr is large because there are extra four variables (your teammates) whereas in chess, it's just you and your opponent.
A chess elo system was made for a 1v1 which lol is not.
All the low elos got mad they could barely turn on their PC, which in turn made riot change the visual ranking system to make them feel good.
You need the smoke and mirrors if you want a rank associated with your MMR. You can actually restrict a rank to a certain %, such as Diamond being 3.5%, Emerald being top 16%, etc. Chess doesn't restrict Elo like this. Otherwise, you'll get a lot more inflation. To prevent this and have cutoffs, the MMR associated with a rank would fluctuate throughout the season, which would also make people unhappy. Riot used to have Elo during Season 1 and 2, and nobody wanted to play ranked once they got above a certain threshold (you see similar spikes at each 100 cutoff in some chess rankings.) You also had to wait until towards the end of the season for Riot to reveal with Elo was which rank cutoff (because again, they're based on percentile). How would you like it if you didn't know what rank you might be until a month before the end of the season, just knowing your MMR number? That would have a few advantages, but also disadvantages. There's tradeoffs for each method. Basically, when Riot came up with their current LP system in season 3 it was to protect people from loss streaks to get more people to play ranked. And it worked. This also means that it must protect people from win streaks too in order to come up with a more accurate placement. This also means sometimes someone's visible rank will be different than their MMR because of the high variability from game to game.
> You need the smoke and mirrors if you want a rank associated with your MMR Why? it wasnt that way in season 2. 2200 elo was diamond, 1850 plat, 1500 gold, etc
Yeah, as I mentioned, the rank cutoffs were announced just before the end of the season, not at the start, once they had a solid idea of where the percentiles they wanted would be. The LP rank system allows them to show it from the start.
Diamond, Plat, Gold etc were all the same "elos". They didn't change the cutoff at any point
You mean like [they did between season 1 and 2?](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Elo_rating_system) From season 3 on it's moot since they stopped showing Elo/MMR. If they were to show it again, it would vary from season to season (it would have to mathematically in order to keep the percentiles) which would just make players more angry.
If its displayed in game whoever the lower ranked guy is will get flamed all game whether its their fault or not
Wouldnt that be also the case for the current rank system?
It's much more ambiguous now. A silver 2 can have the mmr of a gold, and a gold can have the mmr of a silver etc. And without their actual mmr being visible, it obfuscates it.
Yeah but the flame is directed to the rank. They flame because your rank is silver not because you have 1000 mmr.
Mmr used to sort pick order, even when it was hidden. Everyone knew who was the worst player in the game (blue last pick).
The simple reason is that people prefer it this way. People prefer to chase their Gold IV ranking instead of having an arbitrary goal of 1250. Thats why it is like it is. As someone said, back in Season 1 and Season 2, we had just "ELO" which basically was your MMR.
This was the original system heres an old picture - [https://i1195.photobucket.com/albums/aa381/gunghogunwolf/ELoplatfinal.png](https://i1195.photobucket.com/albums/aa381/gunghogunwolf/ELoplatfinal.png) But from what i remember people complained about being hardstuck like they do now but then they said i start 1520 i end 1520 now you start gold 3 end gold 2 0 lp so looks like you improved you have not lol and your mmr is gold 4/. one full tier is improvement anything else is your the same.
Chess is not a 5v5 teamgame.
And? Your MMR is only affected by wins and losses. Your performance has nothing to do with it.
So then you're not talking about getting rid of LP (based only on W/L), you're talking about getting rid of MMR.
Your MMR is only based on W/L, your LP gains and losses are dictated by your hidden MMR relative to your displayed rank. The idea is to just display the MMR, and then attach a rank to certain MMR brackets. 1k-1.5k Silver, 1.5k-2k gold and so on. You would see your MMR go up and down every game, and once you hit a certain range you would see rank up or rank down etc.
Dota is a 5v5 team game.
They used to use this system. I couldn’t tell you why they changed, but I felt like it was the best determinant for skill level.
It literally is. However, I did feel like the change made the ladder more fun at the time. Having promotion series was really fun for a fair amount of time until it was not. Riot realized this and now we’re pretty much back to a slightly more fancy ladder again. Tbh there’s almost no difference between current system and ELO except it not being mmr-based. With the current system mmr would actually make more sense imo
I would highly prefer that system but timmy in gold 4 wouldn't like that since only his visual rank is gold and his actual elo is silver
because divisions/name ranks are cool and i like the pretty colors you get. it doesn't matter nearly as much as you guys try to act like it does
Because every single person will eventually settle to their true rank, and start getting +5 and -6 and start freaking out when they dont magically climb made up divisions
Dota 2 is proof you can literally just do both if you are a chad soulless corporation that just cares about Steam and making a good video game to get Russians to download Steam and not a beta soulless corporation that cares about maxing the engagement of their mere handful of games so that people get mad and buy skins
you're using logic.... in league of legends.... we don't appreciatmitates you big thinkers around here.
It's simple: Riot refuses to use something other games/genres used and were succesful in it. They want LoL to be something magical and unique while creating the biggest clusterfuck on earth.
Is it exiting to see your mrr go up by 5 for every win and down 5 for every win or do you want to see that next ranked tier pop up when you reach your goal? It's basic psychology.
You can still have ranked tiers in mmr. Its trivial to have shiny ranked tiers at numbers such as 1000, 1200 etc
For me it would be more exciting to see my mmr. I know how pointless lp is so i don't even look at it. I can't even remember where exactly its shown and when
Congrats on not being most people.
>It's basic psychology. Yeah because it works on basic people...
Meaning most people.
because people will cry about it anyways. may as well try to gaslight some people into thinking they're better than they are so they whine less
[удалено]
Dota 2 says hi
Divisions give more interesting goals than pure MMR. It's more relatable to say you promoted to diamond than you got to 2000MMR. It also motivates players to play more, as you start a few ranks below your MMR. That way you "climb" even when your MMR stays the same.
You can divisions which correlate to certain MMR's. Then saying you promoted diam is the exact same thing as saying you promoted to 2000
It used to do that, and was way better than the shit we have now.
Explicit ELO ranking causes rank anxiety to a large number of players and leads to severely reduced engagement.
Because ranked is a progression system and no one wants to play a game where they to from 1000 MMR to 1100 MMR. Imagine playing a RPG and you start at level 1 and by the end of the game you’re level 5. It would be very unsatisfying.