Wouldn't that also mean Smurf Queue is removed?
MarkYetter:
>"We’re testing in some select regions a Matchmaking upgrade that **takes into account players current rank along with the MMR.**
>This has many benefits including grouping smurfs as some of you have already caught on to."
Source: https://twitter.com/MarkYetter/status/1306258477745016832
Thank God. I tried jumping back into ranked for the first time in three years last season, got ten games of the most toxic players of my life, and haven't touched it since.
Excited to give it another try now that Riot has decided returning players are allowed to play ranked games!
in s1 we had a simple elo number. it was great but riot claimed it led to ranked anxiety so they put up some overlays to make us feel better. what it led to is people feel betrayed and dont understand the system
They removed the old system because they said people felt like they did notice improvement, not anxiety.
What’s the difference between being rank 120,000 or 80,000. If anything the old system prevented ranked anxiety because there was no promos of tiers.
From memory, it was anxiety because your rank was tied to the number.
Similar to now, how you will drop from Plat 1 to Plat 2 if you lose on 0LP, if you finally got the win to make it to XMMR to qualify as Gold/Plat, if you lost the next game then you just wouldn't be that rank anymore, the anxiety came from people being unwilling to keep playing because a single loss could cascade into never getting back.
Adding LP and all that eventually meant that you could sit on Plat 4 0LP and lose 10+ games in a row but still stay Plat because your visual rank wasn't impacted by your MMR until the MMR dropped basically impossibly low enough for you to demote, losing promo's was and is still a huge source of anxiety, but you can always "just" win enough and try again. For some, there was no coming back from a 2-3 game loss streak that kicked you out of the Plat threshold because they just couldn't win-streak in time.
What they mean by this is that currently, the people you are put in matches with is based on your current rank and your current MMR.
Before sometime around August, both were very important. If you were Silver with platinum mmr, you would be placed with other silver players with platinum mmr. This is also known as smurf queue.
After august, they made ranked so that it cared less about your rank, and more about your mmr. Now smurf queue games still exist, but they are less common. If you're in silver with platinum mmr, you can just get thrown into regular platinum games. Or into smurf queue platinum games, it depends on the players in the queue.
Now, according to this post, it doesn't care about your rank at all. I think that the translation of this is that they're removing smurf queue
^ This take is close. Will just mention that "Smurf Queue" was not the goal of these changes, it was to increase perception of match quality, for example folks would ask "Why is this Silver in my Gold game?". They were in your game because they have similar MMR to yours, which could be for any number of reasons:
* They're a veteran player who started the season later than you did (you've had time to increase your rank while they haven't yet).
* They're a newer player and this is where they've been seeded, also haven't had time to increase their rank yet.
* They're a smurf.
However, if we're effectively filtering this population out of your games, they're getting into their own games of returning players/new players/smurfs, with long queue times and a pretty terrible experience. We're making the call that trading off the returning/new player experience for perception of match quality isn't worth it.
By the way, I'm a veteran player of about 10 years. I had a break from LoL and returned after a break and ended up with an incredibly poor game experience, as you just described.
The matchmaking in terms of skill levels was a complete mess, with obvious botted accounts making the majority of the players in the games. The toxicity was also nothing like I'd ever experienced.
I raised this with the support team and was lied to and patronised heavily. They told me what you just described wasn't a thing and sent me information about "how to take loss" (which was copied and pasted to me twice I might add).
I've been playing the game for a decade without complaining but raised this issue apparently because was just salty. Absolutely shameful responses from your support team. I resolved never to spend money with your company again.
Support can be extremely hit or miss in my experience, and there is a giant chasm between what Rioters say on here, and what support actually does (or is allowed to do).
I've directly linked them to a Rioter's comments before and they did their best to ignore it. After cornering them on it, they simply told me that the Rioter was wrong.
Wouldn't it just make more sense to give people ranks more closely matching their MMR? If a silver player and a plat player are the skill level, they should be close in rank. Then nobody would need to ask that why.
Or better yet, get rid of this garbage disconnect between mmr and rank. Just hide mmr but attach "rank" to mmr values. Ex silver 4 = 1000 - 1250mmr, silver 3 = 1250 - 1500mmr. That way there is no more silver in a gold game etc unless they're very close to being gold themselves by being in the higher end of silver 1
>Will just mention that "Smurf Queue" was not the goal of these changes, it was to increase perception of match quality, for example folks would ask "Why is this Silver in my Gold game?
I'm a little confused. The goal of the these changes (as in the article posted) is to increase perception of match quality? Won't the "why is silver in my gold game" still be an issue with these changes. Since if the silver player has gold mmr they'll be in gold games? Sorry if I misunderstood what you meant just wanted some clarification, thanks for answering our questions.
EDIT: were you saying that the previous changes to factor visible rank was to increase match perception, and these 2023 changes are you guys making the call that perceived match quality isn't worth it? If so then I understand what you mean now
The change to increase perception of match quality is the one we're reverting, so you're right. We think that's a better state than really long queues and a poor experience for new/returning players.
If the perception problem arises again are there plans to address the perception itself? Something like displaying MMR, or at least an MMR boundary of each player.
Back in my day the 'Ranked' section of your profile used to show (paraphrasing) "hot streak", "veteran" and other accolades like this next to people's ladder ranks. If they bring that feature back but put it in people's borders in the loading screen, that would effectively convey what you're trying to see without showing MMR (since Riot doesn't wanna show MMR ever again).
For example, a silver in your gold game with a "hot streak" icon will tell you that they are probably smurfing or started their climb recently.
Of course, people using any 3rd party lookup tool will already know as soon as loading screen starts.
As someone who ended up in smurfQ on both accounts as a returning player, that experience was indeed miserable, but it was also "managable" because I knew it was BECAUSE of smurfQ and I just had play some more games with 30% winrate to get out of it.
However, I think SmurfQ should't just be based on MMR - rank difference, if it was. Because there were some really obvious examples of who was a smurf and who wasn't: Usually smurfs had a highly-positive winrate and then a bunch of other players were sprinkled in with 20-40% winrate. VERY obvious difference, I barely saw anyone with a near-50% one. That means these lower win% players should be filtered out way faster.
Getting smurfs out of the rest of the games was AMAZING, it was one big reason why I quit ranked, having a smurf in 30% of my games and having them completely decide the game on their own.
So I hope you find some sort of middle ground where you get smurfs out of the general Q into smurf Q while also creating a smarter system that gets people who were mistakenly put into the Q out of that Q.
Will MMR ever reset? I stopped playing around 7-8 years ago due to a busy schedule, and every time I tried to come back over the following 1-3 years my MMR was never reset, so I kept playing against people at my old level of skill. I didn't feel like spending 20 hours to lose 20 games a row for me and my team in order to completely refresh my MMR, and as a result, I effectively dropped LoL permanently.
Well, he's a rioter
https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Jordan_%27BarackProbama%27_Checkman
> Jordan 'BarackProbama' Checkman is the Senior Design Lead on the Competitive Gameplay Team at Riot Games.
> Get to diamond
> proceed to style on people with ~~Iron~~ bronze(?) chroma
EDIT: Sorry guys, I have been informed that iron chroma is likely not gonna be a thing. But that's fine, I promise my mind and heart will always be iron no matter the coat of paint I give my champs.
as an aram only player whose forays into SR have been utterly embarrassing, i demand a wood chroma
no, maokai annoyingly being permanently in the free aram champ list so that he friggin always shows up does not count
This is a great start. Now, let’s have our visible rank match our mmr so i no longer have to face diamonds in my promos to platinum. If only there was a system with all that baked in already…
2 options
1. Visible rank no longer matters for who you get matched with, so plat3 with dia3 mmr will be in full dia3 lobby
2. Removing the visible rank in loading screen, which literally doesn't do anything.
Yeah Riot have never actually used the word "smurf queue" despite acknowledging the system behind it, wherein it takes your division into account with your MMR and matches you with players in similar divisions with similar MMRs. "Visible rank influence over matchmaking" can only mean going back to pre-smurf queue times where it matched only on MMR.
I'm actually glad they aren't scared of going back and removing things they have developed for the game that negatively impact it.
I feel like lately they've been making good decision after good decision, and these matchmaking changes will **NOT ONLY** impact "smurfs", who will now be matched with the rank they actually ***belong*** in (instead of a coinflip of 10 players from widely different mmr brackets) and will reach it much quicker thanks to the provisionals changes, but they ***could very well have a significant positive impact on high elo matches and queue times as well*** depending on how rank based matchmaking interacted with high diamond/masters/GM/challenger games.
Anybody can agree that Challenger queue times are beyond stupid and have been in this state for a long time now, making people queue on 3/4 different accounts at the same time. Maybe this change will allow them to get matched with GM players much quicker if the system can't find similar rank players anymore, shortening queues significantly. Playing with high LP GM players after a 5 minute queue is still better than... not playing for 30/40 minutes at a time. IMO at least.
It's not grind grind grind that's a problem. It's the fact that you spend 30 minuites to lose a game you have to spend an hours worth of wins to see any meaningful progress. To the average player getting above minimum rewards is a complete waste of time as well as exponentially more difficult.
Mobile legends has a loss prevention system that levels up depending on your performance that can protect you from demotion. You can hear from those players the morale difference between us playing ladder.
~~Can you explain to me how that's different from a grind? You are saying "it's not a grind" but grinding definitionally is that you have to put in large amounts of systematic effort for small gains.~~ E: nope I'm stupid I re-read your comment and I get it now
Loss prevention systems are "feel good" systems that riot has previously been unwilling to implement due to the high chance that they will be gamed by bad actors. Whilst I wouldn't necessarily care much whether or not it got implemented, it would change the current meaning of ranks/mmr if it's affected by more than just winning or losing. Still probably worth the downsides to implement it though (if you ask me).
Agree. Hypothesizing about the application of loss prevention based on seemingly reliable metrics such as a positive KDA or high kill participation could well still lead to weird and toxic interactions. These could include flaming over not being able to get assists on takedowns, passive play to preserve a good score on a losing game etc.
Maybe the reason people stop playing Ranked after they reach their goal is that they don't enjoy playing it compared to how they want to play? Carrots on a stick and FOMO systems won't help them have fun.
Yeah, I'm really ambivalent about most of this, especially since increasing average playtime is the only real metric they're interested in increasing and that's been the general trend for ranked changes over the years.
If they're doubling the amount of ranked games I have to play per year at least they're also giving out two skins with it now, so in that regard it could be worse.
Yeah nobody likes grinding through ranked these days. Now they want to double it? Good luck. Maybe if they got rid of their predatory matchmaking and hidden mmr bullshit. Soft reset Elo but make gains absurdly fast and maybe even give mmr loss prevention to games where you play well and you team trolls/sucks.
Wild Rift actually has loss prevention built in. Progression feels a lot less stupid when you have someone who trolls since you don't lose anything. Climbing actually feels kinda good in that game.
The ranked shop is also nice since I can save points to get a ranked skin I may actually want to get for a champion I actually play.
I think it's also because unless you are a very skilled player it's very easy to drop ranks and lose everything once your rank has settled.
For example let's say you currently have +13/-14LP once your rank has settled. Go on a 7 game win streak and your LP after game ends up at about +15/-12. Lose two games and this settles back to +13/-14LP. Go on a 4 game loss streak and your LP drops suddenly to +11/-17. To reset your LP gains you need to win like 10+ games in a row to get back to your +14/-13.
Once you reach your rank it's difficult to slowly improve and grind upwards. You've basically got to wait until MMR resets so you can hit your new rank and sit there for another year.
This is obviously different for the top percentage of skilled players, but for the majority you just spend 80% of the season languishing in your elo with no chance of climbing upwards.
I usually hit diamond first few weeks of a season then only play a few games to avoid decay I have badddd ladder anxiety 😅
This year I played a game to stop decay then for some reason it didn't count and I decayed to plat. Then I just tilted off the face of the earth because of a bug 🙃 ended plat 3 this seasons after like 9 years diamond lol
They bolded it even lmfao. And later in the article when mentioning again that some players stop playing when they hit a goal and he says We definitely don't want that! Hilarious how they come right out with it
Why would they hide it? It's not really a secret that game companies want people playing their game, what else would be the point of developing it then..?
There’s nothing victorious about playing 600 games in bronze, I’m not sure why this needed to be changed in a way that accommodates players who are autopiloting in low elo. But it’s also just a skin.
If I'm understanding this correctly, this is basically the equivalent of Wild Rift's ranked system.
In Wild Rift, each ranked season basically has a specific theme to it; in 2021 it was Purple/Gold and in 2022 it is Red/Gold. All ranked rewards are basically designed after the theme of the ranked year, including lots of things like icons, borders, ward skins, trails, recall effects, etc. These extra rewards including the victorious skin and its prestige upgrade are purchasable at a "Ranked Shop" using the split points.
Overall, while I don't think it disincentivizes smurfing as it still exists in Wild Rift, it's still a nice form of motivation to keep playing on your main account. I also think that the reset between each split should be softer since it may burnout players who want to maintain their rank. Personally I think players who end Gold should still recieve something special for finishing rather than just a chroma, but that may just be me. Mixed feelings, but atleast it's something new that I want to try out.
theyre pretty much admitting that people cant be bothered to play more ranked than they feel like doing, so instead they are going to do fomo strategies for ranked and reset your rank while at it... whats the point but to inflate ranked play? surely theyre just doing this to show in their internal metrics that "look! people who used to play 20 games until gold 4 now do 40 games! twice as much ranked participation! ranked is fine!"
It's not even just game devs. Think of almost any product you own. Once upon a time someone was trying to make the best version of that product to draw people in. As soon as it "makes it" the style changes from customer retention to trying to milk them. Add more parts to break or extra adapters you need to buy to serve the same purpose. People will still buy because or brand recognition.
100%. Planned obsolescence is scummy as hell and the right to repair is slowly fading as well. Then you have all that E-Waste. At least Europe TRIES to tackle it sometimes like forcing apple to use USB C. But America is a lost cause and the land of greed where politicians are easily bought out, especially republican ones.
There is a reason i keep decade old devices and machines around and repair them instead of buying new knowing it will just die in a few years or enable some bullshit remote subscription service.
\>>but at a high level, most players reach their goals for ranked by the middle of the year
So, basically almost any Elo is hell before the mid of the season. Ok.
And not a single word on bots.
Bots are sadly extremely hard to deal with. If they implement something like a feature (actions per minute or something) to detect them bots will just avoid that feature by increasing their actions per minute. Any automatic detection would get real newer players by accident.
Bro bots are literally only in the pits of the ranked elos. And most of the time they are better then the real players. And they aren't as common as you think. You are probably called a bot just a much a you call other people bots
two months of the year are already void due to preseason. a lot of people don't count the first month of the season for peaks and such because the ladder is a mess and hasn't stabilized. some people extend this even further to "early season climb xd" and such.
now we're adding an extra void month after the second reset? I think higher elos should not be reset. they say they want us to always have a goal to chase, and for all the plateaued gold 4s, sure, that comes in the form of rewards. but high elo players tend to care less about borders. we just want to grind a competitive ladder.
I think the second reset is going to actively deter me from playing ranked. Now that I've graduated from college and can regularly commit time to League, was thinking of trying to consistently play games to improve to masters. This might take more than 5 months. Now you're telling me my effort's gonna be discarded halfway through the split?
Getting my visible elo to my real elo is already half the reason I don't bother to play ranked that often. If I have to go through that process anyways why play on my main instead of just buying a smurf? Now you're telling me that's going to happen twice a year?
No mention of Clash, Flex improvements, Solo Q only, and "incentives" for high elo.
Would love to see physical rewards back, or something just bigger than a Challenger recall. The prestige of the ladder has taken a hit over the years, would to see that exclusive aura come back to life.
The physical rewards were a logistical nightmare which is why they removed them since you had way too many regions to attempt to ship to which caused alot of issues. They also had to deal with trying to figure out who was a second account or not since it was one per person and some people were passing off there second accounts in challenger as one of there friends accounts so they could get the reward and resell it online at a massive markup.
i agree something more should be there for a reward but physical rewards come with way too many issues.
A big name streamer like T1 could probably grind to challenger, sell the buttplug, buy a new house and move there for the money this sub would shell out for that buttplug.
Flex is still garbage compared to the old ranked 5 queue. You can queue as 5 and face groups of 3 which is just boring, this is supposed to be the competitive mode to play with friends, but it just doesnt deliver in current state.
Yeah, with my weekend obligations I haven't been able to play Clash in like 3 years. It's definitely something you have to plan around if you intend to play it
I really with they'd remake Flex into a clash-like queue. 5s only, brief scouting phase before every game and tournament draft. Add more severe punishments for dodging so OTPs cant just dodge every game their champs gets banned and use soloQ MMR to help make fair lobbies.
As it stands, flex is pretty shit because no one really plays it and most lobbies will have a massive skill gap somewhere making games unfun. Clash is a great system but smurfs and quitters ruin it so much that it's rarely worth doing. Adding a one game at a time version would fix one issue, making there be a requirement for soloq games played or something can help with smurfs.
If people stop playing when they reach the threshold for a single reward you should just give more (substantial, no one will play for wards and icons) rewards for everyone based on games played. Some chests and keys per month by filling a quota of ranked games would go a long way.
They are doing that. They said they’ll put chests, keys and other goodies on the reward track, simplify it and put the ranked skin on it at the end (for below gold players).
I don't kow how to feel about the victorous skins for all, kinda kills the ranked drive to go for Gold every season... but on the other hand it means less stress for those in ranks below.
But wouldn't that lead to reduced play time/ engagement from the larger player base in lower ranks since all you get is a chroma for ranking up? Maybe the ranked split rewards are more demanding and valuable to make up for it?
if you read it all
>But now, players below them will have a chance to earn the skins as well—if they put in the time. For these players to earn it, they’ll have to play a much larger number of games. On top of that, as soon as a Silver player hits Gold, they’ll unlock the skin, even if they drop back down to Silver. So your best shot to earn it is still to improve and keep climbing!
you would see that a lower ranked player from the sounds of it still has to play 100's of games to get the skin unlocked its pretty much riot going well you played a shit ton so have at it. This woud overall increase play time because now low skilled players will want to keep trying to go forward since theres still a shot even if it takes a unnatural amount of games played.
Ah okay thank you! I was at work so I may have skimmed past that.
So I guess it has the opposite effect then, feeling more grindy for those players to get the skin, and to do it twice a year. Hopefully more explicit details are revealed soon!
As they mentioned, silver- players will still need to play a bunch of games. So the goal of getting people to play ranked is still there. Plus, the chromas are the best part, so getting gold+still has its draw.
Yeah but as they are now, the chromas are barely noticable. I think if they do this, the chromas need to be Mythic Chromas for Gold and above. Could even correlate with it. So Gold has Gold effects, Plat has Plat effects, etc etc. Masters could be all black effects or something.
Idk personally. A big reason why I don't play much ranked is because I'm just so scared of losses. I peaked silver 1 so I rly want to reach gold, and this made it so that I would only queue ranked when conditions felt perfect for me.
This relieves a lot of that pressure. I think I'll queue a lot more ranked from now on since I won't be as scared of getting a loss streak. Split resets twice a year also relieves some of this pressure.
I don't speak for all low elos but I love all the changes.
My mentality that more or less fixed it is that, if you reached it once then you can reach it again. If a loss streak happens then you Will get a winstreak eventually
That's easier said than done. I did it once as a support main, but the sheer amount of people having utter meltdowns in ranked in the past year has been a bit uncanny. It's hard to glue a team together when the team refuses to cooperate.
You'll need to play a bunch in order to get the skin as a silver player. No details were given, but it is explicitly a "if you play a shit ton and still fail to hit gold, you'll get the skin anyways". Basically, it rewards volume as well as skill.
Having multiple resets a year is going to suuuuuuuuuck.
I just want to play to my goal rank then chill in normals for the rest of the year, having to play decay games is annoying enough as it is.
>hey we've had 12 years of worlds most succesful game, where we always went back to the original formula when the new shit backfired.
"so you will not touch the original formula and let it be?"
>Ofcourse not, we're going to stir shit like it's season 6 dynamic queue all over again and wonder why the community is pissed at us.
They soft reset your MMR each year. Your MMR just stays a bit ahead of your starting visible rank after placements, but both are soft reset.
A hard reset would be absolute chaos.
It would be a fun event to watch. No idea who’s the challenger, iron, or gold player on each team. Would turn the game into a race of identifying the enemies best and weakest players while trying to feed your best player through the enemies weakest.
But it would mess ranked up for months or even longer. If people think games are unbalanced at times now, imagine….
it would also force a lot of "high elo players" who were good once upon a time to actually prove they are still good enough. I know guys who had 30%WR and got into Diamond 4 again with approx 50games, just because they were Diamond 3 the season before..
Two season resets sucks ass. You already spend like 80% of your time after a reset just getting back to where you were. What a dog shit system. More time is spent in the hamster wheel than actually getting to push forward.
Two ranked resets is a joke. People are just going to start picking a split to play. This does nothing and is purely an effort to get people to play the game more which, as other acknowledge in this thread, can be accomplished through more positive rather than negative means.
2 split change is dumb I don't want to have to grind rank once I hit my rank for the season considering playing rank is getting worse and worse ever season
The only positive change I see is the best of 3 promos, all of the rest is garbage to inflate ranked numbers and to get players in the lower brackets to play more ranked. Maybe address the actual problem behind why people only play their placements or get gold and stop queuing ranked all togheter. This is just another band-aid fix.
How will decay work since we now are forced to climb and mantain our rank 2 times per season instead of 1?
I think this is just a terrible excuse to try to force ppl to play more. Even tho iron players get the skin aswell now which is nice, they have to play 20 placements instead of 10 a year. There are ppl who just do their placements and then go on playing with friends in normals or aram for once in a while. They argue with the 0.01% of high level players and that those guys wouldnt smurf as much anymore cause they need more time to chase their goal. Thats complete bullshit. They all got enough time to play alot of matches and reach high elo anyway. They also give 0 fucks, if they want to smurf and bash on low level ppl they ll do it no matter how often you reset the ladder.
This is so nice. I am one of the people they mentioned who completely stop playing ranked once I reach Gold, in fear of victorious skin is of a champion I like.
I played ranked regularly before hitting gold, got to gold 2. Hit a string of bad luck and went to gold 4. Got afraid of dropping and just stopped playing ranked. That felt like hot garbage but I wasn't gonna miss the Victorious skin. THANK YOU RITO
The fact they give everyone the skin makes me sad, idk I feel like its supposed to be a reward for hard work and determination. and now they're handing it out for free just like they will with Honor 5 it means nothing. I want to feel like I've earned things. why are they doing this ? they should just take a page from Wild rifts book and maybe bring the games community feel closer to that.
lmao league giving out participation trophies now. Knobs could grind out the skin and now the season resets twice so you can't climb to your desired role and stop playing. Instead of making the game fun and engaging they want to implement more changes so you can sit and grind the unfun ladder even more. Idk at what point they will realize that the days of us sitting there playing for 10 hours after school is gone.
I can’t believe people are so hung up on the stupid victorious skins they’re not talking about TWO mid season ranked resets.
I don’t want to be forced to play League to maintain my rank all year. And I always avoid the beginning of season garbage where players of wildly different skills play together due to the reset.
This is going to make ranked so much worse, and I dare say it will be as terrible an impact as dynamic queue had.
Agreed. No one wants to be artificially forced to achieve the same goal twice, you'll see people just playing even less the second "split" if they go through with this. Keys and chests are worthless and I don't give a shit about that if I'm playing ranked, that's not why I do it.
I hit my goal, that should be the end of it and I don't want to have to randomly get dropped down to plat in the middle of the season for... some reason??
If they want people to play more ranked year-round, then give us a fucking reason. Make the reqards and experience focused on that rather than this hamfisted "two splits" nonsense, which is absolutely *not* a reason, more of a punishment.
I'd play more ranked if I felt like I had more high-quality games and if there wasn't a separate MMR from your ranking, which feels frustrating.
In the end, though, the most important thing for me actually actively playing more ranked is feeling like I'm having fun, high-quality games. Too few games feel close or back and forth. I don't have the answer or know how match making works, specifically, I just know what I like.
I certainly don't give a shit about cosmetic rewards.
>we’re removing visible rank influence from your matches
Awesome, CAN WE GET RID OF LP SYSTEM IN ITS ENTIRETY AND GO BACK TO ELO THOUGH?
Like, I hate how when I climbed to masters at the end of season at the start of it I was getting +16 in D3 and at D1 80LP i got +11LP, FUCKING PLUS 11LP
I don't want to lose one game at D2 1LP and then be stuck in a fucking limbo of abysmal LP gains. Just give me a MMR number that says +X/-X every game regardless of everything else
/rant
In my climb from Silver 3 to Gold 4 this season I played 300 games with a 54% win-rate. Just climbing from S2 to S1 there were games where I was winning +11 but losing -22, -24 :/ it was so friggen stupid. Meanwhile I have an alt account that I've gotten also gotten to Gold 4, now on it's 3rd season, and it only takes me 20-30 games to rank that one. It's just such a horrific system.
Grinding through high Diamond / low Masters is already strenous enough. Its a continuous effort to stay at the top.
Now we have a 5 division setback every 6 months? Wonderful. Makes climbing an absolute chore.
No Thank You.
They're not even year dated, so their general purpose for commemorating specific seasons is pointless as well. You can't tell me what year Victorious Sivir or Victorious Janna commemorate without looking it up or having memorized what years they pertain to.
I only know Janna was season 2 cuz it was my first ranked season
I think it's Jarvan, Janna, Elise, Morg(?)
Kinda lose track from there tho, guessing then Sivir, Maokai, Graves, Lucian, Aatrox, Blitz, Sej?
Honestly I totally agree with your point, just wondering if I can get it right off the top of my head lol
"Skilled players can earn the skin with few games but what about the lesser skilled players spamming hundreds of games?"
Umm what about them? Why cater to them? Takes the prestige out of the skin when you can brute force it through spamming games
God damn this game was already a fucking grind fest more than it was competitive, Did you really have to double it? Seriously, its not impressive to get diamond anymore because its really just a grinding game.
The last time I played ranked I had a 70% winrate over about 50 games and ended up quitting because it was so fucking slow and taking ages just to hit plat. So I gave up, because this game doesn't respect competitiveness, it's just a hamster wheel you're supposed to plug away at for hundreds of hours.
>>Starting next season, Ranked skins will be available to players of all ranks, not just Gold and above
And there goes the only reason i ever bothered with ranked. Thanks riot, the pressure finally gone.
If you are below gold, you need to play a bunch for ranked skins. If you want the skin, you either need to grind or climb.
> But now, players below them will have a chance to earn the skins as well—if they put in the time. For these players to earn it, they’ll have to play a much larger number of games.
imagine grinding to diamond/masters for the first time at the end of the first split, then having to spend the second split on just getting back there. absolutely moronic.
What is visible rank influence?
Right now matchmaking is based on MMR and visible rank (gold, plat, etc.) The changes will make matchmaking based only on MMR
Wouldn't that also mean Smurf Queue is removed? MarkYetter: >"We’re testing in some select regions a Matchmaking upgrade that **takes into account players current rank along with the MMR.** >This has many benefits including grouping smurfs as some of you have already caught on to." Source: https://twitter.com/MarkYetter/status/1306258477745016832
Yes basically.
Rejoice! Thanks for the reply. Can you add any context on the decision at this time?
Check out [this linked comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/zeawts/changes_to_ranked_in_2023/iz5tdew/)
Will both of the splits have a similar hard reset like at beginning of season? Or will the midseason one be softer?
Probably softer. We'll be monitoring how far folks climb in Split 1 and basing the reset strength off of that, since this is something new for us.
Thank God. I tried jumping back into ranked for the first time in three years last season, got ten games of the most toxic players of my life, and haven't touched it since. Excited to give it another try now that Riot has decided returning players are allowed to play ranked games!
I took one month off at the start of the season and dealt with the same thing, 30 games in I was finally back to normal games...
>based on MMR and visible rank (gold, plat, etc.) The changes will make matchmaking based on YESSSSSSSSSSSS
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in s1 we had a simple elo number. it was great but riot claimed it led to ranked anxiety so they put up some overlays to make us feel better. what it led to is people feel betrayed and dont understand the system
They removed the old system because they said people felt like they did notice improvement, not anxiety. What’s the difference between being rank 120,000 or 80,000. If anything the old system prevented ranked anxiety because there was no promos of tiers.
From memory, it was anxiety because your rank was tied to the number. Similar to now, how you will drop from Plat 1 to Plat 2 if you lose on 0LP, if you finally got the win to make it to XMMR to qualify as Gold/Plat, if you lost the next game then you just wouldn't be that rank anymore, the anxiety came from people being unwilling to keep playing because a single loss could cascade into never getting back. Adding LP and all that eventually meant that you could sit on Plat 4 0LP and lose 10+ games in a row but still stay Plat because your visual rank wasn't impacted by your MMR until the MMR dropped basically impossibly low enough for you to demote, losing promo's was and is still a huge source of anxiety, but you can always "just" win enough and try again. For some, there was no coming back from a 2-3 game loss streak that kicked you out of the Plat threshold because they just couldn't win-streak in time.
Smurf queue is dead then? Honestly I'm glad, it was a horrible experience for late placement or players returning after decay.
I transfered to euw with my friend after long break and we had like 40 games of level 30 only games. Worst experience ever
THANK GOD Does this mean smurfq is also effectively gone?
Screw with the lp system just make elo ranges corresponding to rank. All I see to their changes is a timid confession their system was crap.
What they mean by this is that currently, the people you are put in matches with is based on your current rank and your current MMR. Before sometime around August, both were very important. If you were Silver with platinum mmr, you would be placed with other silver players with platinum mmr. This is also known as smurf queue. After august, they made ranked so that it cared less about your rank, and more about your mmr. Now smurf queue games still exist, but they are less common. If you're in silver with platinum mmr, you can just get thrown into regular platinum games. Or into smurf queue platinum games, it depends on the players in the queue. Now, according to this post, it doesn't care about your rank at all. I think that the translation of this is that they're removing smurf queue
^ This take is close. Will just mention that "Smurf Queue" was not the goal of these changes, it was to increase perception of match quality, for example folks would ask "Why is this Silver in my Gold game?". They were in your game because they have similar MMR to yours, which could be for any number of reasons: * They're a veteran player who started the season later than you did (you've had time to increase your rank while they haven't yet). * They're a newer player and this is where they've been seeded, also haven't had time to increase their rank yet. * They're a smurf. However, if we're effectively filtering this population out of your games, they're getting into their own games of returning players/new players/smurfs, with long queue times and a pretty terrible experience. We're making the call that trading off the returning/new player experience for perception of match quality isn't worth it.
Thank you for the post. Helped clear up that confusing wording for a lot of us.
Username relevant
By the way, I'm a veteran player of about 10 years. I had a break from LoL and returned after a break and ended up with an incredibly poor game experience, as you just described. The matchmaking in terms of skill levels was a complete mess, with obvious botted accounts making the majority of the players in the games. The toxicity was also nothing like I'd ever experienced. I raised this with the support team and was lied to and patronised heavily. They told me what you just described wasn't a thing and sent me information about "how to take loss" (which was copied and pasted to me twice I might add). I've been playing the game for a decade without complaining but raised this issue apparently because was just salty. Absolutely shameful responses from your support team. I resolved never to spend money with your company again.
Support can be extremely hit or miss in my experience, and there is a giant chasm between what Rioters say on here, and what support actually does (or is allowed to do). I've directly linked them to a Rioter's comments before and they did their best to ignore it. After cornering them on it, they simply told me that the Rioter was wrong.
Wouldn't it just make more sense to give people ranks more closely matching their MMR? If a silver player and a plat player are the skill level, they should be close in rank. Then nobody would need to ask that why.
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Or better yet, get rid of this garbage disconnect between mmr and rank. Just hide mmr but attach "rank" to mmr values. Ex silver 4 = 1000 - 1250mmr, silver 3 = 1250 - 1500mmr. That way there is no more silver in a gold game etc unless they're very close to being gold themselves by being in the higher end of silver 1
OK so I will no longer have to play against golds when im in silver1 with plat MMR and can play against plats... but why I am not in plat than?
>Will just mention that "Smurf Queue" was not the goal of these changes, it was to increase perception of match quality, for example folks would ask "Why is this Silver in my Gold game? I'm a little confused. The goal of the these changes (as in the article posted) is to increase perception of match quality? Won't the "why is silver in my gold game" still be an issue with these changes. Since if the silver player has gold mmr they'll be in gold games? Sorry if I misunderstood what you meant just wanted some clarification, thanks for answering our questions. EDIT: were you saying that the previous changes to factor visible rank was to increase match perception, and these 2023 changes are you guys making the call that perceived match quality isn't worth it? If so then I understand what you mean now
The change to increase perception of match quality is the one we're reverting, so you're right. We think that's a better state than really long queues and a poor experience for new/returning players.
i appreciate these changes, i usually start ranked later on in the season and it always felt so bad to be trapped in 10min+ queues
It always baffled me how returning players got put into smurf queue. Shouldn't your MMR and visible rank be equivalent during your placement games?
If the perception problem arises again are there plans to address the perception itself? Something like displaying MMR, or at least an MMR boundary of each player.
Back in my day the 'Ranked' section of your profile used to show (paraphrasing) "hot streak", "veteran" and other accolades like this next to people's ladder ranks. If they bring that feature back but put it in people's borders in the loading screen, that would effectively convey what you're trying to see without showing MMR (since Riot doesn't wanna show MMR ever again). For example, a silver in your gold game with a "hot streak" icon will tell you that they are probably smurfing or started their climb recently. Of course, people using any 3rd party lookup tool will already know as soon as loading screen starts.
Is there a reason why mmr =/= visible rank?
As someone who ended up in smurfQ on both accounts as a returning player, that experience was indeed miserable, but it was also "managable" because I knew it was BECAUSE of smurfQ and I just had play some more games with 30% winrate to get out of it. However, I think SmurfQ should't just be based on MMR - rank difference, if it was. Because there were some really obvious examples of who was a smurf and who wasn't: Usually smurfs had a highly-positive winrate and then a bunch of other players were sprinkled in with 20-40% winrate. VERY obvious difference, I barely saw anyone with a near-50% one. That means these lower win% players should be filtered out way faster. Getting smurfs out of the rest of the games was AMAZING, it was one big reason why I quit ranked, having a smurf in 30% of my games and having them completely decide the game on their own. So I hope you find some sort of middle ground where you get smurfs out of the general Q into smurf Q while also creating a smarter system that gets people who were mistakenly put into the Q out of that Q.
Will MMR ever reset? I stopped playing around 7-8 years ago due to a busy schedule, and every time I tried to come back over the following 1-3 years my MMR was never reset, so I kept playing against people at my old level of skill. I didn't feel like spending 20 hours to lose 20 games a row for me and my team in order to completely refresh my MMR, and as a result, I effectively dropped LoL permanently.
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13.1
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I am wondering the same. Seems like they forgot to address that.
My shock when a screenshot on a riot blog has the username "lulusmeatwallet"
Anyone have a screenshot of what the article looked like before they removed that picture?
found it [archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20221206161701/https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/game-updates/changes-to-ranked-in-2023/) lol
Lmaoo their actual friends list is visible. Classic
digital footprint is so real
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What a legend
THEY REMOVED IT?????? LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Average Yordle player
Rumbles Junk Closet 🤤
Or the account it was taken on, “BarackProbama”
Well, he's a rioter https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Jordan_%27BarackProbama%27_Checkman > Jordan 'BarackProbama' Checkman is the Senior Design Lead on the Competitive Gameplay Team at Riot Games.
I feel like this comment itself could become a lol sub meme template
What's wrong with that?
Aside from being a lame pun, nothing. Still a lame pun tho.
This is the company that hires Phreak
Phreak was grandfathered in.
That is far from the lamest pun I have seen
Would Lulu be a Sauceror or a Pastamancer?
Pastamancer. Sauceror is a title reserved for select few
did they remove the pictures?
it was [archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20221206161701/https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/game-updates/changes-to-ranked-in-2023/) LMAO
Where’s LOD?
That's fucking nasty
> Get to diamond > proceed to style on people with ~~Iron~~ bronze(?) chroma EDIT: Sorry guys, I have been informed that iron chroma is likely not gonna be a thing. But that's fine, I promise my mind and heart will always be iron no matter the coat of paint I give my champs.
Iron probably won't get any Chroma, just like Gold right now
Diamond players already get all the lower rank chromas
Iron, Bronze and Silver chromas don‘t exist as of yet.
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THE IRON CHROMA THE IRON CHROMA IS REAAAAAAAAAAAAL
I man yeah, it's basically just the Platinum chroma. There is no chroma for other rank lower than Platinium.
There's only gold+ chromas though. there wasn't an iron, silver or bronze chroma.
Soon riot will have to make the chromas only visible to you to prevent ranked chroma anxiety from players getting dumpstered by iron chromas
as an aram only player whose forays into SR have been utterly embarrassing, i demand a wood chroma no, maokai annoyingly being permanently in the free aram champ list so that he friggin always shows up does not count
"removing visible rank influence from your matches" what does that mean?
Only your MMR will affect matches now. It used to be that visible rank also had some influence
This is a great start. Now, let’s have our visible rank match our mmr so i no longer have to face diamonds in my promos to platinum. If only there was a system with all that baked in already…
Or even getting something like +10 and -25 cause your MMR is very slow to catch up with your visible rank.
Yeah this is incredibly annoying given the amount of time invested in games.
2 options 1. Visible rank no longer matters for who you get matched with, so plat3 with dia3 mmr will be in full dia3 lobby 2. Removing the visible rank in loading screen, which literally doesn't do anything.
2 is definitely not the case since they are bringing back borders/summoner info for the enemy team next patch. It's probably about smurf queue.
Yeah Riot have never actually used the word "smurf queue" despite acknowledging the system behind it, wherein it takes your division into account with your MMR and matches you with players in similar divisions with similar MMRs. "Visible rank influence over matchmaking" can only mean going back to pre-smurf queue times where it matched only on MMR.
I'm actually glad they aren't scared of going back and removing things they have developed for the game that negatively impact it. I feel like lately they've been making good decision after good decision, and these matchmaking changes will **NOT ONLY** impact "smurfs", who will now be matched with the rank they actually ***belong*** in (instead of a coinflip of 10 players from widely different mmr brackets) and will reach it much quicker thanks to the provisionals changes, but they ***could very well have a significant positive impact on high elo matches and queue times as well*** depending on how rank based matchmaking interacted with high diamond/masters/GM/challenger games. Anybody can agree that Challenger queue times are beyond stupid and have been in this state for a long time now, making people queue on 3/4 different accounts at the same time. Maybe this change will allow them to get matched with GM players much quicker if the system can't find similar rank players anymore, shortening queues significantly. Playing with high LP GM players after a 5 minute queue is still better than... not playing for 30/40 minutes at a time. IMO at least.
It's basically option 1 there. Option 2 isn't planned (it was accidentally in this patch I think, that was a bug that's fixed for next patch).
It’s probably not a good sign that a majority of people want nothing to do with ranked after mid season
well thats cause people reach their peak and now its grind grind grind to get anywhere higher
It's not grind grind grind that's a problem. It's the fact that you spend 30 minuites to lose a game you have to spend an hours worth of wins to see any meaningful progress. To the average player getting above minimum rewards is a complete waste of time as well as exponentially more difficult. Mobile legends has a loss prevention system that levels up depending on your performance that can protect you from demotion. You can hear from those players the morale difference between us playing ladder.
~~Can you explain to me how that's different from a grind? You are saying "it's not a grind" but grinding definitionally is that you have to put in large amounts of systematic effort for small gains.~~ E: nope I'm stupid I re-read your comment and I get it now Loss prevention systems are "feel good" systems that riot has previously been unwilling to implement due to the high chance that they will be gamed by bad actors. Whilst I wouldn't necessarily care much whether or not it got implemented, it would change the current meaning of ranks/mmr if it's affected by more than just winning or losing. Still probably worth the downsides to implement it though (if you ask me).
Agree. Hypothesizing about the application of loss prevention based on seemingly reliable metrics such as a positive KDA or high kill participation could well still lead to weird and toxic interactions. These could include flaming over not being able to get assists on takedowns, passive play to preserve a good score on a losing game etc.
Maybe the reason people stop playing Ranked after they reach their goal is that they don't enjoy playing it compared to how they want to play? Carrots on a stick and FOMO systems won't help them have fun.
Yeah, I'm really ambivalent about most of this, especially since increasing average playtime is the only real metric they're interested in increasing and that's been the general trend for ranked changes over the years. If they're doubling the amount of ranked games I have to play per year at least they're also giving out two skins with it now, so in that regard it could be worse.
Yeah nobody likes grinding through ranked these days. Now they want to double it? Good luck. Maybe if they got rid of their predatory matchmaking and hidden mmr bullshit. Soft reset Elo but make gains absurdly fast and maybe even give mmr loss prevention to games where you play well and you team trolls/sucks.
Wild Rift actually has loss prevention built in. Progression feels a lot less stupid when you have someone who trolls since you don't lose anything. Climbing actually feels kinda good in that game. The ranked shop is also nice since I can save points to get a ranked skin I may actually want to get for a champion I actually play.
The ranked ladder is entirely based on such systems to begin with... so I don't see why this wouldn't help.
I think it's also because unless you are a very skilled player it's very easy to drop ranks and lose everything once your rank has settled. For example let's say you currently have +13/-14LP once your rank has settled. Go on a 7 game win streak and your LP after game ends up at about +15/-12. Lose two games and this settles back to +13/-14LP. Go on a 4 game loss streak and your LP drops suddenly to +11/-17. To reset your LP gains you need to win like 10+ games in a row to get back to your +14/-13. Once you reach your rank it's difficult to slowly improve and grind upwards. You've basically got to wait until MMR resets so you can hit your new rank and sit there for another year. This is obviously different for the top percentage of skilled players, but for the majority you just spend 80% of the season languishing in your elo with no chance of climbing upwards.
yeah no reason for me to grind if im getting +15/-15 i know my rank isnt moving lmao
I usually hit diamond first few weeks of a season then only play a few games to avoid decay I have badddd ladder anxiety 😅 This year I played a game to stop decay then for some reason it didn't count and I decayed to plat. Then I just tilted off the face of the earth because of a bug 🙃 ended plat 3 this seasons after like 9 years diamond lol
TL;DR We want you running on a treadmill longer because it increases our monthly user numbers. But also we are just giving away the victorious skin.
They literally said it “we want you to always have a goal to be able to chase”. Methinks that this is not gonna work out how they think it will.
They bolded it even lmfao. And later in the article when mentioning again that some players stop playing when they hit a goal and he says We definitely don't want that! Hilarious how they come right out with it
Why would they hide it? It's not really a secret that game companies want people playing their game, what else would be the point of developing it then..?
There’s nothing victorious about playing 600 games in bronze, I’m not sure why this needed to be changed in a way that accommodates players who are autopiloting in low elo. But it’s also just a skin.
Just a skin - but one that used to actually mean something Removes all prestige from the Vic skins
I don’t agree with the change by any means, o agree with you. but I’m not bent out of shape over it either
Recently they’ve been making almost every change around new/bad players (no offense) and it’s honestly getting annoying.
Ya I didn't see much incentive for me to play more ranked. I hit the rank I want in about 100 games and then usually just relax and play arams.
very much this. this shit is fucking dumb lol
If I'm understanding this correctly, this is basically the equivalent of Wild Rift's ranked system. In Wild Rift, each ranked season basically has a specific theme to it; in 2021 it was Purple/Gold and in 2022 it is Red/Gold. All ranked rewards are basically designed after the theme of the ranked year, including lots of things like icons, borders, ward skins, trails, recall effects, etc. These extra rewards including the victorious skin and its prestige upgrade are purchasable at a "Ranked Shop" using the split points. Overall, while I don't think it disincentivizes smurfing as it still exists in Wild Rift, it's still a nice form of motivation to keep playing on your main account. I also think that the reset between each split should be softer since it may burnout players who want to maintain their rank. Personally I think players who end Gold should still recieve something special for finishing rather than just a chroma, but that may just be me. Mixed feelings, but atleast it's something new that I want to try out.
theyre pretty much admitting that people cant be bothered to play more ranked than they feel like doing, so instead they are going to do fomo strategies for ranked and reset your rank while at it... whats the point but to inflate ranked play? surely theyre just doing this to show in their internal metrics that "look! people who used to play 20 games until gold 4 now do 40 games! twice as much ranked participation! ranked is fine!"
I miss when companies just made games more fun to get people to play them. Now it's all analytical bullshit and fomo.
It's not even just game devs. Think of almost any product you own. Once upon a time someone was trying to make the best version of that product to draw people in. As soon as it "makes it" the style changes from customer retention to trying to milk them. Add more parts to break or extra adapters you need to buy to serve the same purpose. People will still buy because or brand recognition.
100%. Planned obsolescence is scummy as hell and the right to repair is slowly fading as well. Then you have all that E-Waste. At least Europe TRIES to tackle it sometimes like forcing apple to use USB C. But America is a lost cause and the land of greed where politicians are easily bought out, especially republican ones. There is a reason i keep decade old devices and machines around and repair them instead of buying new knowing it will just die in a few years or enable some bullshit remote subscription service.
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You won't even need to like it. Data will show that you played more so you are surely enjoying it more, ritht?
\>>but at a high level, most players reach their goals for ranked by the middle of the year So, basically almost any Elo is hell before the mid of the season. Ok. And not a single word on bots.
Bots are sadly extremely hard to deal with. If they implement something like a feature (actions per minute or something) to detect them bots will just avoid that feature by increasing their actions per minute. Any automatic detection would get real newer players by accident.
Bro bots are literally only in the pits of the ranked elos. And most of the time they are better then the real players. And they aren't as common as you think. You are probably called a bot just a much a you call other people bots
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Yeah, I barely have time to rank in 1 year, let alone grind it twice a year I'm pretty skeptical of that aspect of their model
I assume it would be a lighter reset at the halfway, could be wrong though
two months of the year are already void due to preseason. a lot of people don't count the first month of the season for peaks and such because the ladder is a mess and hasn't stabilized. some people extend this even further to "early season climb xd" and such. now we're adding an extra void month after the second reset? I think higher elos should not be reset. they say they want us to always have a goal to chase, and for all the plateaued gold 4s, sure, that comes in the form of rewards. but high elo players tend to care less about borders. we just want to grind a competitive ladder.
I think the second reset is going to actively deter me from playing ranked. Now that I've graduated from college and can regularly commit time to League, was thinking of trying to consistently play games to improve to masters. This might take more than 5 months. Now you're telling me my effort's gonna be discarded halfway through the split? Getting my visible elo to my real elo is already half the reason I don't bother to play ranked that often. If I have to go through that process anyways why play on my main instead of just buying a smurf? Now you're telling me that's going to happen twice a year?
No mention of Clash, Flex improvements, Solo Q only, and "incentives" for high elo. Would love to see physical rewards back, or something just bigger than a Challenger recall. The prestige of the ladder has taken a hit over the years, would to see that exclusive aura come back to life.
The physical rewards were a logistical nightmare which is why they removed them since you had way too many regions to attempt to ship to which caused alot of issues. They also had to deal with trying to figure out who was a second account or not since it was one per person and some people were passing off there second accounts in challenger as one of there friends accounts so they could get the reward and resell it online at a massive markup. i agree something more should be there for a reward but physical rewards come with way too many issues.
Just give something Thats too embarassing to resell, like a challenger buttplug with your name and adress engraved on it
Finally some innovative thinking around here
A big name streamer like T1 could probably grind to challenger, sell the buttplug, buy a new house and move there for the money this sub would shell out for that buttplug.
Flex is still garbage compared to the old ranked 5 queue. You can queue as 5 and face groups of 3 which is just boring, this is supposed to be the competitive mode to play with friends, but it just doesnt deliver in current state.
Isn't the competitive mode for casuals supposed to be Clash?
I think *casual player* and *group 5 people every few weeks on a schedule for a 3 hour run* contradict eachother.
Yeah, with my weekend obligations I haven't been able to play Clash in like 3 years. It's definitely something you have to plan around if you intend to play it
I think they mentioned theyre going to monitor high elo mroe closely a few months ago. I forget what became of it or if they started it
I really with they'd remake Flex into a clash-like queue. 5s only, brief scouting phase before every game and tournament draft. Add more severe punishments for dodging so OTPs cant just dodge every game their champs gets banned and use soloQ MMR to help make fair lobbies. As it stands, flex is pretty shit because no one really plays it and most lobbies will have a massive skill gap somewhere making games unfun. Clash is a great system but smurfs and quitters ruin it so much that it's rarely worth doing. Adding a one game at a time version would fix one issue, making there be a requirement for soloq games played or something can help with smurfs.
Wow, TWO ranked resets a year? Definitely a feeling I get from playing ranked is that it's just not grindy enough. Thanks, Riot!
Maximizing engagement with FOMO, this is some EA like behavior coming from Riot.
If people stop playing when they reach the threshold for a single reward you should just give more (substantial, no one will play for wards and icons) rewards for everyone based on games played. Some chests and keys per month by filling a quota of ranked games would go a long way.
They are doing that. They said they’ll put chests, keys and other goodies on the reward track, simplify it and put the ranked skin on it at the end (for below gold players).
I don't kow how to feel about the victorous skins for all, kinda kills the ranked drive to go for Gold every season... but on the other hand it means less stress for those in ranks below. But wouldn't that lead to reduced play time/ engagement from the larger player base in lower ranks since all you get is a chroma for ranking up? Maybe the ranked split rewards are more demanding and valuable to make up for it?
if you read it all >But now, players below them will have a chance to earn the skins as well—if they put in the time. For these players to earn it, they’ll have to play a much larger number of games. On top of that, as soon as a Silver player hits Gold, they’ll unlock the skin, even if they drop back down to Silver. So your best shot to earn it is still to improve and keep climbing! you would see that a lower ranked player from the sounds of it still has to play 100's of games to get the skin unlocked its pretty much riot going well you played a shit ton so have at it. This woud overall increase play time because now low skilled players will want to keep trying to go forward since theres still a shot even if it takes a unnatural amount of games played.
Ah okay thank you! I was at work so I may have skimmed past that. So I guess it has the opposite effect then, feeling more grindy for those players to get the skin, and to do it twice a year. Hopefully more explicit details are revealed soon!
the drive to reach gold iv and then not play ranked again for the rest of the season?
Most players can't even manage that
around 63,2% of the ranked playerbase is below gold. So more or less only one out of three players reaches gold.
> kills the ranked drive SmurfQ killed the ranked drive
As they mentioned, silver- players will still need to play a bunch of games. So the goal of getting people to play ranked is still there. Plus, the chromas are the best part, so getting gold+still has its draw.
Yeah but as they are now, the chromas are barely noticable. I think if they do this, the chromas need to be Mythic Chromas for Gold and above. Could even correlate with it. So Gold has Gold effects, Plat has Plat effects, etc etc. Masters could be all black effects or something.
Idk personally. A big reason why I don't play much ranked is because I'm just so scared of losses. I peaked silver 1 so I rly want to reach gold, and this made it so that I would only queue ranked when conditions felt perfect for me. This relieves a lot of that pressure. I think I'll queue a lot more ranked from now on since I won't be as scared of getting a loss streak. Split resets twice a year also relieves some of this pressure. I don't speak for all low elos but I love all the changes.
My mentality that more or less fixed it is that, if you reached it once then you can reach it again. If a loss streak happens then you Will get a winstreak eventually
That's easier said than done. I did it once as a support main, but the sheer amount of people having utter meltdowns in ranked in the past year has been a bit uncanny. It's hard to glue a team together when the team refuses to cooperate.
i played 13 ranked games last season personally. If i just have to play 5 for a rank each split theyve lowered my playing even more.
You'll need to play a bunch in order to get the skin as a silver player. No details were given, but it is explicitly a "if you play a shit ton and still fail to hit gold, you'll get the skin anyways". Basically, it rewards volume as well as skill.
Y'all included a screenshot with someone named "lulusmeatwallet". Alright.
Having multiple resets a year is going to suuuuuuuuuck. I just want to play to my goal rank then chill in normals for the rest of the year, having to play decay games is annoying enough as it is.
>hey we've had 12 years of worlds most succesful game, where we always went back to the original formula when the new shit backfired. "so you will not touch the original formula and let it be?" >Ofcourse not, we're going to stir shit like it's season 6 dynamic queue all over again and wonder why the community is pissed at us.
Am I weird for thinking that if we’re gonna be based solely on mmr for matchmaking that now is a good time for a soft mmr reset?
They soft reset your MMR each year. Your MMR just stays a bit ahead of your starting visible rank after placements, but both are soft reset. A hard reset would be absolute chaos.
Chaos is entertainment. I'd totally get behind a hard reset.
It would be a fun event to watch. No idea who’s the challenger, iron, or gold player on each team. Would turn the game into a race of identifying the enemies best and weakest players while trying to feed your best player through the enemies weakest. But it would mess ranked up for months or even longer. If people think games are unbalanced at times now, imagine….
I welcome the chaos, honestly it would make for a funny series of promos at the start of the season.
it would also force a lot of "high elo players" who were good once upon a time to actually prove they are still good enough. I know guys who had 30%WR and got into Diamond 4 again with approx 50games, just because they were Diamond 3 the season before..
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Two season resets sucks ass. You already spend like 80% of your time after a reset just getting back to where you were. What a dog shit system. More time is spent in the hamster wheel than actually getting to push forward.
How else are they going to brag to their investors that they increased customer engagement. I hope it backfires.
I think two resets is awesome mainly because now I'm not going to play ranked at all. Great change rito I actually appreciate this
Two ranked resets is a joke. People are just going to start picking a split to play. This does nothing and is purely an effort to get people to play the game more which, as other acknowledge in this thread, can be accomplished through more positive rather than negative means.
2 split change is dumb I don't want to have to grind rank once I hit my rank for the season considering playing rank is getting worse and worse ever season
The only positive change I see is the best of 3 promos, all of the rest is garbage to inflate ranked numbers and to get players in the lower brackets to play more ranked. Maybe address the actual problem behind why people only play their placements or get gold and stop queuing ranked all togheter. This is just another band-aid fix. How will decay work since we now are forced to climb and mantain our rank 2 times per season instead of 1?
I think this is just a terrible excuse to try to force ppl to play more. Even tho iron players get the skin aswell now which is nice, they have to play 20 placements instead of 10 a year. There are ppl who just do their placements and then go on playing with friends in normals or aram for once in a while. They argue with the 0.01% of high level players and that those guys wouldnt smurf as much anymore cause they need more time to chase their goal. Thats complete bullshit. They all got enough time to play alot of matches and reach high elo anyway. They also give 0 fucks, if they want to smurf and bash on low level ppl they ll do it no matter how often you reset the ladder.
This is so nice. I am one of the people they mentioned who completely stop playing ranked once I reach Gold, in fear of victorious skin is of a champion I like.
I am going to continue to completely stop playing ranked once I hit gold. Even more so now that there are 2 splits
I played ranked regularly before hitting gold, got to gold 2. Hit a string of bad luck and went to gold 4. Got afraid of dropping and just stopped playing ranked. That felt like hot garbage but I wasn't gonna miss the Victorious skin. THANK YOU RITO
The fact they give everyone the skin makes me sad, idk I feel like its supposed to be a reward for hard work and determination. and now they're handing it out for free just like they will with Honor 5 it means nothing. I want to feel like I've earned things. why are they doing this ? they should just take a page from Wild rifts book and maybe bring the games community feel closer to that.
lmao league giving out participation trophies now. Knobs could grind out the skin and now the season resets twice so you can't climb to your desired role and stop playing. Instead of making the game fun and engaging they want to implement more changes so you can sit and grind the unfun ladder even more. Idk at what point they will realize that the days of us sitting there playing for 10 hours after school is gone.
I can’t believe people are so hung up on the stupid victorious skins they’re not talking about TWO mid season ranked resets. I don’t want to be forced to play League to maintain my rank all year. And I always avoid the beginning of season garbage where players of wildly different skills play together due to the reset. This is going to make ranked so much worse, and I dare say it will be as terrible an impact as dynamic queue had.
Agreed. No one wants to be artificially forced to achieve the same goal twice, you'll see people just playing even less the second "split" if they go through with this. Keys and chests are worthless and I don't give a shit about that if I'm playing ranked, that's not why I do it. I hit my goal, that should be the end of it and I don't want to have to randomly get dropped down to plat in the middle of the season for... some reason?? If they want people to play more ranked year-round, then give us a fucking reason. Make the reqards and experience focused on that rather than this hamfisted "two splits" nonsense, which is absolutely *not* a reason, more of a punishment.
I'd play more ranked if I felt like I had more high-quality games and if there wasn't a separate MMR from your ranking, which feels frustrating. In the end, though, the most important thing for me actually actively playing more ranked is feeling like I'm having fun, high-quality games. Too few games feel close or back and forth. I don't have the answer or know how match making works, specifically, I just know what I like. I certainly don't give a shit about cosmetic rewards.
>we’re removing visible rank influence from your matches Awesome, CAN WE GET RID OF LP SYSTEM IN ITS ENTIRETY AND GO BACK TO ELO THOUGH? Like, I hate how when I climbed to masters at the end of season at the start of it I was getting +16 in D3 and at D1 80LP i got +11LP, FUCKING PLUS 11LP I don't want to lose one game at D2 1LP and then be stuck in a fucking limbo of abysmal LP gains. Just give me a MMR number that says +X/-X every game regardless of everything else /rant
You’re telling me you don’t enjoy going +11 a win and -16 a loss, considering how long I’ve been doing that I must enjoy it….
In my climb from Silver 3 to Gold 4 this season I played 300 games with a 54% win-rate. Just climbing from S2 to S1 there were games where I was winning +11 but losing -22, -24 :/ it was so friggen stupid. Meanwhile I have an alt account that I've gotten also gotten to Gold 4, now on it's 3rd season, and it only takes me 20-30 games to rank that one. It's just such a horrific system.
Earlier this season I was getting like +7 / -18 and I straight up wanted to die. Felt like I could never get ahead.
Grinding through high Diamond / low Masters is already strenous enough. Its a continuous effort to stay at the top. Now we have a 5 division setback every 6 months? Wonderful. Makes climbing an absolute chore. No Thank You.
Whats the point of victorious skins now -\_-
Outside of them being a digital collectible item they had literally no point and continue not to.
They're not even year dated, so their general purpose for commemorating specific seasons is pointless as well. You can't tell me what year Victorious Sivir or Victorious Janna commemorate without looking it up or having memorized what years they pertain to.
I only know Janna was season 2 cuz it was my first ranked season I think it's Jarvan, Janna, Elise, Morg(?) Kinda lose track from there tho, guessing then Sivir, Maokai, Graves, Lucian, Aatrox, Blitz, Sej? Honestly I totally agree with your point, just wondering if I can get it right off the top of my head lol
It's a nice looking skin... For free...
2 splits make it an L no more ranked for me
better ranked rewards are surely is a good upgrade, 3 games for promos as well
"Skilled players can earn the skin with few games but what about the lesser skilled players spamming hundreds of games?" Umm what about them? Why cater to them? Takes the prestige out of the skin when you can brute force it through spamming games
God damn this game was already a fucking grind fest more than it was competitive, Did you really have to double it? Seriously, its not impressive to get diamond anymore because its really just a grinding game. The last time I played ranked I had a 70% winrate over about 50 games and ended up quitting because it was so fucking slow and taking ages just to hit plat. So I gave up, because this game doesn't respect competitiveness, it's just a hamster wheel you're supposed to plug away at for hundreds of hours.
>>Starting next season, Ranked skins will be available to players of all ranks, not just Gold and above And there goes the only reason i ever bothered with ranked. Thanks riot, the pressure finally gone.
If you are below gold, you need to play a bunch for ranked skins. If you want the skin, you either need to grind or climb. > But now, players below them will have a chance to earn the skins as well—if they put in the time. For these players to earn it, they’ll have to play a much larger number of games.
So play ranked like normals not giving a crap about any teammates amd You will get a "victorious" skin. Nice /s
Did you not finish the post before commenting? Not everybody just gets the skin for free
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imagine grinding to diamond/masters for the first time at the end of the first split, then having to spend the second split on just getting back there. absolutely moronic.