It has become absolutely insane how low quality ranked has become in different elos, I am currently smurfing in Emerald-Plat to play with one of my close friends and it is absolute insanity the mix of players that are specifically in emerald.
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Actually decent mechanical players, almost the level i meet in low master
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Somewhat knowledgable players
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Players that are literally clueless when it comes to any major concept of how the game is played, the disparity between the people here and the somewhat knowledgable ones is absolutely insane, Note: often players that OTP and manage to JUST not be enough of a burden to not auto lose the game, (extra note: weirdly enough more kayn players than ANYTHING in this category
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Players that straight up belong in silver, no idea how they are here
Or better yet, i know how, which is the point of why Im posting this.
Example of the type of player we are dealing with (atleast 2 in every lobby)
The issue: these players either dont care to improve or hit their limit, lets say they are capped at this level of skill for whatever reason, what happens to them? They reach Plat or X Elo in whatever Season, new season starts with -2 divisions of where they ended but a notorious +30 -10 LP gains that stay high (not exactly 30 10) for the first 60 games or so, they EASILY reach the Elo they were before with a negative winrate (this guy is literally almost 30 Games in the negative, imagine you literally are 50% winrate which you should have to stay in an elo but then go on a 30 loss streak)
How is it acceptable that this guy is still in this elo? Short answer, its not. But Riot doesnt like taking peoples ranks away from them, if you have been Diamond for 3 years but u are just washed and should be in Gold/Plat/Emerald it will feel REALLY bad for the player, thats why the system is set up in a way for the player to consistently EASILY atleast get back to where they were last season, sometimes even inflate urself higher with a lucky winstreak than you were before because of the insane LP gains.
Another MASSIVE issue in this thing is that I have met people on this Journey that Havent played in literal Months or sometimes unironically Year+ and have little (or no?) visible MMR decay. Literally they will come back to the game be COMPLETELY clueless whats going, be rusty, be worse than the average they were because the overall skill level keeps improving but they terrorize games, I dont understand how this is a thing and would like to know everyones thoughts, how can there not be a Full MMR reset in over a decade? Game Quality REALLY needs this and I get that doing this will bring some initial issues with it I am 1000% convinced this is needed for the overall health of the game
long reply sry
this person is pretty much textbook placed properly, theyre only 2 points under expected rate (50%). how are THEY the problem, theyre almost certainly placed correctly? they arent playing at their peak mmr but they arent far off.
why does mentality matter? ranked has one purpose to place you where you win 50% of your games. they place, they play games, and if they get better or worse their rank changes over time.
he’s not the ‘same elo’ - he probably peaked into diamond mmr and now he’s in emerald. he’s lower than his peak.
if they were playing @ a gold or plat level theyd be losing FAR more than about 50% of their games.
you are conflating two things. percentiles change all the time. they can absolutely be -30 wins and be the same rank as last season because percentiles change. this is entirely arbitrary, riot decides one season diamond is top 2% and the next it’s top 10%. what matters is your mmr (the number) and your percentile on the ladder. this player is clearly lower mmr and lower percentile on the ladder than they were at their peak.
there is no mmr decay and i agree with you it’s an issue. i take long breaks and my options are ‘smurf’ or ‘play 50 games at a 30% winrate cuz i’m washed up’ - the ladder does not handle this well at all.
because mmr resets are pointless. the issues today are caused almost exclusively by smurfs, people whose ranks do not align at all with their skill. those that are decayed/washed up are hard minorities on the ladder. you are claiming that there are people who are placed too high while having lots of games played. this simply doesnt happen, if someone is misplaced theyll badly lose games for their team. if theyre only slightly under 50% winrate they are only slightly overplaced.