League of Legends: I finally updated the player list in the OP!

[relyanCe]

i've seen people do the 360 controller LoL thing before

it looked really fucking hard

[Diodes]

See: previous post. Spend more time (if you haven't already) and come to terms with the reality of your skill in the genre or get out of Bronze V by your own merit. Good luck.

I don't care about my rank anymore. Maybe I even belong in Bronze V, whatever that means, as it encompasses such a wide range of skill.

I started playing ranked solo queue to start from scratch and find my correct MMR and play games among people around my relative skill level. But I am absolutely certain that the majority of people I end up getting into games with are noticeably lower in skill. My point was not just to brag about how great I am and denigrate about how inept other people are. I am pointing out my concrete observations about my play and their play that in my mind, demonstrate that I am of a different skill level than the other players. I'm not trying to say I'm the best player ever, but to explain my capabilities so that others would understand where I am coming from and why I would be frustrated. But I suppose I forgot that the forums are not a place to go to find people who are trying to understand where you are coming from.

The reason why I made the post at all was to share my view of a failing of the MMR system, and how my placement has made solo queue so unenjoyable to play that I no longer care about my rank, nor have any interest in attempting to rise in the ranks.

Thanks for listening, friends.

[zircon]

I definitely get where you're coming from. And I think the issue is that once you get below a certain point... let's call it the event horizon of a black hole... there is a way higher chance of things happening in games that are unrelated to player skill. Someone being AFK, or leaving, or instalocking a role and refusing to communicate, these are things that can severely impact a game and reduce the impact of player skill.

So for example, let's say you're better than average and your team *should* have a 55% win chance. But because you're at that level, there is a way higher chance that some idiot will feed, rage, AFK (etc) and all of a sudden the typical odds of the game (that should be based on player skill) get completely skewed. Now you need to be way WAY better than the average to make up for that extreme deficiency. Whereas even in Silver, it's fairly uncommon to have players acting like that.

In other words, because of all the statistical noise, your own skill has to be disproportionately higher to win games and go up in rating over time. Derrit made this same observation and it really does correlate with what diotrans is talking about. It's NOT the same as players being "not good", but actually ruining games completely by feeding/AFK/leaving.

[relyanCe]

jungle zac with spell penetration

wat

[eternal Zero]

Streaming now: http://www.twitch.tv/eternalz3r0

360 controller ARAM time.

[The Derrit]

I definitely get where you're coming from. And I think the issue is that once you get below a certain point... let's call it the event horizon of a black hole... there is a way higher chance of things happening in games that are unrelated to player skill. Someone being AFK, or leaving, or instalocking a role and refusing to communicate, these are things that can severely impact a game and reduce the impact of player skill.

So for example, let's say you're better than average and your team *should* have a 55% win chance. But because you're at that level, there is a way higher chance that some idiot will feed, rage, AFK (etc) and all of a sudden the typical odds of the game (that should be based on player skill) get completely skewed. Now you need to be way WAY better than the average to make up for that extreme deficiency. Whereas even in Silver, it's fairly uncommon to have players acting like that.

In other words, because of all the statistical noise, your own skill has to be disproportionately higher to win games and go up in rating over time. Derrit made this same observation and it really does correlate with what diotrans is talking about. It's NOT the same as players being "not good", but actually ruining games completely by feeding/AFK/leaving.

see? how is that hard to understand

[Nabeel Ansari]

what the hell are those adc's building

[prophetik music]

what the hell are those adc's building

ap MF's still a decent build because of her poison, particularly against heavy-healing characters.

now, when i say decent, i mean "not atrociously stupid", like an AS naut build. it's not that great

[zircon]

Looks like two people picked ADC and MF played support (lol)

[Tensei]

I definitely get where you're coming from. And I think the issue is that once you get below a certain point... let's call it the event horizon of a black hole... there is a way higher chance of things happening in games that are unrelated to player skill. Someone being AFK, or leaving, or instalocking a role and refusing to communicate, these are things that can severely impact a game and reduce the impact of player skill.

So for example, let's say you're better than average and your team *should* have a 55% win chance. But because you're at that level, there is a way higher chance that some idiot will feed, rage, AFK (etc) and all of a sudden the typical odds of the game (that should be based on player skill) get completely skewed. Now you need to be way WAY better than the average to make up for that extreme deficiency. Whereas even in Silver, it's fairly uncommon to have players acting like that.

In other words, because of all the statistical noise, your own skill has to be disproportionately higher to win games and go up in rating over time. Derrit made this same observation and it really does correlate with what diotrans is talking about. It's NOT the same as players being "not good", but actually ruining games completely by feeding/AFK/leaving.

Technically, over time, this should still translate to a higher win/loss ratio (and therefore an increase in MMR), though, shouldn't it? Even if games are far swingier because people aren't just playing badly but actively undermining each other, it's still effectively a 50/50 chance whether your own team or the enemy team throws harder.

If someone truly considers themselves ranked below their actual skill, couldn't they just pick higher impact roles (I guess that would be Junglers or Mids in League?) and effectively drag their team kicking and screaming to a win? I mean, that's obviously not going to work in a lot of games, but say that it does in 1 out of 10 and the rest are pretty much split 50/50, the difference in player skill should eventually start to matter. That said, I can imagine that it could take an immense amount of time to bootstrap yourself out of a low ranking.

[The Derrit]

Technically, over time, this should still translate to a higher win/loss ratio (and therefore an increase in MMR), though, shouldn't it? Even if games are far swingier because people aren't just playing badly but actively undermining each other, it's still effectively a 50/50 chance whether your own team or the enemy team throws harder.

If someone truly considers themselves ranked below their actual skill, couldn't they just pick higher impact roles (I guess that would be Junglers or Mids in League?) and effectively drag their team kicking and screaming to a win? I mean, that's obviously not going to work in a lot of games, but say that it does in 1 out of 10 and the rest are pretty much split 50/50, the difference in player skill should eventually start to matter. That said, I can imagine that it could take an immense amount of time to bootstrap yourself out of a low ranking.

if a 54% win rate is pretty good (and it is) and despite this, 1 out of every 10 times you get an unwinnable game due to intentional feeding, afk, or other unfixable circumstance beyond your control, you have statistically a 44% chance of winning your match.

so no

and the theoretical assumption that at low MMR the game can effectively match you into a 50/50 game, or even a 45/55 game, with any sort of regularity is laughable given that because of the issue we're discussing, two people of identical MMR can have vastly different skill levels, making the idea of an 'even game' a fallacy to begin with.

Edited August 27, 2013 by The Derrit

[k-wix]

I thought i'd share a story about a ranked experience I had recently.

I've been up to Gold in S2, but mostly hover in the Silver 1-4 Territory, I haven't been playing much ranked lately, I don't honestly take it all that seriously. I'm a solid player with a good understanding of the fundamentals and I play an amazing support. I usually solo queue as a support in Ranked. It's increadibly challenging to build up trust with your ADC within the first 10 minutes of the match. It's also very rewarding.

Games feel difficult, sometimes a good player makes it easy, sometimes a bad player makes it hard. That being said, I've always felt I had to work hard to move up in the brackets, until this one experience happened... It felt very odd.

A friend I know irl recently got turned onto the game, he's been playing for a few months, and is ranked Bronze 5. Suffice to say he's not very good. Not godawful, but just barely scratching the surface of the fundamentals of the game; no concern for lategame vs earlygame, just knows how to lane decently, knows how to last hit. knows the roles, more or less. He really, really wanted me to Duo with him for ranked games, I was a bit apprehensive, because of his skill level, but I figured one or two games couldn't hurt. (I was Silver 3 at the time, He was Bronze 5)

.. We ended up playing for like 6 hours and winning every *single* game. I lost track of how many games we played, but he made Bronze 3 by the end of our marathon, and I was in my finals, winning the first of 3. It was painfully obvious how bad my competition was.. like, every game it was almost painful to watch. The ADCs would just auto attack and push the lane. (My ADC would do the same, unless I instructed otherwise, which usually resulted in them getting angry.) It made me wonder how effective Duoing with a 'low ranking' partner would go. The difference in skill was absolutely tremendous.

Has anyone else had any experiences like this, or tried to play the matchmaking system to their favor by partnering with a Bronze 5?

[Bleck]

using Elo for a team game is dumb

honkhonkhonk

[eternal Zero]

S3 rewards revealed: http://beta.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/features/announcing-end-season-3-rewards

While I'm really excited to be getting Victorious Elise I really wish that you'd get IP compensation for already owning the champion since you get the champ for free if you don't already have her.

[Tensei]

if a 54% win rate is pretty good (and it is) and despite this, 1 out of every 10 times you get an unwinnable game due to intentional feeding, afk, or other unfixable circumstance beyond your control, you have statistically a 44% chance of winning your match.

so no

and the theoretical assumption that at low MMR the game can effectively match you into a 50/50 game, or even a 45/55 game, with any sort of regularity is laughable given that because of the issue we're discussing, two people of identical MMR can have vastly different skill levels, making the idea of an 'even game' a fallacy to begin with.

That's not what I am saying, though. There isn't a system in place that automatically makes 1 out of every 10 matches unwinnable. Over time, every match that is out of your control (whether you lose because of someone on your team or win because of someone on the other team) will balance out, because again, the system presumably doesn't/shouldn't have a bias to place bad players/griefers on your team more often than on the enemy team. The only constant factor between all those matches are you yourself, so if you are better than your bracket indicates, EVENTUALLY it should start making a difference.

[relyanCe]

Looks like two people picked ADC and MF played support (lol)

it was funny because it looks like both teams had the same pick snafu

we ended up with 2 people picking support and had bitchcrank take top. he did pretty well for all intents versus the wukong, but still lost lane hard. on their end, it looks like two of them went adc, so MF went AP yolomid while ziggs went support. it was a disgustingly easy lane to gank

S3 rewards revealed: http://beta.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/features/announcing-end-season-3-rewards

While I'm really excited to be getting Victorious Elise I really wish that you'd get IP compensation for already owning the champion since you get the champ for free if you don't already have her.

guess I should try to claw my way into gold for the free champ

[The Derrit]

That's not what I am saying, though. There isn't a system in place that automatically makes 1 out of every 10 matches unwinnable. Over time, every match that is out of your control (whether you lose because of someone on your team or win because of someone on the other team) will balance out, because again, the system presumably doesn't/shouldn't have a bias to place bad players/griefers on your team more often than on the enemy team. The only constant factor between all those matches are you yourself, so if you are better than your bracket indicates, EVENTUALLY it should start making a difference.

you're using statistics incorrectly

it isn't relevant at all how often it happens to the other team, it's only relevant how often it happens to you. let's say one out of every fifteen games this happens. and it does, much more often than that. IF you have a 50/50 chance to win each game, and every 15 games you lose despite that percentage, you're winning 6 and a half out of every 15 games. that's 43 and 1/3 percent. that's abysmal.that means in order to actually have a legitimate chance of *breaking even,* you must win 8.5 games out of 14 to account for the 15th game. That's nearly 57%. On top of that, things like '2 out of 3 series' further skew the statistics of how much you have to win to advance. my MMR was at 1450 a couple weeks ago because I was on promo at silver 2 for 4 SERIES IN A ROW. my mmr went way up because i was consistently winning 5 games out of 7, but the two i was losing were in promo.

this isn't a matter of whether or not it's possible, it's a matter of whether or not it's fun. and the fact that it's easier to win games at 'higher ranks' is most certainly not.

[Tensei]

I never said that grinding games with griefers on both teams for a marginal increase in your MMR is *fun*. I said that theoretically, over a longer time, it's impossible to stay in the 'wrong' bracket because at some point, the disparity between your own skill level and the rest of the players around you will come into play.

If the person in this example is truly better than the bracket they are playing in, every time they play a match, the team that they are on will have an inherently higher chance to win simply because they have *one* player who is slightly better than the rest and is more or less guaranteed not to actively ruin the game. If you match up 10 random players from the same bracket, the odds are supposed to be 50/50. In your matches, however, there are only 9 random players + you. It's irrelevant that one in every couple of games is flat out unwinnable because of a single player who throws the game. Your team is guaranteed to always have at least one slot taken up by a player who presumably knows what they are doing (yourself), while the enemy team has no such guarantee.

Again, this is all under the assumption that the person really is better than their actual placement.

[The Derrit]

I never said that grinding games with griefers on both teams for a marginal increase in your MMR is *fun*. I said that theoretically, over a longer time, it's impossible to stay in the 'wrong' bracket because at some point, the disparity between your own skill level and the rest of the players around you will come into play.

If the person in this example is truly better than the bracket they are playing in, every time they play a match, the team that they are on will have an inherently higher chance to win simply because they have *one* player who is slightly better than the rest and is more or less guaranteed not to actively ruin the game. If you match up 10 random players from the same bracket, the odds are supposed to be 50/50. In your matches, however, there are only 9 random players + you. It's irrelevant that one in every couple of games is flat out unwinnable because of a single player who throws the game. Your team is guaranteed to always have at least one slot taken up by a player who presumably knows what they are doing (yourself), while the enemy team has no such guarantee.

Again, this is all under the assumption that the person really is better than their actual placement.

by my theorycrafting, which isn't particularly unreasonable, if one person gives his team a 55% percent chance of winning, their winrate would still be 48%.

and you would be right if not for the fact that at random points you have to win 2 of 3 or 3 of 5 games. and if that doesn't happen, then you get sent back an undisclosed amount to start over. mmr should increase consistently, bracket doesn't have to because of this

Edited August 28, 2013 by The Derrit

[relyanCe]

and you would be right if not for the fact that at random points you have to win 2 of 3 or 3 of 5 games. and if that doesn't happen, then you get sent back an undisclosed amount to start over. mmr should increase consistently, bracket doesn't have to because of this

You've played a LOT of ranked games this season, judging from you lolking lookup, and you've hovered in Silver with a pretty cleanly 50/50 to 51/49 win/loss. I hate to be that guy, but it may just be that you're exactly where you should be on the ranking system.

I mean, sure, the league system is pretty dumb imo, but I'm pretty satisfied with how it's handled me this season. I'm pretty much exactly 50/50 and hover around silver III. I haven't played a lot of ranked in the last few months, though, and my normal rifts, as I've noted before, are consistently pitting me against high gold to low plat players with a diamond or two every other game or so.

Your normals will reference your MMR slightly, as Zero stated earlier. Try hopping on normal yoloque for like, 10 games or so, and scout them all in lolnexus. See what you're pitted against and how you do! It can be very enlightening about your individual skill level.

[The Derrit]

to think this is about me being like 'i should be higher but my teams suck' is to fundamentally misunderstand my point

my point is as my MMR has increased it has become increasingly easier to win games. this is fundamentally backwards.

[relyanCe]

to think this is about me being like 'i should be higher but my teams suck' is to fundamentally misunderstand my point

my point is as my MMR has increased it has become increasingly easier to win games. this is fundamentally backwards.

Is it really, though? MMR is designed to reflect your level of player skill. If you are showing marked advancement in your play to the point that your MMR is increasing noticeably, I would imagine that winning games should get easier until you hit a point at which either your player skill lessens/plateaus or competition matches your ability to the point that your MMR stabilizes.

This was my own experience, in fact. I started at silver V when S3 began, and I almost effortlessly jaunted my way up to silver III promotion. after a few failed promos, I got to silver II and won my way to promo in like 3 seconds. My MMR spiked to around 1550 or something, and when I made it to Silver I, I was facing competition on a level I was nowhere near prepared for. I lost like 10 games in a row and got demoted, and continued to lose my way back to Silver III, at which time I realized I needed to back off from ranked and improved my skill in normals. Then ARAMs came out and... well I started having fun with the game again.

Edited August 28, 2013 by relyanCe

[eternal Zero]

Want to add that there's a difference between going 50/50 and continuing to rise and going 50/50 and dropping. My win rate is slightly higher than 50/50 but my rank has been steadily increasing the entire time. I play with plat and diamond players and I know where I belong. I'm not discouraged cause I tend to win and lose at a near equal rate. My wins have been against those with higher ratings. It's possible to have a losing record and increase rank even. Simply using win rate as a measure of how you progress through a ranking system doesn't work. Back when your League was determined purely by ELO I'd agree with your assessment of low win rate fucking you over. Nowadays that's not the case at all and that's what Riot intended because using ELO by itself is stupid.

[prophetik music]

Then ARAMs came out and... well I started having fun with the game again.

QFE because fuck ranked

[relyanCe]

http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/23325480#profile

do not know if Team Curse smurf account or sum n00b but I played with this dude earlier

sickest lucian i've seen ingame