Tag: ranked play (Page 2 of 3)

Riot should let 3-man premades play 5v5 solo

August 21, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

I’ve been trying to spend a good bit of time in solo queue over the course of the weekend to see how things feel. There are still a lot of the same problems – bad players have been carried, good players are in brackets well below their skill level, there is so much animosity among teammates that it’s nearly impossible to organize people. My problem is that I want to see the stats that ranked matches provide, but playing the queue as a solo is painful.

I really think Riot should open up the solo queue to allow 3-man premades. There is really no reason not to. Among the queues, solo seems to be taken the least seriously. Even with three people, the chance for your other two players to be atrocious is high enough that it really shouldn’t be much different from the two man system.

I know there are normal games, but the fact that normal stats aren’t being tracked gives players too much flexibility to leave games without consequence. I still want to enjoy a competitive game with my friends on Summoner’s Rift and, unfortunately, the current system doesn’t allow for that.

league of legends

matchmaking ranked games ranked matches ranked play ranked premade ranked solo summoner's rift

Carry/Feeder adjustments coming to ranked play

August 6, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

I don’t think I’ve read better news today (granted, most of my reading to this point has been focused on either games or gadgetry, so it kinda makes sense). I found a thread in which Zileas said he would be adding feeder/carry consideration to the ELO calculations at the end of games.

This. Is. Huge. This is at least a step toward addressing the individual performance in a team setting and the penalties/benefits some players reap as a result. As a for instance, I had a game today in which I played Shaco. I got a slow start, mostly because I was on the phone and not focused on my jungling, so I didn’t gank much early. I did try for one big gank on our 1v2 lane and sent them back to base, so it wasn’t a horrible early game. Well, not to me anyway.

My teammates, on the other hand, would not stop berating me for being a terrible Shaco and a waste of a team slot and on and on. Our Olaf kept insisting I was going to be useless late game because I hadn’t ganked. As it turned out, I went 11-2-15 with two tower kills before the other team surrendered. Regardless of what my team thought was going on, I was largely the reason behind the victory, or at least the very heavy piece of leaden straw that broke the camel’s back. Our Olaf slightly below 1.00 in his K/D ratio and our Mordekaiser was 1-9. For the other team, that can be an extremely frustrating loss. They likely could have beat our team with a different player. My understanding, then, is that their ELO will not be as negatively effected because we had a strong carry. Likewise, my own ELO should receive a slight bonus for carrying.

On the flipside, if Kaiser had somehow lost us the game (which he almost did), we likely wouldn’t be as penalized because we had a heavy feeder on our team. No word on when these changes will come out, but I’m really excited about them.

Development, league of legends

carry carry adjustment elo elo adjustments feeder feeder adjustment ranked games ranked matches ranked play ranked solo

Should ranked games have free champions?

August 2, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

Here’s something that came up today, mostly because I was seeing a lot of Mordekaiser players. Then I realized he’s free this week (I only looked because of the miserable quality of some of the Kaiser players). The question pretty much asks itself. Why do we have free champions in ranked matches?

The question I always like to ask regarding ranked matches is, “will this enhance or encourage more competitive play out of more players?” I have to say, I think the answer here is no. Most champions only come up on the free rotation once every few weeks, some even longer than that. Should ranked matches really be full of champions that a player might use for a few days at a time, once every few weeks? It seems to me that if you’re going to use an ELO system that doesn’t account for individual player performance, I would think a primary goal would be minimizing the attrition from bad players and maximizing a good player’s ability to carry a team. Having teammates who don’t know the champions is a huge problem in that system.

Granted, there are exceptions to this rule, but I think the only thing holding it back from being a great idea is the current 14-champion requirement to enter ranked play. Reduce it to ten, which will be an increase for some players, hopefully forcing them to play more games at the level cap rather than less before jumping in to ranked play.

Champions, league of legends

elo free champions free rotation matchmaking mm ranked games ranked play season one

Level 30 will now be required for ranked play

July 21, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

I am actually astounded it took this long for Riot to make this change, particularly when you consider the kind of data it had available. Granted, these stats were probably taken after the launch of Season One, but it wasn’t exactly uncommon to see players below level 30 matched with those above prior to the Season One launch either.

As Pendragon stated in a post last night, the change was made because players below level 30 tend to leave 4.2 percent of games, versus the 1.1 percent of games from level 30 players. The really interesting stat, though, is that sub-30 players have a staggering 35.2 percent win rate, while those over 30 are seeing an average 52 percent win rate.

Again, I’m shocked it took this long, and the data serves as a pretty embarrassing statement toward Riot’s foresight on this. You should start to see the change today.

league of legends, News

level level 30 level 30 ranked level 30 requirement level 30 stats matchmaking ranked matches ranked play season one statistics

Draft mode is just what TT needed

July 16, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

I know I’ve flip-flopped a bit on TT in the past – excited to frustrated and back again – but my final verdict was that it’s a fun map, but only until you get sick of seeing the same few characters. Well let me say, with the release of draft mode and the ranked 3v3 queue, TT is back to being fun.

I was particularly curious about the 3v3 draft games because it’s where I’ll likely spend most of my time in the ranked team queues. I never have five people consistently playing with one another, but three is much more manageable, and with draft mode it’s a lot more fun. I like that I can remove Shen/Jax/Shaco from the equation and see where people end up. Granted, there are still quite a few toons that people consider top tier for TT available, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the variety I’ve seen. Hopefully that will continue as my ELO continues to rise.

I also just noticed today that you can’t ban toons that the other players can’t pick. If they haven’t unlocked everyone, you’ll only have the toons they’ve unlocked to ban (plus the week’s free rotation). It’s nice that you can’t then waste a ban on something your opponent would never have anyway.

Where are you guys spending your time? Solo, 5v5, or 3v3?