While many League of Legends players have been impacted for some time by illogical PL gains and losses, Riot Games has finally spoken officially on the subject. The studio is indeed making changes to the MMR and therefore the PL gains.
It was growing a little in the League of Legends community since the deployment of patch 10.24. Many players had complained about incurring illogical LP wins and losses in their game – losses that were too great that was in no way offset by their wins. Game support even advised affected summoners not to play in ranked queue during the preseason as the competitive season was over. It should be remembered that players who play in a ranked line between two seasons are essential since they allow Riot Games to better adjust the MMR algorithm and to adjust it according to the data collected thanks to the parts of its die-hard lovers of the solo Q.
This fluctuation in PL was actually due to a change led by Riot Games at the MMR level. There is nothing wrong with adjusting the game’s algorithm, the only problem here was that the studio had not released the information to players who found themselves faced with a fait accompli and had to deal with consequent losses of PL. Today, Riot corrects the situation and therefore finally officially communicates on the subject.
League of Legends New MMR Changes: Riot
We made some pretty significant changes to the PL system during the preseason, and while some are fairly visible (end of division promos), others are more discreet (improved our matchmaking algorithm). There were a few glitches when deploying these systems, but that’s why we’re doing it in the preseason, where the impact is more limited. As a result, player rank increased, which reduced short-term PL gains. We’ve made the necessary adjustments to get everything right when resetting the season in January.
These changes have one main goal: to reduce the LP gains and losses slightly on average. The leaderboard will be reset at the start of the season to keep players closer to the leaderboard they reached this year.
The elimination of division promotion streaks allows players to climb faster and benefit more from winning streaks. The combination of these two changes would cause quite a lot of rank inflation, so we need to decrease the amount of PL earned per victory, in order to preserve the accuracy of the ranking system.
After having finally clarified the situation in terms of LP gains and losses, the studio also reveals its ambitions for the progression of the preseason. Three priorities emerge:
Priority 1: general stability and pace of the game
- Are the game length, snowball effect, damage and other important aspects of the game at the right level?
- We are currently happy with the snowball effect and the length of the parts.
- Instant damage was too high on deployment, but improved after the changes in patch 10.24. However, they are still a little too high compared to our expectations in the long term. We plan to make a new instant damage reduction for patch 11.1.
Priority 2: general balancing of classes and positions
- Are all classes viable and performing in the right way?
- Originally we had (as expected) a few strong classes (tanks, AP, a few assassins) and a few weaker (ADC and enchanters).
- We hope that the changes in patch 10.25 have brought the balance back (buffs for ADCs and enchanters, nerves for tanks).
Priority 3: individual choice of objects, stability and satisfaction
- Do all champions have access to the vast array of choices we imagine, with a satisfying build in sync with their style of play?
- The first results seem convincing for more than half of the workforce, where champions benefit from increased choice and satisfactory builds.
- The first spring patches will bring changes to champions and items to allow the new system to unlock its full potential.
The priority that interests us the most – and on which we hope that Riot Games will quickly achieve a decent result – is of course the balancing of the different classes of champions. The omnipresence of tanks in the meta doesn’t appeal to everyone, and the studio announces, ADCs should be buffed in the next patch and annoying tank nerfs at the same time.
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