[2022] Changes to Ranked in 2023

Originally posted by Carpet-Heavy

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.

Originally posted by KerbleWasTaken

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

Originally posted by Jozoz

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

Originally posted by DanielDKXD

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.

Originally posted by Jozoz

Rejoice! Thanks for the reply.

Can you add any context on the decision at this time?

Originally posted by Piercingforce

Will both of the splits have a similar hard reset like at beginning of season? Or will the midseason one be softer?

Originally posted by shrubs311

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

Originally posted by 747Dragon

Now just remove losers queue and the game could be decent

Originally posted by egrodiel

What’s the point of putting smurfs against eachother? Why not just make it so that a diamond player smurfing on a gold account just gets placed against diamonds, instead of having a 8 minute long queue to find other diamonds that are smurfing in gold?

Originally posted by Shitconnect

So I will see enemy border next patch again?

Originally posted by DiffMeHarderStepJG

God I would love this. There’s very few people with those skins anyway. I think they should do like they did with Championship Riven and make new versions with new names and make it a ranked points thing where you get a token for every win and you can buy a Victorious skin from 5+ years ago with 500 tokens

Eg. Victorious Elise 2024 for 500 ranked wins

Obviously the idea could be tweaked for viability

u/auberaun 👀

Originally posted by I_am_avacado

thank you so much for reverting this, one of the best decisions riots made in 10 years, on par with chemtech drake removal, rengar/leblanc reverts absolutely deserve 300% praise for this.

but why was it even denied there was a smurf queue in the first place? like everyone knew it, it was proven , we knew that if you didnt play your games in first 2 months of season your in smurf queue for 50 games, we knew that new accounts get put in smurf queue but why did for the best part of 2 years every single public comment from riot completely reject the notion this was a thing? why not be more open and honest about this before it was implemented?

Originally posted by Mazrim_reddit

Are you going to turn off the game for multiple times a year now? It's already a joke ranked gets turned off for almost 2 months nov-jan already

Originally posted by General_Pepper_3258

Omg thank you Smurf q had good intentions but was a horrible implementation screwing lots of normal players.

When does this go live?

Originally posted by danielloking_

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.

I guess you'll probably have your inbox spammed by now, but I'm still taking the shot to ask you.

Is there a worry that the existing League population will decrease over time with this change in place? As you said, this change will make the experience for returning/new players worse and it could turn away those people. Or do you think that improving the experience of the existing player base will keep more people into League than you would gain in the first place?

Don't get me wrong, on average I play like 50-70 ranked games per season, get to plat with a high WR and rest because I can't invest the time to grind to Diamond and beyond, so I'd assume that this change will effect me aswell. But I actually think this is a great change speaking for most of the League community that's been grinding ranked for seasons. I'm just suprised that Riot would agree on a decision that is meant for keeping their current playerbase over growing their current playerbase.