On February 03 2013 00:40 Kyo Yuy wrote:The New League System ExplainedOkay, so there appears to be a lot of confusion about the new LP system. Having gone through several red posts (the most informative being
this one, I think I have a solid idea on how the LP system works and I hope this explanation can help frustrated players.
Here's the tl;dr - your ELO still exists, but is now hidden. The higher your hidden ELO is, the more League Points you win and the less League Points you lose. The lower your hidden ELO is, the less League Points you win and the more League Points you lose. As a corollary, if your ELO is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than everyone else in your division, you may rise up divisions without having to go through a division series. Conversely, once your ELO becomes SIGNIFICANTLY lower than everyone else in your division, you have a possibility of dropping a division.
For example, if your hidden ELO is 1700 and you are in Silver Division I, you may have more losses than wins and still instantly qualify for a promotion series, as the ELO range for Silver Division I is approximately 1450-1550 ELO and you are way above that.
On the other end of the spectrum, if your hidden ELO is 1200 and you are in Silver Division I, you could win 5 games in a row and lose 1 and still be demoted down a tier, as your hidden ELO is way below the expected ELO range for Silver Division I.
So how does matchmaking work? It's done by hidden ELO. Simple.
Your League Division, League Points, etc., have absolutely no impact on matchmaking. HOWEVER, once your match ENDS, your hidden ELO is compared to the ELO of players in your division. If your ELO is much higher than everyone in your division, you will gain a LOT of League Points and you may be able to skip tiers (
Source). If your hidden ELO is much lower than everyone in your division, the system may consider demoting you to a lower division.
As expected, the people who are most affected by the transition to the LP system are people whose ELOs were at opposing extremes of the division cut offs. This is especially true for divisions with an extremely wide ELO range, 100 or greater.
When Riot made the divisions and tiers, it wanted to make sure that every division had an equal number of players. This leads to not every division having the same ELO range - in fact, it would appear that Silver V has a much narrower ELO range than Silver I, but this has yet to be tested. In general though, the division I of each tier should have a higher ELO distribution than the other divisions. I believe this is the case as Yegg has stated the system is stricter about promoting players up tiers,
given that you can never be demoted down tiers.In theory, it is possible to be in Platinum V then repeatedly lose ELO - you could have 500 ELO and still be Platinum V. However, the new system is set so that your LP gains will be miniscule and your LP losses will be extremely high - a 500 ELO Platinum player may win 50 games in a row, lose 1, and then still lose all their LP!
I believe that Riot implemented the new LP system to account for "lucky/unlucky" streaks. On one end of the spectrum, there are players who have gotten REALLY lucky and had 20 straight wins in a row. Their ELO might have gone up 200. However, it's possible that these players don't really "belong" in that ELO, and thus the promotion/division series are in place to test a player's consistency and ability to compete at a given ELO. Conversely, a lot of players in the 1200s can run into bad streaks and then tank a ton of ELO in a day. Assuming these players were placed into Silver, even though their hidden ELO is in "ELO Hell," their apparent League is still Silver V and they can never drop to Bronze except due to extended periods of inactivity.
The flip side of this is that it is now much, much harder to visibly see numerical improvement. You basically have to PROVE that you belong in a certain ELO by not having any losing streaks and consistently having a net win > loss rate. Many players have had instances where they jumped up to 1500 ELO in a day, then tanked down to 1200 and concluded that they belonged in 1500 and were brought down to ELO Hell by bad players. Now if you have a winning streak, you must be able to stay in that ELO bracket for an extended period of time without entering any losing streaks before the system will consider you eligible for promotion.
Again, tl;dr - matchmaking is done by hidden ELO. Your LP gains are higher if your ELO is higher, your LP gains are lower if your ELO is lower. The inverse is true for LP losses per ELO.
Please feel free to correct anything that I've said that is wrong. These are conclusions I drew based on reading posts from a bunch of Rioters on the League forums.
I hope this helps anyone that is confused and provides an explanation for frustrated players who find themselves randomly dropping divisions despite an even W/L ratio.
EPT
