ELO Hell - Suggested Fix.

Hey all, this thread is about my suggested fix for the issue of "elo hell" From my perspective "ELO Hell" seems to be a major game issue that a large part of the player base have with the game as it stands right now. When i talk about "ELO Hell" a few things come to mind, like for example: -Situations in which players with a high level of skill and experience, are stuc k playing with much less experienced players. (ex. players with 500-1000 wins st uck playing with new lvl 30's -people who sometimes have between 50-150 total ga mes played, players who for whatever reason, are matched together based on elo d espite the huge disparity in experience and skill) -Situations in which players with a low amount of skill/experience in the game a re carried through to high elo matches based off the success of their team mates . (ex. players with extremely low experience/not smurfs, low game count but high win count) -Situations in which, due to the conditions mentioned above, there is a pervadin g feeling of extremely low morale/desire to cooperate as a team among matches at certain elo levels. Overall the above situations seem to lead to a much more negative/unfulfilling g ameplay experience for the players affected by them, as well as being the cause of various other game issues, like for example, you have ranks of "elo" at which certain behaviors are seen repeatedly and constantly throughout matches. For ex ample - at some level ranks you may see players with a very low amount of gamepl ay experience (i'm refering to new players, lvl 1-10, fresh in the game) who coo perate extremely well in their teams despite their lack of knowledge about commo n strategies/player behaviors/functions. Now in contrast at higher ranks/lower e lo's you will see far more experienced/skilled players constantly and continuall y refusing to cooperate with one another/ blatantly "trolling" in game repeteadl y. At some ranks of elo you will see games in which constantly/repeatedly certai n types of champions are almost NEVER played (ex. ranks of games in which tanks are never picked: everyone instant lock's dps/support - games in which tanks are ALWAYS picked, 5/5 tank classes). Most people in this community, i think, are aware of most of these issues or hav e experienced them firsthand. My personal philosophy on the matter is that a large number of these issues are currently percieved to be caused by players being a certain "type" of player (eg . a good/skilled player, or a player who is uncooperative/likes to "troll" other players.) And i would say this view is largely incorrect, i believe that a larg e amount of these issues seen amongst players are caused by a nuance of the ELO/ "matchmaking" system that fails to do the job of accurately/precisely "matchmaki ng". The result is alot of players who, durring their LoL experience, feel out o f place. They feel like they arent in the type of matches/ with the type of play ers they should be and thus the behavior in these games/matches changes drastica lly. If you consider my example about players who are "fresh" into the game of league of legends, level 1 players with no experience. You can understand how its easy for these players to accept their "place" in the game, as unexperienced/undevel oped LoL players they have no reason to question who they are matched with (beca use they EXPECT to all be new at the game and matched with new players as well) and the overall morale at that level is more positive than at many of the "probl

em elo levels". Now currently you can get into these types of "elo hell situations" in alot of d ifferent ways. For example perhaps when you first started League of Legends you were already a skilled player of MMORPG/RTS type games and adapting to League of Legends was easy for you - but you started out playing with a couple of friends who were not, and participating in matches with them lowered your ELO considera bly. Or perhaps vice-versa you were a player who, upon joining League of Legends was new to the mmorpg/rts gaming community and found it difficult to adapt to t he gameplay, but you had friends who were far more experienced than you and were able to carry your ELO up considerably. In situations like these, when the play er of focus in our hypothetical senario's ends up in Solo-Matchmaking que, they are grouped "out of place" either with players of far to little, or far to high a skill level, in the first senario the player of high skill grouped with teams of lower skill will often feel demoralized at having a team who does not meet hi s standards and seems incapable, and the result of that can manifest itself in t he player acting like a "troll" or blatantly not participating/cooperating with the team because he/she believes he is able to forsee their inevitable defeat. I n the later senario the player of low-skill grouped with far more skilled player s can often let down his team and become demoralized at not succeeding/achieving as much as he thinks should in the matches, which may manifest itself in undesi reable behavior amongst that individual and the team as well when he is flamed f or not playing up to par. The later often leads also to players of low skill lev el dragged into high level matches/playing very porely in game because they are underexperienced and conversly, instead of ending up with a high elo they can en d up with an extremely low elo/continually under achieving in games/feeding, whi ch may lead to them becoming demoralized because they feel they are "not good at the game" often these players simply stop playing or at least play less frequen tly. TL;DR At last - the part this thread is about, for those of you to lazy to read my rat ionale for all this - my suggested fix is simple: I think that a HUGE amount of the problems listed (and some not listed) above co uld be very easily solved by adding a new feature to the ELO System - and that f eature would be something like a timed ELO Reset. Or various "seasons" of compe tition similar to what league of legends currently puts into use. I suggest that ELO Ratings be changed so that they are no longer permanent ratin gs, for example: The ELO System could be made to reset or refresh every month -> everyone would b e placed back on the same starting tier and allowed to work through the ELO rati ngs again at the begining of every restart period. (this would not only give pla yers another chance to succeed and achieve high elo ratings but it would give al l players the chance to regularly work their way into the nieche in the which th ey feel they belong in league of legends. Currently the only other method to att empt do this is by re-rolling a "smurf" character, a system/practice which i bel ieve to also be fairly detrimental to accurate matchmaking, and that's probably what Riot had it in mind to improve when they added the previous MMO/RTS/MMOBA e xperience selection feature for new players.[im refering to that option where yo u pick how much experience with similar types of games you have had when you mak e a new account and login for the first time]) I believe this new elo reset type of system would also make the ELO Ratings over all more valid by keeping them current. And as far as how to matchmake at the st art of "elo reset" periods, i would think going off of total games played would probably be the most accurate depiction of overall "experience", which i think i

s a good place to start. Similar systems have been implemented in other games before (Just for example i believe World of Warcraft has some similar feature for pvp rankings, and i know Killzone 2 had a ranking feature that reset on a monthly basis - Not that Riot s hould emulate other games, but they should certainly learn from other games succ esses/failures) and i think its just the kind of balance that League of Legends is currently missing. I think a fix like this would have an enormous and widespr ead positive impact on the gameplay experience and morale amongst players. Playe rs would not be so easily demoralized or so easily trapped into situations where they are "mismatched" in every game. Players who at one time performed very poorly in the game would have enormous in centive to try harder and play better. Players who were able to achieve high elo /status in the game would have incentive to defend that status, try harder/work more towards becomming better League of Legends players. I think it would balanc e the playing field for everyone. Now having the ELO system reset every month is just a suggestion, and i think th ere is probably a way to improve upon that idea vastly while accomplishing the s ame things as well, and i hope Riot takes this thread and my suggestion into con sideration for future implementation on improving the competitive aspects of Lea gue of Legends. Thanks for Reading, ~Laraki. (Oh and please discuss)