Glory of the Climb – Reviewing the New “League System”
It has been about a week since Riot released the new League System which aimed to revamp soloqueue into feeling like an actual ladder, instead of the endless and painful grind of spamming games to gain or lose rating. The new system has provided people with tangible ranks, divisions, rivals, rewards, and promotions, but was this overall a good thing for soloqueue and does it help alleviate a lot of the common problems and grievances that soloqueue grinders used to suffer from? Well I am here to give my humble opinion on the subject as a pretty avid soloqueue grinder and after only playing a handful of games in the new system all I have to say is…..
FUCK YES!
The new league system is absolutely amazing and does so much to make soloqueue an actual enjoyable alternative to playing Normal games compared to its old iteration. Soloqueue feels competitive again because the Color and Number divisions actually do an accurate job of distributing players based on their skill. Climbing the ladder to get to your placement matches also feels incredibly rewarding and satisfying and gives you realistically obtainable rewards to queue for compared to the old system. If you get about twenty League Points (LP) a win and need 100 to qualify for a placement, that means you only have to win five games before your hard work pays off. Compare that to the old system where after hitting 1520 rating to get gold you had to get another 330 rating to get platinum! You could even lose rating and slide past your previous achievement into a lower color; which brings me to the other best part of the new system, once you have achieved a certain color (bronze, silver, gold, etc) you get to stay there! Talk about actually getting to reap the rewards of your hard labor!
So What Does It All Mean?
Well the thing that I am noticing when I queue up now is that I am much less stressed when it comes to winning, trolls, and not making progress. The League system has remedied all these things quite nicely. I was put into Platinum Division IV to start and played a few games, win some lose some, until I eventually got to my placements to move up. I quickly lost my first 2 placement matches and was back to building up my LP to 100. One game later I got back to placement, took two quick wins and got promoted to Platinum Division II. What I learned from all of this was that I really didn’t care if I won or lost though. The burden of stress had been lifted and I think part of that was that I knew I was always going to be locked into Platinum. I never again have to worry about sliding so far down the ladder into areas where I greatly outskill the players on mine and the enemy team, and this made losing much less stressful. Another thing is, when you enter a new division and are starting anew, you have no pressure at zero points because you can only go up, never down. I never find myself grinding my teeth anymore and I am always having a good time even when I lose because I know I can queue up again and get an equally challenging game that actually caters to my appropriate skill level. Also, because you cant go down in color (you can go down in division but its unlikely) your skill becomes tempered and you always make progress. I can’t quantify how much my skill in playing mid lane has gone up by being in my current division, but I sure as hell notice a difference. I die less, I have better map awareness, my cs is good, and I carry more often. This also leads to positive feelings because if you can stick it out in your division long enough and actually learn stuff from the games you play then you will definitely rise and eventually be promoted.
The last thing I want to briefly touch on that is a problem in soloqueue is trolls. Now I will say that with the new system I find that people are much more cooperative and nice within the game lobby, they all want to win, but people still rage a TON in game, especially if they are in placement matches. There are also still some “lobby bullies” lurking out there which are the people that will call mid and even risk going double mid or double top to try and coerce you out of picking the role they want. The new system did nothing to resolve these problems so every once in a while you will encounter them. However, it makes giant strides in removing the general stress and animosity people feel towards eachother in soloqueue under the pressure to win in order to gain rating, which I think overall is a great change to the environment and makes everything much more enjoyable.
So What Are You Waiting For?
If ever there has been a Season to clean up your act and finally achieve a specific color rating to really make yourself proud, impress your friends, and add a tangible value to your skill this is the Season. Riot has made giant strides with the game to make it more enjoyable as a spectator sport and also now to play as a casual fan of the game. Brush up on some of my past Season 3 articles if you want to have an edge over your opponent and I’ll see you on the Fields of Justice!
Previous “Glory of the Climb” Articles:
Dominion: Helping You To Win More Lanes and Games
Developing Your Killer Instincts: Why to be Aggressive in Season 3
Love, Dcgreen
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You’re wrong.@Epistemic
@RybiRyj
I don’t know why people say you can’t fall in leagues, you can get demoted. My friend recently got demoted from gold to silver. Riot even said it was possible in their initial posts about this new system. People need to pay attention.
FYI they didn’t change anything except what players see. Elo still exists it’s just hidden. If you lose enough games at the bottom on any division higher than 5 you will drop to 50 at the previous division. If you just keep losing at 0 at the bottom of your tier your elo will still go down even though your league points dont. What happens is you get less points per win if your elo does not match your division such that advancing from gold to plat means you climbed back up to 1850 elo.
You are in bronze, it means you’re shit. Deal with it.@DJKrafty
Yeah this new league sounds cool, but when you drop from bronze 1 to (about to be) bronze 3 because of AFKers or throws, it’s not that great. Winning doesn’t have enough incentive to keep playing for me since I’ve dropped so low in so few games.
@RybiRyj
Well as RIOT said they don’t want us to feel unsafe to play ranked. In the old system, when you reached something you wanted, you’d end up being scared of joining another game just so you wont drop down. This way you can feel free to play as much as you want. And I don’t think that anyone will get there. You still need to win a lot of games to get to platinum or potentionaly to diamond and you must win those best of threes and best of fives. More people will get there probably but only because of the reason stated above… Unskilled players will either stay where they are or they will get carried higher. But that was happening even with the old system.
I feel that the fact that you cannot fall down to a lower league is just plain stupid. Isn’t it true that in such system every player will achieve diamond league (given he plays a large amount of games) no matter what his skill level is?
I once heard that this system is taken from what we have in Starcraft 2, but you can move down a league there. Why is it different in our beloved LoL?
@Big Lebowsky
Yeah and judging someone’s skill just from what he believes in (elohell) is much more professional right? I bet you just copy what pros say and try to talk like them by say “Elo hell has never existed.” However, truth be told, if you compare players on low elo to players on high elo, there is a certain skill gap. And if you lose 10 games with score 9/2/8 (not that it happend to me) then yeah, I believe you could call that an elo hell.
The new system sucks !
There are tons of players (like ChrisO.o here), who got out of their so called “elohell” – elohell never existed, and the fact that you believe in it is just showing me your +3 Division means nothing for you or your rating.
Maybe YOU feel better – but think about better players who LOSE MUCH points or divion to trolls/afk’s or maybe bad players that just got up 3 Divions BY LUCK or opposing trolls/afks…
@Cervantes
Your division had nothing to do with who you are paired. All is still same old elo.
Divisions are only cosmetic change to make u feel better.
But I really feel better in new system even when there is no logical reason to
So as mentioned by OP, it is less stress and tilting for me, so better results.
I love the new system!
Played the real elohell quite a long time, about 2 months, without gaining any elo.
now, 2 weeks in the new system i got promoted 3 divisions already, according to lolking a gain of 250+elo. mb i can get out of there now, thx riot!
@Cervantes
ya but i go 6-0 all day with roaming, and they got 0-12 so ya, they probably act like gold??, and this happens way to often.
I HATE THIS NEW SYSTEM!
@Jenel
you get paired with people at your skill level. Either they are performing like a gold player, or you’re not performing as good as you think, but I just think it’s the first choice, When I was bronze, I got paired with silver, and now that i’m silver, I play with gold players, and gain 25-40 pts per match
The new system is still bullshit, i got my promotion game to gold 2 and i got queued up with bronze 4 and silver 4 seriously, what did the new system changed if you still get queued with less skilled team mates? and it was no duo’s..
The system it’s better than the elo one, but, still has too many errors, like when people just have 16 top champions and can only play top. Same problem if people grind RP too unlock champions as well as get at lvl30 fast, I don’t have problems with the pros but how about some random new guy to the game do that. They need to give same posibilities for people that actually casual plays league, by reducing the ip prices (they are doing it so slowly) And give descounts for runes, as well as champions, I know the game sustains about RP sales, but let’s be honest… They do streams and events and have too many sponsors so holy molly why so much punish for players that doesn’t invest in the game like a rune page 6300 ip really? so do i need to invest in runes, champions, or a rune page? too many people just buys champions they don’t realize the other stuff it’s needed to actually have a descent game, otherwise they made the game hardcore for the rest of team.
I also have a problem with the statement “I never again have to worry about sliding so far down the ladder into areas where I greatly outskill the players on mine and the enemy team, and this made losing much less stressful”
Yeah, I was placed in silver IV, now I only have to worry about losing two games in a row and falling into the rank 5 pit of a tier that even I can’t carry people out of. Oh wait that already happened. GG.
GG -_-.
Very well thought out article. Really does put a lengthy summary on what Riot has really been trying to achieve and I would have to agree that the trolling has been toned down tenfold.
Only problem with this article:
“I never again have to worry about sliding so far down the ladder into areas where I greatly outskill the players on mine and the enemy team, and this made losing much less stressful.”
MMR/elo is still tracked separately from your division, so if you lose a lot of matches, you will get down to the same situation as before — The only difference will be that you are technically still platinum.