35% First Time Champs

A few days ago I qualified for my promotion series to try to advance from Bronze I to Silver V. Well…things haven’t gone as well as I wanted and it isn’t for lack of trying.

Basically, I’ve lost 6 games in a row since I qualified. I’ve played 9 but twice a player on my team never showed up and we called for a remake; another time, the other team got a remake. 3 outta 9 games getting remade is quite crazy. This isn’t someone rage quitting or dodging – this is a person that failed to connect to the game. Did Riot’s code base take a dump? Or were these players who’ve had issues isn’t the past who got placed in my game?

3 outta 9 certainly seems like Riot is matching me with problematic players.

Then I look at the games I did get to play.

Each game included players who were trying out a NEW champ in this season. And not only was it more likely that there were multiple summoners playing NEW champs, they tended to be on MY team.

20 out of 56 players were playing a NEW champ IN RANKED!!!!

Sure, they may have played the champ before in normals or in a previous season, but according to op.gg, they were playing this champion for the first time in the 2017 season.

Now without even considering the people playing positions they were “autofilled” for that were not their main, that’s 35% of the players in 6 games that were playing a champion for the 1st time in 2017 ranked. Can that just be coincidence?

So let’s go back to the bigger picture…I reached the point where I could advance a tier in ranked and somehow in the following 9 games, I get 3% of the players not able to connect AND 35% that play a champ they haven’t played in ranked during the past month.

How is this a level playing field to actually calculate MMR or ELO?

I’ve been reading Gevlon’s matchmaking analysis over at Greedy Goblin and I am anxiously awaiting his results, but I have to believe there is something very wrong with Riot’s matchmaker.

Even if you make the assumption that part of the reason people are in BRONZE is because they play NEW champs in ranked, 35% is just an insane number of matchups even if Riot is not just targeting me for some reason.

I’ve been out of school for too long to make the calculations right now, but logically that just doesn’t seem right – particularly when the previous 5 games leading up to my promotion series did not contain ANY summoners playing a champ for the 1st time.

While I’ll continue to work on improving my gameplay, reviewing where I need to play better, and identifying where I need to eliminate my mistakes, I will start tracking more information about the people I’m playing with. Perhaps now that I’ve seen a pattern of people playing champs for the first time, I can start to identify a trend that I can work with and around to progress in rank get out of ELO hell.