Riot Games has released a blog post updating fans on matchmaking and more for League of Legends. Its upcoming projects and early preseason explorations include improvement in ranked and rewards. Additionally, it shared initial results from the previous update in February.
Improvements
The biggest concern among many League players is the quality of ranked games they receive. This includes autofilling, player ban, queue times, and server status. Since patch 10.6, Riot shipped Autofill Parity, equalizing the number of autofills across teams. It also addressed issues within unfairly matched premade teams.
Since then, games have improved, going from 54% imbalanced premade matches to 6%. Moreover, autofill imbalances for ranked games have gone from 11.4% to less than 5%. Queue times have improved overall as well, marking these improvements as successful.
A little bit more than brief mid-year ranked update. Topics from matchmaking to promos to Victorious on the table:https://t.co/RDi4WSQG7d
— Cody Germain (@coderbryant) June 1, 2020
Changes in matchmaking
Now that Riot has fixed some autofill and premade match bugs, the developers are looking to further improve matchmaking. They have shared results of their months-long effort to “quickly identify new and veteran player’s [sic] skills.” This update made its way to patch 10.10, improving queues in most regions. The next initiative is Ranked Account Seeding, which uses this new matchmaking algorithm to improve ranked queues in early preseason. This is great news for players who play ranked all year long and have previously dealt with games that negatively impact their MMR for the current season.
Ranked Account Seeding (previously New Account Seeding) will make sure bottom-tier Gold IV players don’t get placed with high-tier Gold 1 players. In New Account Seeding, League of Legends placed all players in the bottom half of their rank. This meant highly-skilled players often faced lower-skilled players, making it an easy climb to return to their pre-season rank.
The new ranked goal is to gather as much information on players, accurately matching them to the correct rank pre-season. This will guarantee less imbalanced games, making it more fun for everyone.
Player feedback, reporting, and Flex restrictions
Next, Riot has released a game plan for some projects in the upcoming year. It will first work on Champion Select Reporting and Muting. Players often get into arguments with matched teammates during pick-and-bans. Riot hopes to improve this by allowing teammates to report someone before the game even starts. These changes should arrive in late June or early July.
Additionally, Riot plans to loosen the restrictions in Ranked Flex. Players will soon be able to play with anyone they want, regardless of rank. It will also focus Ranked Flex’s matchmaking to become similar to Clash, prioritizing balance across a broader range of MMR.
Upcoming projects for 2021
It isn’t too late to plan for the upcoming year, and Riot already has some ideas at hand. It plans to improve the progression system for promotional series, as well as update inter-division demotion protections. Hopefully, this will improve a player’s experience when it comes to ranking up to the next tier.
Additionally, Riot will update rewards and Legacy recognition. Part of the update will change the way players get their past and current accomplishments highlighted. It also plans to fix organized group play, such as Clash and Ranked Flex. The overall goal is to encourage players to continue to play in teams without the hassle of bugs, imbalances, and an unhealthy ecosystem.
What kind of changes do you hope to see in the coming year? Let us know in the comments below, and make sure to stick with Daily Esports for more League of Legends news.
