Matt Leung-Harrison

Agree the season has had challenges. (it was hard to read your doc on my phone so apologies if I misinterpreted some stuff) There are 300 challenger players and 700 grandmaster players and not all of them are playing every day at the same time. Y'all wanted fast queue times and all challengers in your game. It's just not possible. I think your expectations are unrealistic 😢 We reduced the queue times because it's better than waiting forever to still get a bad game. Either we have faster queue times and the players in the games are wider or you wait forever and maybe we get challengers but probably not. Even if there's a wide variety of skills overall, we still try our best to make the match overall balanced I do agree that with the widening of the gaps, we could take a look at duo eligibility. Those rules could get super confusing within our rank construct though

I mean just follow your own tweet history regarding high elo and matchmaking in general ? you guys have been apologizing and investigating new problems every 1-2 weeks and when it comes to matchmaking, i made this cute little google doc for you to watch where I got 4 lobbies that I played literally today and where I was totally confused as to how some players ended up with me together in the same game docs.google.com/document/d/1zY… please tell me why i am full of shit, i would love to be the dumbass in this situation

the ladder doesn‘t need a reset we need a new matchmaking System that is built from the ground up Riot doesn‘t know wtf they are doing this whole game is built on 3rd order consequence bugs if riot resets the ladder but add a new nasus skin the entire game collapses anyways

(not trying to be combative here, just trying to understand your argument) "would you rather test your luck and see if you could get an account to the same rank getting +26 instead?" This is the part that's confusing me. Are you saying that a GM player is as good as Viper and can reach him if they get lucky? The only way to be rank1 is if your skill level is rank 1. If Viper suddenly goes on a giga loss streak, no amount of +30/-10 will save him, he'll stop getting +30/-10 and eventually flatline at +-20 and a lower LP. Its the fact that he is winning so much that his mmr is just that high. It's like saying a Plat player can become Diamond, all they need is a bit of luck. I agree it's demoralizing for a plat player to be +-20 and look at a Diamond player and say I give up they're too far away, but that's also what makes the ranked ladder work. It's the same construct as being GM and looking at Rank1 and seeing how far away they are and giving up. If a GM player is not going to go on the skill journey to be as good as the rank1 player, why should they have a realistic expectation that they can hit rank1? In the same way we don't deceive plat players into thinking they can become diamond one day. The only way for a plat player to become diamond is by being diamond skill level.

You don’t understand. The question is not whether or not it ACTUALLY is the faster way to climb; the question is when you see Viper gaining 30 LP at 1000 LP do you feel like grinding your 50% winrate +19 -22 account or would you rather test your luck and see if you could get an account to the same rank getting +26 instead? Everyone is already choosing option 2, and when you refuse to actually reset the ladder and the top spots get to 3000-4000 LP I guarantee you it only gets worse. There’s a reason why Chess has never changed their requirement for Grandmaster and they are still able to maintain and grow their playerbase after centuries. When you get to the top, it’s not about the number. It’s about the prestige. You need to re-remember this before it’s too late.

Apex LP Gains Hey everyone, We’ve had a lot of attempted changes to resolve some of the root issues with the Apex experience this year. Some have worked OK and others haven’t worked as well. We wanted to shine a light on changes that are going out (hopefully) today and how we’re going to approach it for the near term and wanted to apologize for the experience that people have been running into so far. Does every region have negative LP gains? - Less than 5 of our 16 regions are having negative LP gains in Apex right now, and they’re to varying extents - Some of those are experiencing it consistently and others, just a little bit, and most, none at all Is Aegis of Valor causing this? - We don’t see any long term impacts on LP gains caused by Aegis - Especially given that the majority of regions are functioning completely fine What’s going on then? - Masters being more achievable this Season & the best players getting stronger as the years go on is expanding the gap between the bottom of Master and the top of Challenger. - The addition of Challenger duos made it more challenging to balance some of these games - While we took pre-emptive mitigations to reduce the impact of things like Rank 1 & 2 duoing together, they weren’t powerful enough and resulted in the best players catapulting further ahead - The rollout of our improved Matchmaking and better balance to duos (this is now Live in every region); does a better job of balancing duos and balancing autofills to make Apex matches more balanced in over 90% of cases, but there is still work to be done when the very best players are duoing together - In the Live Ranked system, the max LP attainable has a soft cap to prevent LP gains from getting too high, which combined with the above issues has led to a less than ideal apex ladder experience Are you going to reset the ladder? - There are some set of people who are really vocal about resetting the ladder; we hear the concerns and are taking them seriously - At the same time, there are a lot of players who will find it very frustrating for all their progress to be reset and while some players will be happy we reset it, others will not, so we’re continuing to evaluate The changes we’re making - To reiterate, in the Live Ranked system, the max LP attainable has a soft cap to prevent LP gains from getting too high - The closer you get to the top of the ladder, you need a higher and higher winrate to climb. - ie. As a player gets closer and closer to the cap, their gains will approach +10/-30 - We’re going to remove this cap, which will unbound LP on the top end and result in the very best players being able to play and climb to pretty high LP values (+30/-10LP until they start to reach where they should be) - It will also make LP gains for the entire Apex ladder more stable, but LP cutoffs for Grandmaster and Challenger will also increase when most players no longer have negative LP gains - We expect most regions to reach peak LP’s of around 3000 and in some of the top end cases, close to 4000 - Grandmaster and Challenger are meant to be very difficult to achieve and it’s intended to be challenging to get there (in the same way that an Emerald player should look at Diamond and feel like it’s going to be difficult to achieve) - At the same time, we’ve heard your feedback that hitting these ranks feels too daunting and grindy (though there is an expectation that the peak ranks in a game are going to require more dedication to keep, we need to strike a good sweet spot here) The future - Us making climbing at apex less daunting caused us to add Grandmaster several years ago and we’re nearing some of those feels now; the skill gaps in Apex are getting too big - In some regions also, the number of Grandmaster/Challenger slots being too low for how big their region is is also contributing to the cutoffs being very high (EUW being a notable example) -> curious on thoughts on increasing this - We might also reconsider the top end of how much LP you can gain per win, but need to be considerate of how much this incentivizes smurfing - Changes to systems like these are a natural part of League being a long-lived game and having growing player skills over time Thank you for being patient with us as we fix all the things and we’ll continue to work to make the top of ladder climbing experience the best it can be.

This change is intended to "fix" LP gains, especially after everyone is stabilized in the manner that you're suggesting. The only difference is that Challengers will also still get +-20. Making a new account to fight Viper is not the fastest way to get up to that LP. I can guarantee you of that. It used to be in Seasons past, but not like that any more

You guys are killing your own game, please take the time to read this. Nobody that grinds Master+ feels validated when their LP number goes up by a digit. Whether you’re 200 LP, 600 LP, or 900 LP, you’re still masters, and you don’t feel more gratified simply because the number is higher. The fact that Rank 1 is unachievable for almost everyone due to MMR differences between players also makes you feel even less rewarded for playing the game because say you are able to hit Challenger, why should you continue grinding when you’re gaining +18 at 1100 LP and someone else is gaining +23 at 1900 LP? I understand that you’re worried that some casual players who are currently Master+ will feel frustrated at the fact that their LP is reset, but I can guarantee you that your only alternative is that the entire Master+ ladder smurfs on different accounts since playing on their mains isn’t even worth it anymore and infinitely more casuals are going to get frustrated and/or quit as a result. The solution is simple. In a few weeks, “season 1” will end. When it does, market an event that the entire Master+ ladder is going into ‘Gladiator Mode’ for the rest of the season where every player, regardless of how good or bad they were in the past, will have an equal shot at getting Challenger and/or Rank 1. Then, do the following changes; Master+ LP gain +/-20 Grandmaster +18/-22 Challenger +16/-24 For years the high end ladder used to always have negative gains and nobody cared, the only reason it’s different nowadays is because carryover MMR makes it so you feel like the only way to compete with the likes of Viper is to go fresh account and get such high MMR once you’re masters that you can actually go higher. If LP gains are fixed and cannot be changed, no one will even want to Smurf anymore. Also, limit DuoQ to a certain % of games once you reach thresholds above Challenger to actually make things fair, and base it not on rank but cutoff LP so people can’t abuse it. If you go through with the idea of 4000 LP to hit Rank 1, I guarantee you will kill off your entire high elo playerbase and make smurfing way worse than it already is for the next 7 months at least. Take this seriously.

I don't think an 800 LP Masters player is in the same universe as Caps or Viper. This change is making that difference more clear My take is that soft cap depressing the cutoffs is doing more harm than good, so this is an effort at transparency for the ladder Are you proposing that we continue doing ^ Can you help me understand more about what your proposed solution for this would be?

@RiotPhroxzon everyone is complaining that cutoffs are so high and your conclusion is uncapping the LP in the ladder which will inflate the cutoffs even more? what a disgrace 👍👍👍 also pls stop with the cope that players got better, that doesnt make lp peaks jump by 400 in a season :D

Shyvana’s rework came out strong (57% winrate). We expect her to only get stronger as players optimize so we put together a micro patch nerf. It should be live now.

Some quick Ranked/Matchmaking updates: 1. We're rolling out improved Autofill vs Autofill Matchmaking in each region (should be complete in each region as of this morning). We had a small hiccup where this was accidentally reverted for 1 day in EUW on roughly the 12th March, but turned back on after that 2. We're aware of the reports of mismatched LP gains in Apex and investigating. Wanted to acknowledge these are painful experiences for folks; it's a hard space, not going to overpromise that we'll be able to fully fix it, but will convene with the team and have an update later today

@RaiderEUW Will take a look later though

Hey was there something tweaked about Q times on EUW? We are waiting 3x-4x the time than usual since this patch today? @RiotPhroxzon

@RaiderEUW I don't believe so, we are rolling out the improved matchmaking in other regions, but that shouldn't affect EUW, since it was already on it

Teammates got you down? Sick of the endless grind? Hungry for LP? Come on down to Swain’s Hot Chicken for some finger-lickin’, cluckin’ fun!🍗🍗

@xFSN_Saber We're rolling out better matchmaking in NA hopefully within the next few weeks. VN and EU have been looking pretty encouraging, so we're hopeful it'll improve things a lot

I'm ngl, this is the worst matchmaking I've ever seen in the 16 years I've been playing league

@Nuclear_int @drew We're pushing a fix in 26.6 to resolve this outside of super high challenger. There's always going to be some amount of negative lp gains at the top of the ladder in certain games, but it should be localized to high challenger after the fix

eh frero @drew ca va pas lfaire ta dit ct fix pq jme prend un -22 a 876 lp avc 74% de winrate répond frr et vite

@LeagueOfLeaks Ah, my bad for trying to have some fun at our job

@RiotPhroxzon Less jokes and more fixing your game, thanks!

Sorry, the Xerath change was a joke... about Phreak saying he was Xerath in a patch rundown😢 Please don't take it seriously 😭

Patch 26.6 Full Preview Azir - We're buffing Azir to distribute some of his power back into regular play capabilities through scaling power that Azir players hopefully will appreciate - Phreak is Xerath Lissandra - Lissandra hasn't really felt the same since her Q cooldown was nerfed in Season 9 - Times have really changed since then and her perma priority waveclear + aftershock taking days and in the vein of making champions feel better to play, we're seeing if she can sustain having this cooldown again Olaf JG - These changes are targeted at Jungle, which has been languishing a bit - Top is a little bit weak, so he will be getting buffed there a bit too Sunfire Aegis - Sunfire's build cost (1000g) has been long cited as a pretty painful experience of the item - While we think having some painful build paths is valuable for the long term value of League, we think this one is a bit too painful ---------- Ranked EUW/VN Matchmaking - We've had about a week and a half now of autofill vs autofill matchmaking being Live and we're seeing excellent results - In regions like Vietnam with a high autofill rate, we're seeing autofill vs autofill go from ~25% of games to 75% of games - In EUW, regular play was already good (90% of the time autofill vs autofill), but in high MMR we went from 30% to 85% - We will continue to roll out to more regions over the coming patches as we're seeing positive results here Apex LP - So far, so good on Apex LP fix resolving most of the issues. The fix looks to be good and is holding - >98% of players should be between 19 and 21 in terms of LP gains, calibrating up and down in small amounts (+19/-21 or +21/-19 or +20/-20) - We have one small fix coming in 26.6 to make this even more consistent

@Diamondprox_LoL @riotgames Yay super glad. We should play chess again sometime :) Will continue to look into local optimizations like you suggest and we also have more improvements on the base bones of the change you're playing on currently

1/2 Dear @riotgames Whoever is responsible for MM changes: GOD BLESS YOUR SOUL. Yes, I've been filled in 40% of my games recently, but those games are finally meaningful again! Now there is almost always a filled player on the opposite side to match and its actually fun playing

@Agurinlol This isn't true, people will still have (ideally short term) negative and positive gains sometimes. But even if it was, isn't having gains close to +-20 what people were asking for? Can you help me understand what you think is a better version?

The fix in question is everyone just gets flat +/- 20 LP no matter their MMR LOL

Patch Preview 26.6! Overall - Overall, the game is looking pretty healthy in terms of balance and broad satisfaction - Over the coming patches, we're going to be looking at some of the champs that have felt a bit unloved/worse for wear and would love to hear your suggestions (both champions and systems) Systems - Chempunk Chainsword has been one of the weaker Grievous items for a while. While we don't want Grievous items to become too commonplace, as it subtly degrades champion kits when too common, it is still just a bit weak for even that purpose - The support item minion penalty has been a pain point for support users and with role quests, the risk of funneling (why it was there in the first place) has been reduced pretty significantly, so we're removing that drawback Shen - Shen Jungle has really started to take off recently, which is really awesome to see! (thanks xPetu!) - That said, he is a tad strong, especially in lower levels of play Zaahen - We're really happy to see Zaahen picking up a sizeable audience in both Top and Jungle, but now that regular players, in addition to experienced players are starting to demonstrate that top end mastery performance, he's looking too strong across the board - Currently, we think his Jungle is a bit stronger than Top, so the nerfs are mostly focused there Skarner Top focus - Skarner has been out of the spotlight for a while and since we've tapped down a few of the things that were causing him to be overbearing in Top (especially W max and the E point blank kidnaps), we think he can get a bit more power there Olaf - Jungle Olaf has fallen a little behind the pack so we're adding some power back

@hylmew No, we just missed an edge case 😭 that then cascaded and caused a negative effect

Pushed another fix to all regions for LP gains in Apex an hour ago (please don't link screenshots from several hours ago) . This should hopefully be the last fix. Thanks to everyone for your patience and helping us troubleshoot the issue. Please respond to this thread if you're seeing anomalous gains and losses. Some very small number of players at the top of the ladder might still have bad gains but it should be slight. Patch preview later