As HotS takes a step forward, LoL takes a step back – S6 ranked changes

Not long ago, I applauded Blizzard for making grouping changes to their Heroes of the Storm ranked sys­tem.

Before the patch, players would be able to group as a premade party of any size between 1 and 4, then queue up for Hero League.

I indicated that this was bad, because a large part about MOBAs is playing with strangers, adapting to their playstyle, and working together. By eliminating the need to get along with other people, a critical aspect of MOBAs was not being taken into account for many people’s Hero League ratings.

After the patch, Hero League became restricted to only solo and duo queue. If people wanted to play as a group of three or four, they would have to play Quick Match; if they wanted to play as a group of five, they could play Team League. This restored the importance of teamwork and once again made it a uni­ver­sal element for achieving a high Hero League rank.

Recently, League of Legends decided that this was not, in fact, what they wanted to do. As Heroes of the Storm took a step forward, League of Legends took a step backward and changed their system to what Blizzard already realized was not the right thing to do.

Source: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/site/2016-season-update/ranked-improvements.html

So now, if you see that someone is diamond in ranked, you have no clue if they’re truly a diamond-level player, or if they just happen to have a lot of challenger- and master-level friends who carried them up the ranked ladder in five-man premade groups.

Luckily, I’ve become deeply involved in other games, so these changes to League of Legends won’t even be relevant to me…

(This post isn’t endorsed by Riot Games and doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of Riot Games or any­one officially involved in producing or managing League of Legends. League of Legends and Riot Games are trade­marks or registered trademarks of Riot Games, Inc. League of Legends © Riot Games, Inc.)

 

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