The ranked climb defines the start of every season of League of Legends, though it seems that each time a split begins anew, a handful of discrepancies plague players’ experiences.
Riot Phroxzon, the lead gameplay designer for League, has offered players some advice regarding their ranked endeavors at the start of the 2024 season, particularly new players and those venturing into ranked queues for the first time. This follows ongoing discussions regarding the state of ranked placements and where new accounts are starting their climb—seemingly in above-average Elo.
Phroxzon encouraged new players to partake in games on Summoner’s Rift before jumping into ranked queues so their gameplay can be analyzed correctly before placement games are taken into account. He noted that seeding information is greatly skewed when players have solely indulged in other queues like ARAM and bot games. This can not only lead to new players being placed incorrectly but their teammates being placed lower than they ended in the previous split, spiraling into a larger, more widespread issue.
All ranked modes remain locked until players reach account level 30, which requires a number of games to hit. But there is no requirement that these games have to be either quick play or draft pick, meaning players can circumvent Summoner’s Rift almost entirely by simply playing bot games, ARAM, or Arena to gain experience and reach that ranked requirement. This is how a majority of smurf accounts reach level 30, a factor that Riot Games has actively been trying to diminish over the past several years.
Phroxzon also noted that in an attempt to remedy the seeding issue for new players entering ranked, the team may be implementing a prerequisite number of games on Summoner’s Rift before players can jump into ranked queues at some point in the future. But this “won’t be for a bit” and is not something that has been decided on just yet, according to Phroxzon.
Riot previously announced that League will eventually be moving to the “TrueSkill 2” system for rating players’ MMR, though noted the switch will take some time to implement due to the factors it takes into account when evaluating player skill. More information is expected to be revealed as the season continues.
