What will change in ranked games after the 12.17 update?
Ranking games and picking opponents are topics that have been regularly discussed by League of Legends players for a really long time. A huge part of the community pays a fair amount of attention to their division and consequently spends a lot of time making sure it is as good as possible in the ranking queue.
For this reason, a fair amount of frustration is caused by the fact that sometimes there were situations in which teams differed significantly in level. Riot is constantly trying to improve the ranking system so that games are as fair as possible and players don’t feel disadvantaged by team selection. What change is hitting the servers in patch 12.17?
Matchmaking will be fairer?
Riot has included a mention in the update’s roster that deals with the matching of opponents in the ranking queue. The developers announced that the system will now try to focus on players’ hidden MMR, rather than their displayed rank.
Summoner’s Rift Ranked queue matchmaking will now focus more on player’s MMR and less on their visible rank (e.g. Silver or Gold).
In theory, the change will make the remaining players in the game better matched by their skill level, and thus the games will be fairer. How this will ultimately affect ranked games will be seen by players in some time when enough time has passed to compare it to the system before the changes.
Riot is currently focusing in updates on fixes to prepare League of Legends for the upcoming Worlds. Most of the changes are related to the balance of heroes, which is expected to mainly affect the game’s professional scene.