Red Post Collection: Community Infograpic, Teamwork OP, Matchmaking FAQ, and more!

Check it out thanks to this post by Riot Romulus:

"With the continued growth of the League of Legends community, new players keep offering lots of new ideas for awesome content. As the game evolves, your passion for League makes a huge impact on the features that accompany each release. 

Here's a quick look at some of the ways your feedback has influenced the game.

Whether it’s on the official forums or elsewhere, we look forward to continuing the conversation and seeing what you come up with next. 

Download a copy of the infographic here (PDF version)"

If you didn't want to click any of those other options to view the full version of this player-rific infographic, click here.

Teamwork OP

In addition to the infographic, Riot has also put out an animated video showing the benefits of working together as a team! Check it out for some interesting statistics about being a friendly and helpful player.

Lyte also had some follow up commentary:

"As we all know, correlations do not imply causation. 

When we first worked on in-game tips, we posted a few correlations that were interesting to us; however, the hypothesis was whether reading the tips themselves had a strong impact on player behavior in the game. If you are interested in some of the impact of these tips, you can take a look at our GDC talk here:

http://gdcvault.com/play/1017940/The...Shaping-Player
Since that time, we've done a variety of analyses on teamwork and sportsmanship and how they impact your odds of winning. None of the analyses on their own are 100% conclusive, but together, we felt like it was compelling data. 

For example, in one analysis we took a set of players and codified their chat logs using an advanced language model in Champion Select Lobby before games have even started. By coding the chat logs as neutral, positive or negative then correlating these to in-game performance or end-of-game reports and Honor, we can see the powerful effects of sportsmanship-like behavior before the game has even started. 

In another example, you can take 5 sets of players that have markers of sportsmanlike behavior such as a low report rate, a high Honor rate, and so on and so forth. You can then compare these sets to 5 sets of players that are considered neutral (or toxic) and see which sets of players tend to win more games.

In yet another example, you can take every behavioral combination of a team and see how win rates differ among them; for example, how often does a team of 5 sportsmanlike players win? What about 4 sportsmanlike players and 1 toxic player? What about 4 sportsmanlike players and 1 neutral player? What about 5 neutral players? You can then look at the behavioral composition of a team and see whether they outperform the matchmaking system. So on and so forth.

When we talk about Champion Select in the future, we'll be digging into some of these analyses in more detail, but we wanted to start the discussion about how OP teamwork is ;)"

Matchmaking FAQ

Riot Exekias has posted up an FAQ, on behalf of the player behavior team, reagrading matchmaking - addressing topics such as ELO hell, duo queuing, smurfing, and more.

"Hello Summoners! 

Recently the Player Behavior team has been seeing a lot of questions about matchmaking. In the future, we'd like to do more regular updates on how matchmaking is working and share some of the results behind our matchmaking systems. But for now, we'd like to start with a FAQ that answers some of the more common questions we see about matchmaking. Lyte, Glacest, and myself will be happy to answer any questions and will add to the FAQ as needed.

Q1: Does ELO Hell exist? 

Based on our data and analysis, the answer is no. However, that does not mean that the pain many of our players feel is invalid. Many players feel that, through no fault of their own, they are stuck in a situation where they can no longer progress. And there are several key factors that can heavily contribute to this feeling. The first of these is that when we take a look across all games, most players actually require about 150 to 300 games to reach their true matchmaking rating. This means that for many players, what feels like an unsurpassable wall may end up being just a small road bump.

The two major psychological factors which contribute to the sense of ELO Hell are the Dunning-Kruger Effect and negativity bias. The Dunning-Kruger effect refers to the phenomenon where people tend to rate their own abilities as much higher than average, regardless of reality. For League of Legends, this translates into most players rating their matchmaking rating at about 150 points higher than their actual matchmaking rating. Negativity bias refers to the cognitive trend where people negative experiences tend to be more mentally “sticky” than positive experiences. In other words, negative experiences, such as playing with a leaver or a troll, will have a larger impact on your memory.

Q2: How does matchmaking work right now? 

Currently the matchmaker attempts to match players with similar MMR and number of wins for that particular queue. For example, this means that your Dominion MMR is determined solely by your Dominion games which is separate from your normal blind pick games on Summoner's Rift.

Q3: If that’s the case, how do I keep ending up in games with players whose skill differs greatly from my own? 

The previously described behavior represents the optimal case. When server populations are low, for example at off hours or at the very extremes of MMR, the matchmaker will give up some of its accuracy in the interest of expediency. However, we are constantly tweaking our matchmaker to help reduce the chance that players of vastly different skill levels are matched together.

Q4. Is the matchmaker punishing me for my winning streaks? I’ve heard that it tries to force everyone into having a 50% win chance. How is this fair!? 

This is false. While the matchmaker tries to create games in which the teams are balanced and have an even chance of winning, this is not always possible. As a result, the ultimate goal of the matchmaker is to be as accurate as possible in predicting the winner of the game, thus allowing their matchmaking rating to be adjusted appropriately. In some cases (particularly for players new to that queue) win streaks can lead to a rapid increase in your MMR, which will cause you to face tougher and tougher opponents. Naturally, this will eventually end your win streak, but you’ll find yourself landing at a new level of more challenging competition.

Q5. Why don’t we just put toxic players into a lower queue? 

This concept, also known as Prisoner’s Island, has been proposed multiple times and considered by the Player Behavior team. However, we ultimately determined that this model was not a good fit for League of Legends. Not only does it go against our goal of reforming toxic players, but it also feels extremely negative in the rare case someone is incorrectly sent there. Finally, since League of Legends is a free to play game, prisoners may opt to just abandon their account and transfer their toxicity to our newest players.

Q6: Why is duo queuing allowed? 

While duo queuing can create less than ideal situations in matchmaking, the vast majority of our players actually prefer to play with their friends. While we have to be cognizant of this fact, we are also working on improving this experience for solo queuers.

Q7: How does Riot feel about smurfs? 

Riot does not officially condemn or condone smurfing. We understand the cases where players make new accounts in order to help teach new players the game, but are working on newer systems to provide a similar experience in a more positive way. Creating smurfs simply to beat lower level players is heavily frowned upon. Permanently banned players who make smurfs are quickly banned again. A permanent ban means that unfortunately, we feel that there is no place for you in our game."

Feedback on Revive in Dominion

ManWolfAxeBoss is seeking player feedback on the summoner skill Revive and it's various uses in the Dominion game mode.

"Hey all, 

Opening up a discussion here regarding the Revive summoner spell on Dominion and want to hear your thoughts on a couple different things. 

1. What does it do well? (ex - Let's me fight more)
2. What are Revives weaknesses? (ex - Long cooldown makes me feel like I'm playing with only one summoner spell)
3. What are Revive's high moments? (ex - I got ganked bot, revived, came back and picked up a double kill)
4. What would you like to see done differently about the spell and/or its corresponding mastery Summoner's Insight? (ex - I want to see more Movespeed upon reviving and the HP boost lasts too long)
5. How do you feel about removing the spell completely? (ex - Everyone would run Exhaust/Garrison) 

We've been thinking about some potential changes to Dominion (like adding a speed boost at the nexus) and want to figure out how Revive fits into the larger picture.

And feel free to include any other thoughts you have regarding Revive."

Have ideas or thoughts? Jump over to his NA forum thread to leave your ideas!

Update on Vlad bug

Jozrael has posted to shed light on a long standing Vladimir "bug" that stopshim from using abilities for ~1 second after casting his ultimate.

"Hey all, here's an update. 

Unfortunately, my last update was not quite correct. There was some unclear communication internally. 

TL;DR of all the miscommunication is this: This is intended behavior. 6 months ago we tried taking away the cast animation. Vlad's power level spiked through the roof - his burst was insane. Nerfs would have accompanied this bugfix (kind of like when we fixed Rumble's Q). The not quite intended behavior is that you can actually cast his W immediately after his ult, but the decision was made to leave that in rather than 'fix' that. His Q and E, for now, will continue to not be able to be cast after his ult for approximately 1 second. 

All this being said, it's not a clear player experience. We'll be graying out his abilities after you cast his Hemoplague so it is clear that this is the intended behavior. When you are in a teamfight, ulting will be a conscious decision - do it a second before your abilities come off cooldown to maximize your damage throughout the fight.

Sorry that I didn't keep a closer eye on this. I should've investigated more fully before updating you guys, so I apologize for any confusion my previous post contributed!"