[Lain]

Since I got more time off from the corona scare, I've been playing more league.
When I ended my promotional games (to place me in a rank) I already got a higher rank than this girl, bronze I. After a few more games, I'm currently at Silver III and still climbing pretty quickly.

This game feels waaaaay easier than it used to be, not just gameplay wise but also the ranked system was changed. Not to mention I guess Riot (the dev company) decided to finally crack down on the shitty community.
We're in Season 10 now, last time I played ranked was five years ago in like Season 4 and 5. Back then, there were Five main tiers (and a tier for the highest-ranking players)

Code:

Bronze
Silver
Gold
Platinum (Plat)
Diamond
(Challenger)

Each of those tiers would be divided into five divisions, so Bronze V to Bronze I to Diamond V to Diamond I. Challenger was the only exception where challenger ranking was determined solely by how many points (LP) you had (gain points from wins, lose points from loss.)

To go from one tier to the next, you either had to lose a game while you had 0LP to get demoted, or get to 100LP then win the next two out of three games. To promote a tier, you needed to get to 100 in [Tier] I and win the next three out of five games.

This system was flawed. Did you notice it?
To get to 100LP, you would need to win. You cannot get to 100LP from a loss. Then you would need to win your next few games.
So instead of winning 2 out of 3 games to get promoted, you'd need to win 3 out of 4 (75% winrate from 67%). For tier promotion, you'd need to win 4 out of 6 (67% winrate from 60%)

If you lost a promo series, you would get dropped down to 75 LP or so and have to retry (or fall downwards and get demoted xd)
If you won, you're up to the next Tier/Division and start at 0LP. You'd have a grace period of 3-5 games (based on your elo) where you can lose games at 0LP without getting demoted.

Now, there's way more Tiers:

Code:

Iron
Bronze
Silver
Gold
Platinum
Diamond
Master
Grandmaster
Challenger

Each of the original five + Iron are now divided into four tiers.

The promotion/demotion system is a little easier too, although not much has changed; you get to 100LP and win the next X out of Y games and get promoted.
But if you fail your promotional series once and get dropped to ~75LP, then the next time you get back into that series (by climbing, not demoting) then you get a free win counted towards your series, thus bringing that flawed winrate back to 'normal.'

Once you promote from Diamond I to Master, it's basically the same as the old Challenger, but there's a limit to how many players can be in Grandmaster and Challenger (500 and 200 respectively.) Since rankings are determined solely by how many LP you have (some have like 1800) the system checks every day at midnight or something to see if your LP is higher than the lowest LP players in those tiers, and if you are above them then you have the chance to be promoted (assuming that there aren't more people above you that are also about to be promoted.)

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The community is also a lot better, although not perfect.
Out of the nearly 100 matches I've played, only in like five of them did I encounter someone who would shittalk the team the entire game. There were more toxic players on the enemy team as well. I still have yet to find someone who goes AFK and leaves the game right in the middle (although I had to do that the other night at like 1AM to head to the hospital.) This contrasts back in the day when that would be the norm in like 80% of the games I'd play, either a dickhead or an AFK.

So I guess Riot is handing out more bans to more players more frequently now to discourage people from being dickheads.
Kinda cool.
That being said, I don't know what the banter between teams are like, because I play with cross-team chat disabled. I don't see it and I can't send messages to the enemy team. I reckon it's same as always, though, hence why I keep it disabled. Not like I need to actively communicate with the enemy team, though.

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Meanwhile the girl I was trying to show up this whole time is still stuck in Bronze III to Bronze II. Sucks for her, this game is f*** easy lmfao. Just get really good with like three characters (I'm now ranked as one of the top 2000 players in North America for Fiora) and get decent macro play (not champion specific, like watching the map, helping your teammates, securing objectives, wave management/lane pressure, etc.) and you can climb really easily.

So yeah, if this corona scare doesn't go away for the next while, I should be able to hit Gold by the end of the month.