Imagine an guy with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from an Ivy League institution. He comes up and tells you "IM SMARTER THAN YOU AHAHAHAHAHA."

You are a little annoyed, but you understand his claim is justified. You politely request hind-side copulation with his mother, and then still very politely, asks him to leave.

Then there's a second man. He dropped out of high school after attending for five years and failing 9th grade math 5 times. He comes up to you and says "I'm smarter than you, I can not prove it any shape or form and I have no intellectual accomplishments, but I just think I am much much better than you."

This is how I feel when a 700 elo bro comes up to the forum and QQ's about Elo Hell, claims to be gold material, and refers to us average players (~1200 Elo) as "dumb scrubs". Unfortunately this happens every day.



EDIT: this thread has turned into a discussion of game theory, and as a stats major, I find it quite painful to see how little people understand game theory.

Game Theory 101: The Basics, by William Spaniel

Here is a $1 introduction to game theory book from amazon. It's an interesting read and reading it will improve your gaming skills in multiplayer interactive games. And you will stop making arguments that sounds good to random internet people but will gives stats majors like myself (the people you pay to design matchmaking, rating systems ) mini heart attacks.

I like the ones who refer to plat players as lucky, scrubs or got carried.

unfortunately tho, elo hell exists, and if you doubt it, plummit your elo to 700 and tell me if you can make it back up to what you call "average".

Heres how I know elo hell exists:

1)90% of my games have 1 person that dies 10 times or more, even if we win. Thats not a problem.
2) I win 80% of the games where there is only 1 kid going heavy negative, I dont carry every game, but I keep the team together and we push on.
3) I had a 33% win rate in season 2. Vastly different from what I just said, heres the deal:

Most games there are at least 2 people going heavy negative, usually 3. Usually all 4 of my teammates believe they are unjustly in ELO Hell. Not hard to imagine why, probably like me, they see all the feeders, and instead of recignising their negative score, they push the blame on others.

This leads to a simple problem, you find a bunch of feeders, with no concept of the game, running around thinking they are better than everyone else, solo pushing, refusing to work as a team because they know better. If a gold player was placing, and had a bunch of games with these people, they can just as easily lose and end up in the lower elo. In fact, now that we have the borders, I see Gold borders in my 1100 elo games ALL the time, and they tell me the same thing, feeders in placement, feeders most games, now their elo will not rise above the 1200 "average" player mark.

That is elo hell, you need to be able to carry a 1200 elo team of feeders to escape it, which would mean you would need to be better than Gold to get out of it. And if you believe 1200 elo to be average, my friend, you are not competitive enough, I concider being at 1200 to be a failure, and im quite frustraited with my inablility to carry the 1200 elo feeders I deal with daily.

Now dont get me wrong, there are plenty of decent players at 1200 elo, but unfortunately there are alot more feeders that had someone from Gold carry them thru games to get 1200 elo. Big problem, because now elo is not a reprisentation of YOUR skill, but rather your LUCK in getting good teammates. I have a simple solution for this problem that noone seems to like, maybe I just dont explain it properly, but here goes:

Calculate your elo loss/gain based on in game stats. eg: your support, your elo is based on: K/A vs Death ratios. you go 0-5-35, you get loss protection because you were in fights, and didnt feed, congratz. Lets say your an ADC and you go, iuno, 12-10-8. 12 kills, bravo, 10 deaths, tisk tisk. but 8 assists, so your ratio is 2:1, not bad. now lets say you go jungle, and your not that great, and you die in alot of ganks... and go i dunno 1-15-10, now you have contributed to 11 kills but died 15 times, you are NOT helpful. so you take a elo hit. This system accomplishes 2 things:

1) make elo represent how you do in matches
2) discourage dying, while not encouraging KS'ing cuz kills/assists have the same value. Less feeders, better games. Feeders drop elo faster, those who dont feed, hold on to their elo better even if they are in elo hell.

let me know what you think, I hope I showed you why elo hell exists and why it is such a big problem.

Riot claims its impossible tho, so we need to give them some good plausible ideas

Drewbiiee said it magnificently, if I'm on a team and I go 14-10-10, but the rest of my team all died about 10 times, im average with them, and should take the win loss as is, but if my entire team is 2-10 and Im doin everthing I can and I go... lets say im a tank, and I do 5-5-10, I've died half as much as my team, been in most of the kills, and I am a positive force, even as a tank, for the players like that, the current elo is unfair because it doesnt matter how nice I am or how many times I fill instead of calling adc my efforts are not going to be reflected in my ranked stats, or my elo.

If you are better, you will go up. The opposing team is, assuming you are better than where you are, more likely to be worse overall. They have 5 possible leavers/feeders you have 4. You can escape.