Riot is once again targeting the rank gap between League of Legends players at the top of the ladder.
League lead gameplay designer Mark “Scruffy” Yetter informed fans today that high-ranked matchmaking is being tuned to the “strictest” it’s ever been. This should limit the range of ranks seen in high MMR lobbies at the expense of a longer queue time.
“Overall we think the tradeoff is worth it for the highest competitive tier of the game,” Scruffy said. “We get the feedback from high MMR players that they would prefer longer waits for better matches pretty consistently.”
Even though high-ranked players may have to wait in a queue longer, the payoff will be a fairer, high-quality match.
Riot devs began working on this issue last week after Fnatic jungler Selfmade tweeted a picture of his solo queue lobby, which had players ranging anywhere from Diamond One to Challenger. The large discrepancy in skill creates unfair lobbies and forces players to compete with others who may be more or less experienced than them.
Scruffy said there might “still be a little more room” to make matchmaking even stricter. But the devs will have to look at the data before tightening the MMR range again.
