Do new League accounts make you climb faster?

Grinding the Ranked Solo/ Duo ladder in League of Legends used to be a mission of self-fulfillment, but nowadays seems harder to do.

For a long time, League players have complained about the state of the game and talked about League’s “prime years”. Nostalgia surely plays a part in it, since Riot have done a great job at keeping the game fresh. If League today was the same as it was seven years ago, much fewer players would be playing it.

League Ranked system

The Ranked system in League has been improving every season despite players becoming more and more discontent. It does sound kind of ungrateful because, in the early days of League, there wasn’t even role selection, let alone applications that tell you when the enemy red buff is going to spawn. But one thing that has always remained a constant in League’s Ranked environment is smurfing. Riot has heard the outcries for a long time and its answer is Smurf Queue. As flawed as this concept is, it does get the job done. But along it, we saw another change, that quietly hurt the player base much more than the smurfs.

Hidden MMR changes

If you have competed in League’s Ranked Queues in the last 2,5 years you have probably noticed this trend. Ever since Smurf Queue was added into the game, the days of 90% win rate accounts disappeared. Surely that was the point of it. No more smurfs stomping low elo games and going on 50-game win streaks. But something about the MMR system also changed, that helped implement this system. And it was most evident in the high elo community, with Diamond I accounts dodging their Master promos to inflate their MMR. That way they farmed their MMR versus weaker players and when they stopped doing that, they would skyrocket to the top of the ladder despite losing more games.

A lot of noise was made about the accounts that Riot gave out to the pro players, with their MMR starting at Diamond I. The rest of the high elo community was outraged that they got special treatment, having accounts gain +32 LP at the highest ranks. But the ranked community found a way to do it as well as we mentioned. And now having a 1000 LP account is not a career-defining achievement, it’s a must-have to get a spot on a professional team.

Older accounts don’t do that

The problem most League players face is not this one. Less than 2% of the entire player base is Diamond rank or above. But what this change did do is ruin the MMR gains on the low elo accounts that were old. Accounts created before Smurf Queue didn’t have the option to boost their MMR if they won many games in a row. And compared to new accounts, it made climbing ranks on older accounts much harder. And a large portion of the community has a problem with this, not just because of the sentimental value. A lot of players have invested a lot of money into the accounts that they own since the early days. 

The mastery points, the OP.GG recognition, the legacy skins. Players that want to climb have to give up all of that, because their account can’t compete with the MMR gains on the new ones. You can either grind 150-400 games to reach your elo goal each season on the old account or make a new one and reach it in 70 games. Accounts with the same win rates in the same elo receive a different amount of LP. Even if the same player is playing on them. Removing promotion games might have had an influence over this, but that’s a better explanation for why there are 2000LP accounts.

Header: Riot Games