Hello, I am your average silver-3-to-plat-2 player. The mm in these ranks is, suffice to say, atrocious; there are smurfs galore, elo punishment, and the most absurdly mismatched games I have ever seen during my time gaming.

Starting with smurfs, I honestly don't know how they will address it. HOWEVER, they have to do something. Smurfing absolutely plagues lower ranks and I would honestly argue that I likely see 1 smurf per match which automatically makes the entire 30-minute game a joke one way or the other.

Second, elo-punishment. I understand what they were going for with their ranking system, I really do. With that being said, losing more than you make (by 20% too!?) makes it impossible to escape ranks and prove your skill. If you are stuck in silver and MVP every game but only make +18, it takes 6 games to jump. However, one loss is -30. Given that you are not at a crazy 70% win-rate, it's gonna take 12-13 games PER TIER and often times even more. To say that's player-friendly is ruthless to the people who cannot spend 60 hours a week climbing.

Finally, the mismatches. I think most people in ranked will understand this complaint. It is either stomp or be stomped. 3/4 of my games are absolutely absurd 13-4 or 4-13 romps which are pointless wastes of time. The hidden mmr along with all of these other over-engineered systems have led to a system that can't seem to make a balanced match to save its life. I assume that Riot will die by its matchmaking but they should at least know that there are other successful alternatives that would improve game quality (Rainbow 6/chess Microsoft trueskill, for example).

TLDR; I, along with other people in the middle ranks, cannot consistently get a good (or even okay) experience in this game.