The topic of Elo Hell has been beaten to death, revived and then murdered again...repeatedly. Still I enjoy talking about it with most people. There is no doubt in my mind that a form of Elo Hell does exist but not in the way most people seem to popularize this infamous idea.
The most common idea about Elo Hell is the idea that you're stuck in some crappy elo because of how bad your teammates are. That no matter how good you are - you can't seem to rise out of the pits of hell because your teammates are so bad they keep you down. In short "It's not my fault I'm not high elo."
Well for starters I think that idea is only half right. The other half is pure bullshit. My idea of Elo Hell is that there are different sections of it much like Dante's Inferno. I'll explain them below in a bit. Anyways - I am a believer of these types of Elo Hell and it is one of the bigger reasons as to why I avoid playing ranked during some days.
I believe there are different levels of Elo Hell and the most notorious has to be what I dub "lower" Elo Hell. This is in the pits elo where new players are joining the ranked scene or where truly bad players exists. Here I do believe the "my teammates are so bad I can't win" thing partially applies. Matchmaking, even in higher elos, does have somewhat of a luck factor and that factor is basically multiplied here. There are good players down here who are stuck because of bad teammates however it is also their fault they're stuck here.
One can't possibly think that everything that works in a "better" setting would work in the pits of elo. This is how I can see some good players end up in that pit after a streak of bad luck. These "good" players are usually those who play support roles or "softer" roles that don't do a lot of murdering and carrying. Yes it is their fault for not accepting that they have to abandon all forms of common decency and tell their teammates to go screw themselves and just go "I'm mid - go burn in hell," but not everyone has the personality to do so. They're too nice I would say so they screw themselves and keep themselves in the pits.
I've seen some of their games. They take forever to finish and they're honestly some of the most ghastly and infuriating things to even watch. Some players there (their teammates) are an abomination of gameplay that you wonder if they're playing with a Rock Band drum set and using the guitar to bash the drums. They're so bad. But then I see my friends (or at least associates) continuously play stuff like Soraka and Janna as support and it's basically making impossible for themselves to win. You just can't expect anything good from the pits.
This is what lower Elo Hell is. It is where your teammates are so bad that you cannot expect anything good from them. You have to play in those games expecting failure from your teammates and opponents and be willing to use tactics that exploit the crap out of it. If you can't or are unwilling - then you'll be stuck there.
The other Elo Hell is dubbed "higher" Elo Hell (real creative huh). Basically this is the one where a lot of people, in my opinion, wrongfully place themselves in. See this is where a lot of 1500~ elo players argue they are in but honestly they're deluded. Higher Elo Hell, again in my opinion, is where your teams range from good to bad but most of the time you have to WORK to win. If you're good enough at this game, you will eventually get to higher elos and settle in the elo you truly belong. However, the idea of higher Elo Hell is that doing so is a god damn grind.
More often than not, players will go on a winning streak or a losing streak in the middle elo brackets. It is very random but the good players are rather evident amongst the mobs of players. They will eventually get themselves out of this bracket but they will have to work hard for it. Sometimes this grinding gets to the point where playing the damn games are no longer fun. It is torment sometimes but admittedly the highest of elos are where the fun starts so it can be worth it in the end.
In short, higher Elo Hell is basically when matchmaking throws the most haphazard teams onto you and makes the game feel more like a chore than actually fun. The good players will eventually grind themselves out of there but many of them will be made cynical or easily frustrated because of it.
Then the final section of Elo Hell, a sort of City of Dis, is around the 1800+ elo bracket. Most of the players in this elo are actually skilled individually but have other problems that keep them from rising. This is the bracket where everything just seems to be a dick waving contest and egos clash. Players won't cooperate, stupid shit happens everywhere, the biggest throws because of gun ho assheads, trash talking and just general bad behavior rules this bracket.
As I said - there are legitimately strong players here but some of these strong players just have poor team work or toxic behaviors that they end up sinking their own teams. The City of Dis is sort of like where people who weren't exactly the best people but not as bad as everyone else (in terms of sins) and that's how I feel this bracket is. It's not fully a hell, it's not fully a heaven, it's Mexico.
What can you take from this though? The best players will eventually carry themselves because they understand the crap they have to deal with and how they have to adapt to it either gameplay wise or behavior wise. If you are good, you will rise. You just have to have patience and the willingness to march through the fires of the Elo Hells.
"Every Elo is Elo Hell" - everyone who has played this game
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Posted 12/17/2012 3:28:14 AMWell, my usual comment to the "Elo-Hell"-Topic is: It's not "Elo"-Hell 'down there', but certainly some form of "Hell" where playing is not fun due to player behavior. Sadly, it's not limited to any Elo range I've been in so far..
It was relatively nice around 1.9k at the middle of season 2, a lot of cool and nice people which were a pleasure to play with and against. The complaining, toxic or blabbering morons were rare. But the nearer it got to the end of Season 2, the more these annoying individuals appeared in the games.
This was partially due to the normalization (the longer the laddering goes on, the nearer people get to their True Elo, and their "True Elo" compared to Season 1 was higher as a number since more people were playing) and partially due to people wanting to reach the next rank.. Originally I intended to go for Diamond, but I stopped at 2.1k, after having been at 2.15k. I haven't played any ranked games since.
The behavior of these people made me stop playing... So many games were lost because some team mates simply didn't WANT to win anymore due to petty reasons - which is in my opinion the most frustrating. On this rating, if one of your team mates doesn't WANT to win you won't in most cases.
For me, "Hell" is the end of the Season.
Thinking about it. I'm doing it the wrong way around, I should go up the ladder now to enjoy the games and then stop at the end of the Season..
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Posted 12/16/2012 9:48:55 PM"It's not fully a hell, it's not fully a heaven, it's Mexico."
I couldn't stop laughing when I read this.
I do have a question though is it worth it to trudge through hell and climb the elo brackets or should I just stay in pergatory playing normal draft mode and having a good time? Anyone can answer who has climbed the elo hell mountain not necessarily just stonewall.
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Posted 12/16/2012 4:16:26 PMyes. i agree that elo is not a true display of skill. most games are not a 5v5, but more of a 4v4.
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Posted 12/16/2012 7:28:36 PMSo you don't think that elo is a good estimate of true skill, despite the fact that stronger players consistently maintain higher elo than weaker players?
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Posted 12/16/2012 8:24:02 PMConsistently?
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Posted 12/17/2012 12:09:53 AMand then the players that they carry end up in elos they don't deserve.
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Posted 12/20/2012 3:14:12 AMTechnically ELO is not a rating of skill, but a players ability to win. Individual skill (in terms of personal decision making, tactics, mechanics etc.) is a huge factor in that, but by far not the only one.
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Posted 12/20/2012 3:24:03 AMnono, elo is more of a "how lucky were you in a random distribution" thing than a rating on someone's skill or chance to win
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Posted 12/20/2012 7:07:34 PMRight. It's all luck and the system is keeping you down. High ELO players shouldn't be winning more than you at all!
Want to know something? As long as you have the attitude of a victim that everything is out of your control and it's the systems fault, you will never improve as a player and never break through your ELO ceiling.
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Posted 12/21/2012 4:03:51 AMThe only shitty thing about elo is the tiering at the beginning. This might be, but probably isn't, what Merry is talking about.
Example: I am 14/13 s3. if I won my first 14 games and lost my last 13 games I would be 104 elo higher then what I am now. If I lost my first 13 and won my last 14 I would be ~100 lower.
Obviously it will balances out in the end but it takes a lot longer. It is frustrating to see ppl who are worse then you at 200+ elo then where you are simply because they ended up winning those first games.
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Posted 12/21/2012 4:37:39 AMMan, don't try and explain him how elo is random before 1800ish.
In this game, there is only two kind of players. The awesomely great (2k+), and then the rest.
Below this elo, elo doesn't represent anything but randomness.
Good players are almost as likely to be the same elo than the worst player ever. (like in, statistically, a player with 1000 normal wins would have 50.0001 % chances of being over one "fresh" lvl 30)
You loose 7 games in a row? gg you are now -100 elo and struggle even more to get back up.
You are "lucky" in 14 games? gg you now have +200 elo.
Let's not talk about how even worse the random matters when it's about elo tiering in the beginning. Games for 60/40 elo, and still "Elo represents one's ability to win". Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.
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Posted 12/21/2012 7:16:31 AMBanana: That's a fair point and I can't really speak to the value of these parameters without having access to Riots data. However as you said, it might suck for the first few dozens games but eventually you get through and your rating will stabilize. In any system there will inevitably be volatility for new entrants so that can never be eliminated, whatever Riot has in place seems to be working for them though so I don't want to question it.
Merry: really man? "Arguments" like that I just can't take seriously. My impression is that you are a low ELO player and upset about it, so you try to rationalize this as best you can by placing the blame on the system. Yeah, the system isn't perfect, there is some discrepancies, but this type of excuse is a cop out and anyone familiar with statistics and the ELO rating system could tell you this. I doubt Riot would keep a rating system in which 300 ELO swings in a single weekend were very common, "statistically, a player with 1000 normal wins would have 50.0001 % chances of being over one "fresh" lvl 30", whatever the hell that means, and everything below a somewhat high rating [1800+ represent the top 2%] was "random".
It's not your fault, it's everyone elses right?
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Posted 12/21/2012 8:37:24 AMhttp://www.reignofgaming.net/forums/league-of-legends/general-discussions/29842-reasonable-rework-to-the-ranked-system
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Posted 12/16/2012 3:19:52 PMLMAO
Mongol General: Conan! What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.
Mongol General: That is good! That is good.
- Conan the Barbarian -
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Posted 12/16/2012 3:17:41 PMHuman perception is a big part of this too. We naturally focus on all the bad games and don't really think about the ones where we forced a 20min surrender. Sure you will remember a couple games where you went 19/2 or the one where the morons let me get blitz and our jungle ali. But as the saying goes it takes 10 rights to right 1 wrong. We focus more on the negative.
You are obviously winning games because if you think you are in elo hell that means over a long period of time your elo hasn't really improved. Thus you have to be winning as many games as you are losing. Yet when you read the posts below, "Watched video, thought i could carry out of elo hell, queued ranked, got a feeding trist LOLOL." Right you got a feeding trist thus its gg can't carry? What about the time you dominated their adc he was 0/6 at 15mins. You don't think he was feeding because you just crushed him. Yet their top looks at the score, "wtf bot feed gg." That's how this game works. Yet your mind tells you, you get all the feeders can't win.
You are too attached to your elo. Due to this you focus on all these bad games. The funny thing is players are no better in normals. They aren't less rude or less moronic. You just surrender and queue another one when your bot feeds and you aren't carrying that game. Since you aren't emotionally attached to winning or losing in normals you carry on business as usual.
For people who have a hard time breaking the, "omg its all trolls and feeders in solo queue" mentality I implore you keep a ranked log. It enables you to see what your mind doesn't.
I have logged every game for season 3. I've only played 27 games in s3 since I stopped playing ranked as school was finishing up but the stats are still interesting. I am 14/13 I've gone between 1215-1373 this season.
4 of my 13 losses were just the worst teams ever. If I went 12/0 laning phase as diana mid i couldn't carry these baddies.
3 of these losses I was bad. I wasn't the reason we lost but i contributed nothing to our chance of winning thus I blame myself.
The other 5 losses were just games where their mid/late was better then ours ie: "our karth+darius were fed but in team fights graves always survived unscathed, he got huge and won." or "late game our Ori and J4 just got caught all day long gg."
The point of all this?
These stats aren't that scary. They don't describe the situation of, "omg my team so bad, too heavy gg solo queue sux" every single game like you think happens if you read the boards. Sounds like how most normal games go too. The difference is you are feeling waaaaaaay too much pressure due to your elo number that you can't see the truth.
The outcome? I have less of a negative view towards ranked then I did before and I have a much more real perspective of where I stand as a player and how I am contributing.