Vainglory Forums

I hope I'm not feeding the troll by responding ... but trolls will be trolls ...

I don't think it's perception at all. There has been massive discussion on the ranking system. Please google "elo ranking system" for the wikipedia article that explains the equations. In summary, you are assigned a score named after the equation's inventor, ELO. If you defeat someone with equal or lower ELO (a lesser skilled player), you don't get many points. So you can have 100 matches with equal or lower opponents, and your score won't increase much (if at all).

However, if you win against an opponent with a higher ELO (a more skilled player), you will "take" some of his ELO. The bigger the gap, the more points you are rewarded (for a win) or subtracted (for a loss).

Here's the trick: the matchmaking system does not count your individual ELO, instead, it counts the average ELO of your team vs. the average ELO of the enemy team. That means if the enemy team has one "Pinnacle of Awesome" and two "Not-Bads", the enemy team average ELO may be "Pretty Good". Then you're screwed, because the PoA player will carry and dominate the game.

In summary, you can play 30 games, win every one, and not advance skill tiers if you were matched evenly against enemy teams. Conversely, you can play a single game against a highly skilled team, and if you win, jettison your ELO instantly. Even worse, a single loss to a unskilled team will pummel your ELO, and you're back in "Decent-ish" after a single loss. The ranking screen doesn't update until 5 games, so you may not see the result immediately. This has happened to me during a laggy day. Several players were lagging badly and I had to reboot the game twice (pings in the 60000ms category) and my team lost to a bunch of lamers. Boom. Decent-ish. One game did it.