In 2019, League of Legends tested a system that would have changed your rank matches forever. However, Riot Games scrapped it because players were increasingly dissatisfied.
What was that system? League of Legends tested a position-based rank on North American and South Korean servers in 2019.
A position-based rank means you would be assigned a different rank based on your position. So, someone who mainly plays Jungle could be ranked Diamond there, while they were Gold on the Top Lane because they only played there occasionally and at a lower level.
What came of it? In March 2019, Riot Games announced that they would not pursue the position-based rank further. Further testing and development of the system were canceled (via nexus.leagueoflegends.com)
Player satisfaction drastically declined
Why did Riot Games scrap the position-based rank? As the “Riot Games” employee Ed “SapMagic” Altorfer revealed, the change led to frustration among players. Surveys among players showed that overall satisfaction at the time of testing had dropped by 20-30%.
According to SapMagic, players complained that matches on the so-called off-positions were too exhausting and many teammates who played on an off-position did not put in effort and did not take the match seriously because it did not affect their rank on their main position.
How would this have affected things? A position-based rank would have changed LoL’s matchmaking forever. Today, you have the same rank on each position, regardless of whether it’s your main role or you only play it once in a blue moon.
The result is that you could play in a lobby at Master Elo, even though your skills on the played role are significantly lower. You would still be assigned to the match because your skills in another role are at Master level.
This, in turn, is fodder for the toxic players that Riot is bitterly fighting against, as they notoriously pounce on players whose performance does not meet their expectations.
A player who is probably rarely flamed for a lack of performance in LoL is the eSports legend Faker:
LoL: 46-second video portrays the slender Faker as a tough hero like The Rock
