Depending on how you’re doing, it could just be your perception. Being wrecked is much more visceral than the joy of dominating your opponent, and the really bad moments can unfortunately be more memorable than the great ones.

And sometimes you’ll just have a bad game.

While we know our matchmaking systems are never going to be perfect, and sometimes you (or your opponent) will end up with a 20 minute win, we try everything we can to prevent imbalance before the game has even started, and consider it a huge priority to ensuring League remains competitive.

— Riot Gortok, Designer, Get in Game Team

Why do I get worse people in my games when I’m on a hot streak and trying to climb?

This is pretty much an urban myth. Mostly.

There’s nothing in the MMR system that forces you to have lower-skill teammates or disproportionately higher-skill opponents. We expect every game you play to have a 50 +/-1% chance of your team destroying the Nexus.

As your MMR goes up, you’ll stop being the “standout” player and your teammates’ skills will be higher. This can also happen to anyone else in the game, which can give the impression that you have “worse” teammates, when really they might just be newcomers to your skill bracket.

Even if it all goes wrong and you feel like your teammates have been letting you down, you can make use of systems like demotion protection and promo helper to prevent you from being punished for a few “unlucky” games. We think this is the right tradeoff compared to having a volatile rank—being demoted feels rough, and reaching a tier should be a decent indication that you can play at that level.

— Riot Gortok, Designer, Get in Game Team

Why do I come up against high-ranked players in unranked games?

MMRs between queues aren’t connected. This means occasionally high-MMR ranked players have lower MMRs in normals.

Our perspective on the queues is that ranked should continue to be where you put on your tryhard pants. In contrast, unranked queues should be a place to play and experiment in a less intense competitive setting. The reason the MMRs aren’t linked is that introducing a consistent connection could change the competitive intent of each queue.

For example, if having a higher ranked MMR meant you would be placed higher in normals, it could put more pressure on you to have a “ranked mentality” in all queues. Beyond this, we want to provide an outlet for experimentation and lower stakes through unranked modes. A player who tries super hard in ranked may play with their casual friends and try goofy strats in normals in a way that means they perform at a lower level.

That said, we think there’s room for improvement here. We’re looking into some options, such as having better algorithms to get players to more accurate MMRs in a shorter time, or potentially “splashing” small amounts of MMR from ranked into normals without a direct link between the two.

— Riot Socrates, Designer, Meta Game Systems

Why do I get matched with unranked players if I’m Bronze/Silver/Gold?

When players first start playing ranked, they have to go through a period of placement games where we try to figure out how good they are. We have to place them against players we already have a lot of information about to get the most accurate placement. Since most players are Silver and below, we tend to start looking in Silver and move them up or down based on their performance.

— Riot Gortok, Designer, Get in Game

Why do you continue to match me with players I block/mute/report?

Short answer: It would literally break matchmaking if we didn’t.

Imagine you’re Challenger in KR (congrats) and you come up against Faker in midlane. He dumpsters you, and your plays show up in a TOP FAILS montage on the Inven frontpage. Next time you see him in solo queue, you rage-check a box that says “don’t match me with this player.” Now imagine 100 more people do that this week.