"Elo Hell" Revisited

Two months ago I posted about the rating system in League of Legends and how my rating at the time was making the game unfun. I've been asked since then by several people about if I ever got out of "Elo Hell". I figured I should revisit the topic to see if two months of play has changed anything.

The first thing to mention is I still often see people in games complaining about being stuck in Elo Hell. It doesn't seem to matter what rating you're at; there's always people who are stuck at that rating and think they should be higher. I'm pretty sure this can just be explained by Illusory Superiority. Most people think they're above average. Pretty much by definition some of them aren't. Those people are going to reach their rating equilibrium point, believe it should be higher, but get stuck. And then since this is the internet they're going to whine about it. That people complain about Elo Hell in this manner doesn't mean it exists at all.

The second thing is that games have gotten better recently. There are still people who whine. People who make mistakes and play badly. Blame gets thrown around. But by and large everyone is still trying to win. I had one game recently where someone stated point blank that we had to give him solo top or he'd feed. (We gave him solo top and then he was bad and fed anyway...) Beyond that one game though I haven't had anyone threaten to play badly at the start. I haven't had people who intentionally join a game just to lose. Or who don't really join at all. Games, by and large, are fun.


As far as rating goes I had fallen as low as 1001. I started playing games almost exclusively with Robb and focused on playing a couple of champions well. In particular I stopped playing Vayne (8-16 record) and switched to Tristana (13-11 record) as my ranged physical attacker. I'm up to an overall winning record (120-111) and my rating is 1294.

Apparently Riot also implemented an automated banning tool which suspends accounts of people who routinely go AFK. Maybe that would help the matches down at the 1000 rating zone? I have my doubts. The Tribunal thing getting some press for actually banning people might be helping too. I posted about people flat out not caring about the threat of being reported and that may have changed? I kinda doubt that too.

But yes, I am out of "Elo Hell". Games are, by and large, fun. I'm sure my rating should be higher than it is since I'm obviously above average at the game but I'm sure that will come in time...