Riot Games is addressing the EUW server’s longstanding matchmaking woes, adding to an ever-growing list of issues that need to be remedied to fix the solo queue experience in League of Legends. Riot changed the matchmaking configuration in the EUW server, prioritizing closer MMR over low queue times. As a result, challenger players are now facing longer queues, theoretically with the tradeoff of better matchmaking.
After the change, players in solo queue are being paired with players of similar skill. According to Riot, EUW’s configuration was different because of some changes implemented in early 2019 where Riot changed the algorithm in EUW and simply forgot to change it back.
We’re tweaking matchmaking configurations for very high MMR in EUW to match other regions. They should now prioritize closer MMR over slightly faster matches.
Ty @Prosfair for finding this discrepency.
Here is @jonmoormann our matchmaking designer’s full take: pic.twitter.com/NkDQykmNZR
— Mark Yetter (@MarkYetter) May 11, 2020
This isn’t the first time that Riot admitted to ignoring an existing problem in the game. Earlier this year Riot launched the Client Cleanup Campaign, a six-month plan to fix the League of Legends client. In the process, Riot discovered that Affinity, a key tool used by the client interface, stopped working back in 2018. It wasn’t until Riot decided to fix the client that they noticed this major issue.
The same thing happened with increasing toxicity in the game. Once influencers started talking publicly about the frequency of game-ruining behavior, Riot decided to address it and launch measures to counter the game-ruining behavior.
This careless attitude is being noticed by players.
“Why does Riot only do important things like matchmaking and dealing with toxic players after the community demands it? Where is their drive to make the game better proactively?” a player wrote on Reddit.
Another player complained about the fact that Riot only seems to pay attention if the issues affect high ELO players.
“It’s always about high MMR. No one gives a shit about low-mid elo, lmfao. This company,” the player wrote.
EUW is the second-largest and most problematic server for League of Legends. In 2019, EUW reached 3 million players in the region. Throughout 2020, EUW has been down several times. The stability of this server is at risk, especially in the current time where more players are finding time for the game.
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