League of Legends’ Positional Ranks System Is Ending on March 13

For League of Legends players who’ve been chanting “Reset ranked!” for the past month, Riot announced today that they’ll be doing just that—sort of.

In their latest /dev update, Ed “SapMagic” Altorfer of Riot Games summarizes with the following:

“We’re happy with some of the Ranked changes like the placements rework, and positional matchmaking is an improvement in several areas. However, the reception of position ranks hasn’t been as positive, so we’re discontinuing the global rollout and ending the position ranks preview in KR and NA on March 13.

We also concluded our investigation into Diamond+ matchmaking/rank issues. To fix them, we’ll be setting all Master+ players to Master 0 LP and demoting Diamond players by one division, floored at Diamond IV, by late March.”

High-ranking League of Legends players have been complaining for over a month now about the state of ranked matchmaking near the top of the ladder. The issue spurs from wonky LP gains at the start of the season—some players consistently seeing gains of 20 or more for wins while losing just 10 or less for losses.

As of right now, the highest ranked player in North America is at 1203 LP in Challenger. Sometime in late March, even they will be reset to Master 0 LP.

That’s not all that Riot has planned, though—positional ranks are being removed from North America and Korea, and other regions will never get a chance to see them. Riot is retiring this system after negative reception:

“We’re constantly polling players to understand what they like or don’t like about League. Since position ranks launched, we’ve seen a dramatic negative shift—by 20 to 30%—in satisfaction with the feature in both North America and Korea.”

On March 13, League of Legends will be reverting back to the old ranked system. Here’s what will follow this change:

• Your highest position rank becomes your new rank. We’ll preserve your rank, LP, and promotion series status and progress. If your highest rank is provisional, it will carry over with the same number of games remaining.
• You’ll keep your rewards. Your Ranked Armor and any split rewards will stick around and you won’t lose any progress.
• All Promotion Helper benefits carry over. We’ll remember the highest rank you’ve achieved across all positions and use that to determine Promotion Helper eligibility.

There has been a lot of news revolving around League of Legends lately, such as the Kayle and Morgana reworks and Cats vs. Dogs event announcement, but this is one of the first times Riot has ever had to address a matter of ladder integrity in the middle of a season.