League of Legends devs apologize for “brutal” season reset ranks

Liam Ho
League of Legends ranked art

The League of Legends developers have apologized for the “brutal” ranked reset at the start of Season 2024, providing explanations for why it needed to happen.

The ranked season for League of Legends’ 14th season has just begun. With the launch of the ranked reset, players have begun to start the arduous climb to the top, hoping to attain a rank higher than the last season.

In order to grab a rank though, players have to go through their ranked placements once more. Ranked placements are vital to the climbing experience, as winning games can result in massive LP gains, with your rank being finalized once they’re complete.

However in Season 2024, many League of Legends players noticed that they were being placed far lower than usual. Catching the attention of the developers, it prompted an apology and explanation as to why this was the case.

Lead gameplay designer Riot Phroxzon took to Twitter to explain why so many players were placed lower than usual.

“We start of season resetted to where your MMR should put you. Because of the thing I mentioned last week, where we were not demoting people often enough (especially from tier boundaries like E4, P4, etc.), there were many cases where a player was Emerald with Gold MMR or Plat with Silver MMR, etc. “

In order to counteract players not demoting enough, Riot placed players’ season rank to where their hidden matchmaking rating should put them. As a result, this may have been drastically different from their previous rank.

“This was usually because someone lost a lot at the tier boundary. Some peoples’ placements might feel a bit “brutal” as a result.”

3 Honors Akshan League of Legends
League of Legends players can earn rewards like skins by partaking in ranked splits.

The dev explained that this was one of the side effects of making better visible ranked matches, and was their fault for allowing this to take place in the first place.

“We understand a lot more about why these situations are happening now in the first place and will do our best to avoid them for this season and beyond.”