Cruel LoL client bug shames you for being worse than your friends
Riot GamesA cruel bug has been swept into the League of Legends client, shaming players for being worse than the others in the lobby, and notifying them of a “large skill gap”.
League of Legends is at its core a skilled-based game. As a highly competitive MOBA, you’re constantly striving to outplay, outwit, and outclass your opponents. The game has a robust ranked system that many will spend hundreds of hours grinding on, just to flex their skill.
Of course, League is always better with friends, which can sometimes be an issue if there’s a large difference in experience and skill between yourselves. Oftentimes you’ll be faced off against someone far better than you, or stomp a completely new player.
And while getting crushed can feel awful, nothing feels worse than when a nasty bug causes the game to compare you to your friends, notifying you of a “large skill gap” when you didn’t want it to.
The message is normally received for specific game modes like ranked and Clash, where a large skill gap can mean longer queue times to preserve match integrity. But a bug has caused this message to spill over into more casual queues like Draft Pick and ARAM, shaming players who are just there for fun.
This skill gap is dictated by a player’s MMR, which indicates a player’s skill in the developer’s eyes. However, the issue is that MMR in League of Legends is completely hidden, especially in unranked queues where there’s no visual representation of skill.
Fortunately, the message doesn’t point out who the skill gap is between, meaning in five-man lobbies it’s anyone’s guess who’s causing it to appear. Of course, if you wanted to skill-check your friends you could have each of them leave and join, that way you can directly see who the culprit is.
The developers are already aware of this bug, which means it shouldn’t be in the client for much longer. So, if you ever wanted to flex on your friends for being the better unranked League of Legends player, your one and only opportunity is now.