TrueSkill 2 will replace the ELO system sometime in 2024 in League of Legends – but what is it, and what do you need to be aware when it comes to the new rating?
Ratings and ranks are what make competitive videogames possible – even though you improve if you practice, it feels great to have something to show for it, even if it’s just an emblem in-game. Heaps of players are striving for just one rank higher, just one more win to get that sweet LP they need.
But there’s something more important than LP and Visual Rank currently in place for League of Legends: the ELO. Your matchmaking rating is the hidden number behind each and every account in Riot Games’ hit MOBA, which influences the amount of LP you gain and lose, as well as the teammates you get when playing ranked. While MMR is not a perfect system – and due to it’s invisibility, has received more criticism since Riot hid it after the earlier Seasons – it was the best we got. Until now.
One of the developers of League of Legends, Riot Iksar revealed in a Reddit comment that Riot will implement a new system around the start of the new season, and eventually plans to move on to TrueSkill 2, a new way if ranking players based on their performance. But what is TrueSkill 2, and how is it different from MMR?
TrueSkill 2, League of Legends’ new rating system (probably)
TrueSkill was developed by Microsoft to use for matchmaking in Xbox games such as Halo. While the widely used ELO MMR system was created for chess – which is a two-player game – TrueSkill was tailored for video games with multiple players. TrueSkill 2 is the upgraded version of TrueSkill, which was revealed in 2018.
TrueSkill 2 calculates a player’s perceived skill using 2 variables: perceived skill (represented by mu) and how much the system doubts you (represented by sigma). By combining these numbers, you get a player’s true skill, represented by X.
On Xbox Live, players start with a “mu” of 25, and a “sigma” of 25/3. The first number always increases with a win and decreases with a loss, and your rating is calculated like this:
- Rating = mu – 3xsigma
- so Rating = 25-3x 25/3 if you start a fresh account on Xbox Live
With this system, you can actually gain ranks from losing matches, as it doesn’t just count your win or loss, but your achievements as well.
How does this Maths exam tie into my League Ranked Games?
You might ask that. This means that even if you lose matches, having big roles in key fights or playing around objectives can mitigate your LP loss, and increase your gains if you win the game. According to Riot Iksar, it will be much more difficult to get into states where you lose 30 LP for a loss and only gain 20 for a win – something that they dislike about the current system.
The developer explained that while Riot Games is working on implementing TrueSkill 2 to League of Legends, at first, they will replace the ELO systems with something of their own making. So far, they haven’t revealed anything on their own system, it should arrive very shortly, so players can expect a Dev Post soon – stay tuned for more info in the new MMR system coming to LoL!