imatwork101

why did it take so long?

and is there anything being done with D4? People are not demoting out even with 30-40% winrates.

This specific tuning value isn't like an on/off switch - we had a previous iteration of the change a little while back and we wanted to let that settle before making another change. We got the results we wanted in some regions but not in others, so we went for a bigger push this time around.

For the specific D4 problem you mention, we do have demotion protection systems in place that make it harder to demote across a Tier. Also, looking only at winrate loses a lot of the context of how a player is performing - specifically, who those games were against, how recent the performance is, etc.

gxgx55

Yeah, but either way the main issue with D4 is the fact that it is bloated anyways. It is massive, bigger than D5 ever was, despite one goal of new ranked system being streamlining diamond division sizes.

Would Riot consider softening the tier demotion protection to decrease the size of D4?

When we say "streamlining division sizes," that doesn't just mean the actual headcount inside that division. It's a consideration, but we also want to look at the skill disparity inside that division, and that has actually improved this season. Having high skill disparity in a division makes it much harder to climb through that division, and that was a big part of what we wanted to address.

SometimesMainSupport

We've made some adjustments to high MMR matchmaking this week based off some problems we've been seeing this season with too wide an MMR discrepancy occurring in really high skill games

Is this a ranked-soloQ-only change or does it apply to other queues?

It's ranked only