It has been more than a year ago since the League of Legends Dev team tried to implement a huge change in the game’s rank system. With the dawn of Season 9 came League’s position ranks system, an attempt to make ranked games cater to specialist players and one-tricks. What sounded as a promising idea actually fell extremely short within a few months after it was tested.

We’re now in the middle of Season 10, and the system is nowhere to be found after it was removed three months after implementation. No one has talked about it since, except for the fact that it is what people say to be what ruined the competitive integrity of Season 9.

There is some grounds to these assertions, and in contrast to how Dota 2 made position ranks work, let’s discuss why Riot failed.

Ranks are extremely forced behind roles

In the Position Ranks testing that ran in the North American and Korean servers, the premise is that each role (from Top to Support) will have individual ranks based on your main role. If you were a Gold I mid laner, queuing for an offrole like Bot will shift your rank and MMR to a lower one, such as Gold III or IV.

In short, instead of having one single rank that provides an overall estimate of your skill level, you would have had five different ranks in different roles gauging your particular ability in said position.

While it sounds great on paper, it actually feels even worse at the time to be autofilled to any offrole. Once you find out you’re not playing your main role, it simply means you are essentially wasting an hour of you possibly getting one step closer to a promotion series because the majority of the points won’t make it to your favorite role.

In addition, the 5% of the playerbase who actually main Fill will suffer the worst from the system. In order for Fill players to actually progress in the ranked grind, they need to focus on a role that they are most capable of, relative to the rest. Not only did Fill players have to do five separate placement matches per position, but also the change heavily made Fill players climb slower unless they declare a primary rank.

“Splashing” mechanic is lacking

When winning or losing a ranked game, your LP gains or losses would be “splashed” onto the other roles that were not played. If you won your game as a Mid, you will primarily gain points for your Mid rank while the others get some bits of the points.

As an incentive for playing roles other than your primary one, LP splashing actually did not accomplish the job well. It also took away points from your other roles if you lose, which depending on the rank can be either a dent or a huge blow to one’s progress.

The rank grind in League is already intensive, with the addition of Iron and Grandmaster rank in the same season. More tiers simply mean more promotion series for players to commit their entire life being into. With the addition of position ranks, it made grinding way more difficult than it already was at the time.

For a player to suffer through feeding teammates, flaming, and the occasional 0/10 Yasuo powerspike, only gaining lesser points than you lose is already a shame. It’s worse if you’re not playing your actual role, and end up only giving your main rank +2 or +3 points for all that trouble.

Unresolved toxicity issues

On top of everything mentioned, what the position ranks did best was ignore the elephant in the room: the unresolved toxicity issues present in the ranked ladder.

From feeders to champ select hostages, toxicity comes in many forms. Autofilled supports would hypothetically pick something like Support Teemo and go against the team’s wishes, ruining the experience for the entire team on top of making them lose progress to the next rank. Add the fact that negative LP splashing can also happen; toxicity becomes an actual hurdle for most players.

Even before the implementation of position ranks, players have despised the autofill system for putting them more often into support than it should be. Because it’s not the fan favorite, the support role becomes a mixed bag with autofilled players hostaging the game to get their wanted roles regardless of the system.

As it turns out, most of what the position ranks attempted to accomplish had actually backfired. The majority of the League community was unsatisfied with the system and it was therefore a failure in Riot’s eyes.

It was fortunate that the playerbase had spoken up as early as the first split of Season 9, and position ranks never went outside of Korea and North America after April. Players in the two servers were given a soft reset in their rank, prioritizing the highest rank they got out of all five positions. Even with this, most players felt like this ruined matchmaking for the entire season, but that’s a topic for a different time.