Out-of-control LoL rank inflation finally ‘hit down a good amount’ after Season 14 rework

Riot Games has declared victory over the infamous League of Legends rank inflation  issues this week. The development team has suggested things have been “hit down a good amount” and League players are already reporting their ranks sliding closer to their expected skill levels.

One of Riot’s biggest goals this League season has been to wrangle wide-swinging ranks under control, with leading balance boss Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison admitting as much as the 2024 got underway in January.

Six months later, things seem resolved: Leung-Harrison told happy League players the developers on June 20 that he believes most players’ visual ranks will now appear closer to their genuine skills after Patch 14.13 goes live. This, in turn, should go a long way to “helping make games feel more fair” across competitive queues and balance out how one-sided lobbies could end up being if talented one or two players were inaccurately placed.

What this (should) mean is anyone who has been struggling in the depths of a higher tier (e.g. the bottom of Platinum) should now be kept around a lower rank (e.g. Gold).

The ranked inflation issue has remained a huge talking point in the League community for some seasons now. New threads on Reddit and viral posts on X (formerly Twitter) often popped up as frequently as a few times a week.

Things took a particularly big nosedive⁠—at least in the eyes of League players⁠—after Season 14’s major rankings rework. Hot off the back of adding Emerald as a rank in 2023, the League devs flattened ranked seeding in an attempt to “push players into their correct ranks.” While there was some success, some players reported drastic LP gains and losses that kept them swinging through tiers too quickly.

As it stands today, League’s rank spread is still quite level. According to the latest reports, around 80 percent of the competitive ladder sit across Bronze through to Platinum, with each rank boasting roughly a fourth of that major group. Just under seven percent of League players are deemed Iron level, while four percent are playing in Diamond lobbies and a hair under 0.5 percent are ranked Master to Challenger. These bounce around slightly on any given day or week of play.

This isn’t the first time Riot has twiddled with ranked numbers in 2024 either; the team also made several changes in Patch 14.8 to “rank players correctly.”