Ranked Team Rating Calculations

Season Two shall feel my might!

Some of you might have noticed that despite having the same amount of wins and losses as other ranked teams, your own team might be rated much lower or much higher than other teams. Why do the ratings differ so much? Well Riot's released a post detailing why:

Hello Summoners!
We’re aware there has been some confusion about the Ranked Teams rating system, especially surrounding the relationship between a team’s rating and how many games that team has played. We’d like to take a moment to provide a brief overview of the system, but first want to explain the goals of the feature.

• We want each team to have a single, collective rating that accurately represents how strong the team is when compared to other teams.
• We want matchmaking to be effective at creating balanced, competitive Ranked Team matches, even for newly created teams.

With those goals in mind, here is a general explanation of how team ratings are determined:

• Each player who participates in Ranked Team games has a hidden personal rating tracked by the system.
• The rating for newly created (provisional) Ranked Teams is influenced by the personal rating of each member who joins the team.
• In general, newly created teams formed by high skill players who have played many Ranked Team games will start with a higher rating.
• Starting with a team rating below 1200 doesn’t mean your team is below average. Ranked Teams rating calculations work differently than Solo/Duo ratings. As a result, the majority of new ranked teams are assigned a rating below 1200.

This system helps ensure newly created teams are initially assigned an accurate rating, and improves the matchmaking experience for all teams who participate in ranked play. It also, however, makes it possible for top tier players to form new teams and immediately start with very high ladder ranking. 

As such, we’ve identified some system improvements that should make ratings for newly created teams a bit more consistent and minimize some potential edge cases. We are in the process of applying those adjustments and will continue to monitor the system to identify any further necessary improvements.

rjcombo
Senior Game Designer