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Dec 03, 2023

League of Legends adds new Emerald rank and overhauled ranked system

Many League of Legends players hone their skills on the ranked ladder, vying to

Many League of Legends players hone their skills on the ranked ladder, vying to see how high a rank they can achieve. Riot's planning to make hitting high ranks a bit easier in the near future, along with the addition of Emerald rank. Emerald will sit between Platinum and Diamond.

For a competitive game like League of Legends, ranked is one of the main pulls for players looking to show off how good they are.

However, in order for players to be in high ranks, they have to come out on top of others and shove them into lower ranks. A ladder only works if there are players populating every part of it.

That said, Riot are looking to alter the system and push players stuck in Silver and Gold into higher ranks, all while keeping Diamond and above at a fairly low population by adding a new Emerald rank to League of Legends.

There are a few ways that Riot devs are switching around Ranked to get players into higher ranks while still forcing them to earn their way up the ladder via a dev blog.

First, promo games are being entirely removed. Players that would stall out on their promo series will no longer have that issue, and they’ll be able to move directly into the next rank if they gain enough LP to get there.

Additionally, an Emerald rank is being added to create a new barrier between great League of Legends players in Platinum/low Diamond and the absolute best League of Legends players that reside in high MMR brackets.

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Riot Brightmoon, Meddler, and 100 pc nuggets discuss changes to Ranked and Clash, ASU progress, and an upcoming Ultimate skin. pic.twitter.com/NPHOiEpeQl

Riot Brightmoon and Riot Meddler went over the changes, speaking about some of their goals with switching up the ranked system. Meddler thinks that ranks are "too skewed toward the lower end of the spectrum", and that players being able to reach a wider range of ranks would more accurately reflect the skill level of the individual players within those ranks.

The removal of promo games also comes with placement games being halved to only 5, making it so that players receive their initial rank much faster.

That said, players have been critical of how easy it is to hit high ranks in comparison to earlier seasons. It remains to be seen whether or not the overhauled ranked system can make players at all skill levels happy.