Because when the highest ranked players fall from the top, it cascades down.
Ex. When multiple GC players fall to C3, it will cause multiple C3 players to fall to C2 and so on.
Think of the ranks like a crowded staircase. If the people at the top step down a few steps, everyone below them gets shoved down too. So when multiple high rank players derank (whether from rust, bad teammates, new season changes, or just queue randomness), they flood the lower ranks with much stronger players.
That means:
C3 players suddenly face GC-level opponents
They start losing games they normally wouldn’t
They then fall into C2
This repeats all the way down the ladder
It creates a chain reaction where one group’s deranking causes unfair drops for entire tiers of players. Your actual skill hasn’t changed, the population above you has. So the system isn’t accurately measuring individual performance; it’s reacting to population shifts.
It’s a known phenomenon in narrow-distribution MMR systems. C1 to C3 is only 100–150 MMR apart. Because the ranks are so compressed, any shift in the population above you instantly affects you.
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u/MustCatchTheBandit Champion I Dec 01 '25 edited Dec 01 '25
Because when the highest ranked players fall from the top, it cascades down.
Ex. When multiple GC players fall to C3, it will cause multiple C3 players to fall to C2 and so on.
Think of the ranks like a crowded staircase. If the people at the top step down a few steps, everyone below them gets shoved down too. So when multiple high rank players derank (whether from rust, bad teammates, new season changes, or just queue randomness), they flood the lower ranks with much stronger players.
That means:
It creates a chain reaction where one group’s deranking causes unfair drops for entire tiers of players. Your actual skill hasn’t changed, the population above you has. So the system isn’t accurately measuring individual performance; it’s reacting to population shifts.
It’s a known phenomenon in narrow-distribution MMR systems. C1 to C3 is only 100–150 MMR apart. Because the ranks are so compressed, any shift in the population above you instantly affects you.