League of Legends may add a wood or sand tier since veterans are stuck in iron.

The recent League of Legends developer update was dominated by discussion of the long-awaited Shyvana rework, but Andrei “Meddler” Van Roon and Paul “Pabro” Bellezza also provided some interesting insight into how ranked play is shaping up this season.

According to Van Roon, adjusting some of the timers in champion select and harsher penalties for dodging (down from 19% of the lobby to just 4%) has reduced the time it takes to get into a game by about 30%.

League of Legends' matchmaking rating (MMR) system has undergone significant changes this season. MMR changes were made to address the issue of players of different skill levels grouping together in the same rank. In my experience, this season has been a very easy uptick compared to last season where MMR seemed to plateau very quickly.

Hardstuck, a way of life

“For example, historically in Iron we had a huge population. [League’s lowest tier]“About 14% of players worldwide are mostly seasoned veterans,” explains Bellezza. “We want Iron to be a place for true new players, rather than just a home for people over the long term. We decided to adjust MMR to determine correlation rankings to get more experienced players on Iron and keep Iron a true home for new players.”

Unfortunately, Riot found that some experienced players were still struggling to break out of the league's bottom tier.

Van Roon adds: “At some point… we may need a whole new rank under the irons.” “We've seen some similar issues at the top of the ladder. The skill gap between Diamond 4 and Diamond 1 players is roughly the same as the difference between Bronze 4 and top Silver. We don't want too many differences in how people understand the game between the top and bottom of each tier. We concluded that we need to spread this player base across a wider range of tiers.”

This was achieved by broadening the LP range for Masters and increasing the LP requirements for Grandmasters and Challengers. Belezza added that Riot is also considering additional tiers at the top of the ladder due to the large skill level gap between Master 0 LP players and Master 900 LP tiers.

Interestingly, Riot is tweaking the system that matches auto-selected players with other auto-selected players who fill the same role. This is a welcome change, as the difference between those who lead a role and those who do not can be enormous.

In a Reddit post about the update video, Van Roon revealed that “Wood” and “Sand” are two tier names used internally to refer to potential new bottom tiers. But it's not a serious name suggestion just yet.

'Wood tier' has been a meme in the League of Legends community for a decade and is often used as a comedic line to diminish someone's abilities. For example, “This Maokai is Wood 7.” I imagine the negative (but fun) connotation of the name would make Riot reluctant to use it. However, there are so many materials that fit into Ranked's naming system, especially those considered inferior to iron.

Thankfully, the last time I made it to bronze was 11 years ago, and I've been living at dizzying emerald/diamond heights ever since. No one will ever call me Sand 9, even when I deserve it.