League of Legends Is Getting Positional Matchmaking, Separate Ranks for Roles

League of Legends players' ranks will be split between each of the five positions next year to allow players to climb in each role at their own pace.

This means that each player will have five different ranks during their Ranked matches with one each for top, jungle, mid, bot, and support. The change was detailed in the video above around four minutes in by lead producer New001.

"Next year, you'll earn unique ranks for each position you play, and matchmaking will adjust based on position select," Riot's New001 said.

Not only will the new feature that's being called position-based matchmaking be applied to Ranked games, it'll also be applied to Normal Draft modes as well. Riot New001 said that this change will make it safer to practice a new role – or get stuck with one, if you're autofilled – without having to risk your rank.

One of the problems that this change looks to fix is one that Ranked players will recognize immediately. If you or a teammate end up getting autofilled to a different role, the game still treats you like you're whatever rank you're at even though you don't main that position. You may be a Gold or Diamond top main, but that skill doesn't come across in the same way if you have to play support. The current system also doesn't give players credit when they can adequately perform in multiple positions, a point that was raised in the dev update about all the Ranked changes.

"Right now, Ranked doesn't recognize players who master several positions," Riot Sapmagic said in the dev update. "In fact, if you've ever queued up for another position or gotten autofilled, you probably realized our matchmaking system treats your skill the same regardless of what you're playing. This means the worse you are at an off-position, the more likely you are to find yourself in a really hard game. It's kind of like assuming a soccer player who is a really good goalie will also be a talented striker—it's just not true most of the time."

As for the ranking side of things, Riot said that the current plan is for players to have five different ranks, one for each position. In the new system, if you were to get autofilled to an unfamiliar role, the matchmaking will adapt to put you against players of similar skill levels. The same adjustments won't be applied in the same way to the Master and Challenger tiers, but the vast majority of players will benefit from these changes.