The MMR change is bullshit.
There were a couple problems with the old system.
1) high rated players made a bunch of free accounts to stomp people in basic games
-this pisses off the low rated players
-high rated players did this because there were long queues at the 1850+ level
2)high rated players had long queue times
3)lower rated players complained about queue times
These are all valid problems, so lets see how S2 addressed them in this patch.
1) S2 made it so you gain/lose a lot more MMR in your first 20 or so games. You gain/lose around 20 MMR for each match. If you're stomping these noobs, you'd hit 1700 in 10-14 games, and those games are harder to stomp. This works in theory, but i don't think it will stop people from grinding out lvl 2 accounts to get the referral bonus. This change is a step in the right direction, but i think there will still be rampant amounts of smurfing.
2) This new MM change allows people to choose between fast queue times by having a wider range of rated players join the game, and it lets you choose a longer queue time to have a smaller range of rated players join the game. This change doesn't really do shit for high rated players. It's only available if you're team queuing, so solo queuers get fucked. Plus this isn't an improvement over the old system if you wanted people your same rating. If you want shorter queue times for 1900s, you need more fucking 1900s. There are only, ~2000 1900 rated players, and not all of those are unique accounts since people have created multiple 1900+ rated accounts. S2 could have used this MMR change to have a big announcement about a ladder reset and tried to get more people to join their fucking game. In open beta it peaked at 65k players online. Now it's only 35k from europe and the americas. S2 fucking dropped the ball. This doesn't help high rated MMR players at all. Now they have to stomp shitty rated players to get back their rating, which will supposedly be harder to do this time.
3) The slider bar that lets you choose how long you want to wait in a queue lets people join games faster. But low rated players didn't have much of an issue with queue times since there are lots of them.
This change really didn't do shit. It stops people from cranking out lvl 5 basic accounts, but not lvl 2 basic accounts. High rated players still have long queue times, and have to play one sided games since they compressed MMR. Queue times are shorter, but it's because they compressed all the ratings, so it's easier to match people with similar ratings together. Just wait till people hit 1900-2000 again, the queue times will be as long as before. S2 is a fucking joke. They're fucking awful don't buy gold coins from that piece of shit company. If they wanted to touch MMR, they should have just reset the whole thing. So you won't have pissed off players since you fucked their stats. Now i'm 1650 rating and 59% win, where as before I was 1850 with 59% win. They should have just reset everyone down to 1500. They didn't do that because they wouldn't get money from people who reset their stats.
Fuck S2 games, I hope Riot continues to cannibalize their shitty operation.