League-of-legends – Do unranked games have matchmaking by skill/level

league-of-legends

I play League of Legends since a few month casually on-and-off doing quite ok. I only played a few ranked matches last season (3 wins, 2 losses, 1339 rating) and recently just farm easy IP via coop (yay for noone raging in those games) and do the occasional unranked match.

Recently, my colleagues started playing League of Legends, too, and… well, they are bad. Really, really bad, as in 0/17 bad (not feeding intentionally)… BUT… somehow they still manage to win games with that score.

My matches are usually decided by someone going 0/2 or similar which basically ends up being game over right there, so i'm wondering if they are just playing far worse opponents or if they just have good teammates.

Note:
I'm level 30, they are between level 8-12.

Best Answer

League of Legends uses a mathematical system to match up players of similar skill in the “Normal” and “Ranked” game types. Source

So just like in "Ranked," "Normal" uses its own Elo for matchmaking. It's just hidden.

Most likely, though, because your colleagues are new, their opponents aren't as good as the ones you're facing now. In other words, your colleagues' opponents don't capitalize on mistakes as much as your opponents might, because you're a better player, and the people you play against scale accordingly.

That's why your colleagues can get scores like 0/17 and still win a game.