The Business and Examination of Dynamic Queue: An analysis on the pros, cons, and the future

tldr: Dynamic Queue has good intentions, but pits the needs of one group of League's players against the needs of another. Solutions should focus on benefiting all groups, since League isn't owned by any particular group. DQ should be analyzed for what it does right as well as wrong in order to find out how to replicate those beneficial factors.

I’m seeing a lot of complaints about how DQ is ruining the game and how the decision was obviously stupid and misguided but not a lot of posts looking for solutions to DQ that don’t move backwards on some of the progress that DQ has made.

As a result, I made this post.

Firstly, we have to define what the gains to Dynamic Queue are, and for that we’re going to have to put ourselves in Riot’s position. League of Legends is a massive game popular in several countries and dominant as both a product and an eSport. As a result, it’s accrued a massive player base, and really everyone who’s a part of the gaming scene has heard of the game by this point.

These factors result in the following:

League’s popularity as an eSport has led to a popular and historically healthy ranked scene, its dependence on team play means that large numbers of games were required to progress, and there were high rates of burnout with particularly motivated individuals. On the other hand, there was a large pool of players who had an interested in the ranked scene, but couldn’t play it with friends, meaning that they were underserved.

This means you have two underserved markets. We have the more casual market, which likes to play with friends, and the hardcore market. Note that games with high levels of social interaction are likely to retain players for longer. Considering that it’s hard for League to acquire new players due to its sheer complexity and because basically everyone who could be interested already knows about it, player retention is incredibly important. Especially in the shorter run, as Riot can look to cut down on barriers to entry for new players (rune price adjustments and level exp reduction were both movements in this direction, and I doubt they’ll be the last.)

Additionally, while the ranked playerbase is definitely the most invested and hardcore, higher toxicity and burnout (I’m basing burnout based on Riot communication, I have no data to be able to definitively say how much of a problem this was in practice, but trust Riot on this front as they have incredibly talented Analysts) are both factors that negatively impact this particular group and lower their overall retention. In the long run, this is incredibly dangerous for the game- a decreasing ranked playerbase can create drastic hits to both the eSports scene as well as casual interest, as playerbase size is a valuable asset to online games (lower queue times, better matchmaking, etc.,).

Riot is attempting to supplement the ranked community, and convert more casual players into more hardcore and invested players. The thing is- this is an intelligent business move by many purely statistical measurements. If ranked players are more invested, and you can make more ranked players, and invested players stay longer and spend more money, than making more ranked players is a no brainer. Competitive integrity becomes an issue, however competitive integrity at lower tiers relative to playerbase size and player retention is most likely a very easy tradeoff to make. Competitive integrity at higher tiers impacts the eSports scene, so the tradeoff is significantly more severe (and hence the 1/2/3 queue limiting at higher ranks.)

However, that isn’t to say it’s a perfect trade. Here’s what I think the problems are with Dynamic Queue:

1: Misunderstanding of Riot’s target markets. Large playerbases in China, Korea, and even in the West are highly invested in the competitive nature of the game. These highly invested players are the ones that allow for League to grow as an eSport. While League may have had a fairly split playerbase before (large premades in ranked 5’s or normal games, and competitive players in ranked) the playerbases are now at odds with each other.

While a net positive in the short term, I believe this is likely a net negative in the long term. Increasing player engagement of one group at the expense of an already hardcore, dedicated group is undesirable. Even if every ranked only player were to quit and be replaced, having a precedent for neglecting or underserving your hardcore sector of the playerbase is incredibly dangerous moving forward. Additionally, this dampens the eSports scene considerably. In the short term, this isn’t much of a problem as there are many pros currently playing at a high enough level that ranked queues aren’t frequently needed to supplement roster decisions. As time goes on, current ranked frustration as well as difficulty in estimating individual skill will make this problem worse until it begins to have a visually measurable impact on game performance.

2: Misunderstanding of the appeal of ranked, and group ranked as well as an over-evaluation of team play. The appeal of ranked is to be able to measure your own skill relative to others. Playing with friends allows you to continue progressing towards a particular goal, but without having to ditch people you really enjoy playing.

The current thought process is that, because team play is fundamental to league, solo queue skills can be replaced by team dynamics. Therefore, teams at certain ranks belong at those ranks- they simply possess an equivalent, yet different, skillset.

However, this assumes that the different skillsets are equivalent. If you, the reader, and me, the writer, were to get into a knife fight, and I brought a gun, that’s not an equivalent skillset. You could put me up against harder and harder opponents until I only won the fight half the time, it’s irrelevant. My win rate may be 50%, but only because I have access to better tools- not because I’m such a great fighter that I can deal with guys who can reliably fight against gunfire.

Additionally, I believe it attempts to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Group ranked allows you to progress towards your particular goal… but why does it have to be done in tandem with solo ranked? There are other systems that allow you to move towards whatever goals you want, at different levels of expertise, without being related to the ranked system at all. A system where playing 100 games on a champion unlocks their Chroma is a progression based system with a clear goal that can be done with friends.

In fact, the current implementation of Dynamic Queue but limited to groups of 2, 3, and 5 would make an excellent replacement of the previous ranked 5’s system- but could still be done in tandem with pure solo queue.

The thought process is, that would split the playerbase. I half disagree- because players who are queuing up in groups of 3 or 5 weren’t playing ranked before to begin with. They were already split. They will have no impact at all on the current ranked playerbase.

Except they will have an impact on the normal queue playerbase. This is, as you can imagine, undesirable. So then, are there ways to reward team play and allow a sense of progression and reason to group without impacting either queue?

Let’s move on to the final part of this post: Potential solutions

Here are what I think are potential directions Riot could head. Of course, I came up with these in a single sitting- it’s very likely that Riot could do better with their dedicated analysts and hours. However, unlike Riot I’m not committed to backing any particular project, so I suppose I do have more freedom to say whatever I want.

My Suggestion: Remove dynamic queue. Replace ranked with a solo only queue. Toxicity in this queue will likely, if not definitely, increase with team dependence, however toxicity should be dealt with by other game health systems. Harsher punishment for toxicity in ranked specifically would be a good first step. In order to deal with the issue of burnout, take a mid-season break. During the mid-season patch and subsequent follow up patch, freeze rankings. You can leave the queue enabled (some people prefer the competitive environment) with or without severely reduced gains and losses during this time period, but this should cool down ranked while massive gameplay changes are underway. This diminishes ranked’s value as a testing grounds for new game changing content for a little bit, but normal data and high elo ranked (which shouldn’t really be affected one way or another) should be plenty as it is. As a potential follow up solution, add progression to normal games. While mastery is cool, it’s too tied to game count and not to performance. However, tying something purely to team performance could disincentive queuing with your friends, which is undesirable.

Therefore I propose some of the following potential replacements for the DQ experience:

1: Normals progression. Think of the old Achievements tab. Maybe a special chroma for winning 50/100/whatever games with your friends. Or an award for getting the highestenjoy mastery rating in a game on your team of 5, x number of games. A ward skin for queuing up with 3 or more people z number of times. An icon for getting a 5 for 0 pentakill with your premade. Etc., Maybe collect enough of these, and get access to the Victorious skin with a special border and profile trim. Like in ranked, but unique to playing with friends.

This allows normal queue players to get that seem progression of ranked while encouraging the same play, without infringing on typical ranked territory. Introduction of these kinds of achievements or goals that are purely based on performance gives you neat things to aim for that require lots of games (player investment) but don’t encourage trolling.

2: Wide Team Queue. A team queue that accepts 2s, 3s, and 5s. This allows high elo teams to continue practicing (like in college leagues) with the benefits of a larger queue size than the old 5’s queue with introduction of 2 + 3 premade structure. To be honest though, I think this is a headache for matchmaking to put together, and higher elo is just going to be dominated by 5’s anyway. However, at low ELO’s there may be some potential for this kind of queue- and high ELO wants a place to spam full 5’s games anyway.

One last thing:

Some recent red posts have discussed the possibility of enabling 5’s during peak hours for high elo, for challenger and college teams to practice. I believe this is a mistake. It negatively impacts traditionally solo players during what would be their peak hours, therefore it simply converts these hours from “peak hours” to “team hours.” I don’t believe this is competitively viable or healthy in the long term.

Rather than attempting solutions to get “overall increases” at the expense of any particular group of players, Riot should be focused on increasing value for ALL players and rewarding loyalty for their longer term, more dedicated fans. I feel like Riot has lost sight of their core focus as being the most customer focused company they can be. They’ve settled for willing to sacrifice the experience of the minority for the majority, rather than trying to improve the experience and value of ALL players. The Riot I was introduced to in season 2 would not have made that same sacrifice, and I’m sure that leaves a bad taste in a lot of player’s mouths.