Team Builder, Dynamic Draft, and Toxicity
This is a big conversation that I have been having with my friends, and I'm pretty sure that there's been quite a bit of talk on the boards as well about Dynamic Queue, its numerous flaws, and its failures. However, let me preface this by saying Dynamic Queue is an improvement over Draft Mode. There are some flaws that it has that Draft Mode did not have (queue time, excessive support role, and some general UI and clarity issues, as well as some issues in the timing), but overall it is an improvement. While some players suffered from it, I think the benefits outweighed the cost.
Instead, I talk about the failures of Dynamic Queue in comparison to Team Builder. Team Builder was a much more enjoyable experience for me. The issues of Team Builder were, primarily, wait times for highly picked roles, disproportionate power given to the leader, and the horrible mirror matches. However, I have experienced more toxicity, griefing, and dodging in Dynamic Queue than I ever did in Team Builder.
There were three main groups of people that played League, to me (excluding Ranked): The Team Builder people, the Blind Pick people, and the Draft Mode people.
- Blind Pick often was the most impatient and had the most raging and trolling--I feel like that was the nature of the queue. You picked it not to have the best experience, but because it was quick.
- Draft Mode had people that wanted to tryhard, but didn't want to have the ranking and concerns of Ranked--I quite often enjoyed Draft Mode, especially with a select few of my friends. Its issues were pick order feeling unfair and lack of ability to control what you got.
- Team Builder, finally, felt like the most relaxed area. It was where you went to just play a game of League of Legends. Often there was barely any talking in those games, and what did result was generally nice.
Pulling numbers out of my ass, I feel like I had an unpleasant person maybe once every ten games in Team Builder, and a genuinely toxic person once in maybe fifty. That means I could go through fifty people before finding anyone that was slightly hard to be around, and at least 250 before finding someone that genuinely upset me--and this only includes my team.
The nature of Team Builder encouraged patience. To play the champion you really wanted to play, you were willing to sacrifice more time. And given the long wait times where people sat in group together, it encouraged being nice to each other from the get go--you could get kicked, after all. Finally, it often felt like I was working with my randomly found group to get that one support or jungler to finish out the group, rather than the feeling of being against my randomly found group in Dynamic Queue.
The removal of Team Builder and Draft Mode and conglomerating them all into one group caused all of these different ideologies to combine. The combination of the Blind/Draft groups and the Team Builder combines two different ideologies of how and why you're playing the game, tries to join them, and fails to please everyone as a result.
To make players feel happy, I believe you have to give them options--even if it's just the illusion of choice. The old Draft and Blind were very flawed, and as a result, suffered from toxicity. But while Team Builder was flawed, I feel like it was less toxic than the new Dynamic Queue. The only choice we have now is Dynamic Queue or Blind Pick, neither of which I find myself enjoying that much. While Dynamic Queue isn't that bad to play, I still miss the environment and group feeling of Team Builder, and have noticed myself playing much less and dodging more with Dynamic Queue.
In summary, this is a rant from a nobody complaining about Dynamic Queue once again in an attempt to vent his frustration and hope that something can change. Ideally, I would see Team Builder come back, but failing that, I hope Riot makes an effort to make Dynamic Queue more fun for everyone.
TL;DR
- Dynamic Queue is an improvement over Blind/Draft
- Dynamic Queue's flaws mixed with Team Builder's removal makes the game less enjoyable for me
- Dynamic Queue does not encourage cooperation or patience in my experience
- Team Builder resulted in a generally less toxic environment, especially in regards to griefing and trolling
