Boards›Gameplay

Why dynamic queue doesn't accomplish what Riot wants

Miku Lv99·4/15/2016, 5:21:52 AM·173 votes·5,042 views

Here are some quotes from Riot: "We want League of Legends to become a global sport that lasts for generations." and "we believe that dynamic queue is closer to representing a healthy, competitive landscape in League of Legends than solo/duo queue" etc., and if you read everything they've said, they want it to be a real sport. You know, like football or something. But there are some good reasons why dynamic queue makes LoL a lot different from how people would get to the NFL.

To get to the NFL, you know what people do? They play college football. And even that is broken up into divisions and you mostly play teams from your own division. A division III team is not expected to win against a division I or even a division II team. This is good for a lot of the players since it lets them play games against others that are mostly at a similar skill level. Obviously there are some very good players even on lesser teams and some lesser players even on great teams. This is pretty much inevitable. But even still, this is just like how it felt in the old solo queue. You were in a game of players mostly around your own skill level so you could try to figure out how to outplay or just stay 1 step ahead of what they were planning to do in order to try to win.

Now what does dynamic queue do? Does it really get you ready for the NFL (or LCS or whatever) or help you improve or anything like that? IMO, it fails to do that. It actually takes away a lot of the potential gain and a lot of the potential competitiveness that a player could experience. Here's why. Instead of being a division III team against another division III team like everyone would want to play, one team has a premade with a couple NFL players on it. Not only that, they can tell the rest of their premade how they should build and strategize as well. The result is more like either you don't stand a chance since your team didn't do the same, or you're the receiver they just never throw to since they have so much more communication with their other receiver and he's just that much better of a player so they just always throw the ball to him. In other words, you do nothing and get a free win anyways.

In either case, this gets in your way of figuring out how to get better. You'll try to think about why you won or lost, and it's simple. Because one team had some ridiculous smurf premade. This stops you from thinking about a lot of the other important things you'd want to work on to improve your game. And sadly a lot of the things you should improve to really get better are a lot harder to get much practice on in this setting. On teams where you just win for free, you never had to figure out how to win teamfights or anything and just won them no matter what you did. You might even reach false conclusions about what's good. Against teams where you just lose it just feels depressing and like there's no validity in the system because your bad opponents are increasing their rank without actually being any better, so that it makes you feel like rank is meaningless and that anyone could get to diamond if they got good enough friends to use smurf accounts and boost them.

Continuing from that last point, it really makes me feel not competitive about wanting to get a high rank. It just doesn't feel like it means anything anymore. It just feels like getting good or getting to a high ranking doesn't really matter anymore as there's no measure of how good you are anymore. In the old solo queue, it actually felt like your rank measured how good you were. Now that there's no measure of how much you improve, it's really not feeling very motivating to improve since you don't even know what improved your game and what didn't. It just feels like the game is now just always normals and ranked essentially is just more normals. It doesn't seem like the game I'd keep playing for generations or anything, at least not in its current state.

81 Comments

zmmby4/15/2016, 6:34:24 AM42 votes

no need to complain anymore since they dont care, too many kids are buying riven and graves skins

just pick the most broken champ of the patch, build tank bruiser items and pat urself on the shoulder like the rest does

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

Tufio4/15/2016, 11:33:23 AM18 votes

All this spinning and damage control, they will never admit solo to be scrapped.

Dynamic will just be always "improving" as excuse

KnKitsune4/15/2016, 7:33:27 AM13 votes

Sad that there are some peeps who are still fapping to Dynamic even if the evidence is thrown at their faces.

Osaka 7784/15/2016, 2:55:05 PM11 votes

Exactly. One of the main reasons I liked LoL was because of solo queue. Now, Riot keeps making changes to improve, that's fine as long as they give you options. What's wrong with having solo queue and dynamic queue? Oh right. Stubborn and cocky developers shoving dynamic queue down your throat while telling you how much you enjoy DQ. Great times.

rescued4/15/2016, 1:23:27 PM11 votes

I agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, I think Riot is blind, and don't realize these issues or they just don't care.

Nyhver4/15/2016, 11:37:51 AM6 votes

Ranked never equaled skill but it does mean even less now

612X0dbmDS4/15/2016, 1:34:42 PM6 votes

Some big shot at Riot has invested too much pride and money into this fiasco.

This clusterfuck won't survive more than a season because they will start losing players. They think that casuals will put the time and dedication in this game but they won't.

Casulas get bored and move along. You need your hardcore crowd, here, on Reddit, on youtube and on Twitch to drive this game forward. You need the hardcore crowd so the casuals have something to strive for.

Dynamic Q is neither fair or fun. It's not like my casual friends are "yaaay, there is dynamic Q, now we can play together". There are normals, we could play together before as well. This won't make League grow.

Sooner or later you will have to admit this was a fiasco and add the solo Q or solo MMR back. Dota and HoTS have been down this road and they have solo MMR at least.

metaworldpeace104/15/2016, 1:56:57 PM6 votes
  • 1, logged on to upvote and voice my agreement. Dynamic queue artificially inflates ones individual ranking without the cost of improving individual skill. Players are encouraged to group with friends and even moreso encouraged to group with friends who are of higher elo so that they can be "carried" to their desired elo. I'll admit that I've carried my bronze 2-3 friends out to silver 4-5 with my silver 1 smurf. I felt like I cheated the game and I felt bad for the other team who didn't have a premade of 5 against my 4 friends and 1. We had a severe advantage with me playing (platinum player) and we were all in the same room, communicating. The other team? 5 solo players who had no where near the communication that we had.

TLDR: dynamic queue is terrible and does not offer a "healthy competitive environment"

Lettow4/15/2016, 6:25:32 AM5 votes

Well thought out post, thanks for taking the time to put so much detail into it. A lot of people (like me) simply posted one or two lines about wanting solo q or at the very least having a real honest discussion with riot about solo q. I'm sorry in advance that the odds are very high that no one from riot will respond, but here, have an upvote at least.

Weasel Kensei4/15/2016, 4:24:38 PM5 votes

I like that they say sport, and make the claims... but if thats the case, we have the pros in this "sport" denouncing the system thats in place.

We have some of the best players in the game charging people money to smurf in lower elos with them. That would be like a minor league or very competitive college ball player taking money to pretend to go to "Booster high-school" and play on their team to help them win. Yeah, real "sporting" of you Riot.

Its like a sport where they have X players on the field, but only most of them are a branded team, they also pick up some random people who are really good at the game too to fill out the rest of the team.... you know, like they do in sports.

Kal Vas Flam4/15/2016, 11:46:56 AM4 votes

Instead of being a division III team against another division III team like everyone would want to play, one team has a premade with a couple NFL players on it.

But what you're describing almost never happens. The premades, which are rare beyond duo's if you're legit solo queuing, are usually worse, not better, than the other players. This is intentional.

LoL Ergo Urgot4/15/2016, 3:51:21 PM4 votes

How Riot can say what they said and not realize their system contradicts their statements is beyond befuddling.

runedara4/15/2016, 12:30:39 PM4 votes

My biggest problem I am support and jungle main. So if I realistically want jungle I have to not pick support.