@Riot Behold the Rank Team Builder hybrid concept

Hello everyone,

so for awhile now I've contemplating on how to integrate ranked queue and team builder into a better experience for ranked players.

There was a number of problems that were associated with trying to do a strict team builder for ranked:

• Team Builder's system makes you select your role and position then enter queue
• Upon entering a team, you then have to wait for other players to fill other positions
• Once everyone arrives, you then can start the queue

The major issue with this system are the long wait times, the scarcity of certain roles (Support I look at you) and the fact of how to tackle the ban system from ranked draft and the players first picking their champions without seeing their opponents.

The solution I came up with was to take elements from the Team Builder and then incorporate a hybrid of the two to replace all ranked queues.

Here it is.

If you look over the "Champion Select Beta" picture, what I did was move around, condense and add some things to the champ select screen:

In the new selection screen you will notice that there are 3 new things:

• To the Left of the Champion portrait is a Trade status light.
• To the right is what I call the Position Pyramid
• Below the Trade status light is the Champion preference stat chart

Let me explain what these are and what I did:

Trade Status light:

This is feature designed to tell you the moment you go in the game, as you highlight champions with your mouse cursor the ranked window tells you whether or not that player owns that champion for you to trade with. Red denotes they do not own the champion, Green for that player owning the champion. A special bright teal blue immediately stays on if that player happens to have unlocked all champions.

Extended & Enlarged Champion selector:

The purpose of this was to allow a bigger viewing of the champion pool. The main reason behind this was to integrate the Trade Status Light with it.

In addition to highlighting champions (although not shown as an example), as you view the champion pool. In the corners of the portraits there would be numbers denoting to the summoners associated in their picking order.

If their numbers show in the corner of that champion, that player indeed does own that champion for trading purposes. This allows two visual ways and early quick planning to see who owns what champions on the fly for trade purposes. (Again, the example is not shown for this feature because I haven't gotten to editing the image by enlarging the portraits to insert the summoner numbers in pick order)

The Position Pyramid:

This will be the best thing for ranked players for communication. (Ignore the smite icons and pretend they are the 5 lane positions of jungle to mid lane to top lane etc)

The Position Pyramid is a visual representation for a quick overview by telegraphing to your teammates by telling them what position you're more proficient in to the weakest. Top being your best (and Preferred) laning/jungle position and the bottom being your weakest area.

In the attached photo "Role Position popup side window", when you highlight over each icon will bring up a side window.

This pop up window tells you what 3 champions this player has chosen to be his preferred (but not required) champions that he plays in this role. Next to the portrait also denotes how many games they have played with that champion that current season (Note: winrate not being listed).

A player can overview each position icon (Mid lane, Top, Marksman, Support, Jungle) to see which 3 champions that this player will most likely play.

These settings can be changed before you queue by going in your Summoner profile window and then hitting a button (Screen shot: "Profile settings main window").

This feature will allow players in ranked queues to quickly assess over each teammate to see what the composition of everyone's strengths and whether or not there is a weak link that someone needs to fill (maybe there happens to be three people that play mid and top but one of these 3 is the only one that can play ADC).

The Banned Champions box:

I took this and condensed it. Reasons being that, two separate boxes to show the bans I find to be wasted space (plus I needed space).

By combining both teams bans into the same box might cause confusion but although not shown in the example picture, I believe the best way to remedy this would be to show a letter or icon to the left of the ban to denote which team banned what.

Champion Stats Window:

This is below the trade status light and it is just another nifty feature to overview on the fly.

Upon highlighting the icon will bring up a popup window.

This window shows your playstyle of champions you tend to play by taking the data what the combined champions that player picked relating in his Position Pyramid.

Example: Blitzcrank is listed as a tank and a fighter and increases the stat meter by 1 point each in their respective fields

To read it, dead center is Zero. Each line denotes 1 point up to a maximum of 5 points.

If anyone noticed, the fact that you pick 3 champions for each role. (3 x 5 = 15 champions) What happens when you overlap the same champion role like tanks or fighters?

What happens is the moment you go past 5 points (i.e. 6 points), another color is filled in on the chart and starting from dead center the next line is filled all around. This would denote as the new Zero for any points going past 5.

The purpose of this chart is really to help teammates determine what type of player you may be.

Two players are on your team, they both happen to be supports mains and have the same position pyramid.

The difference lies though when you overview the support icon to see what champions these players play and when you then compare their chart.

While both being support mains, one player will show they play more mage oriented champions (Sona, Lulu) and the other player actually tends to favor Tank and/or Fighter supports (Leona, Blitzcrank).

Just a handy feature to use.

Profile Settings Main Window:

This is where you get to editing your profile settings to telegraph to your team when you queue up in game.

With the features of editing each position, placing on your own what champions you tend to play in that role.

To changing your type of Position Pyramid (with there being 11 different pyramids) to seeing what your end result will shown in your Champion Presence stats telling you more about how your playstyle is. :)

This can replace everything in ranked queues (and draft mode), because it is all purely aesthetic and will smooth out flustering contention in communication on what people want and what they can do to solve things quicker.

EDIT 1: Permalink: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/ERZWRAtu-riot-behold-the-rank-team-builder-hybrid-concept?comment=0005

Just want to be clear, the queuing system wouldn't work like team builder with you queuing up and having to wait for every place to have a role filled.

That is the purpose of this hybrid idea of it, by telling you who plays what better to easily communicate and work out the kinks on how to fix your team's gaps.

It runs the same as regular queues, only you setup what you want to telegraph to your team on how you think you do in each role.

I'm attaching the other 11 position pyramids you choose to customize around to show how you feel you do in those positions.

For people wanting to do only one role and scale down on a 1 to 1 to 1 to 1 to 1 level, I didn't know how to squeeze it to a smaller scale which is the second to the bottom 2 pyramids like that. But these are the examples.