@RiotSocrates: Veto feature, support incentive, a possible first step in the right direction
WARNING: WALL OF TEXT, IF YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED TO READ IT ALL SKIP TO TL;DR (but I suggest you to read as it is more a general food for thought argument)
** 1) PREMISE** Scrolling through reddit, I stumbled upon this recentthread asking about what happened to the veto feature.
(Reminder: the veto feature was the feature Riot promised they would test to allow a player to exclude one role when selecting Fill to ease the pains of the player forced to fil in the role they are worst/loathe the most)
It was immediately pointed out to the OP that Riot had yet answerered in 6.23 patch notes pointing how the experimentation was a failure because of the negative impact on queue timers and the feature would have not been developed.
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-623-notes#patch-position-preference
>We have concluded testing position exclusion in LAN and LAS and saw it was negatively impacting queue times, so will not be continuing development on this feature. We’re continuing to experiment with improvements to the whole champion select process.
Neverhteless, Riot Socrates chimed into the discussion to further explain the decision and share his takes on the issue based on the experience they got from the various things they tried over time
> Veto had the same issues as pick 2 with no autofill. When we originally simulated what pick selections would look like we were hopeful pick 2 would work since only 20% of players need to pick some combination of support as primary or secondary or the fill option in order for the system to not freeze up. That, at the time, fell well within what players said their preferences were.
> The reality is players didn't really pick in an unbiased way, they biased towards primary positions they felt they could carry from and the secondary that gave them the highest probability of getting that position.
> This isn't an issue now since players get their primaries more often and the differences are no longer gameable.
> We thought veto had a good chance of working since 80% of players would need to veto it for the system to freeze up, which seemed unlikely. However we saw the same behavior as with pick 2 where more and more players started to gravitate towards the optimal choice until it reached the tipping point. Basically vetoing support meant you almost never had to fill, and if you're optimizing to get your primary vetoing anything other than support is always a bad choice.
> We realized any detectable inequality in position popularity could and would be gamed regardless of the specific position. This is why while it's important that we improve support as a position, doing so wouldn't fix the root issue with the old system. If support became amazingly fun or OP the issue would just move to the next least popular position.
2) OK, NICE PREMISE, BUT WHAT'S THE POINT?
The whole thread and Socrates answer underlined two glaring issues in the actual queue system:
-
put too much faith in the community to regulate theirselves a queue system that give players freedom of choosing their preferred roles is not going to work, which forced Riot to introduce remedials that have improved the queue timers issue but have basically dulled and altered the make up of the system, largely nullifying the reasons why community requested it at first
-
most of people still aren't looking positively to play support, despite the work done to improve the role and there is still the demand for incentives to make people play more support role or at least queue up as fill
The veto feature was a nice idea, but has not worked (as could have been easily expected) because people were trying to game the system using vetoes to exclude support (the generally least preferred role) and bypass the remedial that Riot was putting in place to make up for the luck of support (namely autofill) that allow it to work
When I read that, the first thing that came to my mind was: "What a shame, thats why we can't have nice features...selfish people try to game the system for personal benefit, ending up in everyone being screwed"
Then I made a step back, re-thinked about the enitre socrates answer and I changed a bit my perspective. In real life most if not almost all the people try to get advantages for theirself screwing the other, so why they should change their typical behaviour for a freaking videogame which is a way less important thing, and they use to have fun and to unload irl frustrations and tensions?
So I realized, it is useless to blame others to act like what they usually do, why just don't reverse the reasoning?
Something like Veto feature is not going to work for the majority of the people in the overall system...but then why scrap it entirely?
I mean, there are players out there won't mind picking up fill and play support or don't mind playing different roles, but would not select fill because they despise a role different from support and would not like to get it (being either top, jgl, mid or adc, do no matter). There are supports main out there that would not want to play 100% of the time support and would pick fill to play the occasional game off-role (and in perspective this could happen for whatever role become the least popular in the future) that would like to exclude a specific role.
Why can't these people have Veto feature available for theirselves? Giving these people Veto feature won't have negative impact on the overall system, as it won't decrease the number of players queueing up for support/fill, but would still be a nice incentive for support/fill players that would have an extra feature available for them.
So, ALLOW PLAYERS THAT QUEUE UP FOR FILL TO EXCLUDE ANY ROLE BUT SUPPORT.
These are the kind of features that aren't really abusable by people queueing up specifically for them and would end up trying to game the system (like Bonus RP) nor would be felt totally useless that no one would consider them (like Bonus IP), but would still be feel something for the one that can use it and would be enjoyed by them
And these are the kind of features that should be aimed to be developed and given to support/fill player to incentivize them and their role. Getting something more that would valorize the players that make the system actually work and would make them feel cuddled by having more without penalizing the others.
This one small feature that is talked specifically about in this post would mean close to nothing itself, but if/when you start to put more of these together they can start to become a very nice way to improve the situation and especially the overall perception of the roles that will benefit from them
No matter how much the least popular role will be worked upon, and made stronger and more interesting (as long as it does not become completely broken and people hop on it, which would just shift the problem to the the next one which would become lowest in the priority), most people would not recognize it, and that's why what said above is the only way to ease the "pain" of people in playing the support role and incentivize people to try and play it.
3) TL;DR
Give Veto Feature to Fill players (allowing them to veto anything except support). When developing new features that you acknowledge will not work for the general population, try to not completely scrap it, but verify if you can give these features to niche of players that because of design can't abuse them as incentive for those players - with special care for categories like fill and support players -
