Just a Thought to fix Ranked Queue and the Flaws of Dynamic

Alright before I get started on what I want to say I want to make it clear this is not a Riot bash thread or simply me complaining about Riot screwing up. Actually I love Riot and have supported and believed in every decision they have made up until this season, even at the cost of a few champions I use to love to play. However they have made a few changes this season which just don’t make sense to me as a player and I can’t just let that slide by because of my faith in Riot. I don’t expect them to change anything at all this season since its already past the midway point but I do have hope for the seasons that come after this so without further ado let’s get into my issues with the game as it stands.

Dynamic Queue: Alright so beside all the threads claiming how it has killed the game and has been one of the worst decisions Riot has made I want to try to actually talk about what it has brought to the table but at the same time why it does indeed have to end after this season. Let’s hop back to season 5 when we had something called Team Builder which I’m now going to refer to as TB. TB allowed us to queue in normal games in the role of our choosing and as the champion of our choosing, no matter how long we had to wait for the queue to pop or for a team to accept our champion choice in the role we picked, we were practically guaranteed a game that we wanted to play in. Now I honestly believed TB was restricted to normal because Riot wanted to test out how it worked and how players thought of it before they brought it to Ranked. Obviously I did not expect TB in the form that it existed in to be the same when it was brought to Ranked but I did expect some variation of it, but instead we got what we all know and well mixed feelings aside, overwhelmingly despise as Dynamic Queue, which I will now refer to as DQ.

Truthfully I personally don’t hate DQ, actually just like TB I believe it has much potential. However before I get onto why DQ does have a few positives I want ya’ll to consider what TB could have been if brought into ranked this season. I obviously did not expect to be able to play as a pre-picked champion if we had a Ranked TB. Instead I thought we would have a TB that stopped at the role we picked so when we did get into a game champions would be banned still accordingly. We would be able to play the role we wanted no matter how long the queue, that was the price right there, if you wanted to play Mid or ADC then you may have to face a longer queue time than say SUP. Well honestly I would have no problem with this at all if it meant I got the role I wanted to play without causing any issues with other players and was able to play a game with a group of people who were all either playing the role they were good at or the role they desired. However we all know that TB ceased to exist in any form after S5.

So let’s get into DQ now. DQ promises us a position in one of two roles of our choosing and also has allowed us to play Ranked with any amount of team mates of our choosing. The first role we pick is considered our primary and the matchmaking system would ensure we were given our primary role at the very least equally to the amount of times we got our secondary. However this isn’t fully true and depends on what the two roles we picked were. Pick SUP as your secondary and be ready to have a new primary role that you are only second best at. Or perhaps you actually are only good at one role in the game, it’s the role you have played since you started and it’s the role you wouldn’t want to give up because that very role is what makes league fun to you. Obviously if you were one of these players who could play only one role you probably avoided Rank for a while due to the chance of not being able to get it. It’s obvious that not all people are like that and did play rank despite knowing one role and either learned to play new ones, stayed in elo hell, or simply gave up on ranked and perhaps the game all together. TB was a way to avoid the last two possibilities and also avoided in team fighting for a position which could lead to trolling or feeding from some tilted salty player. DQ gives us the ability to also avoid this but not as well as TB did, lets face it, if you main one role and are slightly good at another you are not playing to your best ability if forced into the second. Many people will say that you should learn to play multiple roles and I do support that but for the sake of this argument we will avoid that discussion as to why. Why being if you know how other roles work and play you are better able to face them in game but that’s as far as I’ll go into that topic.

DQ allows us to queue with as many friends as we want. That is cool and all but the thing is it does provide an advantage whether you are communicating through verbal speech or text. If you know how a friend plays in a certain role or champion then you already have a basic idea of how well they will do and whether or not they will need a certain amount of help or not. I do support the idea of letting more friends play with each other in Ranked but no more than three. Having four players make a pre-made group you might as well go the extra length and find a fifth and play 5s. Maybe you don’t know that many people or simply can’t find that fourth or fifth player but really do you honestly believe it is fair to play against an enemy group of players that has a chance of being and probably does consist of all randoms and perhaps a duo or two? Maybe you do, and honestly if you do, then you probably don’t have much faith in your own skill alone sorry to say. If you do or even if you realize you lack skill then you shouldn’t be afraid to play with a friend or two, but do you really need a full team unless you want to play Ranked 5s? Answer that question yourselves.

What is the point of all this ranting if I don’t offer up an idea to solve this issue of DQ and the absence of TB? Well honestly I believe we should bring TB back and into ranked next season. Obviously not the way that it was when we had TB but as a combination of TB and DQ, the best of both, for they both have brought some interesting and awesome things to the game despite the negatives. Bring TB back but limit it to only role selection, do allow us to pick a champion to but in the same way DQ lets our team know who we would like to play. Let the option to pick a secondary role and perhaps third, fourth, and even a fifth maybe but be just that, optional. So if we are willing to sit in the long queue time that is up to us and us alone, but if we do know how to play other roles and want to play them then we can but in the same way that DQ tries to place us in our main role of choice. By pre-selecting a champion we let our team know who we would like to play in that main role, or maybe leave TB at role selection and when we get into a game then let us pre-select who we intend to play just like DQ does. This way we can still have our picks and ban phase without any issues. Now as for how many players should be allowed to queue together I honestly am not sure. I would be okay with allowing at least groups of 3 to play in this new DTB (Dynamic Team Builder). Any more than that and we will run into the same issue that DQ now presents which is zoning out the solo queuers before the game even begins.

I did want to bring up a few points about the new Champion Masteries as well but I realize I kind of went on to long with the current queue system, so maybe if this idea is received well or perhaps even just talked about on how it could be improved or ideas tossed out then maybe I’ll make a post about that. However I honestly believe we should talk to Riot about how they can make queueing for the game better and offering our ideas on how is far better than simply bashing their current system. If we just complain about it they will indeed change it but we could end up with something even worse because none of us said what we liked and disliked about the past systems. The queue system did have to change, not in the way it did because we all know what that has led to, but perhaps if we work together to come up with a better system Riot will be willing to listen. Also it has to change in order to compete with new and future MOBAs, why fix what isn’t broken? Because someone could come up with a better queue system in their game and already has, and League could begin to slip and fade away. Don’t be afraid of change, rather think on what changes you would want to see and learn from the ones you don’t like. Thanks for your time in reading my wall of text, I hope it didn’t crit you and knock you out.

TL;DR: So what the point of the wall of text is to show why I think Dynamic Queue should Make it's exit off stage at the end of the season. It is a very unpopular system however a valiant attempt on Riot’s part to modernize their old Ranked queue to keep up with competition and future MOBAs. A new queue system using a combination of Dynamic and Team Builder could take its place as one possible idea.

Dynamic Team Builder (DTB) would work by picking the role you want to play in like old Team Builder and searching for teams from there, in champion select it would work just like the current Dynamic Queue. However an option would also exist to select a secondary role or more to decrease searching for team times but only if you want. Just a thought, and curious to hear other ideas.