Solo Queue (Serious Discussion/Long Read)

Hey everyone,

This post is just going to be my thoughts on what I think the biggest flaw of Solo Queue is in its current state.

Role Selection/Autofill

Out of all of the things I have encountered in this game, I think this is the biggest reason why so many games are extremely one-sided. When people do not get their main role, they are already at a huge disadvantage and, God forbid they start feeding or doing poorly, their teammates will most likely start flaming them, causing them to perform even worse.

I firmly believe people should not be forced into playing a role/champion they are not comfortable with, as the foundation for a bad game of League of Legends is already being laid right there in Champion Select. The biggest counter-argument I have heard to this is: "Well, you shouldn't be playing Ranked then if you can only play one champion/role," to which I say: "Since this IS Ranked, people should be playing to their strengths, not their weaknesses."

Let me give a couple examples:

Three games ago, I had to play Mid. I am not a Mid Laner, my strength is in ADC and I can play a "passable" Top, but my teammates were happy with their roles so I told them I would just play safe and farm. I did indeed play safe, and kept up in farm, but my opposing lane opponent was a one trick who had 360+ games on his champion. He had complete lane control over me and constant kill pressure. My other lanes were even, but eventually collapsed and a lot of it was my fault because I couldn't at all keep up with my opposing laner's pressure. We ended up losing the game pretty swiftly and I have no qualms about taking most of the blame for that game.

On the other hand, in my last two games, I got my role of ADC, popped off in both games, and used my immense pressure from Bot to help other lanes and win those games.

I would also like to note that in my very last game, the opposing Top did not play the role at all and was steam rolled by our Top.

I think these things would happen less often if people were playing the roles and champions they are good at, instead of being forced by the system to play things they are not so good at.

"So what is your solution then?"

My solution is pretty simple on paper, but is probably very complicated in application. However, I think if the current system were given some "minor" tweaks, people would be given more agency over their Champion Selects.

1. Remove Autofill and change the current Fill option into a feature you can turn on/off.

Autofill is probably the single greatest source of lopsided games. Riot has stated that Autofill is necessary to prevent long queue times, but I don't think this approach would drastically lengthen queue times (obviously I do not have Riot's data on this, so I can only speculate). I, for one, would much rather wait for a longer queue knowing that me and every other player who is going to be in that game is going to be on a role they want to play, greatly increasing the chance of having a good game of League. However, I know everyone is not like me and they might not want to wait that long for a game, in which case they have the option to turn the Fill feature on in order to reduce queue times.

2. Remove Primary/Secondary role choices and replace them with a feature that allows a player to choose which role(s) he/she is willing to play and place them in order of preference.

Example:

Top: 1 Jungle: 2 Mid: 3 Bot: Support:

Fill: disabled

This system caters to all players. If you can only play one role, then you are guaranteed to get that role at the price of a longer queue time. If you are a player who can play multiple roles, your queue time decreases. If you are one of those people who can play all of the roles, I honestly envy you, but you will also have the lowest queue time out of anyone since you aren't inhibited by only being able to play a specific role(s).

*Would like to note that I am going off of the assumption that queue time will decrease as the number of roles selected increases.

The above example would indicate that you are comfortable with the system putting you in Top, Jungle, or Mid. It will not put you anywhere else since you have Fill disabled. However, if you are more of a one trick like I am, you could limit the selection to just one role. Or, if you don't mind being filled, you can select your preferred role(s) and enable the Fill feature. The system (in theory) will look at which roles you have selected and the order in which you placed them (1 being most preferred, 5 being least). It would then use this information to find a match. Again, going off of my previous assumption, it will be easier for people who can play multiple roles to find a match than it will be for people who can only play a singular role.

Well that is my attempt at making slight changes to how we all queue up for games. Am I heading in the right direction? Am I way off course? Am I a complete moron and have no earthly idea what I am talking about? Please let me know in the comments below, I would love to hear what others think about this idea.

P.S. If you read my whole post through to the end, thank you for taking the time out of your day to do so!