***IDEA***: BPAM - Ban Pick All Mid

I know that the Howling Abyss / ARAM queue is already a fairly niche queue that splitting into different modes might cause to have a much longer wait, but I think this would be a worthwhile mode for retaining longtime players, and that the wait times might balance out if enough players are retained. Let me explain why.

My reasoning here is pretty simple, so hear me out: My theory is that there is a large number of players who find the 'All Random' part of ARAM to be repulsive, but which also grows over time as players tire of losing due to the poor odds ARAM can often hand a team at champion select. Combine that with the fact that you don't see your favorite champions very often, and this can make for a frustrating player experience over longer periods of play. Given that a lot of players end up in ARAM because they dislike or are bored of SR, I also suspect that a fraction of players who have this experience are dropping the game altogether instead of going back to SR. If my suspicion is correct, that might mean that player retention could be improved by improving this aspect of the game.

My idea to solve this problem then is to add 'Ban Pick All Mid' (BPAM) to the Howling Abyss queue. What this would do is allow players who are frustrated with ARAM to take some of the randomness out of the odds for a match without abandoning the all-mid format, or the game altogether. It would also allow them to build effective teams and ask for champions that they like to play, and stick with them long enough to learn what they do. This would create an environment where by the time this became mundane or repetitive, the frustration players felt with the randomness of ARAM or the issues they have with SR will have faded, and they will go back to playing either of those instead. This also would be great practice for SR because it would effectively put the team in the position to tee off for what would usually be a mid-game or late-game team fight in SR over and over, learning what works and what doesn't. There are definitely players out there who are great at farming and map awareness but that choke in team fights because they're just not sure where to stand and what to do in order to be effective. BPAM would be the perfect laboratory for teams to queue up for a good old fashioned rumble in order to practice team fighting synergy without the grind of early-game or map awareness in SR slowing down or cluttering up the process. You still have bushes, pokes, obstacles and towers to contend with, so the practice should lend to better mechanical proficiency without losing all regard for those elements.

So why bans and picks as opposed to just bans? Well, we just experimented with bans in ARAM as part of reducing the odds ratio between the teams, and I think a large part of the problem with bans by themselves is that because only one team ends up with a champion in the end, banning higher win rate champions is far more likely than the lower win rate ones. You don't just have the incentive to ban champions you don't like to play against, but also champions you feel are too great of a risk to allow the other team to get instead of yours. (Some of the win rates of champions in ARAM pre-bans exceeded 70%. You can trust that players recognize those outliers.) But it turns out that removing 10 champions off the top tier of the roster means you're far more likely to roll a champion on the bottom half of the roster than the top half. This makes for a lot more wonky teams filled with champs that struggle in ARAM and a lot more tanky characters in general lumbering around with nobody on the other team who can harass them. Whereas vanilla ARAM is chaotic and often painfully one-sided, ARAM with bans is more like a sleepy slow-motion version of that where your hands are often tied in the exact same way, just for different reasons.

Giving people picks sorts this out because allowing people to play roles, get synergies and play towards the top of the roster after bans allows them to give themselves a fighting chance while still banning champions they find intolerable to go up against. This also can make those bans more specific to the strategy they plan to employ and less about the raw stats or absurd win rate some champions have in ARAM.

Thanks for listening to my idea! I hope it made sense and you enjoyed it. Until next time, -JustSomeGuyTho