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@Riot: Want more Supports? Change Fill to be what PLAYERS expect it to be.

DrCyanide··5 votes·628 views

One of the features I was looking forward to with the new Champ Select was the Fill option. I'd gotten to the point in my Blind Pick games where I primarily went Fill, and came to expect a variety of what roles I would play. I liked that, which is why I kept selecting it. Sure some roles were more common than others, but you'd inevitably get a player that would prefer Support over one of the other open roles, letting you go there.

Unfortunately, "Fill" in the new Champ Select no longer means "Random", it means "100% Support." It's so bad the Patch Notes have to joke about it.

What's the answer thrown around the boards? "If you don't want to play Support, don't put Fill" or "Manually pick two roles," which is what you, Riot, don't want to have happen. When I manually pick both my roles, that means I have a 0% chance of being the Support your system needs. As more and more players give up on Fill being random, the pool of potential Supports gets smaller and smaller.

#Ironically, the best solution is to make fewer Fill players go Support.

Don't give Fill the Support role 100% of the time and you'll have more Fill players. Even if those Fill players are playing Support 60% of the time, if you double the number of people choosing Fill you've got more Supports than you had before.

#Riot, you have to act fast!

The longer you delay, the more people will get stuck in their 2-role pattern, which will only hurt your queue times more.

48 Comments

Anraton3 votes

well maybe you don't understand, how the system works ... i'll do a condensed example with mid, adc and support ....

lets imagine, your queue consists of 4x adc/mid, 1x adc/support, 1x mid/fill ...

now the system is designed, to get you out of the queue and into a game as fast as possible ... now try to distribute those 6 players ....

as long as support is the least wanted role, fill is equal to support and queue times will be high if you pick 2 specific lanes that don'T contain support.

DrCyanide3 votes

I understand that's how it currently works, I'm explaining that the system is fundamentally flawed.

It's worth pointing out that the system could not start a game with the Queue you provided, because there are two roles missing (Top and Jungle) and only one Fill. This is exactly why having more Fills would be better for the system.

Anraton1 votes

as i mentioned ... i did a reduced example with mid, adc and support as roles!

Duke Anax2 votes

I am a support main and even I don't want to play support every game.

So if I want to play jungle I have to put Jungle/Top .

But that only gives me a lot of top games where I would have prefered to play supp instead.

Ravenhale1 votes

Heh, I tried doing this and ended up Top more than Jungle. If I want to play Jungle, I just go to blind pick these days.

The Queen Viper2 votes

[zombie-brand-facepalm]

It never meant "random".

DrCyanide1 votes

The result was always Random. Arguing that "Fill" meant "I want to get into a game faster" before the new Champ Select is a far bigger jump in logic.

Ravenhale2 votes

The reason why Fill felt random was due to call/pick order. You would enter a game with two people wanting ADC or Mid and first pick/call would get it. The other would normally **** and then go Support (either because they can or because they can't do anything but their primary). This is why Fill used to not always be Support. It was because the Matchmaking was done prior to role assignments. Now that role assignments are done prior to matchmaking, you won't ever have the situation where people will begrudgingly go Support because their primary was taken by someone else.

You can still Fill in Normals/Blind Pick and it will be the "random" you were familiar with.

DrCyanide1 votes

Yes, I understand that's why Fill use to give diverse positions. The new system fails to deliver on that result, which is what people wanted when they wanted a "Fill" option for Team Builder.

There are many people that would be happy to take an occasional Support position. These people have no way of occasionally getting Support with a chance of getting their main, thanks to the flaws in the new system. This results in fewer potential Supports. That's the problem here, fewer Supports due to fewer Support Secondary/Fill players, which is due to Riot 100% assigning these players to Support, which lead to these players not taking positions that would result in them getting Support all the time.

Ravenhale2 votes

Try to Duo with a Support Main. That should fix your Fill issues.

DrCyanide2 votes

I can duo with my wife any time, yes. The point isn't to fix this for individuals it's to fix the whole system.

Ravenhale2 votes

Riot would have to change how they assign "Fill". Presently they match MMR and roles and the "Fill" usually ends up Support. If Riot's system assigned a Role to the "Fill" prior to matchmaking, then it would operate more like random. However this isn't much different than placing values on a six sided die and rolling it yourself to determine what secondary role you want to select. I don't understand why you need Riot to change their coding when you can do this rather effortlessly yourself.

DrCyanide1 votes

You're starting to get it!

I don't understand why you need Riot to change their coding when you can do this rather effortlessly yourself.

Because 1) it's about more than just me (even if I swapped to Support 24/7, you wouldn't notice) and 2) it would likely have to be a weighted system to help the entire queue.

Ravenhale2 votes

And while I say you can do this rather effortlessly yourself, it also isn't that hard for Riot to do either. It would be a simple RNG execute that ran the moment you hit Queue up. If enough of the playerbase wants a genuine "random fill", there shouldn't be an issue for Riot implementing it.

ModKnightsKemplar1 votes

I really don't think the system is flawed... I think support is flawed. If it were a better role, more people would want to play it.

I'm glad that the queue timers are silly, because it might actually help encourage Riot to take a look at the most neglected role. It's gotten MUCH better over the years, but they are still, largely, ward bots, and there's no reason for that anymore. Trinkets are here. Let's change the role to the useful utility role that it was intended to be.

Ravenhale1 votes

How is Support flawed?

ModKnightsKemplar1 votes

Basically, supports that aren't Janna don't have much influence over a game (over other supports). It makes very little difference if you're playing Braum or Taric (or even Nami or Sona), since your main job is warding.

I have been spamming Taric in ranked, and I notice that my support pick just never matters much. There aren't interesting, nuanced matchups. My abilities barely contribute to the team. It feels bad to play support because they are ward-bots, and all the champs ward-bot exactly the same way.

That's why no one wants to play the role. I am ENJOYING my time playing it, even many games in a row. But I understand why other people don't. It isn't very challenging or interesting, and you lose based on decisions the other team makes with very little variance in your own play. After you get done standing around lane and doing nothing, your team thanks you profusely for being a "good support." Because you put wards down and didn't get caught out. That's basically all you do.

Ravenhale1 votes

I've never felt like I have no influence over the game. Morgana snares can be deadly. Leona can be unbreakable. If you want to be a pain, even bring that Annie support and see how game changing a Tibbers can be. Or play Soraka and hope you can outheal all the mistakes your ADC makes (extra frustration points if they accuse you of not doing anything).

I get that the warding game is "boring". I find being dead even more boring, so I don't mind playing the warding game. I don't like getting caught out, so I won't deep ward without enough mobility to do so safely. Heck, I exclusively buy the Tracker's Knife when I jungle in blind pick because wards matter that much to me. And I have noticed several players ward as religiously as I do, even when they are playing Top/Mid, with just their trinkets alone. Warding is life.

I will concede that I don't win the game for the team. This is probably why people avoid the role. It's a role designed with the intent of assisting your team to victory. You can hit a three man ult with Sona and for some reason your team retreated. It's a communication dependent role that suffers in silence. And this is not limited to Supports. It's frustrating for Tank built Vi to hit her ult on the carry and watch your ADC chase that Alistar. That's just Solo Queue for you. I don't find that a flaw in the Support role. If anything, the introduction of Dynamic Queue encouraged more communicative team play so that the Support role didn't have to feel so dependent on being miraculously in synch with a complete stranger.

ModKnightsKemplar1 votes

Well, that's why I added "over other supports." I agree that supports influence the game. And obviously there are key differences in supports... but it's not enough.

We can go back and forth about ways supports do and don't affect the game, none of those things will be factually incorrect. I just feel that they don't have ENOUGH impact to make players want to play it. That's they key thing. You should be able to build tanky on Leo. You should be able to build some damage on morg. And it never feels like you can really do that.

Again, more evidence, that's why it's so hard to balance these champs for solo lanes and for support. I'm asking for a system where they can be balanced for both, specifically because supports aren't hamstrung by gold/XP limitations. And I refuse to accept that such a system is not possible.

Urgonnalearn2day1 votes

It never meant random...fill was never random either. You might have gotten another role more because people talked it out when you said fill.

This is now automated. Your solution is not a solution nor would it help.

This isn't an opinion; you're just flat misguided.

DrCyanide1 votes

How would increasing the number of potential Supports not help? More Fills will generate more Supports, even if those individual players aren't playing Support as often as they would now.

Anraton1 votes

{quoted}

How would increasing the number of potential Supports not help? More Fills will generate more Supports, even if those individual players aren't playing Support as often as they would now.

How did you exactly plan to increase the number of Support players?

Urgonnalearn2day1 votes

{quoted}

How did you exactly plan to increase the number of Support players?

Same reason the fill option hasn't; people will avoid it and the queue will not be any shorter because it won't prioritize based on need.

Anraton1 votes

you don't need to tell me - i exacly know what is happening and why ... I am not the OP

Urgonnalearn2day1 votes

{quoted}

you don't need to tell me - i exacly know what is happening and why ... I am not the OP

It came up as a reply for some reason.

Anraton1 votes

hm.. sorry i still don't get what you want to tell me ... (sorry not native english)

DrCyanide1 votes

There are plenty of players that would Secondary Support or Fill, but who have been driven away because those options have become 100% Support. I would increase the number of potential Support players by guaranteeing that these roles don't give you Support 100% of the time. This, in turn, opens up more players to feel like they can pick these roles. The increase in number of players willing to occasionally play Support will, I believe, be greater than what's lost by trying to stick to the current system and force all of these players to 100% play Support.

I'm not saying such a system can't be biased towards whatever role is least popular, but it can't be so high that people feel like they only get that role.

Anraton2 votes

that happens as soon as you have more players queued up as support and any other role is less wanted then support ....

EDIT: once gain ... if you don't get your secondary support role by any changes made ... it will increase waiting times DRASTICALLY

DrCyanide1 votes

{quoted}

that happens as soon as you have more players queued up as support and any other role is less wanted then support ....

The problem is here now, why wait 6 months to a year for a solution which may or may not work? Even if some other role becomes less desirable, it will be the same problem with a different name attached to the role. My solution will work now.

EDIT: once gain ... if you don't get your secondary support role by any changes made ... it will increase waiting times DRASTICALLY

That's assuming that there's no influx in new Support Secondary/Fill position players. My whole argument is that there will be an influx, resulting in shorter queue times over all and a better experience for those players.

Anraton1 votes

once again ..it is NOT a technical problem ... it is a problem of the player base .... the only "solution" would be to find a way to start a game without a support player.

Any solution, that is not changing the playerbase but prevents you from being distributed to support even if that would be the fastest way to get you into a game, will ONLY increase the over all waiting times - and there are allready more then enough players that complain about queue time sof over 10 minutes.

DrCyanide1 votes

The current "solution" is to not start the game without a Support Main, since those are about the only people still picking Support/Fill. My solution is to let the Secondary Supports and Fill mains back into the pool.

Riot making is making it harder for those players to help Riot with Riot's problem (too few supports resulting in longer queue times for the entire player base), it's on Riot to make a change.

Anraton1 votes

i still don't get it ... we agree, that there are way to less support players. Because of that, everything that can be distributed to support will be distributed there. Because of that, Game are starting at the current speed where everyone, who doesn't pick support has waiting times they don't like ....

So how does anything. that prevents you from being distributed to support increase game starting speed?

DrCyanide1 votes

Most of the Supports in your games are Support Mains, because everyone else is sick of being put on Support 100% of the time. Those players would continue to get Support because they're putting it as their Primary, so there's no loss.

What we do to increase the number of Supports in Queue is try to get more Secondary Support/Fill players.

These players stopped picking those roles because they were getting Support too much, which resulted in fewer Supports for games, resulting in longer queue times. When the system was new I could go into 10 lobbies as Fill and have a 8/2 split on being Support/Other positions, now it's 10/0 Support/Other. Others noticed it too and avoided these roles, making the problem worse.

If you ensure that those players will get something like a 6/4 split on Support/Other positions, then these players will start to play Fill/Secondary Support more. That in turn gives the Queue more support players to work with, resulting in lower Queue times. Nothing's lost by them playing a different role for 4 games out of every 10, because right now they're not playing Support at all.

Anraton1 votes

Serious question ... as you stated yourself .. as the new system got introduced it was a 8/2 split .. what changed so it is now a 10/0?

and .. ok lets do an imaginary experiment ... we add a coinflip to support secondary, preventing them to be distributed to support ... means they are nailed to their primary role ONLY ...

means .. average about 50% of the secondary supports are removed from the pool of available support players ...means ... as the support mains allreay queue as support ... you need DOUBLE as many players willing to queue as secondary support as we have now - to get even ... and everyone after that doubled amount will be a net win ....

you get the idea what i wanna tell?

DrCyanide1 votes

as the new system got introduced it was a 8/2 split .. what changed so it is now a 10/0?

8/2 was too much for many, so they stopped taking Fill/Secondary Support. Enough of them dropped that it became 9/1, which was too many for others. Enough of those dropped so it became 10/0. The cycle feeds on itself, which is why it needs to be changed in order to improve.

imaginary experiment ... average about 50% of the secondary supports are removed from the pool of available support players

50% of 0 is 0. There aren't enough Secondary Supports in the game for you to notice if Riot gave them their primary 100% of the time. That's where your thought experiment falls apart.

Now, imagine guaranteeing for players they wouldn't be trapped as Support unless they wanted it. People who liked the occasional game of Support now play them. You'd have a pool of potential Supports immensely larger than it currently is. If the pool is twice as large, anything over 50% leads to more supports, thus shorter wait times.

Anraton1 votes

the point is ... you need those people who are willing to play support ... you don't have them ... anything that prevents people from being distributed as support increases queue times

I understand, that you don't want to to be support every game when u pick secondary support ... but any system that blocks you because you played support to often ... is self blocking.... it only works, if there are enough support players, that the system has enough freedom to distribute you to your primary role .... anything else WILL NOT work.

WarlockLaw1 votes

But the players do exist. A lot of players exist that would be willing to play support, but not as often as half the time. However with the current system it's either all the time or none of it so they stopped picking fill/support. Once they stopped they got used to their new pick combo and kept using it instead of playing the occasional support game. Op's solution offers a compromise with the expectation that enough players would utilize it. As he said, half of zero is still zero. Support mains are the only ones who play support anymore

Ravenhale1 votes

Basically he wants Fill to be a RNG script that assigns a role to Fill before matchmaking. What this script will do is it will be a "six sided die" that rolls 1 = Top, 2 = Jungle, 3 = Mid, 4 = Bot, 5&6 = Support and it rerolls if the value = primary. You have twice the chance of landing Support as any other role (1/3 vs 1/6) but have twice the chance of landing any role other than Support (2/3 vs 1/3).

Anraton1 votes

That reduces the number of players availabie to the support pool ... resulting in less games started .. resulting in longer queue times ...

Ravenhale1 votes

Yes and no. Yes in that it reduces the current available support players. No in that these players would stop using fill entirely, thus reducing available support players even more.

It's a short term loss to prevent a long term loss.

Anraton1 votes

players are allready complaining about way to long queue times ... untill players aren't willing to play support more often, anything technical won't help .. and at least fill means any role and not a random role .. that's a slight difference ...

about your example with the 1/3 2/3 distribution ... if you allow i'll change that to a coinflip (1/2) to keep numbers easier ...

So .. we got the main supports with primary supports .. which will get support any way ... the we have secondary support and fill ... each one has a coinflip it it will be support or anything else ... meanse average 50% of those players are blocked from support right?

means to be equal with the actuall state, you need double the amount of players willing to pick secondary support/fill ... everyone afterwards is a net benefit ... you really think that will work?

Ravenhale1 votes

Secondary Support would never be a coinflip unless we are talking about doing some RNG to predetermine whether or not someone gets their Primary or Secondary upon Queue up. That's a different discussion that might have some merit in it.

Say we have 100 Fill players. In the present situation, this means all 100 Fill players are Support Mains. If we change the system as I initially proposed, those 100 Fill Players would result in 33 Supports. This means there would be 67 less games started and the queue times would increase accordingly. In order for queue times to remain the same, an additional 200 players would have to be selecting Fill. Influx of Fill players would mostly be based on how many former Fill Players abandoned the option due to how the system currently works.

If we do nothing about the Fill system, the number of players interested in playing Fill will diminish. I'm sure Riot has the numbers over how often Fill is selected, and could better answer if the option is steadily declining. I highly doubt it is on a 50% decline, let alone a 67% decline. This is mostly intuition on my part over the average attitude of a Fill Main. I would guess it's probably more around 10 to 15%. This decline will continue until there are no Fill Mains as they will either quit or simply start putting Support as their primary (why fight it). Other players won't notice a difference while a minority group of players are snuffed out of existence.

Anraton1 votes

right ... the only real option is ... to give support some kind of upgrade ....

Quepha1 votes

Fill always meant you were going to support more often than not.

DrCyanide1 votes

Yes, but there's a difference between "more often" and "always". I'm OK if they make it so that you get Support more often than not, so long as it's not always.

Quepha1 votes

{quoted}

Yes, but there's a difference between "more often" and "always". I'm OK if they make it so that you get Support more often than not, so long as it's not always.

You don't support always. I've gotten mid when picking fill.

Even if Fill is giving you support more often than you'd like, you can take a break for a few games as two other roles and then go back to filling when you're ready to support again.

DrCyanide1 votes

{quoted}

You don't support always. I've gotten mid when picking fill.

When the system was new it was like that for me, a different role maybe every 5 Support games, but it's been very stale since then

Even if Fill is giving you support more often than you'd like, you can take a break for a few games as two other roles and then go back to filling when you're ready to support again.

Again, that a solution for an individual, not a system. The system needs to be improved, because the majority of individuals will simply pick another two roles that they don't mind playing and stick there, never playing Support again.

Quepha1 votes

{quoted}

Again, that a solution for an individual, not a system. The system needs to be improved, because the majority of individuals will simply pick another two roles that they don't mind playing and stick there, never playing Support again.

because players don't like fast queue times?

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