Upvote if you don't care about longer queue times

LegitBacon66·Jan 9, 2017·446 votes·5,613 views

Maybe 1-2 minutes longer... would you care? Would you care to spend just a few more minutes to get the role you wanted and have a quality league match?

188 Comments

RewtJan 9, 201740 votes

Easy fix. Run Fill as your Secondary. learn to play all the roles, learn to be a good teamate. Anyone from before this system should already have champs to fill any role and understand how to play those roles. If you dont i suggest you do because they are part of the game. Im a jungle one trick but surprise surprise i have champs for every role in the game. Learn to love league. not Mid. Find a champ that is fun in every role. I play lux support. while it may not be the most meta thing its fun and still very effective.

Tldr: Find a fun champ for every role in the game and then you wont have to worry about auto fill

Mariel141Jan 9, 201716 votes

"Easy fix - just spend WAAAAAY more time playing the game."

Some of us don't have the time to devote to learning all roles and a wide roster of champions, and so choose to focus on a couple positions/champs. Others are just newer to the game and similarly are trying to learn to be good at a couple things rather than equally shitty at everything. Your easy fix is only easy if you have unlimited playtime available.

AnidanJan 9, 20179 votes

You're playing a game in which time sink for practice is a foundation upon which the genre is built. Learning the game is kind of a requirement. Not only does learning the other roles properly help you play every other role, it helps you construct better team compositions when you're choosing your heroes in the first place since you'll know the greater impact of the individual choices, which give you and your teammates a smoother game experience overall and most likely it'll result in better, closer games if both sides of the Rift are able to do this for each other. It's all about synergy, and whether we like it or not we have to put in time to learn it. I played primarily top and ADC, but I'll be damned if I didn't play my fair share of jungle, support, and mid as well.

And newer players will learn in time, that's just what happens. But you can't just consciously decide to not want to learn something in a game genre in which the burden of knowledge is both very heavy and very important.

ElikainJan 9, 201711 votes

If you have the time to play even a few games a day/week, use that time to at least learn one champion in each role. There're no "i don't have the time" excuses. If you have time to play League, then you have the time time to learn how to play League in the bare minimum.

You can't be telling me you want to one trick a role and then complain on the boards for the "unfairness" when you don't get it. League is not a game where you can lay claim to a lane (one trick a lane), not having to bother learning anything else about any other position that exists in every game you played on SR so far.

Furthermore, if you were with us in the earlier Seasons of League (before the New Champion Select), Autofill was not a feature of the old SQ but a requirement for you to be able to play Ranked. The NCS lessens your burden for about 80% because the feature of the NCS is the Autofill that can put you in a role that your team needs you in but if you filled recently, you are protected from autofilling for a few games and are always guaranteed to get your primary/secondary role in your Promos.

Sraeg2013Jan 10, 20171 votes

No, it wasn't.

Back in the days of pick order, you could actually reason with people.

As in, in 3 years of playing Solo Queue with Pick Order in effect (Season 3 through 5) I played support... 40 times. Out of over 2000 ranked games.

So I played support in less than 2% of games and at least a quarter of them was that off duo with my only IRL friend still playing ranked, and another quarter was some random shit, like Rengar "support", which for some weird reason actually worked, but I'm still generous to call those matches "support" games.

Now I can possibly get autofilled into support every third match and there is no way to talk to those entitled fucks, because they can't hear (or read) you over the sound of their pre-defined role.

ElikainJan 10, 20173 votes

Now I can possibly get autofilled into support every third match and there is no way to talk to those entitled fucks, because they can't hear (or read) you over the sound of their pre-defined role.

If you could reason with people where they thought they deserved their self picked role thanks to being higher on the team pick order list, you can also reason with people who got their role assigned by the matchmaker and Autofill. And just like in the old SQ, players don't have to trade you anything, sometimes you'd just have to suck it up and play what you've gotten to play.

Sraeg2013Jan 11, 20171 votes

The thing is that after the Chat Restriction fiasco in 2014, people really quieted up.

Then with the pre-defined role selection they stopped talking altogether. Accept a game, see if you're banning, if not, then go jack off doing everything except looking at the client, until it's your turn.

Trading champions, swapping roles or even merely talking became a myth for me last Season.

Back in Season 3/4 I used to talk shit, joke, even roleplay nearly every match, while swapping roles and trading champions was so common it it happened before each match.

The thing is, people at least stayed in the freaking lobby until the game started. Now they only pick-intent at the start and hit "Accept" at the end.

Obviously I've got last pick countless times, but as I said in my previous post I supported in less than 2% of my games. That should speak volumes about how healthy all this crap is now.

ElikainJan 11, 20172 votes

Obviously I've got last pick countless times, but as I said in my previous post I supported in less than 2% of my games. That should speak volumes about how healthy all this crap is now.

It actually isn't speaking volumes. If people aren't paying attention to the NCS, it's not the problem of the system. It's interactive, it has phases, it has effects that makes the experience enjoyable which is way more than it had in the past. Why did people spend more time in that queue instead of this one is beyond me. And i too noticed this, which leads me to believe that people aren't invested in playing the game anymore, they treat it as a chore.

Or they treat is as if everything is predetermined and they're waiting their turn to do what they need to do, doing something else in the background. But that's the thing - the timers aren't absurdly long and the whole experience doesn't last forever. So why do people believe that 2 minutes doing something else is better than actually giving undivided attention to interacting with their team in the NCS?

Gregor GysiJan 9, 20179 votes

You don't need to learn all the roles, all you need to do is learn Janna. Boom, problem solved.

Speaking of time though, not everyone has time for a 10 minute queue. Even one 10 minute queue takes longer than learning Janna.

BattleBossSorakaJan 9, 20172 votes

This is actually something I've been trying to do, but when I do badly my team usually flames me HARD. I'm a support main looking to branch out and learn other roles, but when your teammate tells you to get cancer and die bc you lost lane, it kinda kills any motivation to keep trying to learn.

Do you have any recommendations for fun champs that aren't terribly difficult in each role?

ZURELLJan 10, 20173 votes

the starter champs

top: Garen Tryndamere

mid: Annie

bot: im not sure exactly MissFortune ?

sup: most tanks are made easy to play (i dont like that but its true) so like Alistar Malphite Nautilus Leona ... oh wait u said u were a sup main (god bless you)

jg: Warwick

Nicholas NAJan 9, 20178 votes

We shouldn't have to play the roles that we don't have a fun time in. That's like saying win at the expense of your own enjoyment of a VIDEO. GAME.

QuephaJan 9, 201727 votes

1-2 minutes? Probably more like 10-20.

DarkRitualJan 9, 20172 votes

On a good day.

Gregor GysiJan 9, 20178 votes

People really don't understand the bottleneck phenomenon. Just waiting 1-2 minutes more doesn't increase the amount of supports. There are constantly people starting to queue up and only few of them are support - if you start a queue and wait 2 minutes then there won't only be new supports who queue up at the same time, there will be even more midlaners etc. who also want to play a game. Queue times will increase for so long until people are sick of the queue time and start queuing up as support.

You don't believe that the queue time will be 10 minutes? Take a look at that

AMYS GRAVEJan 9, 20172 votes

Queue times will increase for so long until people are sick of the queue time and start queuing up as support.

So the problem will solve itself then....

Gregor GysiJan 10, 20171 votes

Yes, matches will be made at some point. If people have to decide between 50 minute queue and support and then decide to queue up as support and you consider that a "solved problem" then yep, problem solved. Queue will obviously not be quite that long, but 10 minutes is enough for people to decide to play support or no league at all (for all of those who don't have that much time). I figure quite a few will also chose "no league at all" which decreases the amount of non-supports and shortens queue times. You may say "problem solved", Riot, however, will probably disagree as they lose customers.

AMYS GRAVEJan 10, 20173 votes

and then decide to queue up as support

Well at least is their decision instead of being forced on them, and they can only be mad at themselves when they get support.

Reaper SorakaJan 9, 201711 votes

I'm guessing you're talking about the removal of autofill; the queue times would actually be faster for me so I'm all for it! [slayer-jinx-wink]

Purpl3Jungl3Jan 9, 201710 votes

It's either wait a few minutes extra for the role you want, or wait a few minutes less but risk spending 45 minutes playing a role you despise.

I'll take the few minute extra wait please.

ElikainJan 9, 20173 votes

a few extra minutes

Try 20-45 minutes waiting for that support. Then you'll be stuck playing a 20 minute game that ends up in a stomp loss. That's bad match quality. And why a stomp loss? You waited for so long that the matchmaking algorithm had to pick players from a lot larger player pool, drafting people that aren't even in your ELO to start your game. If you watch high ELO streamers, you can also see that their long queue times end up in such dumb games that feel like waste of time because sometimes low Master/Diamond 1 players end up getting mixed in the equation.

And that's on the very end of the spectrum, top tier games are so bad when you get stuck in a long queue. Lower tier games aren't going go to such extremes but it's still going to be an ELO mismatch and that's still going to be bad game quality because lower ELO players won't know how to play on that level.

Tribbles FoxfolkJan 9, 201710 votes

{quoted}

Maybe 1-2 minutes longer... would you care? Would you care to spend just a few more minutes to get the role you wanted and have a quality league match?

It won't just be "a few minutes". Not even close. A very very VERY tiny amount of people play Support and/or Fill compared to the other 4 roles. Queue times will pile up to unreasonable levels without Autofill.

It's all because people refuse to learn how to play 3 champions that aren't carries (AKA: Vayne/Yasuo/Riven/Lee Sin/Rengar). Maybe if people (pointing the finger to you too) would learn some easy shit like Morgana, Soraka, and Nautilus, we wouldn't NEED Autofill in the first place.

LegitBacon66Jan 9, 20174 votes

But we did dynamic queue and my queue times barely were longer. Maybe at most 2 minutes longer

QuephaJan 9, 20172 votes

{quoted}

But we did dynamic queue and my queue times barely were longer. Maybe at most 2 minutes longer

Things dynamic queue had going for it:

People didn't realize "Fill" and "Support" were practically the same thing so you had more people choosing "Fill," but that number was going down every single week as "Fill"-ers who didn't want to support 50% of the time dropped "Fill", and then ones who didn't want to support 75% of the time, and then those who didn't want to support 95% of the time. "Fill" became even closer to being synonymous with "Support" as supports rose in demand.
It allowed people who played in groups to play the game. The popularity of this feature meant that the queue had a bigger pool of players to choose from to minimize queue times due to MMR disparities, geographical proximity for better connection speeds, and other factors (although overall popularity doesn't do much to help with the role selection slowdown, this still affects total queue time)
It required player groups to always cover at least 1 more role than the group had members, and these groups generally contain players whose favorite things in the game spread out across a variety of tastes. Every 4-man group was required to have "Support" as a primary or secondary role somewhere in the group, and a group of 3 was required to cover 4 roles and was far more likely to have "Support" as one of them compared to 3 random solo queue-ers.

ElikainJan 9, 20178 votes

You don't understand the correlation between game quality and waiting time for the matchmaking algorithm. The more you wait for a team, the wider the player pool has to be taken into consideration, often sacrificing ELO to put someone in the missing position.

You're not going to wait 1-2 minutes longer. If people aren't playing a certain role, games won't start without it. You can't be there waiting an hour for that perfect game because that game is going to be absolute shit, often ending in a stomp. There are no perfect games. In a perfect world, instant queue pops are ideal but the role distribution, player number and ELO spread aren't equal across the board. The ideal wait time in queue, in my opinion, is 3-5 minutes. And yes, Autofill needs to exist or we come to a situation where people avoid one role and there's a shortage of players that leads to long(er) queue times, that lead to bad match quality.

The removal of Autofill won't fix your problems, it's going to increase your queue wait times and increase the quantity of bad matches. But the bright side is that no one will queue dodge because they never got autofilled to a support? This doesn't make anything better, your perception is skewed.

Tychusfindlay919Jan 9, 20172 votes

{quoted}

You don't understand the correlation between game quality and waiting time for the matchmaking algorithm. The more you wait for a team, the wider the player pool has to be taken into consideration, often sacrificing ELO to put someone in the missing position.

You're not going to wait 1-2 minutes longer. If people aren't playing a certain role, games won't start without it. You can't be there waiting an hour for that perfect game because that game is going to be absolute shit, often ending in a stomp. There are no perfect games. In a perfect world, instant queue pops are ideal but the role distribution, player number and ELO spread aren't equal across the board. The ideal wait time in queue, in my opinion, is 3-5 minutes. And yes, Autofill needs to exist or we come to a situation where people avoid one role and there's a shortage of players that leads to long(er) queue times, that lead to bad match quality.

The removal of Autofill won't fix your problems, it's going to increase your queue wait times and increase the quantity of bad matches. But the bright side is that no one will queue dodge because they never got autofilled to a support? This doesn't make anything better, your perception is skewed.

The removal or revamp of support would mostly fix it, because support is clearly the bottleneck due to it being a shit fucking role that only miserable people play.

ElikainJan 9, 20171 votes

Autofill could be removed if the role distribution was on acceptable levels. I agree that the Support role is the bottleneck but i don't agree that it is a "miserable role that only miserable people play". There are a variety of supports to choose from and even mages can be supports (Brand, Zyra, Morgana, Veigar, Fiddle, Cass, Annie, Nidalee...). Just to name a few over the various metas they were pupularized in.

And meta is just that - a popularity contest. Viable champions also exist outside of the meta and people don't play them because they aren't in the spotlight. They'd physically have to figure out how to play them themselves instead of seeing someone else in high ELO making it work for them. It's the unwillingness to play outside of the meta that's exacerbating the issue.

I'm a support main and i can confirm that i wouldn't be playing the role, or League, if i felt miserable by doing so. And i don't play true supports (Soraka, Jaina, Lulu..), i play my baby Morgana. She's a mage that has a decent amount of CC in her kit, with a lot of damage that rewards precision.

dakm102Jan 9, 20173 votes

My problem with people's perception on support is that they think that a) it doesn't require skill and b) it isn't an exciting role when in all seriousness it requires both since it doesn't only test your mechanical skill but also your game knowledge which I think is huge.

A Humble SinnerJan 9, 20177 votes

Take away autofill. Don't care about queue times. That is all.

ElikainJan 9, 201710 votes

You don't care until the match quality turns to shit because the queue times are an hour long and player's ELO is disregarded. And then you'll be back here in no time complaining how Riot's matchmaking is shit because players way below your ELO are in your games.

drakuIa421Jan 9, 20175 votes

autofill doesn't help either (especially in lower elos). people that were autofill will either: A. dodge the champ select which will result in longer queue times B. troll/feed because they didn't get the role they wanted or C. play poorly which will result in botlane feeding in 90% of the cases

do you really value queue times over game quality?

also before perma autofill was implemented, the quality of my games was fine, queue times were reasonable (5-10 minutes because my primary was mid) and atleast i got the roles i wanted.

ElikainJan 9, 20172 votes

autofill doesn't help either (especially in lower elos)

But here's the thing - the Support role is equally being avoided across the board, regardless of ELO. So it doesn't really matter if there's more players in lower ELOs if the "other roles-support" ratio is proportional with the sample size. Which still means longer queue times in lower ELOs, still leading to the same problems higher ELO players face due to a Support shortage.

But i get what you're saying. Lower ELO players aren't keen of playing with the team, they sometimes act like crybabies and will ruin a match if they don't get what they want. So this is a matter of perceived effect of Autofill VS the actual effect of Autofill.

do you really value queue times over game quality?

Queue times go hand in hand with game quality. They don't go separately. If there are instant queue pops, there can be two scenarios playing out:

Player number, role distribution, player ELO is equal across the board.
Matchmaker doesn't care about ELO or roles, it just fills teams with 5 people.

Since the first scenario is the ideal one, it's only theoretical. The second scenario is also not true.

We firmly sit somewhere in the middle and until the problem with Supports is resolved, the need for Autofill is going to be real, even if the players don't agree with that. The data is simply on the side of Autofill existing. Why would Riot even implement it if everything was ideal before and there were no problems with people getting their roles?

before perma autofill was implemented, the quality of my games was fine

You are looking at this problem from your perspective only. Riot needs to look at a bigger picture and that's data from millions and millions of games, across the servers and across ELOs. That data says that queue times are long and the match quality is bad, resulting from the long queue times. One way to fix it is to implement Autofill and have some people in roles that the teams need. It isn't an ideal solution but it's not like people are getting autofilled game after game, never getting their desired roles. Autofill was designed with that in mind, which makes is way better than what we had to deal with under the old SQ system, which had the requirement of having to autofill if you're close to the last pick in a team. And that was purely random, once Riot disabled descending ELO sorting.

AMYS GRAVEJan 9, 20172 votes

You don't care until the match quality turns to shit

Match quality is already shit because of troll autofilled supports and queue times are already long thanks to constant queue dodges.

ElikainJan 9, 20171 votes

Queue dodges aren't something that the system itself causes, players choose to queue dodge willingly.

And if people are leaving because thy don't get what they want, what's actually stopping them from leaving matchmade games when they don't have the desired score in a game or they die once or twice?

AMYS GRAVEJan 10, 20172 votes

Queue dodges aren't something that the system itself causes, players choose to queue dodge willingly.

Why do people chose to queue dodge right now? Autofill causes arguments in champ select that people don't want to deal with so the root cause is autofill. Players litterally queue up and go "well gg autofilled to sup i trl now" so someone will dodge.

And if people are leaving because thy don't get what they want, what's actually stopping them from leaving matchmade games when they don't have the desired score in a game or they die once or twice?

If they play out the game they can get reported and punished. If they dodge or convince someone else to by threatening to feed and/or being toxic we have no option to do anything about it so there are usually not repercussions for them holding champ select hostage.

ElikainJan 10, 20171 votes

Autofill may be the root cause but it isn't the one to be blamed. It's the people that do that. Queue dodging isn't punishable by a report and it shouldn't be as queue dodging is a valid tactic to evade high ELO games where you just aren't happy with your team and know you'll struggle to even try to win. The penalty for that is the loss of LP only (not ELO) and a timeout period that increases with each dodge for a certain amount of time (maybe a full day).

The perception of being autofilled is being played out here. Because people perceive that if someone is autofilled, they would perform worse, not giving that person a chance. Or actually talking to your team, seeing if someone is willing to trade you for something else, if you aren't particularly good at the role you've gotten. In any case, sometimes you won't get what you want so you suck it up and play your game.

You can't expect for everything to go your way, all the time. Autofill was designed in a way that you don't have to fill most of the time.

AMYS GRAVEJan 10, 20172 votes

Autofill may be the root cause but it isn't the one to be blamed.

What? The people who are now forced into using the system are behaving perfectly rationally. They deserve no blame because they are using a faulty system. I guess they can quit the game instead of dealing with queue dodges but that seems like an extreme solution to the problem.

Queue dodging isn't punishable by a report and it shouldn't be as queue dodging is a valid tactic to evade high ELO games where you just aren't happy with your team and know you'll struggle to even try to win. The penalty for that is the loss of LP only (not ELO) and a timeout period that increases with each dodge for a certain amount of time (maybe a full day).

Right but that wasn't the point. When you said ...

And if people are leaving because thy don't get what they want, what's actually stopping them from leaving matchmade games when they don't have the desired score in a game or they die once or twice?

I answered it because those behaviors are punishable. I never said queue dodging should be punishable but i answered your question about what stops people from leaving games in your failed attempt at a slippery slope argument which already has a stop gap in place.

The perception of being autofilled is being played out here. Because people perceive that if someone is autofilled, they would perform worse, not giving that person a chance.

"well gg autofilled to sup i trl now" is something i have heard in champ select multiple times and it forces queue dodges. I literally copied and pasted that (deidentified of course) from a text file i keep of toxic shit i hear said in games. I'm not imagining this shit it is happening. Perception isn't the problem here.

LoL Tag AlongJan 9, 20177 votes

I'd wait longer. TBH autofill makes time to get in a match longer alot of the time for me. I almost always have 1 or 2 dodges before I get into a game. (Which is sometimes a remake anyways)

macromiteJan 9, 20175 votes

riot needs to fix the support role first.

ßurstJan 9, 20174 votes

I'd rather wait then have a sub par bot lane cuz the support plays that role like once every other month. even when someone autofills jungle if they dont know what theyre doing its most likely a loss lol

Death and DoomJan 9, 20174 votes

thats not how it works.... the problem right now is the lack of people queuing for support. if you turn off auto fill, you will create a bottleneck which will Exponentially increase queue times. we are talking huge amounts, not 1-2 minutes lol.

GayFluffyUnicornJan 9, 20173 votes

i remember something like "flex q will go if queue times are too long". Because riot wants this abomination to stay alive we have to suffer from autofill, nice.

SanctimoniousJan 9, 20172 votes

#BringBackSeason5SoloQ

DarkRitualJan 9, 20171 votes

So you want pick order back? I'm fine with that.

Who is TaliyahJan 9, 20171 votes

Pick order wasn't that bad seriously. Season 3 still most loved season for me.

SanctimoniousJan 9, 20171 votes

Pick order was great. Maybe it's nostalgia from season 3-5, but i remember it being overwhelmingly positive. Maybe a bad game here or there, but that's never changed.

Who is TaliyahJan 9, 20173 votes

Pick order was also so great because you knew you will have to play everything at some point. Now you pick 2 roles and mostly only know and learn 2 roles. When you get autofilled, you "totally didn't expect that" and get f*cked.

aspects1Jan 10, 20172 votes

its not just one to two minutes... this is what people dont get about autofill: its not just longer queue times, its just that there are a lack of support players in ratio to every other role, so its not just going to be a longer queue, it will get indefinitely longer because there will be more and more nonsupport players, and far fewer support players, so queue times get longer and longer. the only thing that stops this is people have their queue get so long, they just give up and play norms. autofill stops this from happening and encourages more players to play ranked. downvote me if you want, but i believe autofill is a great idea, STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT IT.

FantasySniperJan 10, 20172 votes

Mains support.

What queue times?

TacoKingIIIJan 9, 20171 votes

It wouldn't be only 1-2 minutes longer. Games start whenever someone queues as support. If autofill wasn't a thing then people queuing for mid would keep stacking and the waiting times would just keep multiplying resulting in probably hours of waiting.