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Let's talk about Team Builder.

Zyphiridon·10/30/2014, 9:34:31 PM·2 votes·1,290 views

Firstly, I'd like to say that this is a thread for meaningful discussion, and not any petty ranting or screaming about Team Builder. What I want this thread to be is real talk about what makes Team Builder good, what makes it bad, and how we can improve it. Brief Edit: I chose this board for this discussion because I feel it's more about a re-balancing of Team Builder itself in relation to the other modes, instead of just a general discussion of Team Builder itself.

So, what makes team builder a good thing? Well, you get to play what you want, there's no calling positions in lobbies, and there's a little bit of choice about what goes into your team composition, fancy icons you can grab... And that's about it, unfortunately.

For the bad side of team builder, you have horrendous wait times, kills/CS/assists not appearing in your profile, and people who drop into a team and then immediately leave. So let's address these issues. Here are some ideas that I've read from other threads, as well as a few of my own mixed in.

  1. Fix the K/CS/A not showing up on your profile - Whether this is intended behavior or not, I (as well as many others) think that it's rather silly that these stats in team builder won't update your profile. If you think about it, Team Builder is where you should be the most comfortable most consistently, as you get to play the game where you want doing what role you want to. Beyond that, there's no functional difference in the actual gameplay itself, all that's changed is the system of matchmaking, which doesn't influence your personal K/CS/A in the long run, no matter what.

  2. Remove the "Find Another Team" button - This may seem like the oddest fix, and I was skeptical at first, until I saw what appeared underneath it. On its own, this fix would solve the problem of people just randomly wandering trying to find new teams that are full except for the role they are playing, but causes some other problems if not paired with #3.

  3. After joining a team, allow players to swap positions and champions - It's Team Builder, not Team Fill Positions With Champions that May or May Not have Synergy. If you want to build a team, let players swap their lanes and champions after they join a team. This allows for negotiation and communication, as well as strategic development of how you want your team to function.

  4. Fix Digging into One Role by Providing Incentives to Try New Positions - Riot has already slightly done this with the release of the Role Summoner Icons. However, I think that there should be a little bit more. Perhaps a whole hierarchy of Icons could be released, say maybe, three for each role. You would gradually unlock Beginner, Adept, and Expert icons for each role based on how many champions you achieve a specific level of mastery in while playing that role. In addition, provide small IP boosts to players who try new roles and champions, not something too big like the 1st Win bonus, but maybe a 20 IP boost that decreases with each time you play the Champion in that role.

  5. Add the Option to Swap Captains - This has been something that I've run into a lot playing Team Builder. The Captain starts a queue, then gets an almost full team before realizing that they just wanted to go play blind, or that they shouldn't start another game because they don't have the time. In this situation, there should be a button for the Captain to appoint another person on the team as the new Captain when they leave. This will prevent teams that are already nearly complete from being completely disbanded, and allow them to carry on searching for other members.

  6. Fix the Way Players are Matched with Teams - I'm not exactly sure how the matchmaking for Team Builder works, but I would say the sensible thing to do would be to prioritize teams that are not complete, but have waited the longest. Essentially, if a team has been waiting for say, five minutes, and they are only waiting on a support, they should have priority to get the next person who queues in playing the support role over a team that has been waiting two minutes, but also has that spot open. Again, I'm not sure if this is a fix that can even be made, considering I don't know how the algorithm for the matchmaking works. If it's already this way, the only thing that would fix it is more people playing Team Builder.

  7. MORE OF YOU PEOPLE PLAY TEAM BUILDER! - The main reason why queues in Team Builder take so long is because hardly anyone plays it! If more people played Team Builder, queues would go faster, more games would be played, and more fun would happen!

To briefly address Trolls and Leavers, in no way does it make sense that people are more likely to troll or leave in Team Builder than in normals, if anything, it should discourage it because people get to play what they want. Just because a queueing system is different doesn't make people more likely to troll. If anything, people are probably more inclined to troll in normals, because they'll get a game faster.

So, what do you guys think? Are there any other suggestions you have to improve Team Builder? Do you think any of my (or other people's ideas I've put here) could be improved? Or do you think Team Builder is just destined for failure, and why?

8 Comments

CoolKnightST10/31/2014, 12:07:24 AM2 votes

The biggest reason why people don't play teambuilder is simple:

No possible to duo or multi Q. If you want to play together you are forced to build a team. Something that takes time to setup. Their isn't even a quick button to setup the meta roles quickly. Whe really need a 3th button where you can Q with friends. If their isn't a team that need these roles. You automaticly will host a team with the meta setup (if players want something else setup automaticly they can change it with options).

The whole point of the teambuilder is that it goes faster but going top, mid, jungle takes forever. And the reason for that is because they don't find enouge botlanes. The duo Q'ers that don't want to spend the time to create a team while they just can Q'up a lot faster in normal setup.

The whole teambuilder idea is so great but I just never use it unless you want a quick Q on support or adc. What's also really anyoing is that players in a team often give a specific role to jungler, top and mid. This resulted into really long Q's.

This should be the default setup with one click on the button or when a team in mult Q automaticly get created:

  • Top/"any role"
  • Mid/"any role"
  • Jungle/"any role"
  • Bot/Marksmen
  • Bot/Support
Ghiefelstein10/30/2014, 9:56:58 PM1 votes

Team builder will always have long waiting times. That has nothing to do with the number of people playing team builder, but with the popularity of each role. Not every role has an exact 20% pick rate. Suppose the least popular role has an 18% pick rate. That role becomes the bottleneck, you can make teams for at most 5*18=90% of your players. The last 10% has to wait in team builder lobbies.

Long queue times are inevitable as long as not every role has the exact same popularity. But if you look past that, you can also see that Team Builder offers you the unique chance to play your favorite champion in the position you want. When your game start, you know everyone opted in to playing together. That alone makes Team Builder a success for me. By the way, I really like your idea of swapping captains, so the game still exists if the captain leaves.

ModWulf Helhammer10/30/2014, 10:05:38 PM1 votes

Play Rate in team builder will skyrocket as soon as Riot release the first wave for the open beta of the new SR. It's only going on Team Builder and Intro bots at first

Kiharon10/31/2014, 2:37:31 PM1 votes

4: Fix Digging into One Role by Providing Incentives to Try New Positions - Riot has already slightly done this with the release of the Role Summoner Icons. However, I think that there should be a little bit more...

While I appreciate the goal of the incentives you suggest, I'm afraid it would be largely gamed and not solve the problem you were hoping for. Based on my experience with the icons, any additions like these are likely to result in people gaming the system to get the rewards for a role without actually playing the role. Right after the icons came out, you saw a lot of nonsense like Olaf top/"marksman" or Vayne bot/"tank". Those people had no intention of playing those champions in those atypical roles, they were simply gaming the system to earn the icons.

A few ideas I've had for teambuilder would be:

  1. Some way to select multiple roles for a slot without having to pick "Any Role". This would let you pick bot/"Support or Tank", top/"Fighter or Tank", mid/"Mage or assassin", etc. Right now, if I want to play team builder as Leona or Braum, I, the player, have to choose between queuing as tank and missing a bunch of teams that selected "Support" role but would be happy to have me. On the other side, the team has to choose between selecting "Support" or "Tank" only and missing out the other half of potential spot fillers or selecting "Any Role" and having to reject all the "Marksman" players that get slotted in (or the 2nd marksman is likely to leave anyway).

  2. Some way to have the queue balance out damage types. Of course any additional specifications will increase queue times, you may want to make sure you don't end up with a "build armor, win game" comp. However, there is no way to tell the system that right now. Ideally, I'd want to be able to tell the system, "I don't care if mid is magical or physical damage, but make top the opposite, or vice versa depending on which fills first." (or something similar, and it could get worse if you start including jungle in that too) UI-wise, this may be as simple as having a "Balance Damage Types" check box at the team level. Champions that can do either kind of damage depending on build would be difficult because a player may want to build it for physical, when the team is looking for magical.

GayForYasuo3/11/2015, 10:03:55 PM1 votes

To improve it, there should be a random button.

Raptamei3/11/2015, 10:11:10 PM1 votes

Riot doesn't want to let you repick your champion. They said this several times. The reason is people would accept your Brand mid pick and then demand you switch to Zed or else kick you.

This makes no sense because now they just kick you outright but something something toxicity.