My Opinion On DQ (I would love to calmly discuss with a Red about the points made in this post)
This is not a post designed to start flame wars, passive aggressive responses, negative comments, or to complain. It is my attempt to express my individual opinion on the effects of Dynamic Queue in the hopes to have a calm and mature conversation with a Red to fully understand their reasoning behind their decision making. I understand that just because a Rioter states something does not mean they speak for Riot 100%.
DQ is great for normals/casual games, and I fully support it for these types of games. It's a great idea to allow players for an easier experience in making friends and making connections with other players. I felt as though TeamBuilder did great for this objective and am glad it has remained Riot's focus for this season.
Now in my opinion, SQ is better for ranked simply because the purpose of ranked is/was to evaluate the skill of the individual players, and I just don't see how that is possible anymore if they are with 4 others for a large portion of their ranked games? And while your focus has been directed to being team-based, the ranking system still judges the individual ranks which get's blurry because now it's using team performances for individual rankings. All ranked is doing now is basically averaging the premade's elos so that some are getting a higher elo they deserve while the other half aren't affected because they are likely playing on smurfs so they can play with friends without dropping elo. (Now here I can get into how DQ promotes smurfing in a sense but that isn't my main issue as there will always be smurfs. Now players just have more incentive to do it)
And so while it's a team game...ranked no longer has a team ranking system. If you wanted to have a team ranking system then SQ is still better because they provided a 5-man ranked queue...anywhere between 1 and 5 man groups is impossible to accurately judge at an efficient level. Besides...what major sport can you think of that allows you to play with only half a team if the rest aren't present?
Now some make the argument: "so should I just not be allowed to play with friends just because I can't complete a team? That seems unfair"
and the answer is: Yes
My Reasoning: Because ranked should never have been about playing with friends. That makes me sound like a scrooge but hear me out. It was always to test your individual skill. There has always been casual games if you wanted to play with friends and so you really aren't losing out on anything but a ranking. Now this may seem unfair to those with only 1-3 other friends because they can't play competitively with friends. If you feel as though that's the case, let me ask you this:
Is it really better to provide a portion of the community the ability to play with friends in a more competitive setting at the cost of the entire game's competitive integrity, accuracy, and fairness as well as submitting another portion of the community (solo players) to losing influence in the match's outcome to create an even more unfair environment for that part of the community?
(man that was a doozy of a question, run-on sentences ftw!)
