Ideas to improve ranked play
I've see a trend in ranked play that I feel is causing more trouble than people realize, and I would like to bring some attention to it, and give some ideas on how to fix it. The problem is that many players champion pool is extremely limited, and this is intentional. They choose to play only ONE, (or possibly two) champions for their entire ranked career. This is a problem for a couple of reasons, (oh, and by the way, the "own 16 champion" rule does absolutely nothing but have 15 untouched champions on their account...)
First, and most importantly, this completely ruins matchmaking. Matchmaking is necessary to pair players together based on their skill level, yet some players may be on a much higher skill level with one champion, and can barely even play the game on any other. This tricks the matchmaking system into thinking you are, for instance, a platinum level player when in fact you can only play in Platinum on one champion. If that player cannot get the one role and one champion they want, it causes one of three outcomes;
A. The player quits the queue and tries again after the delay. This causes a huge delay in matchmaking which leads to much longer queues. (Yes, it does not seem like that big of a deal, but it does frustrate some people. Also, I doubt this happens often because they do not want to drop in rank).
B. The player threatens to troll/AFK if they do not get the role/champion they want. This is probably THEE worst of the outcomes, but it does happen. "I can't go Master Yi jungle so I am going to troll and make us lose" is not what you want to hear as you are about to play in a promotion game.
C. The player stays in the game, but does not play their "main" and is forced to play a role he/she cannot play at the same level. This is a huge problem for the team that is expecting players near their level and are getting teammates that have no clue how to play their champion/role. A team full of Platinum/Gold/Diamond players now have a Bronze level player because they did not get the one champion they play. This is a problem that flies under the radar because there is no way to prove it.
As you can see, all of the outcomes are problematic. As a possible solution, I was thinking of ways to slightly change ranked requirements to fix these problems. First, I would change the way LP is earned in the ranked system. I would have a requirement that the player must obtain 25 points in the ranked system playing at LEAST 4 different roles, (25 LP per role = 100 LP). This way, players are forced to play at least 4 roles at whatever rank they are. Along with this new stipulation, I would also say that those points need to be earned with at least 5 different champions. That would mean in order to earn any LP at the Platinum level you would need to be able to play 4 roles and 5 champions with Platinum level skill. I really feel like this would change the ranked community in a good way. All those that can only play one role with one champion can spam their queues in normal to their heart's content, (since they say "tryhards" should be in ranked anyway). Those that really understand the game and want to play the TEAM game that League of Legends is meant to be can show their skill in ranked throughout the various roles/champions.
I really feel like this is what ranked needs to be, and I feel that my suggestions could be a possible solution to these problems which could, in theory, remove some of the toxic behavior as well. Please let me know what you think and I hope RIOT members see this!