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Please Read : Trying to understand why SoloQ's not here

Vritra··36 votes·1,551 views

Disclaimer wall of text incomming This is a very emotinal topic for me, but i made a very rational post with my thoughts on what is going on. If you have a few minutes please read, and if you could relate on any level, please think about upvoting so more people can see. I am very worried about the game's state and I am trying to understand the whole DQ situation. First of all I think it is not going to come back. But I am neiter for, nor am i against it. I simply want to play the mediator between a confused community, and many alienated players, i want to stop the hatred against a company that provided me hands down the best gaming experience of my life.

To start of: Riot is not a teenage boy who's too stubborn to admitt he's wrong, thery're also not intetionally running the game into the ground, that's a crazy claim and you know it. They are a_** business**_ and as a busniess their product has to satisfiy as many customers as possible. Now you may be thinking: 'But hey all this negative backlash indicates that a large portion of the playerbase is not satisfied!' and you would be right.

While I do think an even larger portion of the playerbase just does not care or actually likes it, there is a part of the community that is so upset it can't be ignored. But why is it then? Instead of making up reasons like the ones mentioned above just spent a minute or two thinking about the topic. Here's my two cents:

Dynamic matchmaking was conceived, atleast that's how i imagine it, as a means to make league last over its natural life span. Now hold on a second and let me explain before you comment saying: 'But DQ sucks and it is killing league that's the opposite of making it last!'

The core satisfaction of a true solo experience is your_** rating**_. A high rating is something you can brag about to your friends or just feel good about yourself , it is something that rewards you, it instantly gratifies you after won game with sweet +25 points. It is the core incentive to getting better and playing the game. And it is the very thing Riot wants to move away from.

You see, if the main focus of the game is not the game itself but the rating, the game will only last until another game becomes popular and their rating gets more important to you than leagues. Also, the focus on rating hurts gameplay: SoloQ was driven by cheesy and one-dimensional strategies, the cheapest and easiest way to win is the preffered one to grind the most elo.

Riot realized this and implemented DynamicQ, driving away many true solo players that identified via their solo play. Understandably since their main gratification, their rating, was made more meaningless than before. League has now a new focus: social play. The main gratification in league is now the ability too play with a group of friends, memorable moments, earning the win together with friends and showing off your skills are the new instant gratification a player gets and no, this is not possible in normals since there is nothing at stake.

Also since Dynamic Quem, League heavily shifted focus around more team oriented play, which is how Riot wants League to be played. LoL is a sport where the competitve gameplay looks very different than the gameplay of 99% of the playerbase. DQ does not solve that, but did deliver in some ways. Of course there is still messy unorganized play, one sided stomps and short and unfair games, but there is also an undeniable increase in structured gameplay, organized teamfights and objective based play.

Like it or not gaming is shifting away from pandering to players who identify via strong individual play and rating, in favor of a social experience. It is a trend of this age and i do not need to point you to overwatch, who is using this exact same system, and will not be the last of upcomming multiplayer titles.

They want to build large e-sport franchises and are orientating around real life sports. Like a trip to the local football pitch with your friends they want to make their game fullfill two criteria

  1. You identify with the activity primarly over your social connections and only secondarly via your personal skill
  2. Gameplay must be as similar as possible to competetive play to make it easier to access and identifying with your pro idols

With all that being said, I do not wish to silence anti-DQ threads. I want every voice to be heard, and if there is enough voices maybe Riot will change their mind. All i ask for is please stay civil and polite and to be educated with the topic before you run off to making false claims.

to whomever makes it through to here my biggest regards

singing out Ourobors peace [slayer-jinx-catface]

41 Comments

Shadòw8 votes

The problem is that there is no fair way to match premades apart from teamranked.

thats because 5s use the Teamrank. DynamicQ uses the average Elo of every player in the Group. But, just from that, the matchmaking still doesn't know how good these premades can play with each other.

In Teamranked a Plat Team can consist out of 5 Gold-Players if they just have an awesome team coordination. They would then get matched against other teams with the same skill even if the individual players have higher/lower average elo and it still would be a fair match.

A team like these would get matched against other golds in DynQ. The problem here is that, like i said, a team that played very often together can easily beat a team of 5 other premades of the same individual elo that maybe just played 3 games with each other.

Yes, they would climb because of their Team skill in DynQ, but what if they play solo then? They would get crushed because they can't use their team coodination skill that got them in that elo in the first place.

Short Form: A Queue where you can match up as any premade-size you want that shares one rank can and will never be fair.

Maybe Solo Rank is just about bragging in front of other People, but the DynQ Rank isn't better. Both are basically worthless apart from showing off.

The one and only Queue where the Rank really means something is 5s. That's because it's a team game, like you said, and Teamranked shows your skill as a complete Team, the only real thing that matters in League of Legends.

But, apart from the Teamranked Queue, i would prefer Solo/DuoQ anytime over DynQ as a 2nd Ranked Queue, simply because the matchmaking would be much fairer and SoloQ would at least give an accurate information on how well a player is as an iduvidual.

Quepha2 votes

{quoted}

The problem is that there is no fair way to match premades apart from teamranked.

It is possible to tweak all the variables in the equation so that matchmaking can find opposing teams of uneven sizes with the right handicaps applied such that the odds of victory for each side will be about 50/50.

Shadòw3 votes

handicaps are not the best way to solve something.

and that would be impossible to calculate as you don't know how fast a team gets good when playing with each other. some teams learn faster how to play with each other than others do.

Quepha1 votes

{quoted}

and that would be impossible to calculate as you don't know how fast a team gets good when playing with each other. some teams learn faster how to play with each other than others do.

then they win more games and their MMR increases faster do you honestly think that players should not win when they get better at the game?

Shadòw4 votes

did you even understand my point?

and then they all have high mmr, play solo and get crushed.

Even if the calculations are right DynQ will never be fair.

Because this is what the Ranks say:

Teamranked:

Your skill as a _complete _Team

SoloQ:

Your Skill as a Solo player with 4 people you never played with before.

DynamicQ:

Your Skill as a Solo player, Your Skill with some premades and Your Skill as a full team.

In my days we called the Queue where you could go in with any premade size you want Normals... and there was no Rank for a reason.

Quepha1 votes

{quoted}

did you even understand my point?

and then they all have high mmr, play solo and get crushed.

Even if the calculations are right DynQ will never be fair.

Because this is what the Ranks say:

Teamranked:

Your skill as a _complete _Team

SoloQ:

Your Skill as a Solo player with 4 people you never played with before.

DynamicQ:

Your Skill as a Solo player, Your Skill with some premades and Your Skill as a full team.

In my days we called the Queue where you could go in with any premade size you want Normals... and there was no Rank for a reason.

That's a completely separate issue that you did not at all describe before. You're talking about players who work together so well that they are greater than a sum of their parts.

This also has at least one solution that keeps Dynamic Queue almost completely intact, although not through handicaps: separate MMR's for solo and group play within the same queue (DotA 2's system). Riot even suggested this solution although players don't really seem interested in any options for compromise.

Shadòw4 votes

then it is like 2 seperate Queues

There is no need for a Ranked Queue with 3/4 players.

Teamranked and Solo/DuoQ is enough

Quepha1 votes

{quoted}

then it is like 2 seperate Queues

There is no need for a Ranked Queue with 3/4 players.

Teamranked and Solo/DuoQ is enough

Except for when people want to play with 2 or 3 of their friends.

Keevalroy3 votes

Then go to normals...

Quepha1 votes

{quoted}

Then go to normals...

No.

I want to see how far I and the people I like to play with can push ourselves as a team in a team game featuring teams of players who oppose other teams of players with strategies built around how members of their team interact with other members of the team and deal with a team of enemy players.

Because League of Legends is a team game.

Keevalroy3 votes

Premades have no place in a competitive ladder that includes solo players. If you want to play with a team because as you mentioned, "it's a team game," then get a few more and do ranked 5s - y'know, since team play is so important. That way, your team is fighting another team rather than being matched against randoms queued together in this shitfest system.

Quepha1 votes

{quoted}

Premades have no place in a competitive ladder that includes solo players. If you want to play with a team because as you mentioned, "it's a team game," then get a few more and do ranked 5s - y'know, since team play is so important. That way, your team is fighting another team rather than being matched against randoms queued together in this shitfest system.

but smaller teams are also matched against smaller teams the vast majority of the time, and when it isn't the matchmaking system tries to handicap the teams in a way that odds of success are even for both sides, and when that doesn't happen it's because there simply aren't any really good matches possible and one mediocre quality game is still better than staring at the queue timer for an unreasonable amount of time.

Keevalroy3 votes

but smaller teams are also matched against smaller teams the vast majority of the time,

The fact that it happens occasionally is already far too often. And so what if it's 100% accurate in matching 2's with 2's, 3's with 3's and so on? Then what? The solo players are still being ostracized both by the premades they're with, and by Riot.

when it isn't the matchmaking system tries to handicap the teams in a way that odds of success are even for both sides

Regardless of the handicap, the premade is always at an advantage because of the communication, and synergy from playing together for a while. As you might say, teamwork is important in a team game, right? You are always going to be at an advantage. That doesn't mean you'll always win, but the odds are in the premades' favor.

when that doesn't happen it's because there simply aren't any really good matches possible

According to Riot's precious data, more people are playing ranked than ever before, so if I'm supposed to believe them and take their word like a mindless sheep, then I call bullshit. If they're so proud of the number of people playing ranked this season compared to previous seasons, there shouldn't be a problem with the matchmaking. Oh wait, but there is isn't there? From boosted apes, to boosters themselves, to the simple fact that people across a wide range of ranks can queue together and screw over the MMR system means the system, and let me be clear; Does. Not. Work.

one mediocre quality game is still better than staring at the queue timer.

There are many who would disagree with that. Many of them would wait a bit longer just to be assured that they, as solo players, would also be matched with solo players without a chance of premades showing up.

GayFluffyUnicorn3 votes

And u are proud when you win as a 3 men premade against five poor solos? How do you oppose "other teams with strategies" when those teams don't have any strategy at all? BEsides splitpushing with a trynda. You want to test your teamskill? Go on create a 5 men/women/horse/weebo team. But don'T call a 3+ stack against solos or solos+duo competing with other teams.

Quepha1 votes

{quoted}

And u are proud when you win as a 3 men premade against five poor solos?

I am never proud of one win, no one should ever be proud of a single win in this game because it represents almost nothing at all.

I get excited over single wins and even individual plays within a game (sometimes in games I don't even win). But pride is only deserved for achieving a higher level of mastery in the game, which means that you consistently win statistically more often over the course of enough games that there can no longer be an argument that randomness has gotten you to where you are.

GayFluffyUnicorn2 votes

What does "getting better at the game" even mean? Look at trick for example. Master tier player. His mechanics are rather simple (not saying he is bad or something but he isn't a mechanically strong player) but his decision making, calls and even his sometimes odd builds qualify him for the rank. Then there are OTPs who are top tier on their champ mechanic-wise and know every possible match up and how to win but they can still be shit in decision making or focusing or what ever and still rise to a reasonable elo. Still you will have in a certain rank a variety of all those types of players in an equal environment and all need to work with their teammates somehow. Now we have premades: who can suck in laning, suck mechanic wise and even suck in decision making but their communication will make it possible to pull out 1/3/1 splitpush tactics, constant jungle invades with their supporter for example and win the game. Or they can be premades with really nice mechanics, shit decision making but still make it up by coordination. So even a handicap won't make up for the huge benefit a coordinated team has especially if they know each other. Right now btw that "handicap" is penalizing the higher ranked enemies they face because they lose against lower enemies.

redfeenix8 votes

The point is we are unhappy with the changes and riot refuses to communicate negotiate, compromise, or otherwise try to make us happy. That's all. Their silence and arrogance is what the community is really pissed about.

Imagine next patch they removed 3 of your favourite champions and then they had the same reaction ? No replies, no communication. Just a brick wall for months and months while you cannot play your favourite champs. No reply, no context and some made up stats. How would that make you feel ?

DeathBurst4 votes

"we" is a noticeable but ultimately small fraction of the community, but more importantly, "we" engages in misinformation and propaganda. There isn't a lot of negotiation or compromise that Riot can do in the current situation...

  • Asking for a plain revert, or two Q in parallel, that's not gonna happen. Riot values and goals are aligned with Dynamic Q. If you don't challenge the values/goals themselves, they'll never get back to plain Solo Q, whatever the amount of discontent, because DynQ is actually serving these goals/values quite well (and that's kinda the point of OP here).
  • Popular lies and misconceptions such as "Queue timers are horrible because of DQ" (no, it's 'cause of Champion Select), or "everyone will be boosted" (and by who, exactly?) or "all premades are bunches of ass-holes that harass solo players" do not help calming the situation.
  • Meanwhile, the real problems are getting addressed, and only concern a very small minority of the player base, like 2-3%. Top players are arguably a very important part of the community, due to the publicity they do and their effect on setting the meta, etc., so pleasing one challenger is probably worth pleasing a hundred or so Bronze, but that's already the case. The amount of resources dedicated to solving the problems of the top 2-3% is disproportionately high.

There are technical problems that are on their way of being solved (for instance, you can queue as Support secondary, now and it doesn't mean Support 90% of the time anymore). But ultimately, there is only one real reproach you can do to Riot: it's promising that Solo Q would be back, back in the days when DynQ started, and not delivering on that promise. But they haven't been neither arrogant nor silent about that.

LatetotheRace4 votes

Queueing up as support secondary outside of bronze/silver does in fact put you as support in 90% of games. Take a look at what has happened to the community though, it's weakened. I don't know the statistics of actual new players (not smurfs or second accounts) coming into the game, and neither does riot. BUT the entire structure and skill of the community is out of whack. Due to DQ more players are leaving bronze/silver that have been stuck there for seasons, suggesting no actual skill increase. Furthermore, specialization exists. What does this mean exactly? We can only play 1 or 2 damn roles now.... Since the new champ select came out, we very rarely leave our comfort zone, and if autofill or soloQ were to ever roll around, we'd all be screwed. (Luckily I still play 4 roles proficiently.) But I can almost promise you, if the solo players left, the queues will skyrocket to 10+ at platinum and above. Tencent is ruining this company, and treating it as a cash grap until it dies, so they can break even while also collecting as much data as possible.

DeathBurst2 votes

I'm not gonna bother replying to your conspiracy theories about Tencent.

You can pick Fill, if you still want to play many roles, or you can pick different roles every game.

And no, queueing as Sup secondary does not mean support 90% of the games anymore. It was the case, but it's better now.

AdeBug1 votes

It was and is around 80%.

DeathBurst1 votes

"Was", yes; "is", no.

LatetotheRace5 votes

I can say quite confidently that tencent is behind this, and they are currently calling the shots. I have found quite a few reasons and I'd be more than happy to share it with you. -Tencent buys riot, then riot proceeds to go silent on various matters when they were often much more vocal and transparent with the community.

  • Tencent is a horrible company that's design is to make good little socialists. -Tencent does nothing but steal ideas and technology, even a quick google search will prove this one. -Tencent is a multibillion dollar company, and they can easily make their investment back on riot in a couple of years. Once that's done, they can proceed to play with the players and gather as much precious data about your "credit score" of the online world. That's just what Tencent does.
Vistha Kai6 votes

To start of: Riot is not a teenage boy who's too stubborn to admitt he's wrong, thery're also not intetionally running the game into the ground, that's a crazy claim and you know it.

You are right, by the time standards they didn't even hit puberty yet. This doesn't stop them from being stubborn and no, they basically never admit mistakes. Whenever they intentionally want to run the game into the ground or not, doesn't really matter. Sunk costs fallacy is simply too strong.

You see, if the main focus of the game is not the game itself but the rating, the game will only last until another game becomes popular and their rating gets more important to you than leagues.

You see, people in games first care for the game to be fun and once they learn ins and outs, then their scores matter first and foremost. It doesn't matter which game it is. They won't magically jump over to another game simply, because ranking in that game is as good or better in the one they play currently. They will however switch, if their ranking becomes nearly meaningless, thanks to dev choices and the game becomes a cesspool of awful ideas that hurt the gameplay. With where game's been going for the last game, the latter is closer than you can imagine.

SoloQ was driven by cheesy and one-dimensional strategies, the cheapest and easiest way to win is the preffered one to grind the most elo.

Except the cheese in Solo Queue required majority of people on the team, to understand and execute it properly. Quite the contrary, it's the Dynamic Queue, with as many as 5 people you know and played before, usually a lot, where the cheese is the easiest way to win.

I simply wouldn't be able to count games where 2 or 3, or 4 people (usually with the same club name) were repeatedely ganking up on one guy/lane, making them useless in the process and winning the game like that.

Also since Dynamic Quem, League heavily shifted focus around more team oriented play.

No, it didn't. It shifted from "teamplay with strangers" to "cheese every game with friends or lose".

Of course there is still messy unorganized play, one sided stomps and short and unfair games.

Which gets worse with every major change (like Dynamic Queue) Riot is doing.

But there is also an undeniable increase in structured gameplay, organized teamfights and objective based play.

None of those things is thanks to Dynamic Queue, though.

They want to build large e-sport franchises and are orientating around real life sports.

They are on a good way to do the complete opposite. South Korea, possibly the most e-sport competitive-oriented country in the world has people dropping League, because of how deteriorated ranked experience has become.

Like a trip to the local football pitch with your friends they want to make their game fullfill two criteria

  1. You identify with the activity primarly over your social connections and only secondarly via your personal skill
  2. Gameplay must be as similar as possible to competetive play to make it easier to access and identifying with your pro idols

Too bad none of those criteria are being met in League of Legends.

Hell, from personal experience, I had about 50 people on my friends list playing at least weekly before Pre-Season 6. Now, half of them haven't played on average since February. Yestarday, since 3PM until about 9PM I haven't seen a single one of them online, for example.

No, League is too rage-inducing and hopelessness-inducing at this point, to become a proper "sport".

KONO RUBICK DA2 votes

thank you god, i have no other words

solo queue had more interesting teamplay than dynamic queue.

Vritra1 votes

Valid opinion, by no means am i saying DynamicQ is the right way to go. Im just trying to play devils advocate by analysing what could be in the mind of a business making drastic changes to core functionalites.

AdeBug4 votes

Not sure what **values **they have in mind right now except gettin the most of it money wise while the ship is slowly syncing. Playing with friends is playing with friends, for fun most of the times, aka normals and other games, unless you (decide to) become a well oiled machine that can smash anything in its path so you go play ranked. Usually when you have fun in a game, that's when you recommend it to your friends so you can share the fun and increase it automatically. And NOT when you NEED it 100% to go up a rank. To do that you scout players already good at the game or with potential to grow and be trained by you. At this point I would not recommend this to anyone new, for many offtopic reasons, so their **objective **half failed on me. I could try making new friends as it is, which is hard with at least 1 troll/afk per game making me say fu community. And the already existing friends have already formed their own premade smurf+boost team before I came into the game so they won't bother with a bronzie, and I'm still saying 'no' when they're offering to start a smurf acc just to play with me, because I KNOW that ruins MMR. What about personal objectives and achievements which should exist in every game? I'm not the only one that not only doesn't go up the ladder, but actually falls as time goes by (b2, b5, b4 0LP atm). What else can quantify my personal overall growth? All the other numbers count for time spent with champ X.

TL;DR: riot = false values, failed objectives so far (according to the values and objectives the OP accredits them), SQ+DQ pls

oh and to put 1q, 2q, 3q, 4q, 5q in the same pot is ridiculous for anyone calling themselves a game company. The dynamics of each of those combinations are just way too different, from earth to sky.

TahmKench Expert2 votes

TL:DR. I mean for real man, I started reading it, went to take a shit, and when I came back, I still wasn't done reading it.

DeathBurst2 votes

tl;dr: Riot isn't stupid, they have good reasons to make DQ, and it's probably better for them on the long term, even if it alienates solo players in the short term.

Why? Read the long version, but I must say he's rather convincing.

EDIT: why am I down voted for giving a tl;dr to someone who asked for one, ffs....

GayFluffyUnicorn3 votes

If riot alienates solo players the game is dead since DQ can'T function properly without solo players. If you think this is better in the long term you don't seem to understand what long term means.

DeathBurst1 votes

Well, I phrased that badly, but for my defense, it was just a tl;dr. Thing is, they won't alienate ALL solo players, since according to their polls, the large majority of players just don't care one way or the other.

Vritra1 votes

I am sorry man :D i shouldve cut the thing a bit short but i just wrote down whats on my mind

TheRealBaz4 votes

[{quoted}](name=Prince Cobalt,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Uj6xn62B,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2016-07-07T06:53:10.217+0000)

TL:DR. I mean for real man, I started reading it, went to take a shit, and when I came back, I still wasn't done reading it.

i'm not so sure you know how reading works

Sneakyy XD2 votes

Yeah, no

Dynamic queue and solo queue are not mutually exclusive.

Dominick Destine2 votes

Downvoting obvious pro-DQ propaganda.

Lirik2 votes

downvoted that piece of garbage post

DeathBurst1 votes

The general tone of your comment makes me believe you are against DQ, but all your explanations make me believe it's a good thing. Why are you against a good thing? Or what did I not understand correctly?

(Also, not directly related to your points, but about the "meaning of the rating": the ratings have probably lost a bit of accuracy, but I bet my hat that this loss is so negligible in the grand scheme of things that the ratings have pretty much the same meaning as before.)

Vritra1 votes

I am kinda in between. I enjoy DQ but i can understand where the criticism is comming from. The point of the post was to showcase what i understand are the reasons why SoloQ isn't comming back despite heavy community backlash

Also i think your right, ratings are still mostly accurate BUT i feel it is more in the heads of some players that rating does not feel as godd as it used to.

DeathBurst1 votes

Basically, your detailing and arguing what I always said: if you don't challenge Riot core philosophy/values, they'll never revert DynQn because DynQ serves these philosophy/values well.

And there isn't a lot that Riot can do about player's feelings, especially if they are called liars when they come and say "this is only in your head, we have data to prove it".

TyrekGoldenspear1 votes

Do you think maybe one of the biggest issues players have with dynamic que is that they are trying to play ranked in a system noweant for teams alone?

I kinda think that that is a big thing. People are so used to playing solo and carrying themselves that now that teamwork is a much bigger part of ranked, they don't change their tactics while others do and wonder why it's so unfair.

Not against anyone who wants to play ranked solo, I'm just saying that you are trying to play solo in a system geared towards tighter knit teams now, so try to communicate with your teammates more, it's more important now than ever.

Friendly Ram1 votes

Wish to say thank you.

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