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DQ has problems. So did the old system. Introducing Club Ranked

Hyrum Graff··160 votes·8,183 views

no tl;dr, but all key points are in bold or section headers, so you can read just those if you're not into long posts.

This post has 4 major sections:

  1. Introduction -- this
  2. Analysis -- what it means to be competitive
  3. Criticism -- problems with the old system (aka why DQ exists); problems with DQ
  4. Solutions -- Club Ranked

This is thread is for figuring out how to improve ranked, nothing else.

If you're here to sling insults, you're not welcome here. Leave your downvote and leave this thread; there are plenty of others.

To the rest of you, I'm sorry I have to waste your time with this.

I'm Professor Milk Hyrum Graff. Let's get started.

Analysis

Riot wants league to be a competitive sport

We believe League at its best is an incredibly competitive experience, and one that is all the more powerful when played with people you trust. [...] We want League of Legends to become a global sport that lasts for generations. (source)

What does it mean to be a competitive experience? Let's take a look at another sport that requires 5 players and a combination of teamwork and individual skill: Basketball.

Solo -> execution of the meta; 5s -> meta forming and execution

"Hold up, isn't this post about Dynamic Queue?"

Yes, of course. But dynamic queue blends elements of solo and 5s, so we need to talk about them first.

In solo, we're going to play a really standard game. For defense, we'll either do man-on-man or a normal 2-3 zone. For offense, we'll use simple passing around the outside, pick-and-roll, driving to the hoop, and getting the ball to the open guy. Solo games are won or lost based on how well players execute the meta.

In Premade 5s, we've played together before; we've had a chance to practice. Maybe we've got an oddball strategy we practiced that nobody knows how to deal with. We're doing zone defense but with our best defender man-on-man with their best player. We've got a plan to get our best shooter wide open at the 3-point line. Premade 5s are won or lost based on how well players can counter the opponent's strategy AND how well they executed.

Competitiveness is Depth + Balance

Depth is about how much room there is for mastery. Premade 5s have much more depth, because they involve both strategy and execution, plus time to practice and refine those. That's pretty simple, so let's talk about balance.

Say I'm doing premade 5s. The opposing team has 5 people who played basketball in college. Two teammates and I haven't played basketball since middle school. The other two are Michael Jordan and Lebron James.

That game is gonna be 3 noobs trying to stay out of MJ and LJ's way, hoping they can carry 2v5. We might have a perfect 50% chance of winning, but that game is not going to be competitive. It wouldn't be competitive if their team looked like ours, either; then it would be 6 people getting out of the way of a 2v2. Perfect balance requires (in order of importance) an even team matchup, even individual matchups, and all 10 players at the same skill level.

Heads-up: I'm dropping the basketball analogy now.

Also, later in this post I will use "match quality" to mean balance.

The Trade-off: Balance vs Queue Times vs Control

Perfect balance is actually possible in both solo and premade environments, at a cost. Imagine there are only 10 players -- 2 in each tier from bronze-diamond -- in queue. Now take a look at how many options for teams matchmaking has, based on how those players are queueing.

|Queue type|->|Possible teams| |- |Solo Draft, all fill|->|252| |Solo Team Builder, 2 per role|->|16| |Premade 5s|->|1|

Imagine how matchmaking works:

  • in draft, it pairs players in the same tiers, then puts each pair in a lane vs each other.

    • Diamond is still with bronze, but only because there's only 10 players total in queue.

  • in TB, it has no choice about the pairs, so it just tries to create balanced teams

    • Unless you get lucky, you're gonna have a lane that is horribly outmatched, and so will they, and the game will be decided by who can carry harder.

  • In premade 5s, it has no choice.

    • It might be Gold-Diamond vs Bronze-Gold, but tough shit, matchmaking didn't have any options.

    This is simple math: the fewer options you have, the less likely that one of them is balanced. There are two ways to create options: change the queue type so players have less control over who they play with and which roles they play, or wait for more players to join the queue. Player count is a result of how good a tradeoff you made and a resource that affects how good a job you can do, period; it's not a lever you can use to create options. At a fundamental level, there's only 3 options: take away control from players, accept long queue times, and/or accept worse balance. You'll notice this is Riot's conclusion at the roundtable.

Some tradeoffs are unacceptable

There is some point at which a queue time is simply unacceptable. It doesn't matter what elo I'm in or how shit my game would be if the queue were shorter, it's not worth a 10 hour queue (or to some people, a 10 minute queue). I just won't play.

Similarly, at some point matchmaking becomes poor enough that the game is simply not worth playing.

I don't believe the same tradeoff exists for control -- people still play blind, and -- but there are people who will take huge tradeoffs in queue time to get more control, like those of us who played team builder (except supports).

Criticism

Ranked teams made bad tradeoffs

By definition, ranked teams gave players complete control over their roster, so queue times and match quality got the short end of the stick. This would be fine if there were a huge number of people playing.

But there weren't, because ranked teams had a 9 player limit, so getting a group of 5 online together was near impossible. I felt this personally: I tried 4 times in seasons 4 and 5 to make a ranked team. Only one team made it through promos, and only played one game after that.

Low games played also hurt match quality by making mmr less accurate at predicting skill. Imagine if Riot did a full reset of ranked mmr. The first few games would have master tier and bronze in the same games, before the system had a chance to sort out who belongs where.

Now imagine if almost everyone only played those first few games, because it was too hard to get into game. Whenever you finally did manage to get into a game, it'd be a ridiculous one-sided stomp. That's what ranked teams matchmaking was like.

Larger teams wouldn't fix 5s balance

Imagine the limit were 20 players. Now I make a team of friends: 10 diamond players and 10 bronze. All the players only want to queue with others of the same rank. When the diamonds play, they steamroll the enemy and get matched against harder opponenets. Now the bronze players jump on, get matched against harder opponents, and get stomped until they face easier opponents again. Rinse and repeat, matchmaking is still bad.

You could partially fix balance by including the soloQ mmr of players in a certain game into the team MMR, but this would go against the premise of ranked teams, and also allow abuse by tanking your soloQ mmr to get easier team matches.

DQ wasn't change for the sake of change

DQ was created because ranked 5s were absolutely horrid and Riot wanted to fix that. And it worked:

  • It's WAY more accessible. Since I'm not limited to just 9 friends, I can actually play ranked as a 5 man stack.
  • It's WAY more balanced. Since matchmaking can use individual players' MMR, team MMR is much more accurate, and ranked restrictions mean team skill level is much more consistent as well. Combined queues increases player count, which also improves matchmaking.

Again, this is compared to team ranked, not solo queue.

Solo Queue was a casualty

Riot's thought process:

  • "We need to make the premade experience better. Hey, let's replace ranked teams with DQ!"
    • "We're gonna need to get rid of solo queue to do that. That's gonna suck for solos..."
  • "Yeah, that sucks. But like, if we can make it suck as little as possible, it's probably worth it."
    • "Ok, let's do it."

Here's the bottom two lines in Riot Pwyff's words, (source: Pwyff's personal thoughts. note: I cut out a lot of context to keep it short)

[With DQ] your personal rank is suddenly worth less because:

a) Others can get there via other means than your own (and your own standings come into question). b) Text-based sheep-herding is nothing in the face of fully coordinated teams.

I think working with strangers is just as much teamwork as is getting a coordinated premade to make your way to the top. So why make the change?

Because in one scenario (pure solo queue) you value sheep-herding and stranger-collaboration 100%, but you exclude the latter completely (getting trusted teammates, building cohesion, long-term teamplay). In dynamic queue, you get 60% (I think it's more 70%, but I'll be a negative nancy) of the sheep-herding value and 60% of the team-focused skills. [...] We think that 60%+60% is better than 100% serving solo players. The tradeoff is a value and, personally speaking, I don't know if it's one I would have made. But I can understand why we made it.

I don't care which audience is 'better' than the other, but I do wonder if it's better to serve one 100% or to serve two 60% (maybe 70%). [...] Perhaps in the future we can get better at supporting both sides.

That's admirable sentiment. I don't quite see eye-to-eye on the percentages, though. At least premades had some options before (ranked teams and normal draft). No live queue offers a solo experience. This is why pure solos feel told to find another game.

The solo experience isn't possible in DQ

No matter how amazing the dynamic experience might get, it's not a solo experience. You'll never be able to be a sheep-herder in DQ, because you might be with a premade. And as Pwyff said "text-based sheep-herding is nothing in the face of fully coordinated teams."

Remember back at the start? We determined that solo queue -> execution, while premade ranked -> strategy AND execution. The problem is, those two concepts are fundamentally incompatible. Players (solos) should not be forced to learn to adapt to some crazy strategy, even if it's a good counter to the meta. The only sport that requires you to learn the rules as you go is calvinball.

The Bottom Line: Supporting two experiences requires two queues

Possibly fixable problems with DQ

Giving players more control over who they play with forces queue times and match quality to get the short end of the stick. (Am I repeating myself?) DQ is less control than team ranked, but many more games were solo queue. Riot didn't solve the matchmaking problem with team ranked -- they brought a milder version to all of ranked. The small influx of players who used to be playing ranked 5s, dominion, or normals is nowhere near enough to counteract this. Stricter rank restrictions might.

Some premades will be people who play together regularly, like an old ranked team, while other premades are just groups of friends, no more coordinated than solos with voice chat. This means that there will always be unbalanced games. If the premade handicap is set for the level of "just friends", then real teams will stomp. If the premade handicap is set for the level of "actual team," that goes against the goal of DQ, since it's now "queue as if you had a ranked team, or lose". And it will never fail to suck when you're a solo who gets matched with a group of "just friends" and ends up against an actual team.

There's also no path to professional play.

The Solution: Club Ranked

Bring Back Solo Queue, No Duos

I don't think I need to explain why pure solo queue is the best for players who want to play solo. So let's focus on premades.

#Introducing club ranked

Changelog:

  • Club size limit increased from 50 to 200 (or higher as technology allows)
  • Club owners can set the chat room as private or public. Public rooms can be joined through the same interface as legacy chat rooms, which are now removed.
  • Club owners and officers can invite summoners to a private chat room as guests. Being a guest in a club chat room does not count towards your 3-team limit.
  • Club members can play ranked games together (like ranked teams).
    • Unlike ranked teams, a club has no rank. Each player has a rank for each club they are a part of. You may only queue with other club members within 1 tier of your rank (same as live).
      • There are no promos. Instead, you can get over 100 LP. If you start a game while you have over 100 LP, winning that game will consume 100 LP and promote you to the next division/tier (it will also grant you LP for the win as normal).
      • Winning or losing LP in soloQ also makes you win or lose half that LP in each of your clubs. This effect falls off as your club and solo rank diverge, to prevent people from purposefully throwing in soloQ to get easier club games.
        • This cannot change your tier, because that would be weird. It just puts you at higher LP in that tier, and your next win will promote you. If you play a lot of solo and get over 200 club LP, your next 2 club wins will both promote you. Losses will put you at negative LP, at which point the next loss will demote you.
    • In these games, the tag of the club you're playing for appears before your name, and the club tag you have set does not appear after your name.
    • Club ranked has built-in voice chat.
  • "Leagues" (eg, Katarina's Overlords) removed from Solo Queue and added to Club Ranked.
    • Clubs are placed into a League based on the number of members they have.
    • Winning a game of club ranked earns Prestige points for your club. Losing a game does not affect your club's prestige (though of course a different club did gain prestige).
      • Clubs in the same league are ranked against each other based on Prestige.
      • Prestige points reset every LCS split. When they reset, the highest-ranking clubs in a league get a reward (like a banner) until the next reset.

Club ranked is convenient

Start a lobby. Invite summoners individually or click the "invite all" button, which invites all club members eligible to play with you. Large clubs guarantee there will always be enough summoners online to play with. Voice chat works in the lobby, so you can start to strategize. Set your your lanes in the lobby so there's no confusion. Then jump into queue.

Club ranked is competitive

Rank restrictions reduce the tradeoff you have to make in queue times & match quality. Linking to solo queue performance means team skill will be consistent -- no diamond-matched-with-bronze craziness.

"But now I can't play with my friends who are much higher ranked than me!" -Sad Summoner

Yes you can. In normals.

Seriously, you gain nothing from playing ranked with someone who's a wildly different skill level than you. Competitiveness? We established at the very beginning of this post that putting players of highly varying skill in game together makes the game less competitive, like in the basketball where I'm on a team with Michael Jordan. Allowing that in ranked makes a mockery of matchmaking.

Seriously, play normals. Back in S4, my first full season, my then-S5 self played a number of normals with a then-diamond and his (mostly plat) friends. Those were the hardest games I've ever played. We called it "the curse" -- because I was WAY worse than the opponents, and he wasn't that much better, I tended to feed harder than he could carry. It took us 25 games before we got a win -- but it was 25 of the most exhilerating, tryhard games I've ever played, and I got SO much better at league.

Club ranked builds comradery

Because you're not just playing for yourself -- you're playing for the honor of your club.

Some clubs might be location-based, like campus clubs. Others might be a following for pro teams, streamers subs, or clans, etc.

Club ranked supports the LCS

Unless you can get 5 friends together, you'll probably fill out your team with a couple people from your club who you don't necessarily know well or play with often. When you play club ranked in at a lower level, the pool of people to fill out your team with is quite large. As you climb the ladder, there's a smaller portion of the player base at your skill level, so the pool narrows. That means you'll play with the same players more and more often. You'll naturally learn each other's playstyles and who you enjoy playing with and synergize with.

For a club run by an organization like CLG, that means team members have an extended roster of players who they've played with in a competitive environment. So if Aphro gets sick or has to leave LCS, there's a couple high-level supports who could sub in for him, that rip Doublelift Stixxay already plays with on a regular basis.

Credit where credit is due

While the original thought, "What if we replaced ranked teams with ranked clubs?" was mine, turning that sentence into this post was a collaborative effort between myself and Daen. His mirror post on reddit is located here.

Questions, Comments, Concerns?

I'll reply to as many comments as I can find time for.

6/7, 4:00pm Eastern time update: I'm getting tired / don't think I can keep up the pace of replies for very much longer. I'll be in and out but I can't guarantee a response.

FAQ

"I think this system would need some tweaks"

Yes, definitely. Tweaks before implementing it and more tweaks after. No design withstands first contact with users; it's about how you react to the unexpected and iterate on your design that counts.

"Dynamic Queue really isn't as bad as the community makes it out to be."

I agree. I like DQ too. But that's not the point.

Say I like playing chess. I go to this board games club to play chess games. Then one day, there's no more chess because they're only playing Settlers of Catan. Settlers is a great game -- but that doesn't matter: it's not chess.

SoloQ is like chess. No matter how great DQ is, it's still Catan. I like to play Catan... but I also like to play chess, and now I can't any more. And some players don't like Catan, and now there's no more chess...

{quoted}

The only issue I see with this system is that the clubs 'prestige' seems entirely based on the sheer number of games played. Getting to the top is not so much a matter of maximizing your winrate as it is playing the greatest number of games in the smallest amount of time. Although perhaps I am missing something in the setup here, but it would seem to me that that would be the most effective strategy in reaching rank

Matchmaking would match you vs clubs in the same league when possible -> some losses would decrease your club's relative rank despite not having a direct penalty. Still, you're right. The best would be a high winrate and high games played, but it does tilt towards games played.

This was intentional. Here were my reasons, you can decide if you agree:

  • I didn't want club owners to try to maximize their rank by kicking players.
  • I didn't want players to try to get into a rival club and intentionally throw games.
  • Getting a group of 5 together will always be more time and effort than going solo. I wanted to provide an additional incentive for players to get in game -- period -- so that extra work feels worth it. But I wanted to do that without making solo players feel like they're being thrown under the bus.

You focus on 5 man premades. What about Solo Queue?

I think almost everyone agrees that pure Solo Queue would be the best queue for solos. Here's the problem:

  • Riot made DQ to enable competitive play with friends.
  • DQ requires solos to work.
    • Therefore, soloQ will kill DQ and Riot will never enable soloQ while DQ exists.
  • Riot will not disable DQ unless there is another way to play competitively with friends.
    • Therefore, we need club ranked if we want to get soloQ back.

How do small clubs get enough people together to play?

It's hard. If your club has 9 or fewer people, it's just as hard as Team Ranked was (or maybe harder, because of rank restrictions). I imagine that most clubs would have 50-1,000 people, and be run by school clubs, pro organizations, or streamers. In a club that size, finding enough people to get in game with shouldn't be hard.

Hold up. 1000 people? Won't I be playing with randoms if I don't have 5 online friends in the same club?

Above diamond they're not really randoms any more because there are fewer players at that level so you'll play with the same people at lot.

Below diamond, yes. Kind of. Here's how I think that would work:

You and 2 friends decide you want to play ranked. You form a 3man lobby, then send out invites to the rest of your club (maybe there's also a listing of all open lobbies for your club, so a duo can look for a 3-man to join up with).

You can think of Club Ranked as an upgrade to Team Ranked... or as DQ, with these improvements:

  • At least you have something in common with the randoms: you both wanted to be in that club.
  • Integrated voice
  • A chance to chat with them before entering queue
  • Club chat room to find people interested in a certain strategy/comp, and to chat with your clubmates.

What if I only want to play with my friends?

You can all join a club together and only play as a 5 man stack with them, or you could create your own club with only those friends. Bottom line is, if you're only willing to play with a few people, you're gonna have a hard time getting in game. No queue will fix that.

If you insist on playing only have 9 people you want to play ranked with, i

If you're going to join a club that small, it's because you want an experience like old ranked teams.

Wow, that's a detailed post.

Daen and I spent a long time on it. We started over three weeks ago.

Can the queues coexist?

Why people would play both in Solo and Club Ranked? Don't you fear that one will die due to lack of players?

I do fear the death of a queue, but don't think it's likely. There are distinct motivations for playing each:

  • Vanity vs Ambition
    • If you want to show off your rank, you'll probably want it to be based purely on your ability to carry solo.
    • I envision Club Ranked will become the primary recruiting grounds for pro players. Get yourself invited to the club of the LCS team you want to join, grind your way into master/challenger in that club, and you'll be regularly playing with the pros on that team. If a team member tells the club manager, "Hey, I play with this person regularly, they're skilled and we have good synergy," who do you think is going to stand out the next time the team has tryouts? Or maybe there won't be tryouts, because you've already proved yourself in Club Ranked.
  • Convenience vs Preference
    • No matter how easy you make it to queue with a premade of any size, going solo will always be easier.
    • People generally prefer to play with friends. They didn't because there were huge obstacles to playing 5s. Club Ranked removes most of those.
      • In particular, some people who used to duo would move to 5's.
  • Individualism vs Collectivism -- some people prefer solo sports; others prefer team sports. Solo races didn't kill baton races, nor vice versa.
    • Some people also just don't have friends who play league. I think most of them will make friends and then choose a queue for other reasons, but I think soloQ might be important to support people who haven't found their group yet.
    • Ranked Clubs provides the opportunity to play for a cause larger than yourself. How cool would it be to play in the club of your favorite LCS team? This is a motivation that soloQ can never provide.

182 Comments

Oblivein21 votes

Pure solo queue was legitimate cancer for anyone under diamond, I don't understand why everyone want's it back. Yeah the game sucks for solos, but the problem isn't as bad as it was last season. There's no actual change in gameplay that is affected by DQ, 4 man premades with 1 solo is not even that common (people pull stories out of their ass), and overall toxicity and trolls has drastically lowered.

Yeah DQ obviously has major flaws but they arent half as bad as this shitty community is putting it out to be.

FortisDominus7 votes

What are you talking about? soloq was hell to everyone below diamond? Soloq in plat was fine, soloq in gold was also not that bad. You should have said "soloq was cancer if you were below gold". DQ is perfect though right? all these silver level players ruining my plat games is fine right?

Gnart Even Close5 votes

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say before the DQ fiasco that they legitimately thought Solo Q was a good system. I've only heard complaints about how it needed to be fixed. also, don't use a blame your teammates argument. even if it was consistently the case, that's a problem with matchmaking, not Dynamic Q itself

Karn Bishop4 votes

The key word here is fixed with a true solo queue system and a better ranked 5's system that was usable and not replaced with a casual queue masquerading as a competitive mode.

Hyrum Graff3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Karn Bishop,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YlTcjEEf,comment-id=0004000000000000,timestamp=2016-06-07T02:49:14.193+0000)

The key word here is fixed with a true solo queue system and a better ranked 5's system that was usable and not replaced with a casual queue masquerading as a competitive mode.

I am fighting an immense desire to make a really sarcastic comment about the point of the thread you're in.

This was the compromise between writing it and not.

Steven Mcburn4 votes

People complained mostly that it was solo/duo and not just straight solo.

If anyone complained about the queue itself it was because they were in "ELO HELL" and couldn't climb and wanted something to blame.

Hyrum Graff25 votes

{quoted}

Pure solo queue was legitimate cancer for anyone under diamond, I don't understand why everyone want's it back.

It's not everyone, it's everyone who enjoyed playing solo. They want it back because they enjoy the experience of sheep-herding, and of knowing their rank is a representation of thein individual ability to carry. And there isn't a single queue in which you can get that experience any more.

Yeah the game sucks for solos, but the problem isn't as bad as it was last season. There's no actual change in gameplay that is affected by DQ, 4 man premades with 1 solo is not even that common (people pull stories out of their ass), and overall toxicity and trolls has drastically lowered.

There is a change in gameplay because teamwork is different. Playing in a coordinated team is a totally different than playing solo. LCS is totally different from challenger soloQ.

Yeah DQ obviously has major flaws but they arent half as bad as this shitty community is putting it out to be.

DQ is not a horrible system. But it's much worse for solos than soloQ was, and it's much worse for premades than club ranked could be, imo. Why settle for something that's okay when you could get two things that are great?

Lord Boltrix8 votes

Dynamic Queue has problems that you have addressed in a way that I would approve of.

In my personal opinion, some of the people who want only solo-queue and do not want ranked premades that aren't 5v5', aren't for solo queue for the sake of game integrity. The thing is, solo queue was a chaotic environment of disorganization where five lone wolves were put together to face five other lone wolves, and this mentality has largely affected a good number of these people (some, not all, but some). Often the people who found the most success did so because of the lack of organization, with everyone trying to do their own thing a lack of cohesion allowed for one-man carries.

The people who prefer this tend to be lone wolves who stood out amongst others and progressed because of their simple ability to carry in the previous solo queue system, irrespective of what their team did. This was usually the result of the nature of solo queue and throwing together complete strangers and expecting coordination without any means to coordinate outside of pings and chat, the latter of which could be detrimental at certain moments.

Now, someone earning their ranks through their ability to single-handedly win the game is something to be admired, and there is nothing inherently wrong with this.

The problem stems from the kind of environment the expectation of this style of progression has on the playerbase.

All of a sudden, teammates are potential liabilities because they are strangers and may not have excellent coordination with you, but more importantly: they are looking to carry the game, and they see you in the same way. Enemy kills become contested among teammates because an environment exists where you can't trust your teammates to be reliable, and you feel the gold would sit better on you because then YOU - not you team, you - can more easily win. Every mistake your allies make means they are a bigger burden on you, and you can't trust them to do anything less they feed the enemy team while you're trying to win the game by carrying.

The cohesion of teammates increased through the ranks less from people learning to work together, and more because they simply notice and take advantage of more openings provided by their not-enemies, essentially an expansion of game knowledge than anything else.

Was this system functional? Yes, it did it's job well and teammates were ranked purely by their individual ability.

But this is a team game, this isn't Deathmatch in a first-person shooter, this is League of Legends.

With the creation of Dynamic Queue, ranked premades exist, and coordinated teams are the hard counter to the solo-queue people who thrives purely through the disorder of solo queue. Suddenly, enemy teams could counter one person trying to carry through pure skill by either taking them down as a team through coordination, or punishing their lone wolf style of play by focusing said carry's team and taking objectives far away from where said carry was.

Does Dynamic Queue unnecessarily disfavor solo queue? To a degree it does and it requires some fixing, but a lot of rage comes from the fact that people want a return to disorganized play because said disorganization favored solo queue hard carries.

6KEMBE4ORBA4 votes

But this is a team game, this isn't Deathmatch in a first-person shooter, this is League of Legends.

And exactly because of this you need a system that can measure personal performance "accurately enough" if you're not gonna go all out and make the entire playerbase play on 100% Team Ranked 5vs5 with static rosters. Your argument is only strong in that situation - and DynamicQ dosn't favor from it in any way.

The other part of your argument is that "SoloQ dosn't foster teamplay + no voice-comm". The first one is not entirely true and the culprit for the absence of the 2nd one is Riot. Even a true SoloQ fosters enough of a teamplay mindset while it can 100% outline talented individuals way faster than DQ.

The higher MMR you go the more important teamwork related decisions are. IE; When to roam, when to group, when to split — these are all teamwork related decisions. When you queue up by yourself in SOLO Q you have to learn how to develop (fast) these teamwork related decision making skills by yourself because if you don’t try to play with your team then you will not climb very high.

In a group or a team all these teamwork related decision making skills get relegated to one or two people. What will actually happen is that some people will get very good at leading dynamic groups to victory while some people will just get lucky by happening to know someone who is a really strategically minded person. This means that the followers in the dynamic group will not truly earn the MMR gained by playing in the group because it isn’t their decision-making that is winning them games.

This means that when follower X actually queues up at an MMR gained through following calls of another player then they will not have developed the skills necessary to play at that MMR.

Secondly, the reason why high level team games are so different from solo queue is because the teams build actual team compositions to fullfill particular objectives. Dynamic groups of less than 5 cannot play this way because there is no way to guarantee that the 1 or 2 players playing with the group of 3 or 4 will play the correct champion for the teamcomposition. Plus, Esports top team competition is an entirely different thing in itself.

Thirdly, players who have been boosted by their dynamic group will not be able to play by themselves in ranked anymore because they will get destroyed by players who might be actually worth their MMR. This will mean that players in gold because their dynamic group has a diamond level shotcaller will be thrashed by actual gold players once the midgame rolls around and the actual gold level players with actual decisionmaking skills group roam correctly and the boosted gold player doesn’t..

Lastly, rank will mean nothing. You just got carried by your dynamic group even if you didn’t.

A support player that wards/initiates only where/when the leader tells him to is contributing but he isn't developing any skills until he starts to. (it's doubtful that he will at all - cause there's already someone doing the work for him)

I could also argue that is much harder to be a leader of 4 randoms and rally them to victory than with 4 friends - it shows true leadership strats imo and that's the reason you encounter it exremely rarely in ranked games.

Skilled people realize that individual skill and performance actually matters and it will always be the foundation for organizing and branding/bounding together a better group.

**Individual skill/personality/characteristics always comes first **---> only after that comes the group play which is amalgamation of all individual skills combined.

p.s: we can discuss the inaccuracy of DQ's ladder, if you want. I have much to say about that too.

Mr Fidori2 votes

This may be the best (out of only a handful of decent ones) summary of the issue I've seen.

Elikain1 votes

They want it back because they enjoy the experience of sheep-herding, and of knowing their rank is a representation of their individual ability to carry. And there isn't a single queue in which you can get that experience any more.

This was possible seasons ago. Way back into the youthful days of League. The ability to solo carry a game has been phased out since then, patch by patch and it transitioned to you having the advantage (like always) and if you don't translate this into a win condition for your team (contesting objectives and ganking other lanes) then you're just not be able to do anything once the other 5 people on the enemy team can deal with you and take you out.

I don't feel the difference between DQ or SoloQ. I fully understand that the group dynamic has changed and how you can play ranked but winning or losing is still the same. I've lost and won games and could have easily attributed it to a single person or a premade. Doesn't make a difference to me because the win or loss conditions haven't changed. If you misplay in either case and don't know what you're doing, the chances of losing increase. I still play as a solo player as i always have and i don't feel like my rank doesn't mean anything anymore. As a more of a thought behind this and the potential problems, i always refer to this video: https://youtu.be/Mf7-hhrBMtw

BushidoBlade1 votes

Seasons ago? Last season was October of 2015.. Eight goddamn months, it took you, to forget that Dynamic Queue didn't exist for FIVE out of SIX years of League's existence. Solo Queue got League to where it is now, and if we can't pay Homage to Solo Queue, then we do not deserve League and what it has become.

Respect your Roots

As for win conditions, when Individual skill mattered, and Solo players didn't have entire premade teams coordinating against them on voice comms, advantages were taken by simple numbers, such as your top laner killed our toplaner, therefore you got X objective. That is how the game WAS played.

Now, it is just whatever team can make the better premade.

LegacyDAP6 votes

What's so "cancer" about pure soloq for below Diamond? Because as a Gold player I'd love a pure solo queue. Just want your thoughts.

GayFluffyUnicorn2 votes

That noone can carry his ass out of bronze anymore and as a solo he needs actually skill, map awareness and coordination with randoms.

Narsicus7 votes

This is a really good idea, I've generally felt that clubs were being underutilized and this would certainly add far more to that system.

The only issue I see with this system is that the clubs 'prestige' seems entirely based on the sheer number of games played. Getting to the top is not so much a matter of maximizing your winrate as it is playing the greatest number of games in the smallest amount of time. Although perhaps I am missing something in the setup here, but it would seem to me that that would be the most effective strategy in reaching rank 1.

In general though I really like this idea, maybe some slight alterations in how clubs are ranked against one another but it seems solid.

YJRBqwXJcS5 votes

don't care

either give us a solo queue that also has the new champion select, that is separate from dynamic shit fest or continue to send this game to the grave.

I'm not settling for anything

fuck dynamic queue, i don't wanna play with coordination if i wanted to do that then i would do ranked 5s.

Hyrum Graff5 votes

{quoted}

don't care

either give us a solo queue that also has the new champion select, that is separate from dynamic shit fest or continue to send this game to the grave.

I'm not settling for anything

fuck dynamic queue, i don't wanna play with coordination if i wanted to do that then i would do ranked 5s.

It seems my post was unclear, but Club Ranked is intended to be an addition to pure solo queue, not a replacement. I have edited my post to reflect this

coltfan085 votes

This sounds really cool for a lot of reasons (mainly I really want solo queue back) and I definitely suggest that people read it all the way through. I think this system has potential to work very well. One comment I'd have is that club rank vs solo rank vs prestige seem like too much to keep track of. I think that club rank could be replaced by individual prestige. Individual prestige could be either the total club prestige from a win split among all players from that game equally or the prestige could be divided based on ranks earned in the game (so someone who got an S would get more prestige than someone with a B). For matchmaking, solo rank and individual prestige could be combined. This system isn't ideal, because as prestige can't be lost a silver player could play nonstop and get into the club equivalent of diamond while still having silver skill. Your system of club rank is probably better than mine, but I wonder if there is a more efficient way to combine the rankings together.

FearEngineer4 votes

"But now I can't play with my friends who are much higher ranked than me!" -Sad Summoner

Yes you can. In normals.

/thread

Hyrum Graff2 votes

{quoted}

-Sad Summoner

/thread

I can quote me, too.

Seriously, you gain nothing from playing ranked with someone who's a wildly different skill level than you. Competitiveness? We established at the very beginning of this post that putting players of highly varying skill in game together makes the game less competitive, like in the basketball where I'm on a team with Michael Jordan. Allowing that in ranked makes a mockery of matchmaking.

What point are you trying to make?

FearEngineer4 votes

That quote is the short version of all the queue arguments. It's so simple.

I just don't understand how Riot created a problem from something that wasn't particularly problematic.

DrCyanide1 votes

You can't consistently get a competitive experience in Normals, because everyone is in a Normal game for a different reason. Some are there to play with friends outside their skill range, others are there to try new champions/roles/builds, others are there to goof off and do silly things (5 TP/ 5 Smite/ funny team comps), and others are there to try their hardest. The people trying their hardest, but unable to get consistent 5 man teams (like the OP) were getting the short end of the stick before, potentially to the point where their time would be better spent on other games.

You can argue that's good, bad, or doesn't matter, but that's the reasoning.

FearEngineer3 votes

You can't consistently get a competitive experience in Normals, because everyone is in a Normal game for a different reason. Some > are there to play with friends outside their skill range, others are there to try new champions/roles/builds, others are there to goof > off and do silly things (5 TP/ 5 Smite/ funny team comps), and others are there to try their hardest.

With the increased accessibility and influx of casual players who didn't try it before (and the bulk of these new players being friend group premades) doesn't this doesn't apply to ranked as well?

The people trying their hardest, but unable to get consistent 5 man teams (like the OP) were getting the short end of the stick before, potentially to the point where their time would be better spent on other games.

Oh gee how horrible. So they could play with friends in one queue AND get a more competitive experience in another. AND there was still the stupid option to have a duo, even though I thought that shouldn't be a feature.

I'll say again, where was the massive outcry from the intersection of people who wanted to play casually with friends but also wanted a competitive ranked experience at the same time, in the same queue? I don't remember seeing it anywhere. Not even a "vocal minority"

This assumption that, this! This is what the silent majority wants! While players who care enough to actually voice their opinions are disregarded, is asinine.

69982196_DEL4 votes

Too bad Riot is only trying to bandaid solos to keep them in DQ, but that won't solve anything, wil only delate the process of solos either leaving the game (if they are hardcore enoguh) or start playing in premades (if they aren't). Even if the percentage reaches a low value like 10% (of solos, no total players) across all tiers, Q timers will skyrocket and Riot will be forced to end DQ.

Hyrum Graff1 votes

{quoted}

Too bad Riot is only trying to bandaid solos to keep them in DQ, but that won't solve anything, wil only delate the process of solos either leaving the game (if they are hardcore enoguh) or start playing in premades (if they aren't). Even if the percentage reaches a low value like 10% (of solos, no total players) across all tiers, Q timers will skyrocket and Riot will be forced to end DQ.

At the moment, Riot still thinks they can make DQ work. I think they could possibly get DQ to an acceptable state. But why settle for acceptable when you could have something great?

I do have faith that after Riot does everything they can think of to fix DQ, they'll realize there's a better solution and go with that. But it's not going to happen until they try to fix DQ.

Which, I understand, even if I don't agree with it.

GayFluffyUnicorn2 votes

This horrible Q is already out for 6 months. The least fun 6 months i've ever had in 5 years of lol. How do they want to fix that? There are already enough boosted players in higher elo. Riot would need to reset the whole mmr again. Either riot brings back soloQ or we have to live with this abomination of a Q for the rest of the season

RemoveEnterKey3 votes

"Riot wants the game to be a competitive" do people honestly still believe that?

Hyrum Graff6 votes

[{quoted}](name=DragonSin Wrath,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YlTcjEEf,comment-id=0010,timestamp=2016-06-07T04:12:41.295+0000)

"Riot wants the game to be a competitive" do people honestly still believe that?

I do. I think Riot has pretty good goals, generally.

They just don't quite hit what they're aiming for.

Serika Zero3 votes

"Riot wants the game to be casual"

examples: -dynamicq for casual play with friends -ahri removal of charm can stop dashes in mid way (this was not something casuals were doing) -lee sin gets extra damage for kicking tanks -lee sin gets different energy distribution compared to before per auto attack. I believe it was 50-50 changed to 75-25 (again, helping casual players) -ryze's overload time capped at 5 spells which caused him to be totally underpowered and then they buffed the base dmg on his spells, which made him pick or ban in lcs now (again, buff for casuals) -kindred "nerf" to only be able to ult herself, another buff for casuals. Before her ultimate could have been used in many creative ways, now its just ult yourself ps-kindred will always be a she for me as you play as lamb (just like with yorik you play with yorik, not the ghouls) -akali more energy for q pop at lower ranks

and i bet there's more examples on to why the game keeps evolving into catering premades and casuals 3 more days till i get my salary and can buy cs:go q.q

Hyrum Graff4 votes

[{quoted}](name=Serika Zero,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YlTcjEEf,comment-id=001000000000,timestamp=2016-06-07T07:47:36.053+0000)

"Riot wants the game to be casual"

examples: -dynamicq for casual play with friends

I'm not sure why you think DQ is "for casual play". Normals are "for casual play", DQ is (ostensibly) for competitive play with friends.

You're telling me that -- given equal skill -- the game is more casual when there's a coordinated premade in it?

-ahri removal of charm can stop dashes in mid way (this was not something casuals were doing) -lee sin gets extra damage for kicking tanks -lee sin gets different energy distribution compared to before per auto attack. I believe it was 50-50 changed to 75-25 (again, helping casual players) -ryze's overload time capped at 5 spells which caused him to be totally underpowered and then they buffed the base dmg on his spells, which made him pick or ban in lcs now (again, buff for casuals) -kindred "nerf" to only be able to ult herself, another buff for casuals. Before her ultimate could have been used in many creative ways, now its just ult yourself ps-kindred will always be a she for me as you play as lamb (just like with yorik you play with yorik, not the ghouls) -akali more energy for q pop at lower ranks

Hmm. Maybe we have different definitions of "casuals".

I think of a casual as someone who isn't very competitive, who doesn't play league very much.

All of these things are buffs to players who are bad, and sometimes but not always also nerfs to players who are good.

Casuals are likely bad, but IMO being bad doesn't make you a casual. There are players who tryhard in Bronze and Silver who these changes will help greatly. Are they casuals?

Serika Zero2 votes

I'm not sure why you think DQ is "for casual play". Normals are "for casual play", DQ is (ostensibly) for competitive play with friends.

You're telling me that -- given equal skill -- the game is more casual when there's a coordinated premade in it?

Think for yourself. What is the difference between DinamicQ and Draft mode. . . . . Ok, by now I'm sure you realized that the only difference is that you see your "rank", which is essentially your MMR. And that's it. For the past 3 or whatever seasons. DraftQ was never the "competitive" queue. It was always the casual queue, just like normals. Actually, before riot forced chat and rank restricted players to DraftQ, it was the least negative and most friendly queue out there.

Playing with friends = $ Generally when you go out in the town or at the mall by yourself, you won't buy more than what you went there to buy. Lets say you went to the mall to get a t-shirt, you go there to get the t-shirt and just that. Heck, if there even are people over there fighting and cursing each other, you will try to go away asap (or grab some popcorn and watch).

If you go with friends, you go, get your t-shirt. And then you go to a bar/fastfood in the mall and eat something too. Heck, your friend might find another t-shirt or pants or whatever they really love and you buy that for them as a present. Or maybe they find something really suitable for you, and you buy that too. Maybe even drop by the cinema since its in the same area anyway.

That's riot's goal basically. They want the game to have a friendly like atmosphere. To do that, they have to appeal to the casual players as they pretty much fucked up with their "try hard players" during the past years and made them really negative so far.

So, they started making the game more casual. They started with nerfing champions. More exactly, there are things in a champion's kit which requires a lot of time and a lot of games to practice until you get to pull it off. An example is Ahri's charm vs dashes. It required very many Ahri games to even notice that it can stop mobility skills. And then it required you knowing pretty much all the other champions kits, predict their mobility skill as well as the travel time and direction. In essence, casual players will not put ALL THAT TIME into something as small as this. So it got removed.

Ryze could do a few different rotations when he had no cap on his passive. Ryze players that spent a lot of time (not casuals) playing Ryze, getting used to his combo rotations and so on were able to dish out 10 or more spells per passive activation. Riot's solution? Limit passive to 5. Oh Ryze is to weak now? buff his base damage

Lee Sin was required to make plays for engages to be useful late game. That would require a lot of practice and time on Lee Sin. Do casuals spend a long of time practicing? no Ok, lets give Lee another way to use his ult. Ok, extra damage base on target's extra hp. Now kick tanks in the enemy carry and you did something gg Lee. Lee Sin players need to learn how to properly wave auto attacks in between abilities, and sometimes just 1 auto attack is needed and not two. But most of our Lee Sin players are casuals that always use 2 auto attacks coz passive says 2 auto attacks. Solution? Make the first auto attack restore 3 times more energy than the second, making it more clear for casuals that a lot of times, its better for just 1 auto attack between abilities.

Casual players are players that don't have a lot of time to spend on LoL. They got clubs to attend to, work, maybe school or university, maybe even a family. But they can log in for a few hours per week to do like 3-4 games. They won't give a fuck if the game is competitive or not. They won't give a fuck that the "rankq" is the same as "normalq".

But wait, couldn't premades just premade in every other mode EXCEPT ranked until this season? Well yes, but league was mostly advertised for its "ranked" queue. Most people that joined this game, wanted to play ranked quite soon. Actually, out of all the people that I knew irl which also started LoL, they all played ranked within like 3 weeks or so of getting lv30.

While I never felt any initiative to really play ranked except for end of season rewards. Took like 6 months between me getting 30 and me playing ranked. And even then, I was the guy that was playing not 4 games per week but more like 5 games per day.

And with all of this. With the entire riot's goal of making the game more casual. More accessible for the players that don't have a lot of time on their hands. I'm ok with that. I'm personally even OK with DynamicQ despite the fact that if we had a 1v1 mode or 2v2 mode I would've mostly play only that. What I dislike is Riot's constant focus on premades. Premades give them tons of advantages. And people like me that are generally solo players are given zero initiative to play the game.

Like, there's no reason for me to keep on playing right now. And no, soloq wasn't what was keeping me here at all. Its just that starting with events that gave extra IP for more team mates, moving to dinamicq and then hextech also catering to premades. As well as my personal experience with premades in game made me hate them. So, with the last video, rito just made me and a bunch of other players feel worthless. Hence, a bunch of us quit. If the game was indeed fun, if the matches were "fair", if there was an initiative for soloq players. Very few people (mainly high elo due to very small pool) would've complained about dynamicq. But none of that happens so, we are in this situation.

Its similar to the support position problems. Players generally feel bad when playing support as they have the least amount of gold in their team (so they can't build tanky or damage). As such, when things go badly and the enemy team is mostly winning, there's very little they feel they can do. And riot gives them no rewards for playing support despite it giving such a shitty feeling from time to time (as an salty 4 man premade ignoring and isolating you feels like). So, most players stopped playing support, and the reason why queue times are so long, is because there's not a bunch of support players. Which is very obvious at higher elos when it takes over 10 minutes to find a game. Few of them want sup role.

Hyrum Graff3 votes

This was a pretty long reply. I tried to respond to each point but might've missed something.

[{quoted}](name=Serika Zero,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YlTcjEEf,comment-id=00100000000000000000,timestamp=2016-06-07T13:30:49.749+0000)

Think for yourself. What is the difference between DinamicQ and Draft mode. . . . . Ok, by now I'm sure you realized that the only difference is that you see your "rank", which is essentially your MMR. And that's it.

Also end of season rewards. But you're right, it's mostly that your rank is visible. Having rank be visible makes all the difference in how people treat the game, because you can now compare yourself to others. It's like the difference between running a 5k with friends to get in shape or running a 5k with friends on a team. Both places are just training and running with friends, but one you're ranked against others, making it competitive.

It doesn't really matter whether they show your mmr or your rank (before tiers and divisions, ranked showed your rank in an elo system). What matters is that something official is shown.

Playing with friends = $ Generally when you go out in the town or at the mall by yourself, you won't buy more than what you went there to buy. Lets say you went to the mall to get a t-shirt, you go there to get the t-shirt and just that. Heck, if there even are people over there fighting and cursing each other, you will try to go away asap (or grab some popcorn and watch).

If you go with friends, you go, get your t-shirt. And then you go to a bar/fastfood in the mall and eat something too. Heck, your friend might find another t-shirt or pants or whatever they really love and you buy that for them as a present. Or maybe they find something really suitable for you, and you buy that too. Maybe even drop by the cinema since its in the same area anyway.

This is true, but:

  • Going to the mall with friends is also more fun than going alone, and more fun than spending that much money alone would be. Is it really a bad thing that I'm going to the mall and having fun, even if I spend more money along the way? (Personally I'd rather just hang out at home with my friends, but we're comparing solo mall to mall with friends).
  • IFF matchmaking is good -- and that's the huge goddamn if -- based on the criteria I set out in the OP, playing with a coordinated premade is objectively more competitive than playing solo. Individual mechanical skill matters just as much -- maybe more, since it's easier for a coordinated team to snowball a lead -- and there's also strategy and teamwork that don't exist in soloQ (although soloQ does have the sheep-herding type of teamwork that premade doesn't have).
    • Would you really argue that 5 random pros against 5 other random pros is more competitive than LCS?
    • Again, matchmaking in 5's is harder, which makes the game less competitive in that way. But in theory there's nothing inherently less competitive about premades.

That's riot's goal basically. They want the game to have a friendly like atmosphere. To do that, they have to appeal to the casual players as they pretty much fucked up with their "try hard players" during the past years and made them really negative so far.

So, they started making the game more casual. They started with nerfing champions. More exactly, there are things in a champion's kit which requires a lot of time and a lot of games to practice until you get to pull it off. -snip examples- Casual players are players that don't have a lot of time to spend on LoL. They got clubs to attend to, work, maybe school or university, maybe even a family. But they can log in for a few hours per week to do like 3-4 games.

All of these examples are things that help bad players. That's a good description of casual players, and that's why casuals aren't (usually) good at league.

But there's also that person who plays 20 hours of Ahri per week, but his reflexes are shit so he can never pull of that move. He's not a casual, he's just bad. And that person who plays 20 hours per week, but plays a lot of different champions, and never discovered that Ahri's charm stops dashes. She's not a casual, she just likes playing different champions. All the changes you mentioned help both of these players, too, not just casuals.

Riot's trying to make the game more accessible to a variety of people. You might disagree with that move, and that's fine but it's a different thing than catering to casuals.

Personally I have mixed feelings about it; I think there's a sweet spot between "This champion is shit for everyone not in lcs" (HI AZIR) and "This champion will never be good because you can play them perfectly your first game" (LOOKING AT YOU, 4.20 WEEDWICK).

But wait, couldn't premades just premade in every other mode EXCEPT ranked until this season? Well yes, but league was mostly advertised for its "ranked" queue. Most people that joined this game, wanted to play ranked quite soon. Actually, out of all the people that I knew irl which also started LoL, they all played ranked within like 3 weeks or so of getting lv30.

While I never felt any initiative to really play ranked except for end of season rewards. Took like 6 months between me getting 30 and me playing ranked. And even then, I was the guy that was playing not 4 games per week but more like 5 games per day.

And with all of this. With the entire riot's goal of making the game more casual. More accessible for the players that don't have a lot of time on their hands. I'm ok with that. I'm personally even OK with DynamicQ despite the fact that if we had a 1v1 mode or 2v2 mode I would've mostly play only that. What I dislike is Riot's constant focus on premades. Premades give them tons of advantages. And people like me that are generally solo players are given zero initiative to play the game.

Like, there's no reason for me to keep on playing right now. And no, soloq wasn't what was keeping me here at all. Its just that starting with events that gave extra IP for more team mates, moving to dinamicq and then hextech also catering to premades. As well as my personal experience with premades in game made me hate them. So, with the last video, rito just made me and a bunch of other players feel worthless. Hence, a bunch of us quit. If the game was indeed fun, if the matches were "fair", if there was an initiative for soloq players. Very few people (mainly high elo due to very small pool) would've complained about dynamicq. But none of that happens so, we are in this situation.

I used to carry games from champ select. "Good evening, everyone. Prefs? Mine are mid > supp > top > adc > jg." I'd mediate conflicts and make sure everyone got a role they were happy with. I'd help calm people down and organize team comps so everyone was playing something they're comfortable with and that we also still had a good team comp. I genuinely enjoyed knowing that I was contributing to my team's victory in a way that wasn't purely mechanical skill.

And now I'll never do that again, because 120/130 of my ranked games this season were solo, and the premade already knows what they're going to do and any solos in my game already have a role and can see pick intent. I feel your pain, I really do.

I want you to join me for a second and try to join me in seeing things from a different perspective.

Ranked is a big draw. Imagine this guy convinces a couple friends to pick up League. They get to lvl 30 and want to go play ranked and tryhard together, and... shit.

I feel their pain, too. So did Riot. That's why they made DQ.

Your pain matters. My pain matters. Those friends' pain matters. That's why we need both pure solo queue and club ranked, so all of us have a competitive ranked queue we love.

Its similar to the support position problems. Players generally feel bad when playing support as they have the least amount of gold in their team (so they can't build tanky or damage). As such, when things go badly and the enemy team is mostly winning, there's very little they feel they can do. And riot gives them no rewards for playing support despite it giving such a shitty feeling from time to time (as an salty 4 man premade ignoring and isolating you feels like). So, most players stopped playing support, and the reason why queue times are so long, is because there's not a bunch of support players. Which is very obvious at higher elos when it takes over 10 minutes to find a game. Few of them want sup role.

Imagine Riot started giving bonus IP weekends for playing support, extra hextech rewards for playing support, and let supports choose their position, to make the role feel worth it. Wouldn't that be great? Supports would feel valued.

Or maybe, everyone not playing support would feel like Riot only cares about supports, and the solution isn't to give artificial bonuses for playing support -- it's to give the support role more gold so they can feel valuable.

Supports are like premades. Before, there was no real incentive to play in a premade. You couldn't play ranked and it took a longer time to form a group. Why do that when you can just queue solo? So Riot added a bunch of incentives to make people feel like it was worth the extra time and effort to form a premade... and now it feels like they're favoring premades.

Serika Zero2 votes

you get inherited advantage playing as premades over solo, from your own point "its more fun with friends", as in the mall example also you can use voice communication to talk in game over taking time to write shit down in chat and also, you can use voice communication to more easily set up plays its an even more big deal in europe where not everyone speaks english, if you have a premade from your own country, as in real life friends vs randoms online

premades used to have "normals, draft, aram, tt, dominion". Now they have everything. premades are nothing like supports, premades are like adcs. And riot wants them in every fucking position.

There was more then enough initiative for premades. Riot themselves said that there were many duos playing the game in ranked but you didn't know it since they weren't open about. Also, in season 3, they removed the ability for 3rd party websites to tell you who is premade with whom simply because of too many premades.

Sry, the fact that support players have very little initiative is similar to soloq players. Not to premades. Premades get everything and they want more, and more and more and more. Fuck this shit, I'm solo, and since nobody wants me here, i'm out

Hyrum Graff4 votes

[{quoted}](name=Serika Zero,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YlTcjEEf,comment-id=0010000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2016-06-07T17:07:26.793+0000)

-snip-

I don't have too much more to say. I think there should be ranked queues for both solos and premades. Both players have valid desired, and both deserve a queue that suits their needs.

Dengeden3 votes

I had to repeat myself but the strategies you can pull off as a coordinated team really are neither numerous or intricate. The game is still comprised of a lot of micro that is entirely up to the individual players. What premades do that wouldn't happen in soloQ are the following: -If a team mate falls behind, they don't hang him out to dry or flame him. -Once laning phase ends, they make decisive calls.

Silent Reaper3 votes

I want pure Solo Q with role selection added to it.

Karn Bishop2 votes

I was going to argue your points but you make sense, restoring a true solo queue while adding ranked clubs, this is essentially a massive support modification to team ranked 5's and i think that is a GOOD thing and in fact i think you do not go far enough, you should add in the ability to search for clubs / set a club to recruit mode so it shows up for people to try out.

This helps out both groups and as a true solo queue only player i would honestly use both systems because neither game mode screws me over or treats me like a last minute thought trash.

riot never came up with this system for the simple reason that they never even bothered looking at methods to fix alter or evolve the 5v5 system outside of Lytes crusade for dynamic and they can say what they wish but the fact that they never even tried to experiment with live 5v5 changes even if it was only increased rewards says a lot about their mindsets back then.

DeathBurst2 votes

Well, this a thoroughly thought out suggestion that actively try to solve the issue instead of scapegoating DQ. This is great. That being said, I always was on the side of DQ in this debate, so I hope you don't mind me goading you a bit, for the sake of constructive discussion.

But first, I'd like to correct the single one factual mistake I found in your thread:

The Trade-off: Balance vs Queue Times vs Control and all the stuff about number of possible combinations

Everyone is saying that, and that DQ increases the Queue Timer and so on. And everyone gives a similar example with a small number of people, and shows how DQ dramatically reduces the number of possible combination. But that's not how it works, because you're not trying to find combinations in a fixed set of players. This is not a static application, it's a stream application. If at a given time you have 500 players in queue, you don't need to find the "most fair" combination among all the possible combinations to create 50 matches. You'll just create as many fair matches as you can quickly find, and maybe it will be only 30 matches, and it's no problem, you'll sort the 200 remaining players with the next 300 that will join. It's not a problem of combinatorics, it's a problem of sorting the flux of players joining the queue. You need to find quickly pieces that matches in a huge set of pieces, but you don't need to process all the pieces all at the same time.

And the thing is, it's pretty easy to find pieces that match. If a Duo must covers 3 roles, there are 9 possible selections, and 5 of them are good to fill a given Trio that covers 4 roles. That means any random Duo and Trio have more than 50% chance of being compatible, assuming equal distribution of roles. For Quadra, they are forced to cover all 5 roles, so any single Solo that joins the queue can fill a Quadra. And the fact that there is still a majority of Solos in the middle of it all only make it easier.

So, my ultimate point is: the Queue timer issues are overwhelmingly related to the new Champion Select and to the lack of Support. Not to Dynamic Queue and to the fact you have to piece together blocks of 2, 3, 4 people. An experimental evidence about that is that, whatever the size of your premade, whatever the roles you cover, as long as you have a support, your queue time is almost instant.

You talked about 3 factors: Balance, Queue Time, Control, but in fact, your "Control" factor is 2 different factors: Control of who you play with, and Control of your position. And it turns out that the 4 factors are not all linked together, at least not strongly. Balance is mostly linked with Control of who you play with, whereas Queue Time is mostly linked with Control of your position. You don't have one complex trade-off with 4 factors, you have 2 almost independent trade-offs with 2 factors each. And when you look at what measures Riot took : no 4- or 5-man in Diamond+ to preserve balance, and potential auto-fill for all ELOs (but mostly in High ELO) to reduce queue timers.

Ok, with that out of the way, here comes the friendly goading ;)

  1. Why people would play both in Solo and Club Ranked? What incentive do they have? At first glance, I can see none, and if that's really the case, don't you fear that one of the queue --and most probably Club, let's be honest-- will die due to lack of players? This wouldn't be an acceptable situation for Riot, because Club is the queue they would want to promote, it's the one most in accord with their philosophy and their vision of competitive League for the future. So saying "let's make 2 queues, and too bad if one of them die, as long as the other is healthy" is not something they would do.

  2. I really think you overestimate the impact of DQ on the average solo player (and average means mostly people below Plat, since Plat+ is already less than 10% of the whole Ranked community). For one, Solo-Q'ers are simply the majority of players. It's nice to bring in new people into Ranked thanks to the flexibility of DQ, but 3- and 4-man squads didn't suddenly overtook the player-base. Second, some premades are just semi-random people that met in a previous game, and who won't have such an extraordinary coordination, maybe not even voice comm's (especially true in EUW due to the various different languages); you actually mentioned that as an issue for Balancing, so you know it. But fully organized team are a very very small minority, and even then, people in these teams would probably also play Solo when the team's not available, so they wouldn't be "boosted" much higher than their true solo rank either.So in the end, most games won't be different than the games in previous seasons. My ultimate point is: I quite like your suggestions, but it would be a major undertaking. DQ isn't 100% perfect, especially for the top 2-3% of players. But if DQ can be 90% perfect for 90% of the Ranked player base, is such a big undertaking worth the cost?

J Blub2 votes

TL:DR Problems DQ:Solos dont enjoy DQ but there are good things about DQ like que with friends.

Solution:Club Ranked You join a club so you can play with friends so you can grind to whatever rank and even make it to LCS.Solo que coexist because of not having to need DQ.Maybe a few errors sorry Hyrum Graff

XeroKimo1 votes

I'd perfer if either A bring back solo Queue and return teams, but instead put your idea in instead of ranked teams (or if possible have both) B Remove 4 and 5 man from DQ and add your idea/return team ranked

Hyrum Graff3 votes

{quoted}

I'd perfer if either A bring back solo Queue and return teams, but instead put your idea in instead of ranked teams (or if possible have both) B Remove 4 and 5 man from DQ and add your idea/return team ranked

It seems my post was unclear, but Club Ranked is intended to be an addition to pure solo queue, not a replacement. I have edited my post to reflect this.

Lirik1 votes

i wanna feel the experience of "sheep-herding" again and i find your logic and ideas of a great interess, riot should legit discusss this matter with you. i hope they change theirs minds ... :(

Hyrum Graff2 votes

{quoted}

riot should legit discusss this matter with you

I'm going to chat with Pwyff about it in client some time. I may wait a bit, though; I know he's probably getting bombarded every time he logs in right now, and I want to respect his time and not abuse my access.

Ripzoner1 votes

I'm the guy that usually doesn't give a damn about reading forum posts, but to me this is possibly the most creative solution I've ever heard of and I'm glad I read it. Nothing like it ever occurred to me. I can't find any AVOIDABLE fault with your logic or suggestions, bearing in mind that there is no such thing as a perfect system. As a sidenote, what happened to the reddit post? https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/4mvl6x/dynamic_queue_has_problems_but_so_did_the_old/

Ripzoner1 votes

As a side note, a reasonable representation of "club prestige" might simply be a running total of all club members' LP gains and losses, (possibly or possibly not divided by the number of games played; I can see arguments for both in the form of quantity vs quality) from the time of them joining. Essentially the old ELO system, with no divisions as brackets. The higher the number, the better. That way, a club with a majority of serious players who win a majority of games will raise their club's prestige quickly and consistently. If a person feels dissatisfied with their club's progress, they can simply seek a different club.

Hyrum Graff1 votes

[{quoted}](name=I Hate That Guy,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YlTcjEEf,comment-id=00310000,timestamp=2016-06-18T23:27:13.506+0000)

As a side note, a reasonable representation of "club prestige" might simply be a running total of all club members' LP gains and losses, (possibly or possibly not divided by the number of games played; I can see arguments for both in the form of quantity vs quality) from the time of them joining. Essentially the old ELO system, with no divisions as brackets. The higher the number, the better. That way, a club with a majority of serious players who win a majority of games will raise their club's prestige quickly and consistently. If a person feels dissatisfied with their club's progress, they can simply seek a different club.

I am working on version 2 of club ranked, which simplifies a lot.

Hyrum Graff1 votes

[{quoted}](name=I Hate That Guy,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YlTcjEEf,comment-id=0031,timestamp=2016-06-18T23:19:54.604+0000)

I'm the guy that usually doesn't give a damn about reading forum posts, but to me this is possibly the most creative solution I've ever heard of and I'm glad I read it. Nothing like it ever occurred to me. I can't find any AVOIDABLE fault with your logic or suggestions, bearing in mind that there is no such thing as a perfect system. As a sidenote, what happened to the reddit post? https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/4mvl6x/dynamic_queue_has_problems_but_so_did_the_old/

Reddit mods happened to it. There was a temp ban on DQ posts.

BushidoBlade1 votes

Add a check box to Dynamic Queue for Solo Players.

I know that it would be essentially, bringing back Solo Q, but they would both be based off of the DQ MMR. That way, players cannot tank their Solo Q MMR to manipulate Dynamic Q match making.

Hyrum Graff1 votes

{quoted}

Add a check box to Dynamic Queue for Solo Players.

I know that it would be essentially, bringing back Solo Q, but they would both be based off of the DQ MMR. That way, players cannot tank their Solo Q MMR to manipulate Dynamic Q match making.

So my DQ mmr influences my solo mmr but not the other way around? Why not just tank my DQ mmr to manipulate my SQ matches?

The issue you bring up is why I decided on the solution I did -- where solo wins influence club mmr less when your solo rank is further from your team rank. That way if you try to tank solo, very quickly you stop affecting DQ very much.

Also, if Riot decided to do club ranked, they probably wouldn't call it club ranked, they'd call it... Dynamic queue. The actual changelog from a matchmaking perspective is rather small: you may now only queue with friends who are in the same club as you, instead of all clubs, and you can only be matched with randoms in the same club -- but you can invite everyone in your club to make this easier. All the other purely mechanical changes are behind-the-scenes.

jaymc11301 votes

Here's what I cannot stand about DQ:

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/dGXmekty-ok-this-is-my-god-damn-problem-with-fuckin-dynamic-queue-right-here

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