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Role queue actually lowers matchmaking quality.

Disembark·10/25/2019, 6:13:00 PM·14 votes·6,842 views

A lot of high elo players are actually starting to notice this as a root cause: you don't have to be "as good as the elo" to be in that elo. What I mean is, it's so much easier to 1-trick or play 1 role all the way to a certain rank - but your actual understanding of the game is still very low.

So like before role queue - once you got into a Plat game, everyone would have an overall somewhat equal understanding of the game. Now, you get into a Plat game - and you know if you're going to win from champ select. People that are autofilled will probably have no clue how to play other roles because they will get their main role AND champion in 90% of games. So someone playing fill every game is probably better at the game than someone only playing one champion, in the same rank.

I think in actual high elo, maybe Master + - role queue should no longer exist. You need to be a good player to hit challenger, not just good at one champion/role. Straight up.

64 Comments

Subdue10/25/2019, 6:57:47 PM11 votes

If you really believed that playing all roles proficiently is necessary to be "better at the game" why are 95% of your ranked games in the same role?

The Kombinator10/25/2019, 7:28:37 PM7 votes

As a support main i can tell you how much BULLSHIT is behind this. Even before the role selection i got support 99% of the time. I tried other roles, and has some basic knowledge about them, but when it comes to gameplay, then as support i'm on gold2, gold1 level, and with other roles i'm probably on silver, or maybe bronze.

Strategic decisions has nothing to do with roles. The idea of not going into 1v5, because they gona destroy you has nothing to do with being top, mid, or jungle main. Knowing, that 2 mage aren't going to kill Baron has nothing to do with being ADC main. This knowledge can be gathered everywhere.

What truly affects the role selection is the inability to understand the situation of others. Some player might not understand what is like playing on top, and getting pummeled under turret, because they never did that. This can lead to more flaming, and toxic kids. But it's not the reason of making bad strategic decisions in midgame, or lategame. Maybe in early game, but just as at the workplace. I trust the other main to know his role, and not trying to know it better. Even though i have a basic knowledge about it.

Keiaga10/25/2019, 6:48:03 PM5 votes

The guy who plays random characters for 100 matches in a fighting game and knows the movelist of every other character isn't going to be as good as the guy that played ths same character 100 times and has a deeper, more nuanced understanding of that character's skillset. I understand that some people can't handle playing an offrole, but that has always been an issue even before role queue.

Talisid10/25/2019, 7:29:11 PM3 votes

If you really want to go back to people yelling at each other in champ select trying to get their role and having your support just feed the entire game because he didn't want to play support, I really question your sanity.

Titanium7010/25/2019, 9:12:14 PM2 votes

So like before role queue - once you got into a Plat game, everyone would have an overall somewhat equal understanding of the game.

Amen. Gameknowledge in the middle elo tiers dropped so much over the years its absolutely disgusting! The amount of player who have no clue how to actually win a game in PLAT (aka top 10% of players!!!) is mindblowing!

Whisper8710/25/2019, 6:40:33 PM2 votes

I definitely agree. I've said for a long time that spoon feeding casuals is going to be the downfall of this game. It has already negatively impacted a lot of other big titles. But yeah, students of the game SHOULD have an inherent advantage over 1 tricks.

Now some have made the argument that pro players all just play 1 role at the highest level. But since they are a legit 5 man squad that are hypercoordinated...they all understand each other's roles from scrims/practice/team meetings/vod review, etc.

See before there were set roles, you never knew how many matches you'd have to play to get your preferred role. You might go to your 2nd role for 3 games, go to your 3rd preference for 1 game, and get your main only like 1 game in 5. That definitely happened to me a few times. Despite sometimes having to play several games in a row in your "off" role, the beauty of that system is that it forces you to take every match seriously. In the current system when someone gets autofilled, people just are like, "fk it, its only 1 game. I'll be back to my main role for the next handful. So I'll just do whatever this game" and then they pick some champ they've never played before, go full damage no matter the role, and play like an aggro monkey all game long, or abandon their lane when they start to get behind.

So a system where you have to be at least serviceable at any role is better not even because it makes you a "better player", but it's just far less open to one guy trolling cuz they got autofilled. They have skin in the game because there is no gurantee they will get their role next game, or even the game after. So they HAVE to go tryhard in every match.

Fella Air10/26/2019, 2:49:15 AM1 votes

I like the role queue, but I think it has room for improvement.

I've been playing since the end of season 3 so I at least kind of know what I'm talking about. I remember what it was like back when you had to spam "Mid mid mid mid mid" at the start of a lobby, and even if you typed it first someone else would lock mid and just say "haha ur supp"... And what are you gonna do about it.

Then there was team builder.

lol team builder

Then they introduced role queue and it was pretty ok at first. No one queued up for support, but by that point I had just given up and become a support main so it didn't bother me as much. What bothers me now is autofill, which as I recall was introduced about a season later. I would kill for a little check box I could click that says "I am willing to wait an extra 5+ minutes if it means I don't get autofilled or have autofills on my team". It would be well worth the wait. The system is also super weird, too. Like me and my duo both get offroled to stuff we didn't even select as one of our two mains in the lobby... Or when I play 20 games of support in a row, want to change it up again and go mid, and still get offroled to support. Feelsbad.

Honestly, I think the requirements to get into ranked at all should be higher. You should have to do 10 or so games in each role to qualify, and you really shouldn't be able to pick a champ you're under mastery 4 with. This would also discourage smurfs since it would take longer to get an account and your favorite champs eligible for ranked. Less smurfs = Very good in my book. [sg-zephyr]

Subdue10/26/2019, 8:54:42 AM1 votes

I'm going to have to agree with Keiaga here. I'd liken it to learning to play tennis. When you first learn tennis, you learn to hit forehands and backhands first. Strategy takes a backseat until you're comfortable with those basics. Sometimes you see new players trying to do all sorts of fancy stuff when they don't have those basics down yet, and they end up flat on their faces most of the time. And in league it's the same thing. Playing a small pool, or even a single champion, extensively lets you build the muscle memory for how to make the champion do what you want it to do. And the less you have to concentrate on making the champion do what you want, the more you're able to take a game-wide view. People who jump from champion to champion frequently take much longer to build up that muscle memory, which almost always bleeds into their macro play. After all, if you're hyperfocused on how to land your combo on the laning opponent, how will you ever have time to glance at the map and see that you need to teleport?

AronCartman10/26/2019, 8:03:41 PM1 votes

But you are P3, hitting masters for you means the system is not working.

Gaelicmoon1/8/2020, 7:45:04 PM1 votes

that is a strange theory considering that professional teams have players with assigned roles.

Kai Guy10/25/2019, 9:22:28 PM1 votes

Issue with player appeasement systems. Riot added Role selection to deal with issues caused by players who refused to not branch out. This made issues for popular roles vs unpopular roles as a balanced team is important to winning. So riot added auto fill because the strain for low population roles was an issue. People half ass filled games and still refuse to learn how to branch out. Fill protection is added. Which now ups the odds of some one getting filled per game dependent on # of protected accounts. So... Positional MM and Positional Ranks got made for s9. People suck behaved terrible so Positional Rankes went sidewise and fked ranked up for months. that got gutted. Positional MM however... No evidence riot removed it after pushing it out this preseason. Given that folks halfassed positional rank/que so badly I can kinda see why its not being discussed much. People will rage regardless over any changes they make.

My guess is its doing a stronger job of keeping folks who don't aim to learn more roles from climbing as reliably or high as before. So... more angry frustrated stuck players with fragile egos who will rage and tilt about everything anybody besides themselves does in a game.

Telling yall, This game would be made much better if the competitive experience was about pre made 5 man. If Riot took the time to really incentivize their club/clan system and made it THE competitive experience.

Kai Guy10/26/2019, 12:15:20 AM1 votes

@Disembark To be fair. Theres nothing inherently wrong with role que if players are willing to still learn multiple roles and it would not solve the issue if it did not exist should players completely refuse to learn multiple roles. MM quality wont improve if you have 4 MID OR FEED teammates.

Game quality goes up when folks know how to be team players but that's largly being ignored this season. Just have to wait for folks to realize a teamgame needs teamwork and for riot to buff their behavior system to find and remove the folks soft inting and the toxic smurfs who are trying to sink to pub stomp.

Mihalikb10/26/2019, 1:03:45 AM1 votes

Or. Just remove auto fill already and deal with the queue times.

I'd prefer to wait 30 minutes before every single game and play what I want over being forced into a role or champ I don't want to play and spend 30 mins either losing, getting flamed or sucking ass, just to lose LP in the end no matter what.

Or make auto fill optional with an incentive to turn it on, like extra Blue Essence or even like an extra 5% LP per win as long as you have auto fill on.

Weexazys10/26/2019, 1:13:45 AM1 votes

Yes because its actually way more quality and healthier for the first ones to load into champ selec to be able to choose their roles and then all the "mid or feed" idiots come in and destroy a game...

Pika Fox10/26/2019, 1:21:26 AM1 votes

Not entirely.

This means role disparity is far higher. People's main roles are much higher skill than the other roles, and are in general far better than the top players years ago on that role.

The trade off is players literally cannot play any other role nearly as well. Its how specialization works.

When carts were a thing, most people knew how to repair/replace the wheels. When cars came out, most people knew basic mechanics to repair them (they were also simpler). Nowadays, most individuals dont know how to change the oil in their car or have the tools to even swap out a flat tire. We specialized and now we just go to jiffy lube or pep boys or your local mom and pops shop for that.