My letter to Riot Games: Normal Draft

https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/5c2wp1/my_letter_to_riot_games_normal_draft/

@Riot "Normal Draft will be retired at the start of preseason for all regions except North America, Europe West, and Brazil. Our goal is to offer the fewest number of queues that give unique experiences (so we can keep queues healthy) while keeping disruption low, and in all regions except NA/EUW/BR, normal draft had very low participation. In an ideal world, we’d like to retire normal draft in all regions."

Its clear you guys didn't learn your lesson with the whole removal of solo queue last season. Its cool, That's why we are here to gently remind you that Removing Queues is not okay in any which way, Shape, or Form. There is a fine line between tweaking things to further improve the player experience, And tweaking things that clearly should not be tweaked.

Now, I believe removing Normal Draft pick is a terrible idea because:

1. People use Draft pick to: get my preferred roles, find faster queues, Practice bans/counter match ups for ranked, Try out certain builds against certain team comps, Provide a much more relaxing and enjoyable experience for me and my teammates through strategic planning... (I could go on forever). Us, the people who genuinely want a good time, are going to suffer.

2. Blind pick is cool and all, But the main issue is that it is BLIND. You could play whatever you want which is cool, but theres nothing more frustrating then going in blind and getting completely curb stomped because the enemy team decided to go Hard Engage comp while your team decided to play Squishy poke champs. Draft pick eliminates such unfavorable match-ups.

3. I don't know if you realize this Riot, But as a person who has played your game for countless of hours on end, I can safely say that Draft Queues and Blind Queues have entirely different metas. And all that balancing and tweaking you have been doing, Is based largely off of Draft Queue meta (The most popular Meta). So by removing it, you are undoing hundreds if not thousands of hours of work. Meaning that This is not only unfair to us, your loyal customers. But also unfair to your own employees.

4. Ranked queue is stressful as hell. I come to league to have fun and relax every single day. and Normal queue is the perfect balance between serious play and Fun. Ive grown to love it along with the entire community. Its a place where we can go to escape this worry of climbing the ladder and the stress of not knowing what you're up against. Please dont take that from us.

5. For the longest time Riot, I wasn't comfortable playing ranked. When I first hit 30 I thought I was ready, but in reality I was far from it. When I realized this I stopped playing ranked, and instead played the next closest thing. Normal Draft. This allowed me to get comfortable in the game in a Ranked-like Environment Without actually hurting my Teammates or my own season ranking. Now dont get me wrong, I still finished Bronze. But at the beginning of the season I placed Bronze 1 (Default) And rapidly dropped to Bronze 5. Then I stopped playing ranked regularly and focused on learning the game. I used ranked Queue as a indication as to whether I was getting better or not. And as the season neared its close, I decided to start playing ranked seriously again and see how far I came this season. And Miraculously I started to climb (rather easily) as a support main, Even with the Dynamic queues.

My point is, Riot, I think I speak for a vast majority of your player base when I say we Value your Normal queue. Just like we Value your solo queue. So This time instead of going the long way around, Why not just listen to whats being flooded through Reddit and league of legends forums. We want Normal Queue, why try to take it away?

Sincerely,

Exerxes