Please give me a reason to pick FILL again in RANKED

Dr Poro··25 votes·6,579 views

#PROBLEM

In the old draft mode, the flexibility of being able to play every role was a great perk as you could allow your team mates to pick their prefered role so you don't have to carry the game yourself. With the new champion select, everyone receives this perk of having teammates on their prefered roles. While this is a good thing (less toxicity pregame), I feel sad that there is now no reason to pick fill.

I like to play every role in the game occasionally but picking fill just puts you at a disadvantage while you get nothing in return. You have to improve in 5 roles to climb while others just focus on their 2 best roles. I assume that Riot had this idea of 'everyone should main one role like they do in LCS' but LoL is not LCS! (refering to dynamic queue complaints). Yes, you get a shorter queue time, but that means shit if you put yourself at a competitive disadvantage and thus more likely to lose your game.

When you pick fill, you will probably perform below your skill level compared to if you picked only 2 roles. This is not only bad for you, but for your entire team! I don't have the statistics but I would say that people picking fill have a below 50% average winrate, unless there's some covariate playing a part here.

#SUGGESTION

When you queue as fill in ranked, matchmaking will count your MMR as slightly lower for the sake of finding a match, calculating team's MMR and MMR gain/loss. Netto this would mean that you will have slightly easier games, I'm thinking about ±50 MMR (Riot should monitor which would be the most fair value). To clarify this means that if you're high plat I, you'd be matched as a low plat I instead.

#PROS

  • People who like to fill can once again pick their prefered queue option in ranked.
  • More people filling means shorter queue times for everyone! (matchmaking will no longer have to search incredibly long to find supports less populated roles)
  • More people filling means that there will be a smaller chance for 'fill' people to become support. For example: If there are 100 slots for supports that have to be filled and there are 150 people picking fill, you'd get 110 people as support, and 10 for each other role. That's 73% chance to get support. If you have 300 people picking fill for the same shortage of supports, that would be 140 supports and 40 for each other role, so only 46% chance of getting support. tldr: role distribution will be better normalized.

#CONS

  • People can pick fill and then claim mid anyways. I always advocated for a report option in champion select. This would be just one more reason for that. I don't really expect many players to do this, though. The MMR grace you get shouldn't be too big to become a must.
  • You could pick fill and dodge every time you don't get your prefered role. Once again, I don't expect this to be a big deal, but Riot should keep an eye on it and possibly increase the penalties.

21 Comments

RevokeFaith8 votes

I used to fill, prefering mid and support but now I pick mid and top because otherwise I get support all the time. They need to do something about it.

DeathBurst3 votes

You can go back to picking mid/sup, they made an update two or three weeks ago, and now I get roughly 60% mid/top -- 40% sup by picking mid/sup or top/sup.

Before I was picking Jungle secondary, for the very same reason as you, but now it's much better and I can go back to my beloved sup secondary :)

KuroTheHero5 votes

Reasons to pick fill in ranked: You wanted to support and didn't feel like picking a secondary role anyways

DeathBurst2 votes
  • On one hand, I agree that the old strategy of "I'm a Filler main, I'm average everywhere, I just won't feed but I'll make sure you get your best role and I'll let you carry" isn't possible anymore, and I find that a bit sad. I tended to do that a bit in late season 4 / early season 5, when I was still quite new in the game, and that was a very fun way to play and improve my general knowledge of the game.

  • On the other hand, I do not support your suggestion and I think that meddling with the MMR system is very dangerous. Maybe something unrelated to gameplay/ranking would be better, such as higher key fragment drop rates/higher IP rewards.

BloodyTompon1 votes

{quoted}

  • On the other hand, I do not support your suggestion and I think that meddling with the MMR system is very dangerous. Maybe something unrelated to gameplay/ranking would be better, such as higher key fragment drop rates/higher IP rewards.

There's already behind the scenes MMR adjustments. Most people just don't know and most people don't realise. If it's within a certain range where the matches are still reasonable most of the time, does it really matter? The problem I have with this and your suggestions is they are all highly invisible. Just as most people do not realise MMR is adjusted, people are not going to realise that IP is slightly higher or keys drop slightly more frequently. Due to that it doesn't come off as a great motivator to me.

Dr Poro1 votes

Those things would be good to promote filling in normals, but in ranked you only care about your rank. I'm not suggesting this to get an advantage, just to be on even grounds.

BigBellBrute2 votes

The reason you pick fill is to play support 98% of the time instead of the 100% that happens when you pick support.

Lugg1 votes

They should make it where you don't get the same role twice in a row. That way you only support 50% of the time as a fill.

BloodyTompon1 votes

To add to the second con, when you do receive the preferred role the discrepancy in MMR is higher than otherwise. The extent to which that is a problem is difficult to know without Riots data though.

I agree with your problem, not too sold on MMR manipulation being the solution. It's doable, could become very messy and complicated. It might be better to have some external reward.

Edit. You're detailing two slightly separate issue if I'm reading it correctly. Fill playing below average and motivating people to select fill. MMR seems like it could work for the first one, but I do not think it would have much of an impact on the second.

Dr Poro1 votes

Quite good feedback. The issue of the unpredictable 'real elo' of players picking mid is a hard one to tackle in the current system. The only way to truely solve that would be to have hidden MMR based on each role separately.

I think if they made a big announcement about this change, people will see it (although that would probably be only temporarily). Other changes to make fill more attractive would help, however, it shouldn't attract the people that don't actually want to play every role.

Celeste Benal1 votes

What you don't like playing support every game?

Always Be Polite1 votes

There should be more threads like these.

arrowhead21k1 votes

I don't get it. before you picked fill so everybody else got their preferred role, but now that everybody can get their preferred role you want to give an advantage to those who can play every role and put everybody else at a disadvantage. If you don't want to fill or you aren't as good in every role then don't pick fill. there are people who are equally good in every role. that's why fill is there.

Dr Poro1 votes

I don't want people picking fill to have an advantage, but just compensate for the disadvantage they currently have in ranked. Filling lost the advantage it gave, leaving it as a competitively bad decision. You have to be equally good in 5 roles to climb as high as someone else can with just two roles. I'm sorry if the problem is too complicated for you.

arrowhead21k1 votes

Filling lost the advantage it gave, leaving it as a competitively bad decision

What advantage did it lose? I already explained that the only advantage it gave was everybody elses preferred role. Not getting your preferred role was a problem that the new champ select fixed. The only reason to pick fill is if you know you are equally good in every role and want to play any role. You should not be rewarded for putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage.

You have to be equally good in 5 roles to climb as high as someone else can with just two roles

Next time, actually read my comment before commenting. I already said, there are people who are equally good in every role. that's why fill is there.

Ryzing2Diamond1 votes

In my opinion you should get higher rewards for playing fill. LIke, maybe it takes the fact that you're not playing a specific role and gives you a higher mastery rating considering that? A little extra IP? I mean, if playing with pre-mades means you get higher IP and higher mastery, why the fuck does helping everyone by reducing queue times not give you bonuses?

Darius and chill1 votes

Riot could EASILY put a bit of time on increasing incentives to pick fill in a balanced way, I actualy used to win alot of games by filling in the old queue, as this guy said, Im now forced to main 2 roles to not be at a disadvantage, which actually makes me enjoy the game less because I'm forced to have less variety in my games.

LU Vanilla Rice 1 votes

Because I can play support, so fill is pretty good ;)

Aptest1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Dr Poro,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=f6y0z78F,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-07-07T15:24:43.659+0000)

I like to play every role in the game occasionally but picking fill just puts you at a disadvantage while you get nothing in return. You have to improve in 5 roles to climb while others just focus on their 2 best roles.

Your theory is disconnected from observable reality. In your theory when you pick fill you get all roles. In reality you get just support.

When you pick fill, you will probably perform below your skill level compared to if you picked only 2 roles. This is not only bad for you, but for your entire team! I don't have the statistics but I would say that people picking fill have a below 50% average winrate, unless there's some covariate playing a part here.

There is covariate playing a major part here. The covariate is: picking fill = picking support. If you pick fill, you are support specialist that plays only one role which is support. therefore you are expected to have the same win rate for your role as other players on your team.

When you queue as fill in ranked, matchmaking will count your MMR as slightly lower for the sake of finding a match,

My purpose in playing ranked is to have team mates that are as good as possible; I play ranked because I do not wish to play with people who suck. If you reduce my MMR for the purpose of matchmaking you are guaranteeing me team mates and opponents who suck. If this is implemented I specifically will not pick fill ever again.

#PROS

  • People who like to fill can once again pick their prefered queue option in ranked.

I believe the main reason people do not pick "fill" at the moment is that you are placed as a support 95% of the time. having easier games will not make people pick fill more, because it will be mostly invisible. What will make people pick fill more is if fill gives you roles other than support.

For example: If there are 100 slots for supports that have to be filled and there are 150 people picking fill, you'd get 110 people as support, and 10 for each other role. That's 73% chance to get support. If you have 300 people picking fill for the same shortage of supports, that would be 140 supports and 40 for each other role, so only 46% chance of getting support. tldr: role distribution will be better normalized.

From queue times we know that the following example is closer to reality: there are 100 slots for supports, and 50 people are picking fill. therefore 100% of the people picking fill are placed as supports. if you have 100 people picking fill for the same shortage of supports, 100% of the people picking fill are placed as supports. tldr: if more people pick fill, it will have no influence on role distribution. however it will reduce queue times.

  • People can pick fill and then claim mid anyways.

Does this happen ?

  • You could pick fill and dodge every time you don't get your prefered role. Once again, I don't expect this to be a big deal, but Riot should keep an eye on it and possibly increase the penalties.

Does this happen?

Vargrjalmer1 votes

huh, in my timeline, picking autofill gets me top, jg , or mid, but picking top or mid gives me bot lane. mainly jg htough, nobody wants to touch that mess anymore

Vargrjalmer1 votes

what? i love fill, I choose it every time I do ranked (because then I dont have autofilled teammates) plus I can play every role

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