@Riot, a Few Sincere Questions About the AutoFill System

So, just to preface, I'm not going to complain about the AutoFill System. It seldom affects me, and even when it does, it's very short-lasting - and on top of all that, those cases where it does affect me simply help me become better as the jack-of-all-trades that I want to be. Instead, I have two questions I'm personally curious about regarding the AutoFill System, so I'm hoping that one or two of the Rioters with insight and experience with it might be able to answer me.

Moving onto the actual questions, the first and probably foremost of my interest is:

How does AutoFill Protection work? I'm primarily asking this because a lot of posts on the boards have me confused - some say they lose AFP from people dodging matches in Champion Select, and I think others have said they simply run out seemingly too early. So, to break down this question a little more for specificity:

• How many "stacks" of AutoFill Protection does one get for playing Support or getting Filled?
• Do you lose "stacks" of AutoFill Protection just for getting into a Champion Select Screen, or do they fall off exclusively from matches played?

As a little bit of personal curiosity - I recently played some matches with AutoFill Protection (after voluntarily queuing as Support), and tried my best to keep mental track of the duration (I didn't really want to waste time/paper/etc. on something I really didn't know or care much about - why worry how many matches of AFP you get when you seldom even get AFP?) and, by my best recollection, I had 3 people dodge and two actual matches with AutoFill Protection, but my third actual match I had no AFP - so, my guess is, it's on a per-successful team matchup basis, and you have five "stacks" of AFP whenever you get it - but, regardless of how right or wrong my guess might be, I would definitely love to hear some insight from a Rioter.

And now, for my second question (this is more out of genuine curiosity, and the actual math might probably just fry my brain):

How does the Matchmaking System as a whole work? Primary roles, secondary roles, Fill, and AutoFill - I'm personally pretty curious about the inner-workings of the Matchmaking Role finding system works. Breaking this question down as well:

• How does the game determine whether or not a player gets their Primary or Secondary role?
• How does the game determine whether or not a player gets AutoFilled into a non-Primary, non-Secondary role?
• (and, for any Rioter who doesn't mind getting into statistics) Which roles have Fill and AutoFill most heavily targeted over time?

Throwing out a personal hypothesis, I run on the assumption that matchmaking has time-based milestones for unlocking further search criteria for your match - say, you don't have AutoFill Protection - it takes a minute or so, so it opens search for your Secondary role, but even that takes quite some time extra, and the game decides to favor putting you in a match over putting you in a role, searching for any openings past that second milestone.

But, that's a painfully simple assumption (if a logical one), so any Rioters out there who might have something to say about it (if you can, anyway) would be greatly welcomed to add input. As for the third sub-question; I'm not personally hoping to take up any Rioter's free time digging around logs for what roles are effectively most and least targeted by AutoFill, but I am still heavily curious to see whether or not role popularity has shifted any since the last time Riot mentioned role popularity. Even if that doesn't directly pertain to AutoFill, just knowing which roles are most and least popular would still indirectly sate my curiosity.

So, whether or not I actually get a response, I do hope this provokes some interesting thought among Riot members who happen to read this, and as usual for any post I make directed at Riot, I thank you all for the good you do for your community. [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]