Problems with LoL and possible solutions.

Hey everyone, Dreamskies here. So, I've been playing League of Legends for a few years now, and over that time I've noticed some things that severely reduce the overall excitement and enjoyability of the game, and I simply decided to share some of those insights. Now, everything I'm laying out here is a result of my own personal experience in the game, experience gathered as both dedicated player and simply a fan of this game. So, I just have few things to point out that could be improved, as seen from my perspective.

1. Matchmaking Systems don't really work As far as I know, League of Legends uses various systems to provide the most balanced and enjoyable team and solo based experience to every player. As such, various criteria, for example, Match Making Rating are used to determine what players should team up with what players and what opponents should be picked for them so overall gameplay would be balanced. A.k.a. so there wouldn't be any super mega good players in a team of complete newbies. Or so a good, experienced teams wouldn't get 1 or 2 players who don't have much skill. Or so one ALLSTAR challenger tier team wouldn't face a poor cardboard 5 team. This is all done so the game would remain balanced while still being competitive enough that players would actually want to win. In theory, everything is very interesting and correct. But... But in practice it doesn't work. It may be error in coding of said systems, or simply their miscalculations or some other stuff, but in reality, more often than not these systems fail completely and game becomes focused more around being lucky than actual playing skill. I mean, how often do you get into a match and think "Wow. Both ally and enemy teams are so well balanced, they are equal in skill, this match is really great etc." My guess is, those matches make no more than 50% of total matches. How does it usually go? Even if both teams are "equally matched" on paper, in reality its way different story. On ally team somebody feeds hard as hell, even if they are playing a strong champion, on enemy team theoretically weak champion is snowballing so hard you lose the game. Why did that happen? Because some really bad player was assigned to your team and some challenger smurf was assigned to enemy team. One other thing I've noticed, that relates to these "Systems", is that boosting becomes a real issue here. Especially in Ranked matches, low ranked player with low MMR, for instance, have some friends who have high MMR. Low MMR players play with high MMR players, ascend ranks, get carried through matches by their teammates. Does that improve their actual skill? Not really. Does their MMR rise as a result of victories? Yes it does. Eventually those boosted players go play solo, get teamed up with other players who have equal MMR. What happens? Despite them having high MMR, they lack any actual skills, and they just sink their entire teams. Why does that happen? Because boosting. But hey Dream, you go on and rant about systems you didn't make, whine about stuff you didn't create, what right do you have to do so? Of course, you are correct, I didn't make any of these systems, probably I don't even know for a fact how EXACTLY they function. But does that make the problems less relevant? No. Possible solution to this particular problem? Change the matchmaking systems. Either optimize them, or tweak them to work differently. Remove MMR and use actual rank instead of MMR for matchmaking system. For example, make Bronze or Silver players be teamed only with Bronze or Silver players. Use actual indication of skill rather than some theoretical criteria that is based on their winrate or something. If bronze players will only be able to play with bronze players, they will have no other choice besides actually learning to play and developing their ACTUAL skills if they want to ascend a rank. If you are a featherweight boxer, you don't fight in heavyweight category, right? You only fight other featherweight boxers. The matchmaking by actual rank rather than MMR would also reduce the problem of boosted players. You can't be boosted by high MMR players if all players you play with are equal as you, right?

2. Increase penalties for AFK/Trolling/Intentional Feeding Now this is a hot topic, some people might agree, some people might hate, some people don't care. But the problem still remains: at least from my personal experience, at least 50% of matches have either an AFK, a Troll, or a Feeder. I'm glad to see Riot are moving in a right direction with this one though, we recently got an option to remake a match if somebody doesn't connect within 3 minutes. Of course, that is better than having 4v5, 3v5 or (what happened to me once) 1v5. But that **REMAKE **option doesn't solve all the problems. What if, lets say, a support goes AFK at 6th minute? Or jungler decides to take a pizza break and leaves the game at 15th minute? I do realize the problem of AFK cannot really be solved that easily, as no matter what you do, there will always be somebody once in a while who just goes afk, even if that happens 40 minutes into the game and match is 1 teamfight away from being either won or lost. But, something could still be done about that. Maybe increasing the REMAKE window until 10 minutes, or so. Of course, it would be absurd to remove the time cap entirely. I mean, who would want to play a 50 minute game just to have it remade because of somebody AFKing? That would be ridiculous! But 10 minutes, in my opinion, is pretty reasonable time. Most of people DC or AFK in the first 10-20 minutes of the game. So why not grant the rest of the team a right to remake a game, instead of wasting even more time, waiting till enemy team destroys turrets, and objectives, and nexus etc. Besides, at the current time, window for remake is only 30 seconds. If people are involved in fights, focused on match, actually thinking real hard and paying attention to last hitting, kiting, etc, they might not notice the prompt to remake. Hell, they might even not notice that somebody is afk, especially if its somebody like jungler, who doesn't generally become active in lanes till 10-15 minutes anyway. If they fail to notice the short remake prompt, thats it. They're stuck with AFKer and are unable to do anything about it. I do also realize that a certain amount of people AFK not because they chose to, but because of their hardware/software. I mean, pretty much everybody has encountered crashes/constant disconnections from the game, maybe there's interruptions on network, maybe their system is having errors out of nowhere, or electricity is suddenly gone, or something else caused them to afk. But that is minority of players, the rest are definitely going AFK on their own free will. Onto a problem of Trolls and Intentional feeding, penalties for that should be higher. Its one thing to AFK, even if it happens to everybody sometimes, but intentionally losing match is completely different story. Trolling and Intentional Feeding as just a bastardly thing to do. Ruining fun to everybody else just because you feel like it is not a legit reason to do so, yet many people still troll and feed simply because there is no real punishment for that. Whats the worst that can happen, you'll be banned for 30 days? Big deal. I even doubt that bans happen often, based purely on the amount of trolls/feeders I've encountered over the years, but especially in Season 6. I personally have reported what feels like a legion of players for feeding. Of course, there is a difference between a player who is intentionally feeding and a players who is simply unskilled. When a weak player is feeding, even thought it sucks, nothing can be done about it. He is simply bad player, nothing you can do about it. But when player literally walks into enemy turret repeatedly and gives kills to enemies, or just stands around doing nothing while he is being killed, or types something like "free kill mid" and then goes there just to feed an enemy, thats intentional feeding and it should be treated seriously. This is unsportsmanlike behaviour in its purest form. Onto the topic of Feeders/Afkers...

3. "Finding Match" times are way, way, way too long. Allegedly, League of Legends is extremely popular game, played by millions and adored by billions. So why do we have to wait for 10-15 minutes to even get into a match? I've noticed this problem increasing over the last 2 years. When I started to wait, back when Team Builder was still there, you would have to wait maybe 30-40 seconds maximum before you'd be loaded into a match lobby with other players. What about now? Few days ago I was recording my gameplay for a Youtube video. I recorded like 5 hours total. How much time have I spent playing? Just under 4 hours. That one extra hour was wasted looking at "Finding Match" screen. Over last 2 years, more and more people started playing League, it became more and more popular. So, why the wait times have increased so dramatically? I mean, in theory, the more people play the game, the more options are available, and higher supply of lobbies and teams should mean that you get assigned to a lobby faster. Now, I do realize the pure workload of servers at Riot and stuff has also increased, and I do recognize that being one of possible reasons for such long waiting times. Also, I admit that those systems I mentioned in the 1st point, Matchmaking Systems etc, also need to process more raw data and compare players, chose which ones to pair with who etc, and that takes time. But then my question is: Is anything being done to improve the situation? Is hardware being upgraded to handle so much more load? Are systems being optimized? Or is everything running at same level as it did 2 years ago, even despite all these increased loads? It is important, because that problem, the WAITING TIME, causes more problems than it might seem. First of all, the obvious problem. Wasting up to 50% of time just looking for a game is boring, and nobody likes that. We'd rather actually play, sharpen our skills, increase our mastery and knowledge of champions and strategies, actually COMPETE ** rather than waste time waiting for some lobby to be found. Sometimes, even more time is wasted outside of actual game, the reason for that being DODGING. You waste 10-15 minutes waiting for a lobby, just so somebody could dodge and you have to go through all the process again. When it happens once, its annoying as hell, but when that happens like 5 times in a row, its so infuriating you can get really interesting ideas about smashing things. Of course, there are people who don't care about this. For example, streamers. They stream their gameplay, but audience is there to see them, not just how they play. So while those said streamers wait for lobbies to be found, they interact with viewers, or they are saying something to their streams, getting food, etc. Basically doing things they can't do while playing due to them being focused and stuff. But what if you're just a regular person with a job/studies, you can only dedicate very limited time to a game, you chose that game to be League of Legends, you log it, start the match only to find that you have to waste majority of that dedicated time looking for a game rather than playing it. It is really annoying, and most likely next time you will chose to do something other than playing League. Long wait times also bring another problem. Whats with 20% Slower Queue on Midlane and 50% Faster Queue on Support? Of course, considering so many players playing midlane and so few playing support, something has to be done to encourage players to play support more often. But why does that "encouragement" actually result in extending already enormously long waiting times? What if I main exclusively midlane champions, and I only want to play that and don't like/can play any other lane? Why do I get penalized for playing the lane I like? To me personally, that seems unjustified. I myself main ADC, so I don't face the MIDLANE problem so often, but plenty of people do. Midlane/Support problem itself leads to another problem, related to TROLLING/INTENTIONAL FEDDING/AFKING. Some players, just tired of long waiting times, select not the positions they want to play, but positions that will allow them to get into game faster. Then, after getting into the game, they demand others to give them positions they want, otherwise they go do bad thins. "MIDLANE OR FEED" or some other variation of "..... or feed/afk/troll" is very common sight in the game. This is a practical example of such situation: There is a player, lets call him A. Player A is a god in midlane, and has toplane as his secondary position. Player A would like to play a match, but with all the waiting times and dodges he is forced to waste a lot of time. So he tricks the system and selects Support/Toplane as his positions for the match, despite the fact he doesn't play support, just because he wants to get into game faster. And indeed, get gets into the game, as a support. But since player A cannot play support, he asks whether toplane/midlane are willing to trade with him. Now, if somebody agrees to trade, the problem is solved. But, more often than not, players refuse to trade. For example, player A asks for midlane. Player B, who is midlane, refuses to trade, as he cannot play support. This leaves player A with 4 possible solutions: _a) get into game and possibly do well as a support b) get into game and fail miserably as a support, getting reported as a result c) say something like "screw you guys, no mid, im afk/feed/troll", and after getting into game, player A actually afk/feeds/trolls, getting reported/banned as a direct result d) Player A can dodge, and get time penalty, then he has to go over everything again till he either gets the lane he wants, or gives up on playing the game _ Now, as you can see, only 1 possible solution is favorable. And even then, this doesn't guarantee that player A will enjoy playing. Its hard to enjoy playing what you don't like. The rest of possible solutions of Player A problem are negative, nor for him, nor for his team. You can never know, maybe him afk/trolling/feeding will cause one or more players on their team to tilt in case of loss, resulting in even more losses for them if they are unable to get back. That comes from the fact that player A was encouraged to chose position he doesn't play just because that would result him into game faster. In this case, it doesn't even matter if Midlane/Support selection ACTUALLY INFLUENCES THE WAITING TIME . The very fact that it indicated as a direct modifier to the possible waiting time is the problem. ** It seems a small problem at first, But when you start to think about it, there are many, many problems that come out of that. Really, I guess at least 30% of Trolling/AFK/Tilting/RageQuitting/Feeding related problems could be solved simply by reducing waiting times. Of course, that would not fix ALL of the problems, but certainly high amount of problems would be solved.

So what you guys think about this? Am I right, am I wrong, am I whining 2 much? Leave your feedback, and also vote in the pool. Hopefully Riot will get our message. Also, upvote so more people would be reached with this.