As someone who never played it, was Solo Queue that good?

Kadavik·Jun 4, 2016·41 votes·3,152 views

I started playing since season 4, my first login screen was the football world cup one. I have over 500 games on my account. Yet I never really played ranked. I always kept hearing stories on these boards about being blindly matched up with trolls, bought accounts, DCs and the overall hell that was Soloqueue if you didn't manage to carry your team. Because of this Ranked never really interested me. When Dynamic Queue came out I stopped playing Blind Pick and went with DQ Draft Pick instead so it would be easier for me and my friends to get the roles we wanted.

Overall my experience in Draft Pick has been extremely positive with almost no DCs and not a single Troll, and whenever I played solo I was never really bullied or falsely reported by premades, which I hear is the biggest complaint. But its not Ranked DQ. So i want to ask you guys how bad is DQ Ranked really when it comes to these topics and how it compares to Soloqueue. Also keep in mind we have enough rage in the Boards already so keep the discussion objective, respectful and explain the why of your thoughts. SOLOQ ROX AND DQ SUX! Won't cut it. Thanks guys and see you on the Rift.

168 Comments

BluePolarizerJun 4, 201636 votes

No. Solo queue was not good.

However, it was fair. To make it both good and fair, the new champ select was needed with the current tweaks to eliminate champ select ragers.

Dynamic queue - solos playing with premades on 1 ladder - is not good or fair.

KadavikJun 4, 201610 votes

But I seldom see premades with 5 people on them. More like 2 teams going against each other with 3 man premades and solos on both teams. Its not like you have teams completely made up of solos going against a 5 man premade every game.

BluePolarizerJun 4, 201611 votes

that doesn't matter though. Even if it was only 5 man vs. 5 man, solo vs. solo, duo vs. duo, etc it still is unfair.

Let's say someone is gold. Nobody knows what 'gold' means now, since they could've played only in a 5 man, or only played solo. Even if that 5 man was with people of equal elo who climbed with him, they have different skillsets than a player who played only solo games and only went against solos. Now add to the fact that the other people on a 5 man team could all be plats 1's while that player is gold 5. Plat 1 is 1 step away from diamond, gold 5 is barely above silver.

Do you think that 'gold' is representative of that player's skill level? If that player was playing solo, would he still be 'gold' in skill level?

Now you may say - OK, so he plays only in 5 mans and never plays solo, so that's measuring his 5v5 skill. NP, that's true. But it's measuring his 5v5 skill on a ladder which also has solos, duos, trios, etc.

But it's gold. The same gold that a player who plays only solo is ranked at.

KadavikJun 4, 20166 votes

But if a Troll or a DC, of which there were plenty in SQ ruins your series. Wouldn't this be unfair as well? I would much more likely prefer being able to destroy the concept of ELO hell if it meant having some silver level players in Gold etc.

BluePolarizerJun 4, 20166 votes

no it doesn't because on average trolls and DCs occur for the same rate for everyone, so it is fair. the only way for someone to increase their rate of getting trolls and DCs is to be more toxic, which is also fair as social skills are part of the skillset for solo queue.

KadavikJun 4, 20166 votes

But isn't that also one of the reasons why people complain about DQ? "If I naturally lack social skills and have no friends that play league why should I be punished" is one of the arguments against the use of premades.

BluePolarizerJun 4, 201610 votes

nope. social skills are the ability to get strangers to cooperate with you and listen to you. In case you didn't notice, at parties, even introverts can talk to their friends, but only high social skill people can make friends at the party. The introverts just sit in their little corner with their friends and meet nobody new. Of course you had loners, but they lack the social skills and pay the price.

Solo queue - those who were good at social skills, can make random people listen to them and like them. I play on 150+ ping. I am not super mechanically flashy. But I make good decisions and can convince randoms to listen to me.

Dynamic queue - even people with the social skills of a potato can get friends to listen.

I have clearly stated my case while you are refusing to even consider their merits. From your behavior, you are not interested in the question posed in your OP. You are interested in telling us why dynamic queue is good.

AnagsJun 4, 20164 votes

Your argument is BS because you could always play as duo in ranked. So basically it had the same exact problem. Also if it queues solo players with teams that also have solo players then how is that not fair?

Both teams have the same scenario. You could argue the premade you got matched with was worse but you can always be matched with players who aren't as good.

I guarantee you they could put straight soloq in place and people would still be on the forums bitching.

BluePolarizerJun 4, 20165 votes

no it didn't. A duo has less than half the influence of a game (40%).

ZerolockeJun 4, 20162 votes

{quoted}

that doesn't matter though. Even if it was only 5 man vs. 5 man, solo vs. solo, duo vs. duo, etc it still is unfair.

Let's say someone is gold. Nobody knows what 'gold' means now, since they could've played only in a 5 man, or only played solo. Even if that 5 man was with people of equal elo who climbed with him, they have different skillsets than a player who played only solo games and only went against solos. Now add to the fact that the other people on a 5 man team could all be plats 1's while that player is gold 5. Plat 1 is 1 step away from diamond, gold 5 is barely above silver.

Do you think that 'gold' is representative of that player's skill level? If that player was playing solo, would he still be 'gold' in skill level?

Now you may say - OK, so he plays only in 5 mans and never plays solo, so that's measuring his 5v5 skill. NP, that's true. But it's measuring his 5v5 skill on a ladder which also has solos, duos, trios, etc.

But it's gold. The same gold that a player who plays only solo is ranked at.

I think gold is still gold. I am sure I have stronger skill sets then most who use duo queue as a solo player. Even if the other team is all random you have to play like they have a duo partner. Even if they do not, it is silly to blame the loss of a game or a win because they queued with someone else. You can queue with other people if it brothers you that much, once you get to X rank if you play by yourself you are more then likely going to get demoted since you do not have the skillset. Also for rankings everyone for the US at least is bad if not D1+.

Also another point if if you get a group of 5 playing together if all of them play like silver, even if talking though voice chat. A team of 5 random golds should have the edge. So those players are still forced to improve their skill to progress. That is something a solo player has to do as well.

Post like yours forget to say that this is a team game. Do not worry you're not the only one. It is like how many countless others think support is just the w/e role, when the role has a bigger impact on the game then top, mid and adc roles. TEAM WORK is apart of the game, yes many always tell you have to carry people to climb to higher elo, but they still show team work for when it matters. So others working harder on the team work aspect (like the pros on private server atm) with the DQ system are equal as those as solo queue players. They're both using skills you acquire from playing League to win games.

BluePolarizerJun 5, 20164 votes

but you can't play as if they had a 5 man team which involves skills that you simply cannot acquire without your own 5 man team. Or even trio involves skills you can't acquire without your own trio. Coordination means much more than solo mechanics.

a part of teamwork in the real world is getting people you don't personally know to cooperate with you and finish an objective. that is the definition of teamwork at a corporate or scientific environment. Anyone can go to the restaraunt with their buddies, how many can go to a restaraunt with a client and make a sale?

and if you think that until d1, everyone is equally bad: are you saying that you are equal to a b5, since both are equally bad? I didn't make that claim. You did.

ThugWalrusJun 4, 201613 votes

Speaking strictly from facts and stats, if you're below plat dynamic queue has not affected your ranking experience in any meaningful way. Most of the people complaining about Dynamic Queue are basically complaining with no real basis for complaint (think an "elo hell" type argument). Admittedly DQ sucks for high elo players, and they have a lot of influence over perception. If people hear Imaqtpie and Scarra complaining about Dynamic Queue they feel justified in doing the same, but in reality their ranked experience has hardly changed.

Sometimes perception is stronger than reality though, so Riot probably still has to do something about it

Titanium70Jun 4, 20163 votes

Correct - Nothing more to add.

Karn BishopJun 5, 201610 votes

Here is the thing though, you do not have to be leet challenger in order to be competitive, heck you could be wood, bronze or silver and still be competitive in your own division but the thing is DQ ruins competition at all levels of play and not just the highest bracket, it only takes that one buddy being boosted by his diamond or challenger buddies to cause this.

So the argument that it does not affect people below plat is just false, and is only true if you only consider queue times and role choice while ignoring competitiveness.

Mandang0Jun 5, 20165 votes

Yep, and thank god for gbay speaking up during the roundtable. He covered the problems with DQ (in all elo ranges) quite nicely.

Also, there's an implicit line being drawn somewhere that needs to be discussed. Supposedly DQ is the same as solo/duo, but would 5-man premade vs 5 solos be the same? Riot's controlled the system to prevent that from happening, but is a 4-man OK? More specific than that, when people say DQ is "the same", what do they consider the average match of DQ (compared to the average match of SQ)?

AazzlanoJun 4, 20169 votes

Diamond player here. AFKs/leavers are extremely common, at least one in every 5 games on average, with threats to AFK coming quite often as well. People who troll are about as common. In the past 2 months alone I've got like 6 or 7 popups that someone was punished, and even though that is a small proportion of the people who should be banned, it just shows how many of them there are. Flamers almost every game, i'd say 9/10 at least. Quite common in pre-game as well. And the premades who back up their buddies who are clearly idiots are lovely too.

My last game of promos I had some Cait who was flaming since pre-game (for absolutely no apparent reason) who also got hit by like every blitz hook. He threatened to 'gatekeep my ass' as if his performance wasn't already. Luckily I got my team ahead with tons of ganks early and their jungler ragequit, leading to us pushing their inhibitors pre-20 minutes and a surrender not too long after that. But this is really a common scenario, where I almost lost a game because of one player. But yeah AFKs etc. are everywhere and they are on the enemy team a lot of the time as well, so it's just more luck than skill really. Horrible experience.

KadavikJun 4, 20163 votes

What solutions do you think Riot could implement to fix this?

AazzlanoJun 4, 20166 votes

They don't punish nearly enough people. They probably know their population is dying and are doing their best to preserve it. Hell, I submitted a ticket to Riot support directly and I attached A VIDEO of someone CLEARLY scripting. I uploaded it on Youtube and set it as unlisted, so it can't be accessed unless you use the link directly. I get the usual 'directed to investigation, cannot disclose further information' response. Whatever, okay. So I was looking through my Youtube videos not too long ago, and I saw that video in my vid manager. With ZERO VIEWS. It was NEVER REVIEWED, and my video with CLEAR EVIDENCE of someone scripting was basically completely discarded. That was 7 months ago that that incident happened. I can only imagine how many hundred games he has ruined since then.

That, and delete Dynamic Queue and burn all drives with backups.

JerulEonJun 5, 20161 votes

Sounds worse than platinum. Why do you keep playing if its that bad?

AazzlanoJun 5, 20168 votes

Insanity.

Titanium70Jun 4, 20165 votes

To be honest a casual Player couldnt care less about Dynamic or SoloQ - actually such a player should be happy about it.

Problem is, due to its (most of time) amazing balance it surprisingly huge depths when mastered League attracted a ton of highly compeditive player and such who like the thrill of toe on toe battles like my selfe.

These players usually climb the ladder quite fast and play on Plat upwards. And exactly for those, DynamicQ is a big pile of BS!!! Unbalanced Matches due to huge MR differences, sore comparability because the MMR of a group never shows the MMR of an individual, different coordination issues when 3 solos and a duo is forced to play against a 4 man TS-premade... the list goes on.

Besides that: To draw more players into DynQ - Rito decided to removed Teamranked... And thanks to the amazing Q-Limits at high level it's literally impossible to build a (Semi-)Pro Team. (I HAVE NO IDEA what they are thinking...)

As I stated before - I like hard and close games but I'm not highly compeditive. That's why I dont hate DynQ... but I didnt asked for and I prefer SoloQ... Why? Because Qing in League is always a gamble - DynQ just added more variables... (which is bad, btw..)

As time passes and Riot giving one first aid patch after the other to DynQ I understood less and less why they added this thing... I guess they wanted to attract more casuals.. but... those getting rekt by a completely messed up bot and bosting infested beginner Level... -.-

KadavikJun 4, 20164 votes

But this extremely competitive environment also brought more toxicity. Git Gud and all. People's egos became so dependent on their rank that bought accounts were and still are a huge problem. Bots flooded all other game modes except Summoners Rift and ARAM. Why would you think someone buys a bot account? To start playing ranked as soon as possible of course. It sucks for hardcore players but anyone could buy their way into Diamond, its just now that DQ does it in a more apparent way that people are raging.

Titanium70Jun 4, 20165 votes

Sure - A compeditive scene always has people who're missing a screw or two just like every other sport has proofen. But to be honest, at the end of season 5 the Flameamount was totally fine - at least from my point of view.

Sure I played in Dia back than - but the normals i played with some friends were quite fine as well.

And additionally, to achieve less toxicity you should not reduce the thing which made this game great. ^^'

KadavikJun 4, 20163 votes

What if what made the game great for me was playing with my friends? Should I not be able to play alongside them in a competitive environment?

Khell DarkWolfJun 5, 20162 votes

{quoted}

What if what made the game great for me was playing with my friends? Should I not be able to play alongside them in a competitive environment?

That is what team ranked 5's were.

You didn't need dynamic queue to achieve that, only the friends to fill up the team and log in.

Titanium70Jun 5, 20163 votes

Before DynQ - playing with Friends was possible in:

Normals
Draft
Teamranked
Treeline and Treeline Ranked.

In SR Ranked you could play with one Friend.

Especially Draft and Teamranked were great places for friends playing together - no hypercompeditive atmosphere in Draft for cool evenings and the mastery of this game in Teamranked.

Why exactly Ranked needs to be for available for large groups as well? And why on EARTH they removed Teamranked?!?

And btw... if Leagues Community made the game great for you may I remind you that you played since season 4, before DynQ was a thing at all and it was no problem? Additionally you 'As someone who never played it' never experienced DynQ with friend compared to any other Q - so sorry, I dont undestand your argumentation. ^^

The DeckownerJun 5, 20162 votes

teambuilder too

Karn BishopJun 5, 20162 votes

Well outside of ranked 5's which riot could have supported with features and rewards to get people to use it you cannot have it both ways as it would defy the very definition of a competitive sport, i mean sure professional football teams could field fans in the stands to sub in for their million dollar athletes but at that point football would become a game of which team has more professional players and less fans pulled from the stands? sound fun? no? that is because it wouldn't be fun for anyone besides those few people who got fielded.

Mandang0Jun 5, 20165 votes

Just want to chime in - being able to pick your role has NOTHING to do with whether the game uses a dynamic or solo queue.

Vistha KaiJun 4, 20164 votes

You see, the problem with using "less negativity in general" as an argument saying, DQ is better, is fundamentally flawed.

Why? Because the removal of Solo Queue and addition of Dynamic Queue didn't happen in vacuum.

Leaverbuster System was updated = less AFKs.
Chat Restriction System was updated = less toxicity, through faster and harsher punishment.
Role Selection System was added = less toxicity and trolling, through the lack of having to fight over your role.

Now what Dynamic Queue did:

Compromised ranked at all skill levels, due to unlocking any number of people to premade, negating rankings and matchmaking balance.
Removed 5-man premades from Diamond+, making it impossible to play for Challenger and LCS teams.

That's it. There is nothing more to Dynamic Queue.

KadavikJun 4, 20161 votes

Where did I say this? I just wanted us to discuss and compare Solo Q with Dynamic Queue objectively, since I haven't played either I thought I was fit to make such a post. I didn't say I was defending Dynamic Queue at any point. And I certainly never said DQ had "less negativity in genereal". To me it sounds like you're arguing with a straw man rather than with anyone here.

Vistha KaiJun 4, 20164 votes

It's still referring to your "How's DQ compared to SQ" question now, does it?

KadavikJun 4, 20161 votes

Sure just don't use a straw man argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man That's playing dirty.

When it comes to your last argument I will say that compromising the ranked system does bring in something good to league. Which is a way for you to play with at least 3 of your friends in a competitive environment. It all depends on which side you look at it from.

Vistha KaiJun 4, 20163 votes

There is still 3v3 ranked. Old 5v5 queue allowed people of different tiers to play ranked at the same time.

You can't play Silver + Plat in ranked anymore.

Not to mention 4-man premades are extremely frustrating for solo players.

So there is nothing good to give.

KadavikJun 4, 20161 votes

When was the last time you checked your friends list and saw this below their name "In game, playing Ranked Twisted Treeline"

5v5 teams are extremely rare and a pain to organize.

While 4 man premades may be frustrating they could go the other way, many of the friends I made in league were 4 man premades that invited me to another game after we had a great time.

A modular system in which you and your friends can play ranked games constantly is something good to give players.

Vistha KaiJun 5, 20164 votes

A modular system in which you and your friends can play ranked games constantly is something good to give players.

It's as good as the Ladder System. Meant to make you feel good, but is actually working aganist you.

Karn BishopJun 5, 20164 votes

ok so first by compromising the ranked system competitiveness is automatically null and void because the system cannot represent that anymore which means you are not playing with your buddies in a competitive environment you are playing with them in normals option number 2.

Secondly the guys points above are valid within the context of your question and it is not a strawman argument, the fact of the matter is all those things he mentioned were indeed released and would have had a huge impact on toxicity and the best you could argue on your side is that you cannot prove dynamic reduced toxicity because those features could easily be the reason behind lack of toxic behaviors.

In general negating someones argument by accusing them of straw manning is rude and disrespectful to any conversation you were trying to have and if you did not wish for a candid conversation why even post this thread?

The DeckownerJun 5, 20164 votes

basically dynanamic queue makes your rank meaningless, because it doesn't represent your skill like old solo queue.

also normal draft pick has nothing to do with dynamic queue.

Bobloser3555Jun 4, 20163 votes

It was really good yes, but Riot says dynamic queue decreased flaming, so maybe solo queue was not that good after all.

KadavikJun 4, 20162 votes

Atleast in Draft Mode DQ I have never even encountered any flamers or ragers.

AmelieJun 4, 20164 votes

You still don't seem to understand that "Draft Mode DQ" is not a thing. You are talking about new Champion Select, NOT DQ.

DQ is purely connected to RANKED games.

KadavikJun 4, 20162 votes

Oh sorry about that, this terminology is insane. But DQ refers to the ranked system in which premades fill the gaps with solos right? So banning a rager in DQ would be easier since premades can send more reports. Yes in theory you could report en masse an innocent player, but i would bet it is more often the first case than not. Thats what I was refering to.

Best Darius KRJun 4, 20165 votes

So banning a rager in DQ would be easier since premades can send more reports.

...That does not work that way

KadavikJun 4, 20162 votes

I would guess more reports= more bans. Seems logical to me. Then again I could be wrong. Explain to me how it works then? I'm honestly asking. No sarcasm or anything.

EndlessSorcererJun 4, 20165 votes

One report is enough to get a game reviewed. Reports beyond that don't really do anything.

That's part of the reason asking for reports is a punishable offense; it doesn't do anything except harass the player you are reporting.

KadavikJun 4, 20161 votes

Hmm didn't know that. Then why do people complain about Premades ganging up on them and having them banned? Thats one of the biggest complaints I see about DQ.

EndlessSorcererJun 4, 20167 votes

Generally, that would be because:

They are toxic and refuse to acknowledge it
They don't know how the punishment system works

tl;dr They are idiots.

AmelieJun 4, 20161 votes

Is your thread about the ragers/trolls then? Because that's not really a problem people have with DQ. Champion select took care of a lot of the rage-inducing stuff.

But yes, banning a rager is theoretically easier in DQ.

KadavikJun 4, 20161 votes

So there are some positives to DQ then? I don't care what the problem people have with DQ is. I'm trying to compare it as a whole with SQ.

AmelieJun 4, 20162 votes

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to get at. Finding some positives about DQ? Or finding out why people don't like DQ?