Riot I'm Tired of Dynamic Queue (A Letter)

Riot,

Even though I like the concept behind dynamic, and the new champ select, and I was happy to see it during preseason, I'm done with it now. I'm tired of waiting 5 minutes for a game that likely will be dodged by someone in champ select. I'm tired of playing teams of 5 and 4 players 13 divisions higher than me. I'm tired of getting off a stressful day of work to be even more stressed by the game I used to love.

I have been playing off and on since season 1, but I really picked it back up in season 4. I play solo as most of my friends have either moved on or work when I am off. I play fairly casual, I only get around 20 ranked games in a season, which usually puts me around bronze 2. This season I placed into bronze 4, and I've noticed something that only seems to get worse as the season goes on. I don't have the numbers, and I don't have any of the internal data that you do, but over the last month I have more and more imbalance in the matchmaking. Over half of my games now consist of me playing solo against a premade 4 or 5, which is horrible for me as they have the coordination of voice services that I do not. Even though the theory is that I will have a premade 4 on my end, I still cannot communicate with them on the same level. This can be even worse as that lone player can often get ganged up against by his own team. I have had a few instances now that the premade's "support" demands that I give up my "top" or else they will all 4 troll me and then report me at the end. In addition the system isn't perfect, as I have been in games where we have had a premade 2 and 3 solos playing against a premade 5, and they were all around our ELO so the communication advantage really impacted the game. So this game has rewarded playing games in groups of 4 and 5 over the average player, as I know it is not easy to get a group of 5 friends all in a 40 minute game all at the same time.

These problems aren't even highlighting the problems I have been seeing in the spread of divisions in games. This last game had a gold 2 player playing against our team of bronze 3 and 4. Of course this wasn't fun for any of our team, and it really wasn't fun for his friends on his team as well as he just came in and took all the kills and farm from every lane he could. He was playing Kennen so he had the mobility to play the entire map. I'm not sure how the matchmaking considered that balanced in the slightest, because a premade 4 with a gold 2 player shouldn't ever be placed with a solo bronze 4. At first I expected to find out the player was a smurf, as that is becoming more common, but on lolking they were listed as a season 6 gold 2. High experience players going around and stomping the lowly bronze and silver players is just a form of bullying. The fact that experienced players can play with their friends and family is a good thing, but not at the expense of everyone.

When there is very little time in a day to play your game, I like to make each minute fun and worth it. I'd say in bronze the average game length is around 40 minutes simply because people in bronze don't know how to finish a game. This means on a good day I can get 3 or so games in, or at least I used to be able to. One of the problems that has been cropping up is more a symptom of the matchmaking system than dynamic queue but dynamic is not without blame. I'd say the queue time approaches 3-5 minutes for me as I play top/jungle and sometimes top/mid if I want to play a mage. And when someone forgets to lock in a ban, or dodges because they got support it can be another 3-5 minutes to get a game. Yes this is because it's trying to match 10 people with 2 roles into the correct fit while keeping the ELO spread as tight as possible, and I expect that even if solo queue came back we'd still have longer wait times. But there is another factor that keeps the times high, and that is trying to find a premade team of the same size, same elo, and have the correct roles all together. And then when the system gives up and places bronze, silver, and gold all together you have a less than satisfying game. After a 20 minute stomp, or miserable 50 minute troll fest, it's hard to look at the 15 minutes to get into that game and want to do it again, especially if it caused more stress than a 10 hour financial audit. And I'm saying this from bronze, from what I understand the higher it gets the longer it takes to get into the game. At this point twitch is becoming less of a platform of league and more of a platform of cs:go or <insert favorite streamers time wasting game>.

I know that it is very unlikely that anyone from Riot will actually read this. I actually think the reasons that dynamic queue were made were good ones, and I'd like to see that stay. But under the current system the solo queue players are suffering. League is the shining beacon for online gaming that has us coming back to it time and time again. But while the intentions were good, the problems caused by not having solo queue is causing us to leave the game for good. It's not just about us wanting to prove our solo worth with other players, although that is a better way of judging actual skill instead of friends skill. This is coming from a casual player happy to play fun games in bronze and silver, and I'm feeling the burn of the new system. I was the one that was suppose to benefit the most from this system, but unless I go out and find a group that can play on my beck and call with at least one gold 1 or platinum player how can I have fun?

Riot, please please bring back a solo queue for us.

Sincerly, An Old Solo Casual Player