Can someone sum up this 'autofill' thing everyone's talking about?

mosaickle·Dec 4, 2016·1 votes·645 views

I just came over to NA after 3 years of being on another server so I've never heard of this thing 'autofill', can someone explain to me what it is?

9 Comments

GoronMuncherVDec 4, 20162 votes

Basically you get a couple minutes of queue where it searches for your primary and secondary role, then the system goes "screw it, you're being filled into a team that needs a player no matter what position is left".

Mid/adc queue: get placed as support.

Support/fill queue: get placed mid. etc etc.

mosaickleDec 4, 20161 votes

Damn, I see why that'd be a problem. I'm guessing this only happens on ranked? Cuz I'm a filthy casual who basically only plays normals.

Mysticman89Dec 4, 20162 votes

It happens in normals too.

(Also, it's a thing on other servers as well, not just NA. Autofill's new this year though, and only very recently was always on. Previously it only was enabled when queue times were past a certain threshold that was usually only triggered in extremely high ELO games or extremely low, so the majority of people never had to interact with it.)

mosaickleDec 4, 20161 votes

I haven't yet had the time to play (at all) and I'm most likely going to live in Twisted Treeline, do we have to face this there? I'm guessing not?

Mysticman89Dec 4, 20161 votes

It's enabled for all queues with a position preference. I haven't played TT in years, but since theres only 3 people per side, I doubt theres a position preference thing for it as theres less obvious roles.

GoronMuncherVDec 4, 20161 votes

Yeah, ranked. People honestly shouldn't be complaining though. Only a year ago (I think) we had the old ranked system where you weren't given a role. You'd just be put in a numbered position in the draft and would basically choose your role when it got to your turn; lower people down being left with the scraps. Basically 1st/2nd pick was mid/adc/top and last pick was support. Point is: you had to know all roles to play ranked, because you never knew what role you'd be left with.

Sona PingDec 4, 20162 votes

In short:

For a long, long time in draft mode the convention was that position was determined by pick order. First pick, picks position and their champion first. The rest "fill in" the remaining positions as they choose their champions.
Last year, New Champion Select comes out where people choose two positions before they queue and the system assigns them a game with them in one of those positions.
Due to position shortages and queue times, autofill is implemented where people are assigned to fill in for a position that there is a shortage in, effectively as if they were 4th or 5th pick in the previous system.

MagicFlyingLlamaDec 4, 20162 votes

Basically riot wastes 45 minutes of your life (and the lives of every other person in your game) as a way to save 3 minutes of your queue time.

DestructoDaveDec 4, 20161 votes

Someone gets support 1 out of 30 games and cries about it. Ive been autofilled once in like 40 games, and it was last night. And I Q ADC/Mid every game except for 1 day.