Successes and Criticisms on The New Champ Select

Coming from someone who is relatively new to the game and has seen a lot of changes over the past year, I would like to voice some of my thoughts on the new champion select system for ranked and unranked play.

Successes:

**1.) **Good job Riot, you actually made it look attractive. The aesthetics of the new champion select are really pleasing. Hoping for a remodel of the blind pick layout, if possible.

2.) The fascination with game time never ceases to amuse me but this time I was impressed. The queue wait time was brought down in comparison to the old team builder queue which was really just based on whether or not people like you as an individual.

Aaaand now the fun part... Criticisms:

1.) I think that this was not thought out all that well. It bothers me that you can find a match and be all set up with a lane and character but by the time the enemy has their pick, they can counter pick you. 1 of 2 things happens next...

1a.) You proceed to play the game with the character you wanted, knowing good and well that you will be sodomized by the person you're laning against.

1b.) You're teammate will feel bad and give up the role he was absolutely set on playing, just to play a role that he was not absolutely set on playing. Also you will pick a new champion that you didn't actually wanna play. All of this, being caused by the fact that counter picking along with role and champion locking isn't really fun. The appeal behind the old team builder system was to lock the role so nobody else would and then the lane match up would be a mixture of fate and skill rather than, really, just a decent counter pick.

2.) Please, for the love of god, get rid of champion bans. To me, it feels as though the new champion select is a mixture of the old team builder and the old draft pick. I guess I just like the ability to play each one separately because each had its perks that seemed to have dwindled into a complex combination of "Yes, I finally get to play who I want!" and "...Okay, I didn't anticipate them banning who I wanted."

2a.) That being said, let me make a side note about ranked versus unranked. I feel its important to include bans when doing ranked because that goes to show how well you can compromise with the team to fix a dilemma like unbalanced laning. I don't feel it's important to include bans in unranked because it presents difficulty to those at a low level or those who don't want to be helpful for the good of the team.

I think that there should definitely be some improvements to the new champion select because it, so closely, resembles the old draft pick system.

A Suggestion To Riot:

Give us a modified version for unranked gameplay where there's no banning and you can't see what the enemy team is picking. That way its really just blind pick without the hassle of arguing over champions and roles. The difference between that and team builder is that the team would automatically be assembled instead of have a party host.

Let me know if you guys have any thoughts on the system.