...than have to get someone auto-filled who can't do it and winds up just being a handicap for the team...
...or worse yet, to get a toxic brat who ruins the game because they didn't get what they wanted.
Very Hard Engage1 votesthis wouldn't be an issue if people actually bothered to learn the role.
people think that with role selection they dont have to know every role, but thats a huge misconception.
sighstone first item.
junglers buy pink wards too
any laner thats pushing in pre 6 is a free kill for you.
super simple stuff.
HalcyonDweller4 votesYou and I could know that, but a lot of brats (and normal people too) out there don't.
People go into ranked choosing their role, they are going to expect to get it. When that is how the majority thinks, it is too much of a change to try to force down their throats. We've had several months to try to make this work, but there are still unbalanced matchups and toxic toddlers throwing tantrums. They aren't getting removed from the system fast enough, and the whole thing is screwing up matchmaking balance.
Either we need to better control how people get their roles, or we need to make matchmaking more fair to balance for people not playing their intended/main roles.
Azure Dancer1 votesWell before all of this new role selection you were expected to play every role decently in ranks
HalcyonDweller2 votesRight, and I didn't mind that. The problem I'm underlining here is the fact that now people have an expectation to be able to do what they want. On top of that you get people who climb in one role but suck in other roles, then they get autofilled and ruin the game for others because they can't do it.
Teridax681 votesI think placing the blame on players for not learning every role is kind of a red herring: for sure, not having at least a modicum of experience with every role, and expecting to coast through months or years of playing the game without trying them at least once, is completely unrealistic, but every player ends up maining one or two roles over others, and can't be expected to be equally good at the rest. When even a pro-level player gets autofilled into a role they're less familiar with, they can perhaps play competently, but not nearly at the level their division's in, so beyond matchmaking having a brain fart and matching Silvers with Plats or the like, having a Diamond match where one player is playing at a Platinum or Gold level, simply because they got autofilled into the wrong position, is a huge disadvantage. This is made even worse in a climate where one player getting a strong lead off of another can easily snowball into deciding the entire game. Players should definitely have a good enough general grasp of the game to be somewhat comfortable with any role, but they can't be expected to know every position equally well at all times, which is why autofill is doomed to screw over some games.
Icy Hot Shoto1 votesA long time ago, back when Evelynn was fully ap and actually relevant, I was a very annoying person to find as your enemy in the jungle. If you were too far ahead without a pink ward or with it in the wrong bush, I would pop up.
Now, however, I can not jungle. I've tried to get back into the role, but it's just not my thing. And honestly, it never was. I only bothered to learn it in the first place because I quite enjoyed playing Evelynn and she was best placed in the jungle. I'd much rather go mid or support. Heck, I'll even adc if I must. But if I have no choice but to go top or jungle, don't expect much from me. Those aren't my lanes/roles.
But you know what? I actually SAY SO. On the rare occasion I get auto filled, I'll say if I can't do that role. Most people are understanding and either are willing to trade or just tell me to try my best. Heck, I had one game I had no choice but to go top, however my jungler did his best to keep me relevant, and the both of us actually ended up the most fed on the team since the enemy jungler kept trying to counter gank.
If people communicated with their team, like they're supposed to rather than being brats about it, then maybe they'd get the role they originally wanted, a role they're more comfortable with, or get help from their team.
Teridax681 votesWhile I think every player should at least have some basic knowledge of every position as they play more of the game, I agree that having players get randomly filled into roles they didn't want carries more negative consequences than Riot originally thought about. As was initially presented, the three factors Riot had posted for an ideal queue were a) timeliness (the shorter the queue time, the better), b) accuracy (i.e. getting the position you wanted), and c) fairness (you queue up with and against players with about the same amount of skill as you). In this respect, autofill is the devs' way of trading off a bit of accuracy in exchange for better timeliness. However, the consequence of that, beyond just the dissatisfaction of players not getting the role they wanted, is that it often lowers the quality of games, as players are filled out into roles they're unfamiliar with, and therefore much less skilled at, or given roles they dislike, which is likely to generate frustration and non-cooperation. Effectively, autofill generates quicker games, but those games are lower in quality, in addition to often being even more frustrating than they can generally be.
I also think part of the issue here is that Riot's way of going about shortening queues kind of approaches the problem at the wrong angle: the main reason why queues are so naturally long in most elos is because supporting is by far the least popular position, as we've all known for years now, despite being essential to the game. Beyond supports just naturally being less popular than more kill-intensive roles across all games, supporting in League can be particularly unpleasant due to how restrictive its gameplay is, and how supports tend to be easy targets for abuse and bullying. Instead of focusing major design work on making the support role more desirable (minor support work on items every major update doesn't really count), Riot's mostly tried to resolve the issue by forcing people to support, which not only fails to make the role more enjoyable, but ends up reinforcing the stigma that supporting is a chore in League, rather than a fun role in its own right.
Eventually, I think the only viable way to make queues fully functional will be to improve the quality of less popular roles until we reach about an equal split across all roles. A perfectly equal split might not be likely, but there needs to be at least something done to make supporting not nearly as unpopular as it currently is. In theory, the support role should be the one receiving the most love, the most privileges and the most attention simply to combat the natural stigma that comes with supporting, but in practice it is not only the least popular role in the game, and so by a wide margin, but also one that has been treated even by the developers as a second-class role. When the game needed vision to function, the burden was originally placed squarely on supports, who had the least gold income to work with in the first place. When support players complained about being constantly behind on both gold and experience, due to being forced to not farm and constantly roam alone to ward or counter-ward (despite being the game's least independent role), Riot's response so far has simply been to make that an official part of supporting, with mechanics being implemented right now based on that, instead of bringing up their progression to match that of other roles. Riot reached out to players a little while back and asked for pointers on how to improve supporting, but no major conclusion has emerged from that, and instead the underlying trend has been to allow mages to become viable "supports", which on its own is detrimental to the support class. There has been an ongoing problem with not only the way supports have been treated in the game, but with the mentality that has led to a lot of its design, and I think that if Riot truly wants their queues to be quicker and more satisfying, they need to stop thinking of supports as a slave role, and start bringing them up to much higher standards of enjoyment.
HalcyonDweller2 votesGood analysis of Riot's queue design philosophy. This was really well worded, I agree with you wholeheartedly.
I would love it if they made support a more balanced and fun role. The support items need to be evened out balance-wise. Other items need to be on-par with Redemption + Locket.
Graviti Squeeze1 votesI agree with this statement