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My Thoughts on Autofill, and How to Possibly Fix Its Problems

No Trolling Here·10/28/2018, 6:57:50 AM·3 votes·972 views

I think this belongs in Gameplay +, but I couldn't post there for some reason, so sorry if it's in the wrong place. Also, posting this on my alt, so I don't think I have any autofilled games here.

I know I am not alone in disliking autofill, but I definitely see why Riot keeps it around. The game needs to attract as many players as it can, and shorter queue times help keep people playing. I am not fully against the idea of autofill, just how it has been implemented.

Whenever I lose a game as an autofilled support/other role I just feel bad that I didn't dodge the game, because I was part of what caused a loss for my team. In such games I decide to risk everyone's LP just so I don't certainly lose some of my own. Also, because of the toxic nature of most players, I get heavily flamed for doing poorly when autofilled and normally even get reported just for doing poorly. I feel like because of this, autofill adds an element of luck to a largely skill based game and also takes away some of the fun of trying to climb in ranked. However, I have some ideas that might be able to help decrease the amount of discomfort caused by autofill without eliminating it entirely.

Here are some possible options that may help:

  1. Make it optional, but give players incentives to turn it off.

If anyone is comfortable with filling for other roles or simply want a shorter queue time, they should be rewarded for helping reduce queue times. This could maybe be done in a similar way to the honor system, by giving free blue essence/skin shards. I think that although replacing autofill with this would make queues longer, it would also decrease the number of people dodging. Also, it could help give people a better experience, since I personally just get upset when I lose a game due to my lack of skill in a role.

  1. Have a different elo for each role.

This one is probably easily exploitable, but maybe have a unique elo for each role. I am certainly would be at a lower elo if I played support or adc, so getting autofilled pretty much puts me in a higher elo than I belong for that role. My adc and support gameplay is far worse than my main roles, so it would make sense to play against supports as skilled as me at the role. Something like this would certainly feel more fair if I am matched as a bronze level support, silver jungle, gold midlaner, etc. However, this might not actually help the queue times.

As a side note, I am not sure whether this already happens, but possibly give each role a certain mmr instead of separate elo. Maybe make yourself and your teammates lose less LP if they lose a game with someone who sucks at support or something (like me if autofilled).

  1. Stop dodging from affecting LP.

In my opinion, LP should be based entirely on a player's skill. I personally would dodge every single autofilled game if it didn't effect my LP. While some may say that this system works because I am not dodging, I disagree. Instead of dodging I end up making it much more likely to completely throw the game for my team. Autofill feels unfair not just for the player, but for their entire team. Maybe instead of a time penalty + lp loss / loss in promo games we could get rid of the lp loss and just make dodging players wait longer.

  1. Paying to avoid autofill.

I personally don't really like this idea, but it might work or help with the economic reasons for having autofill. If players could pay to be autofill protected it could help mitigate the damage caused by longer queue times. Although I don't spend money on this game, such a system might make me consider it. Again though, I do not really like this idea because it is somewhat pay to win, but it seems better than the current one.

  1. Only using it when actually needed.

I am pretty average elo, so queue times are generally very short (1-2 minutes, at most 5). I have never had any problem with the time spent waiting for games because I just alt tab to YouTube or something. With such short queue times, there is nothing more infuriating than being autofilled after a 1:00 queue or something. I think that if it was only used once players have waited longer than normal it would make more sense, but it just feels strange to be autofilled after hardly waiting at all.

Overall, I don't think autofill is the worst system, but I would like to try to change it if I can. I apologize for the length of this post, but I have quite a few ideas that might help, since lots of people seem to hate the system.

Also, adding a poll because I'm curious to know what the community here actually thinks of autofill.

EDIT: For some reason all the numbers are 1, and I do not know why. This is my first post on the boards, so I apologize.

5 Comments

Nadiri10/28/2018, 7:00:11 AM1 votes

Man World Championship is here NA VS EU

ZephyrDrake10/28/2018, 7:30:14 AM1 votes

there are so many issues here...

making it "optional" won't do anything at all other than have people just turn it off completely regardless of whatever rewards are being offered. Which in turn will just cause queue times to go up and up and up. You might be fine waiting let's say... 5 minutes. Others might not and the higher up you go in the ladder the worst it would get. Queue times for Master+ players was hilariously high before (over 30 minutes at times... sometimes almost an hour). So even "optional" the higher you go it would become less "optional" and more "turn this on if you want to actually play the game in any reasonable amount of time".

Riot is already going to do something similar with making each role have it's own somewhat separate rank next season so no need to even address this.

If you make it so that dodging doesn't really cost much of anything people will just dodge even more since it would be as simple as "I don't like this teamcomp" or "they banned my champion" or "I didn't get my one role I want to play" or "i'll be a douche and dodge at the very last second every single time since I get no actual penalty at all". Let's face it people that dodge don't really care about time penalties when they more than likely have alt accounts or just go do something else while the timer goes down. People don't dodge just because they got autofilled.

There is never going to be a "give us money so you don't get autofilled" option in the game since that defeats the entire point of autofill in the first place. it's not pay to win since you aren't winning just by not being autofilled. Any decent player should have some form of knowledge in each role and know the basics of them so if anything you would be gimping yourself the higher up you go in the ladder.

It is used when needed. Like I said before, you might be ok with let's say... 5 minute queue times, others might not. Some might be ok with even 20 minute queue times but most won't. Some would prefer being put into the game as fast as possible. Others wouldn't mind waiting. So how do you actually measure "waiting longer than normal"?