New Champ Select would have made Solo Queue so much better.

KING ATTILA·Jun 30, 2016·120 votes·2,752 views

I'm honestly perplexed why Riot chose to scrap Solo Queue, Team Ranked, Dominion, and Team Builder just for Dynamic Queue...

I would have been SO HAPPY if Riot implemented the new Champion Select for Solo Queue, because it would have greatly improved Solo Queue's quality. All of the issues that Yolo Queue had came from its old champ select. We went by pick order, and there would be arguments about which role and champ people wanted, and games could suck just from the old champ select alone.

But the new Champ Select would have solved these issues and I believe everyone would have been happy with that.

Doing that while keeping Team Builder, Ranked 5's, Dominion, and improving 3v3 Twisted Treeline sounds so much healthier to than removing all those options for an inherently flawed system that many players have a problem with...shit, we could have still added hextech crafting as well.

This makes me sad, Riot.

We want Solo Queue (with the new Champ Select).

49 Comments

J EpsteinJun 30, 201615 votes

DQ will be the death of this game. I just had players ranging from plat 4 to S2 and an unranked last game. There is no reason for that amount of variance in rank level for a ranked games.

KING ATTILAJun 30, 201619 votes

[{quoted}](name=xXBlue FalconXx,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=reTnh5B9,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2016-06-30T21:42:03.669+0000)

DQ will be the death of this game. I just had players ranging from plat 4 to S2 and an unranked last game. There is no reason for that amount of variance in rank level for a ranked games.

But...you can play with your friends in ranked now! Isn't that what you wanted!? - Riot.

HaloDragonXJul 1, 20161 votes

Rank Variance would mean nothing because matchmaker uses MMR so yours is lower than your rank or the Silver has HIGH MMR.

DeathBurstJul 1, 20161 votes

Care to provide a link/a reference to said game? Because as is, I don't believe you, dear sir. An unranked may be possible (they still have to make their placement series, you know) but a S2 and a P4 in the same game, I doubt it. And if it's true, the S2 is probably a smurf climbing with something like 70%+ winrate, so it's not exactly relevant.

J EpsteinJul 1, 20163 votes

http://imgur.com/M2RK03g

here ya go big dawg. it's almost like people are telling the truth or something.

DeathBurstJul 1, 20163 votes

And as expected, this Silver player has a wooping 78% winrate in Ranked. http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=x1ox1o

It's obviously a smurf, and it's a good thing that he's matched against people from his real level.

EDIT: So, beyond the basic pleasure of "I was right", my point is: DQ won't be the death of this game, and your example proves nothing at all. It's normal for someone with a 75%+ winrate to be matched much above his current ranking, and it was already the case in previous seasons.

franticFurballJul 2, 20161 votes

It's obviously a smurf

Yeah, right.

That "smurf" had barely average 50% winrate in Season 4 + 5.

Now its DynQ time, and his winrate is through the roof.

There is only one thing this tells me, and its not "hes a smurf".

DeathBurstJul 2, 20161 votes

Well, no. OP.GG provides the list of player an account frequently play with (in the "Matches" tab), and this account is in no recurring premade, and the few matches he played in a 4-man premade, he lost all of them.

If instead of jumping to the conclusion you want to reach, you took an honest look to the data, you'd see this has nothing to do with DynamicQ... Given the change in champions used, it's more plausible that he just got boosted the good ol' way than that he's abusing DynQ.

exigentomicJul 1, 20169 votes

Thew new champ. select was what allowed the DQ Trojan Horse. Otherwise, the outrage would have been even higher.

Dr WJun 30, 20165 votes

ded gaem

Arakk01Jul 1, 20164 votes

New champ select REQUIRES Dynamic queue to work. Quite a number of premades include one player who either mains support or 'bites the bullet' and learns the role so that they and their friends can have a faster queue time; without these 'premade supports', queue times would be even longer than previous solo queue- entirely dependent on the bottleneck, which is always support players. Every so often there'd be a spike of 'new support players'- AKA players who queued support for the instant queue- and they'd be terrible at the role because they only picked it secondary to actually get in a game.

Like it or not, new champ select relies on the queueing decisions that premades instigate. So, since I know you're almost certainly a hyper-toxic top, mid, or ADC main that wants the game to be 100% all about your SOLO skill- pick one. Old solo queue, old champ select? Or Dynamic queue, with new champ select? The one other option is double-triple your current queue time and every other support you have being utterly worthless.

LazyW0lfJul 1, 20166 votes

Personally, I'd rather have old Solo Queue back. Riot enjoys breaking the phrase, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" and to name a few examples:

Solo Queue
Ranked 3v3's

TrapinProgressJul 1, 20161 votes

are you talking about the mid-lane mage update for vel'koz? I played him before it and he felt like if you were not a god on q's then you had to wait to get slaughtered getting camped or be matched against melee and have them never be able to dodge e if you wanted to do well

Arakk01Jul 1, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Personally, I'd rather have old Solo Queue back. Riot enjoys breaking the phrase, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" and to name a few examples:

Solo Queue

Ranked 3v3's

SoloQ was broken, Zhonyas should be removed from the game, Vel'koz is STILL broken because of what a ludicrously binary matchup he is, and Ranked 3v3's weren't broken because noone played them. Ever. Period.

NineTailedMysticJul 1, 20164 votes

Remove Zhonya's? You mean remove a mages only defense against an AD match up.

Dextix LTJul 1, 20163 votes

Probably a zed main.

PaugusterJul 1, 20161 votes

I feel like Zed mains aren't petitioning for them to keep Zhonya's.

Locke DaemonfireJul 1, 20162 votes

He's talking to NineTailedMystic rather than about him, saying that Arakk01 is probably a Zed main.

Ayasaki123Jul 1, 20162 votes

{quoted}

Personally, I'd rather have old Solo Queue back. Riot enjoys breaking the phrase, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" and to name a few examples:

Solo Queue

Ranked 3v3's

item 3070 item 3140

Thunder DreamssJul 1, 201613 votes

You, good sir, don't understand how matchmaking systems work.

Basically a matchmaking system is trying to get 10 players into a game so they can play. If there are no restrictions it can do this instantly because there's always enough Bronze players to fill out a group of 10 for that 1 Diamond player in queue.

However, just getting thrown in with anyone sucks so you want to add restrictions to the matchmaking formula. Every restriction comes at a cost of longer queue times, however. Why?

Look at it like this: If we have no restrictions we can get instant queues because there's always at least 10 people wanting to play the game. Now we add a restriction that all 10 players must be within 1 rank of each other. Now queue time takes longer because there may not be that many players close to you queueing up right now. Wait a bit and they may show up.

So now we add another consideration. Everybody gets to pick their roll. Now you can't just grab any 10 people from the same skill level, you need the right 10 people. No supports? Well looks like you're waiting until two of them who are your same skill level show up.

But you say, premades bring in more supports? They might, who knows, but what they definitely do is add another thing the system is trying to match. You've got a three man in queue and seven solos so nobody gets a game until another three man of the same skill level and seven more solos come in and all those new players better be exactly the one's needed to fill out the rolls that are lacking...

"But," you say, "if matchmaking worked like that it would take forever to get in a game!" True, I simplified a bit. The longer you're in queue the greater the variance the queue will accept in each category. Been waiting for two minutes? Well now players can be two ranked apart. Been waiting for five minutes? Now your five man can fight five solo players. These matches won't be as fair but it's better then waiting for a hour to play a 40 minute game.

Premades are particularly bad for queue times and match quality because they introduce elements that are much harder for the matchmaking algorithm to work with. Firstly you cannot ever put two three man premades on the same team. It's obvious but it means there is no amount of time and sloppy matchmaking that can build a team from certain combinations of players in queue. Second, it's much harder to properly gage the skill/ranking of a player in a group then it is a lone player. Some premades are just a bunch of random people who play together but don't use VoIP or any other advantage. Their no better then a group of solos. Other groups are coordinated and ruthless with persuasion rotations and players filling in for each others weaknesses. These groups perform much much better then five randoms. If the matchmaking formula assumes premades will be like the former then the later get to stomp every game while assuming the later advantage means the former gets their face caved in every match. So most likely you assume some level of advantage in the middle and both effects happen to a lesser degree. Yah, such balanced games!

Even if premades provided enough supports that they completely balanced out the other roles (they don't) the system would still need to make teams of 1 of each roll and account for premades which will take longer then just accounting for 1 of each roll.

DeathBurstJul 1, 20163 votes

Premades have a pretty negligible impact on queue timers, at least up to Plat. Just make this test: try any combination of positions and number of premades, as long as you have someone with "Support" picked in the middle, queue timers are virtually instant. The lack of Support is the only noticeable bottleneck in the system.

In theory, yes, premades make the match-making harder. But in practice, the player base is large enough that it has virtually no impact.

Ale non è maleJul 1, 20162 votes

{quoted}

Premades have a pretty negligible impact on queue timers, at least up to Plat. Just make this test: try any combination of positions and number of premades, as long as you have someone with "Support" picked in the middle, queue timers are virtually instant. The lack of Support is the only noticeable bottleneck in the system.

In theory, yes, premades make the match-making harder. But in practice, the player base is large enough that it has virtually no impact.

THIS. Premades likey had a big impact only on the highest elos, the shortage of people queueing in certain roloes has a MUCH bigger impact

Thunder DreamssJul 1, 20163 votes

Firstly, lets be clear. It's not the number of people that would make premades have a negligable impact on queue times, it's the percentage of players in premades. You may be right that the percentage of premades are low enough that they have little impact below Platinum but then there aren't enough of them to impact the roll selection as suggested by Arakk01.

DeathBurstJul 1, 20162 votes

Never said I agreed with Arakk. What he said is possible but very far fetched, and we have no evidence it's actually the case.

And you're not entirely correct about premade proportions. Even a player-base with 80% of players in a 2-5 premade groups could easily be sustainable if it was large enough to compensate the problems of the type: "we have a Trio and a Duo, but their desired lanes doesn't match". And even this kind of problem is not really serious, since you have to cover 3 lanes with a Duo, 4 lanes with a Trio. That means any random Trio can be matched with any random Duo with a 40% chance probability (assuming equal distribution of lanes).

But beyond the technical details, the message I want to make clear is this: People asking for DynQ removal because of the queue timers are wrong. If we keep the New Champ Select (and everyone wants to keep it, that the only thing everyone agrees on), even in SoloQ, the timers would be sensibly the same, because the main factor driving the timers up is the lack of Support, not the complexity of matching premade groups.

There are a few debatable reasons to bring SoloQ back, but this one is not debatable at all, it's just wrong.

Thunder DreamssJul 1, 20162 votes

For your 80% scenario to work you need just the right balance of duo and trio groups or you just wind up with duos being the new support.

But as to your main point... You're right. DQ is probably having a negligible impact on queue times right now*. Supports are THE bottleneck and anything that doesn't adjust that problem isn't going to do much to queue times.

Any increase in queue time caused by the bigger groups is only felt by the bigger groups, not by solo's at all.

General Esdeath Jul 1, 20162 votes

No, it's literally the bane of past seasons to have someone who wants mid be 5th pick. I had games where we had 3 top lane mains and one was forced to support and did horrible. New champ select would have made ranked so great but Riot had to go fuck it up with Shyte's DQ system that doesn't balance out ANYTHING pre-made related and makes boosting legal.

MrWasjigJul 1, 20164 votes

Like it or not, new champ select relies on the queueing decisions that premades instigate.

I can refute that very easily.

Team Builder. That could put together a full team of solos just fine. It wasn't the best in terms of Q time but was a good proof of concept that a similar system (like NCS) can work in an environment of solo players.

Arakk01Jul 2, 20161 votes

{quoted}

I can refute that very easily.

Team Builder. That could put together a full team of solos just fine. It wasn't the best in terms of Q time but was a good proof of concept that a similar system (like NCS) can work in an environment of solo players.

Wrong. Team Builder allowed premades, and as someone who played the odd game (being my preferred mode for queuing with friends), queuing support in Team Builder so my team could get into a game faster is actually the entire reason I got into support enough to main it.

Solo queuing in Team Builder, on the other hand, was entirely miserable for everyone but support players- and sometimes tank jungle players. 'It wasn't the best in terms of queue times'. Try 15+ minute waits with FAR more lax rank restrictions than Dynamic Queue, 20+ if you wanted Mid, 30+ if you wanted to play off-meta because literally everyone would boot you. So- try again. Team Builder relied on premades for supports as much as Dynamic Queue.

JESUSSAYSNOJul 1, 20164 votes

My only issue with dynamic que is the ability to create artificial synergy that wouldn't exist at all in soloque. Playing against a jg/lane dynamic/duo is the most tilting thing to play against and with, because you know that that lane's the only one that's gonna get any jungle attention, and it's gonna get all the jungle attention.

Cookimonster316Jul 1, 20161 votes

Well then you should win if the jungler is paying no attention to 2 lanes because those 2 can get jungle pressure and proceed to snowball

Xenos11111Jul 1, 20164 votes

New CS has its own problems, but I'd rather put up with it than put up with this shit which is dynamic queue.

KouheyJul 1, 20163 votes

On one hand, the entire NCS and DQ thing were intended to help out high elo match quality, master+ can't ensure they get the role because the system just dump 10 people to start a game, much like the rest of ranked population do. So they have to come up with something else to couple up with the NCS, and this is what most people ignore, it's that you can't just give people the power to strictly get what they want to play, that can and do happen in lower elo where there are just so many people whatsoever, but in high elo it will put queue time to a insane amount. So Riot decided to release DQ, so that premade had/have larger size, and that allows lower rated players (like a diamond 2 trio) to be considered as high elo players (like 3 individual masters). However, the matchmake system right now just does not work out well enough to balance the "quality of a premade" and "individual skill assessment".

So I say NCS/DQ is theoretically good for high elo however it needs massive tweaks, but for lower elo NCS alone is pretty good, DQ does make games pretty unfair.

Tobias BracknerJul 1, 20163 votes

I really don't understand the hate for Dynamic Queue. I have not noticed a skill difference at all.

Jesus is SaviorJul 1, 20163 votes

Daily reminder that Riot themselves thinks dynamic queue and new champ select are the same thing (LOL):

http://i.imgur.com/upZzCwu.png[/img]

Dextix LTJul 1, 20163 votes

Daily reminder that one can exist without the other (As it was in Hots), which means that they are not the same thing. Especially since they both serve different functions.

Feed DaddyJul 1, 20162 votes

Dynamic queue isn't that bad

macromiteJul 1, 20162 votes

Could not have worked. you think wait times are bad now? imagine a place where certain roles cough cough Support cough cough wouldn't queue as often. imagine old teambuilder, but with people actively avoiding playing support as a secondary.

The DeckownerJul 1, 20167 votes

premdes are large factors of causing long queue time too

Ale non è maleJul 1, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Deckowner,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=reTnh5B9,comment-id=000a0000,timestamp=2016-07-01T04:49:16.327+0000)

premdes are large factors of causing long queue time too

Premades are a far smaller factor in queue times than the existence fo premade. Just queue as support and see how short the queue timers are...

The DeckownerJul 1, 20164 votes

I am a support main and I still get 5~10 minuste queue time off-peak-time.

Ale non è maleJul 2, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Deckowner,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=reTnh5B9,comment-id=000a000000000000,timestamp=2016-07-01T16:50:35.478+0000)

I am a support main and I still get 5~10 minuste queue time off-peak-time.

Division? And define off-peak time, cause in NA you suffer from being a whole continent with multiple time zone in a single server...

QuephaJul 1, 20162 votes

Because Dynamic Queue allows people to play competitively with their friends. In a team game that is much better than playing with solos.

DeathBurstJul 1, 20162 votes

I'm honestly perplexed why Riot chose to scrap Solo Queue, Team Ranked, Dominion, and Team Builder just for Dynamic Queue...

Well, you better be perplexed. That's not why they scrapped all of that.

Team Ranked was scrapped because they couldn't manage to get the match-making right because of wildly different goals among the player base. They hope it will be better with the new Scheduled Team Ranked by bringing more people playing at the same time and by narrowing the player base to people with similar objectives.
Dominion was scrapped because the player-base was too small.
Team-builder was scrapped because the queue timers were horrible, and because the New Champ Select in the Normal Draft queue solve most of the original issues that Team-builder intended to solve. (Not perfectly, but still, most of them, and with Queue Timers 2 to 3 times lower, at least.)
That leaves only Solo Queue which was indeed scrapped in favor of Dynamic Queue. To switch the skills being tested in the ladder and put more emphasize on team-work compared to solo carrying, and to please people who wanted to play (competitively) with their friends.

GulmaJul 1, 20161 votes

well, enforcing the meta isn't what I wanted to be honest.

ModCaptainMårvelousJul 1, 20161 votes

Solo queue yes.

Team ranked, no. (Considering they brought it back and, even before hand, it was dreadful) Dominion, no. (That was unrelated) Team Builder, no. (Teambuilder was killed, ironically, by new champion select.)

NatsumisokuJul 1, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=KING ATTILA,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=reTnh5B9,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-06-30T18:48:42.458+0000) Yolo Queue had came from its old champ select.

YOLO QUEUE

BigBellBruteJul 2, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=KING ATTILA,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=reTnh5B9,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-06-30T18:48:42.458+0000)

I'm honestly perplexed why Riot chose to scrap Solo Queue, Team Ranked, Dominion, and Team Builder just for Dynamic Queue...

I would have been SO HAPPY if Riot implemented the new Champion Select for Solo Queue, because it would have greatly improved Solo Queue's quality. All of the issues that Yolo Queue had came from its old champ select. We went by pick order, and there would be arguments about which role and champ people wanted, and games could suck just from the old champ select alone.

But the new Champ Select would have solved these issues and I believe everyone would have been happy with that.

Doing that while keeping Team Builder, Ranked 5's, Dominion, and improving 3v3 Twisted Treeline sounds so much healthier to than removing all those options for an inherently flawed system that many players have a problem with...shit, we could have still added hextech crafting as well.

This makes me sad, Riot.

We want Solo Queue (with the new Champ Select).

You're ignoring the problems caused by role selection. Very few want support relative to the other roles. That leaves few options, all of them not so good.

You either wait for a qualified support to become available with the parameters sufficient for the ranks allowed increasing queue times. or You relax the rules of match making compromising fair play so as not to increase queue times.
or you force people into a role they don't want with a system that randomly chooses people to fill the role even though they don't want it and well it stinks to be you. Too bad.
or You do a combination of these.

Going back to solo q doesn't solve the problems because nobody is going to magically want to play support in solo that didn't in dynamic.