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Autofill Consistently Ruining High MMR Match Quality

XDDD·8/12/2016, 1:16:43 PM·40 votes·4,273 views

I'm not complaining about the one time I got autofilled to ADC and fed my ass off. I'm complaining about it consistently deciding the game outcome based on who gets filled where. Here's why it's a terrible idea:

  1. We don't even get the option to opt out and decide for ourselves that we don't think its worth it to risk getting placed in our worst role in exchange for queue time.

  2. I'm sure MOST people would want to sacrifice a few minutes of their queue times to avoid autofill.

  3. We've been playing Dynamic Queue for about half a year without this restriction so many of us who knew how to play their worst three roles at a level at least one tier below their rank in the past DON'T KNOW HOW ANYMORE. The damage has already been dealt.

  4. Yeah I've won several games because the enemy 1-trick Akali got filled to ADC, but I detest games that are decided by factors like this. NO ONE likes volatility. It's the reason why people ban champions with sub-50% winrates. They're scared of the random Leblanc that will solo carry a game even though most of the time, it's not an issue.

  5. Games are volatile, as one player can drag an entire team down more in this season than ever before.

I've got a D2 account and a Master account so it's a bit less than 1% of playerbase affected I'd say so Riot can just shrug it off. BUT A SIMPLE FIX. Oh, and by the way, I'm writing this during my dodge timer after my one-trick Zac got autofilled support while my one-trick Darius got autofilled mid.

Edit: Most of you bring up the point of autofill creating sustainability in queue times and reference the start of the season where queue times were extremely excessive. Again, the fix I'm suggesting preserves BOTH the values of short queue time and higher match quality/good role select. You DON'T HAVE to opt out. You can simply leave autofill on and enjoy your shorter queue time IF you value that more than your risk of getting filled. IF autofill were on for everybody (like it is now), the people that can deal with it and fill will STILL get their games potentially ruined by their teammates who CANNOT. If you try to make sense of it, you will conclude that the longer queue times that this solution yields are the results of people that are GUARANTEED TO RUIN MATCH QUALITY, not have the potential possibility to. You essentially ELIMINATE the ENTIRE complaints threads for autofill.

Another point regarding queue times is that autofill was implemented roughly the same time as other queue time fixes were implemented so it is a confounding factor in all of this as the other fixes (which you guys haven't mentioned) have been huge in cutting our queue times (not just autofill). These are factors like limiting premade size (to 3) and making MMR boundaries stricter for premades and tweaking matchmaking system algorithm's metrics (MMR, Primary Role Placement, Premade Size, Leniency).

And for those of you saying we can just ask our teammates for their roles; it will work sometimes, but less frequently now. I can refer you to the 3rd point I made in the post. Also, it happens to multiple people at the same time. Almost every champion select I get into, the first words I see in chat are "fucking autofilled." ALMOST. EVERY. TIME.

52 Comments

Locke Daemonfire8/12/2016, 1:55:03 PM7 votes

I won't argue that high level matchmaking doesn't have issues, but I think that you underestimate the effect that opting out of autofill will have. As you said, MOST people would avoid autofill given the option, especially at your level where it is so competitive and everyone is looking for an edge. And especially because on an individual level, it doesn't look like you are giving up a lot to choose to opt out.

The problem is that if everyone does so, then the matchmaking would go back to how it was at the beginning of the season, where I understand there were very big rank disparities in a given match, which is essentially the same problem. To have good matchmaking and no autofill, queue times would be way longer than just a few minutes more. Probably like an hour or two on a good day. It's simply impossible to guarantee roles for ten people when there are barely that many at that level in the queue. It's unsustainable to not have autofill, and although the return transition period will be painful, it has to be done.

I would suggest that if someone claims to be autofilled and cannot play his role, don't dodge for them. Make them dodge. That's basically the way to opt out of autofill right now. Yes, it's a higher penalty, but it has to be. It has to be difficult to get out of autofill, or else everyone will do it. Make them either dodge or get better at other roles.

dominusx8/12/2016, 1:27:25 PM5 votes

So much yes. I agree with this you cant possibly put a tank toplane main play adc or an adc to jungle when the enemy has a jungle main ofc the skill difference in the said roles is gonna affect the game and i know how much it sucks to have a guy that doesnt play adc having to play it and not be able to kite/farm/position to the same degree as the guy who has 300games on the said role its frustrating and you cant do anything about it. But who cares as long as you are not flaming rito wont care lul

ModWulf Helhammer8/12/2016, 2:18:02 PM4 votes

Ever heard of asking your teammates if they want to trade? I've heard that works wonders to avoid laying your worst role

Thrëat8/12/2016, 4:09:48 PM2 votes

I'd agree to double my waiting time to guarantee my role so I'm really not sure why they ever though we would want autofill.

Solahrity8/13/2016, 3:17:36 AM2 votes

I think that a lot of people forget that ranked before Dynamic was pretty much autofill, but with lane stealing.

SpecterVonBaren8/12/2016, 5:15:19 PM2 votes

And then there's those of us that played before Season 6 and think you're being whiny when, for the majority of this game's lifetime, ranked has been a grab bag for roles. This is how ranked used to be and people were able to climb and you can do the same now, sometimes a person will be in a role they aren't the best at, shit happens even when everyone DOES get their role.

People need to learn to play more than one role, and how to accommodate their team's needs.

NichtHurz8/12/2016, 5:30:25 PM2 votes

I certainly am not high elo, so I personally don't have any experience with autofill, but a Master jungle main friend of mine talks quite a bit about how ranked feels for him. For him (just from the general feel of playing against them) everything below D2 is trash, they might be very good players but still at a completely different level. So you can imagine what kind of a joke it is for him when he has to play his low-mid Dia midlane, adc or supp. He can play top if needed (which is his second role), but in most games he doesn't even really need to play if he gets autofilled.

In low elo most people don't even know how to close out games, so even if you feed the enemy top laner hard you can still always win the game, but in his Elo range when you make mistake in one of your bad roles you first get punched in the face, then kicked in the nuts and then left on the floor crying. There might be a few players in this Elo who just play almost everything, but in most cases players got there because they tried to train and optimize their play on one role.

It certainly must be annoying to have super long queue times, but autofill just makes quite a few games all about luck and who got autofilled or not, some games you might get carried, but in many others you'll just have beyond suboptimal role distribution making the game almost nonsense to play.

Sammystorm8/12/2016, 8:32:36 PM1 votes

It is posts like this that got us DQ in the first place. No please.

DarkRitual8/12/2016, 9:26:52 PM1 votes

tl;dr OTP's get rekt with autofill

Happy Jack8/12/2016, 10:10:34 PM1 votes

@ OP, Do you think the ladder is TOO stretched? The taller the ladder, the taller the que time.

What rank does the auto-fill kick in? Should be able to at least toggle it on/off.

Spreek8/12/2016, 10:39:37 PM1 votes

First of all, let's just understand that high elo can pretty much only get two of fast queues, fair matchmaking, and guaranteed roles.

A lot of people say they would rather have long queues. Of course, when the queues actually get long, then suddenly it doesn't seem so great anymore. At the start of the season, there were wayyy more people complaining about long queue times in high elo than I've ever seen complaining about autofill.

Bad queue times make people quit playing a game mode faster than anything else. Maybe they will go to a smurf or just stop playing altogether. But few people want to spam games at 30-40 min queues, which then in turn makes the queues worse for everyone else.

We had autofill every game for the past 5 seasons. This current system is clearly an improvement over that.

Apocyliptic8/13/2016, 1:33:52 AM1 votes

You do realize Autofill is basically the old Que system, correct?

Jeanne fan club8/13/2016, 9:55:17 AM1 votes

A problem that I notice is that support players consistently do not get into higher elos because their ranks depend on the other 4 players most of the time. The influence of a support is less than any other position in the game, meaning that climbing is much harder from support than it is in any other position. Because of this, there WILL always be less supports in all elos, just because there are less support mains because players want to be able to directly influence the outcome of the game. ATM I am plat 1 with 32,472 players in the NA server above me. That is not a very big number at all. I am willing to bet that the vast majority of them do not play support at all (and by vast majority I'm willing to bet that only 1/20th of them are support mains).

This is not inherently Riots fault that people do not like to play support. It would be nice to see more skill intensive supports added to the game, because at the moment it is the least populated role playerwise as well as championwise. Or they could at least make it so that more champions are support worthy.

XDDD8/15/2016, 3:00:45 PM1 votes

Supports as a class are in the strongest position recently that they ever have been in league history. Large support discrepancies are usually the deciding factors in games, especially where all the best ADCs don't have dashes. That's not what this is really about but just my opinion lol

Daemonette12/20/2016, 11:01:54 AM1 votes

Even in low Elo it ruining it. Riot get rid of this crap. I am sick of getting in games where 2 people got autofill and do not know how to play anything beside their 2 chosen lanes. It so hard to climb when I keep getting 2-3 autofills.

Smalltomahawker8/12/2016, 3:38:56 PM1 votes

I feel for you high elo players. Between all the pre-mades and auto fill, can't imagine ranked is a great experience right now. I mean yea.... its fun watching Dyrus, Imaqtpie, Aniiebot 3 man youtube videos. But the number of games pre-mades and auto fill ruin really is not worth it in my opinion.

Maximum Morde8/12/2016, 5:39:00 PM1 votes

You know why auto fill came about though right? Dynamic boosters gaming the system inflates wait times.

Gorgiolio8/12/2016, 7:33:02 PM1 votes

Why are there so many one trick players in the first place?

Enloct8/12/2016, 7:34:44 PM1 votes

Yeah it's funny that all the way back at the round table they mentioned 3 factors - Queue time, match quality, and role select. They didn't, however, mention that 2 of those factors are connected. Role select has an enormous influence on match quality and you pretty much ruin games now if you enforce role select unevenly.

LA Losty8/12/2016, 8:00:35 PM1 votes

I agree. Im currently in diamond 1 and i simply dont queue up when autofill is enabled. We finally have the chance to decide what roles we want to play, the entire idea behind the new championselect goes out the window when you get forced to play fill. If i wanted to sacrefice my role for a lower queue time i would pick fill myself, but i would rather wait longer to play a game i will enjoy in a position i enjoy playing.

Malfini8/12/2016, 8:14:46 PM1 votes

You, as well as others, seem to be barking on the wrong tree. The problem is not "fill" on role selection but the players who trolls ranked games.

The "fill" selection is only for those who can efficiently play any role as needed. It is not supposed to be used to queue faster. If you can play any role, then go ahead. If not, then wait for queue times.