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Autofill - I'd rather wait than get autofilled

Lottabullets··6 votes·1,547 views

This autofill system has a good principle, but an absolutely horrid execution. I understand there aren't as many support mains as the other 4 roles, but I would rather wait 20 minutes in queue than get a role I have no intention of playing nor learning. It puts my team at a massive disadvantage when I get autofilled into support, and it creates terrible games. I queue up for my 2 roles because I have practiced and played those 2 roles the most, and I am totally willing to sacrifice a 2:30 queue time for a 20:00 queue time if that means I get one of my 2 selected roles.

I hate having to moan and have another teammate switch roles with me just because I don't play support or mid, but I get autofilled to those 2 roles a lot.

I know what a lot of people are going to say, "Get good, l2support" and you know what, you may be right, but I am playing ranked to improve at my chosen roles, not to be thrown into the fire with a role I don't know how to play. Yeah, the amount of games I get autofilled to mid/support are probably only 1/5-6 games or so, but man is it annoying. I'll frequently get a queue where I'm one of my two main roles, someone dodges, and then insta-remake of the lobby, and i'm support or mid. Why does that always seem to happen?

4 Comments

HalfTangible2 votes

If I was okay with taking any role, I'd play blind pick.

teaph1 votes

{quoted} totally willing to sacrifice a 2:30 queue time for a 20:00 queue time if that means I get one of my 2 selected roles.

Yeah, investing 20min to get a 30-40min game for your desired role sounds better than 2:30min queue + terrible 20-40min game. One satisfying game > Several crappy/toxic games.

I wonder if Riot's implementing this to push/encourage more support mains for future seasons. It'll be a short-term struggle for a better long-term balance of players, that is, if League can retain popularity during the struggle.

Cuz of autofill, my friend is switching his main role (ADC & Jungle) to support cuz (1) he's a decent support, (2) he's guaranteed his role, and (3) he has a higher chance to go against a non-decent support and smash lane & game.

I guess you could queue with someone that would main support/mid to lower your chances of being autofilled there.

Armvis1 votes

I fairly recently saw a post addressing this. While I can't find it, I can certainly paraphrase. It goes something like this:

Step one: The option to get longer queue times is announced. The button to turn it off is clearly visible. Everyone is elated.

Step two: Everyone starts using this button. Everyone refuses to use autofill. Queue times get longer and longer.

Step three: Since there is a scarcity of support mains, those who don't support have incredibly long queue times. Since there are so few support mains, there becomes a huge demand with low supply.

Step four: A bottleneck forms. Nobody can play a game without someone queuing as support, and so it doesn't just raise queue times by 15 minutes- it raises them to potentially hours.

Tl;dr: Without autofill, queue times skyrocket to potentially hours because of low supply and high demand.

In conclusion: Autofill is a necessary evil. Thanks for reading!

HalfTangible2 votes

Or people start picking support for the short queue times.

Like how people who play DOTA often pick support because as much as they don't like support, they do like to win.

If you're playing ranked, then autofilling to a role you're bad at is probably going to cost you and your team the match.

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