Why autofill is egregious, how it could be better
First of all, I 100% understand the reasoning behind autofilling. Keeping queue times down so more games can be played. But I think it has more of a negative effect than a positive effect, just based on my gameplay experiences so far this season. Here's why:
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Draft dodges. I feel like tons of players just immediately x out of league when they see they got autofilled into a lane they dont want to play. theyd rather wait the 5/15/30 minutes or just go play something else. There have been times where it took 7 or 8 or more drafts to finally get into a game because people dodge over and over. Im sure not every dodge is because of autofill, but it certainly contributes. More dodging = longer time to get into a game, thus defeating the purpose of shorter queue times.
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It makes playing ADC more miserable than it already is. While I personally dont really enjoy supporting, I understand that playing 1 game of support is not the end of the world and am willing to put my head down and just do it. The problem with this is that because I am not a seasoned support player I often get flamed by my adcarry for making mistakes that a support main might not make. Similarly, as someone who plays a lot of adcarry (lul) I would also prefer to not have to deal with the person who got autofilled support, and proceeds to pout about it or pick a champion that has no business supporting and then feed/flame/ragequit. Because support is so commonly autofilled, an ADC players game can be negatively affected very frequently and its super discouraging at times.
In an effort to be constructive, Im not just going to rant my grievances without making some suggestions on how I think it could be better. Here are my thoughts:
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At the very least, remove autofill from ranked games and make it exclusive to normals. When people want to be hypercompetitive its unfair to force them to play a lane they dont practice or arent comfortable in, which can put your team at a major disadvantage. Ill gladly wait 15 mins in queue or more if it means all the players on my team will be happy with what role they got. Plus, this way people can learn support at no risk by playing normals.
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Make filling feel more like an INCENTIVE rather than a PUNISHMENT. How hard would it be to give a minor IP bonus to players who choose to fill? Limit it to 3 games a day or something. Im sure there are lots of players who would queue fill for some extra IP and everyone wins. Im going to use World of Warcraft as an example here, for dungeon or raid queues if there is a shortage of tanks or healers you are offered a slightly increased reward for queueing one of those roles. I think thats just a better way to get more people to play support, its a classic case of conditioning peoples behavior. I think theres a term for it but I dont remember. Psych majors back me up?
Anyway, I just wanted to express some of my frustrations with autofill. I really liked the game a lot better without it, and I think its implemented poorly. What do you guys think?