A look into the fatal flaw of dynamic queue and new champ select.
It's no secret. Everyone's complaining about dynamic queue. It doesn't feel good. But as I meditate on the idea more and more, I realize that the problem is not only dynamic queue, but also the new champion select.
Neither Dynamic Queue nor New Champion Select encourage a proper competitive team environment.
Dynamic Queue has been talked about in great depth over (too) many posts, so I won't talk about it much in this post. The short answer is that Dynamic Queue inhibits the feeling of fairness and true competition in ranked play.
However, not many people are talking about New Champ Select (which from here-on will be shortened to NCS). People say that it's great, and I agree that it feels great! It's fresh, and the League interface is now well polished. But there are underlying problems that make it terrible for ranked play and may be the true cause for the poor quality of many of the games that we've been having as of late.
One of the biggest problems of NCS is the failure to support flexible picking and counterpicking. And there are two major components to the system that contribute to this problem.
The first component is the "Select-Two" role selection mechanic. This has been largely greeted with warm welcomes, and I agree that it feels good to not have to worry about playing roles you're not comfortable with. It also gives you a greater chance to play your very best champions. However, when it comes to the pick-phase, it suddenly inhibits your team's ability to switch lanes when the need arises, at least on a psychological level. Because everyone is assigned a specific role, many players are hesitant to ask for help from their teammates in counterpicking. Too many times I have seen people pick directly into their own counters, hoping that because it's their main champion, they can simply outskill their counter. Except that doesn't work anymore, because with the new role select, EVERYONE is playing their main champions. In the old champion select, I would often see players communicating to get the best team comp possible by switching around everyone's roles based on their playable champions in each role. In NCS, everyone seems to just pick their best and hope things work out.
The second component is the NCS ban mechanic. Because the LAST three players get to ban instead of the first few, the first and second picks are too easily susceptible to counterpicking. Not only do the first two players have no say in what gets banned, but they have to choose before everyone else, and have the highest chance of being countered by subsequent picks. Compound that with the fact that everyone is queueing with the top champions in their best two roles and suddenly each counter-pick becomes very impactful in most cases. I believe that this is why there are many complaints about games being too one-sided, or having too many feeders, or being over in champ select.
(Well... this is embarrassing. I had more to say but I completely forgot what my other points were. Oops I probably should have written them down)
For players who actually communicate (like premades), most of these problems actually go away. But for solo queue players like me, it becomes very difficult to play, especially since a majority of players don't talk at all in champion select. Just pick their top champion, wait for their turn, and lock in. If we could encourage pre-game chatting more, I think a lot of these problems would be fixed. However, because picking roles and banning have all been made very individualistic, there is now extremely little incentive to communicate in pre-game chat.
Interestingly enough, the problems I pointed out don't affect players who main a specific role. These problems mostly apply to players who don't have a large champion roster or players who prefer to main specific champions. I have always mained 1 or 2 champions per role, and have been able to play all 5 roles equally. The new Select-Two role mechanic was a big hit to my roster, and it has affected other players like myself as well. Players who main a specific role, on the other hand, have all the tools they need to pick and counter-pick safely in the pick phase no matter when they're up to pick.
I would like to suggest that Riot seriously consider supporting all playstyles (maining roles vs. maining champions) as well as encourage players to talk to your teammates in the pre-game chat. I kind of went on a tangent, but please feel free to discuss in the comments below. I'm off to work now but I'll be back later to contribute to the conversation.
