Support isn't getting more popular. Who is benefiting from the lies?
It's been a problem ever since the formation of the ADC/Support meta, and I'd say it's actually been a problem ever since the introduction of a support class into any kind of game. The vast majority of people would rather not play a supporting role.
But Riot has been doing some pretty sneaky business to increase how many people appear to like the role. The original blind pick where last pick was almost always shafted to Sup unless someone who was sick of people not knowing the role decided to main it themselves ended up with them by chance. Since it was blind, they could only go off of champion play rates to find out if people were playing support. But that meant nothing when it was likely no one wanted it. The creation of the Draft pick so people could somewhat reliably play the role they want also has the added benefit that they can track what roles are popular-- even if they don't give us that information.
But, and you can call me crazy if you'd like, it seems there have been choices made to make it appear as though people are liking the support role without any actual change to the number of people wanting to play it. Autofill was created, they say, to lower queue times. But the slight decrease in queue times that resulted in no way outweighs the discontent a player feels when they have to spend 20-40 minutes playing a role they didn't want to. Though it makes more sense to say that the change is simply to force people to play Support, thus increasing the number of people discontent with having autofilled supports who ruin games for the whole team, resulting in those angry people choosing to main Support themselves. As that would actually have a monetary incentive behind it-- they've already made plenty of skins for supports, and forcing people to switch from the role they already like and bought skins for to a new one gets more people to buy them.
However, I still think there's somehow some incentive for them to make it appear as though more people are playing Support. Take Pyke as evidence. Pyke's existence is questionable at best: he performs poorly in the role, doesn't synergize with any supportive builds, can't reliably be the engage that his CC would imply because he'll die, and can't be added artillery like ranged damage supports. But what he can do, is make people who don't play support interested in queueing up as a Support just to be the guy who makes them feel better because he gets the kills-- whether or not he's a benefit to any team comp. I'd even bet he's only really effective on a team with a vanguard as the top or jungle, so they can have some semblance of a support while he's doing no such job.
So I wonder, just who is it that benefits from Support popularity being falsely artificially inflated? There's a clear case for Autofill, as I outlined the fact there is a monetary incentive. But what about Pyke? Why was a design for a character who wholly contradicts the role and items that were not-too-long-ago updated to make Supports feel more impactful allowed to go from initial stages to completion without anyone questioning the obvious flaws in his design?
In case you're someone who somehow can't understand that this is specifically covering those things which falsely inflate support play rate, I have to point out that the changes to Support items a while back which likely did increase it fairly are the solution to what I'm addressing. We need them to make changes to the role so people want to play it, not make changes to the pick phase to force people into it or champions that can't actually do the job.
