Boards›[ARCHIVED] Miscellaneous

Duo Queue Ranked needs to be adressed in Season 4

Zoram·11/11/2013, 11:04:43 AM·4 votes·775 views

Duo Queue ranked, a point of great contention for a long time now. Season 4 changes so far are big, so why not go and look into this issue?

Everyone at some point has experienced the duo queue of some sort, and they always spell disaster for ranked. In Ranked we are supposed to prove our skill by the merits of our own efforts, to contribute to the team, function well, play well and if we do these things right, we move up. However Duo Queues in ranked break this philosophy...

Duos always have an idea in mind that they usually force upon their team, this is stressful, one entity(this quo queue) has more power than the 3 random people. Thus a lot of people get their toes stepped on, and their desires to find the optimal strategy shoved aside in favor of that of a pre-made duo queue. Sometimes they don't mean to psh their wishes on others, but it can still end up happening, and usually isn't fun.

Duos often have difficulty(more than normal) at looking at the big picture, they know each other and thus feel more responsible to each other, a jungler might gank and protect his friend's lane when maybe his time would have been better spent elsewhere. They also can tend to be defensive, offensive and overall difficult to work with. These aren't true each time, but often it is whether or not they mean to or not. Finally they are those who tend to talk on voice chat like skype, and thus when they strategize, their team mates have no idea and it disconnects them, which is bad in a ranked environment.

Finally, there is just plain skill gap and system abuse. Its no fun to be silver/gold and have a diamond+bronze duo queue stomp you. Likewise being gold/plat it isn't fun when you get a silver+gold duo queue be just enough to drag your team down to lose. The fact is, duo queues always lead to teams that the system would normally never put together, and it just has no way to compensate for the wild variables that duos queues often bring.

Ranked is about proving yourself, not proving you and your friend. Ranked pre-mades should stick to team ranked, while the solo/duo queue should be left to solo queue. I am out there to prove my worth, and I don't want to be made to play unfairly with and against duo queues that skew the system. If you are out there to have fun with a friend, that is fine, I do it all the time!....in non-ranked. Ranked should be for individuals to show their induvidual skill level, not to show how much they carried a friend, how much a friend carried them, or how much they brought down each other and random strangers with their duo-que...

In all, Duo-Queue ranked causes more issues than it is worth, I think it should be nixed.

12 Comments

Solan Stonewhip11/11/2013, 5:56:05 PM3 votes

i have mixed feelings on this. on the one hand. you bring up some good points. on the other hand, as a guy who plays with friends mostly his own skill level. i'd miss duo queuing with them. it decreases the number of toxic players i might encounter by 1. i'd rather they kept duo queue and instead limited the elo range for the players queuing up together. i.e. silver iii can play with players ranked between gold v and bronze 1 for example.

my basic objection to your post is that league is not an individual skill game, so teamwork for me is more important.

the duo queue enforcing their own designs on a ranked game i haven't really ever seen. but i can totally believe it would happen. personally i don't think riot has any intention of making small fixes to champ select until they finish team builder and see what the results from that are.

but if riot did decide to remove duo queue from ranked, i wouldn't stop playing either.

Apollinarius11/12/2013, 8:45:34 PM3 votes

No. I only play ranked, and I duo with the same person about 30% of all my games. My duo partner is one league higher than me, but in most situations, the difference isn't very obvious.

My duo (and most duos I've encountered as a solo) do not impose their will on others. They call their lanes, just like most people often do. I like to fill, mostly because I get bored of playing the same role all the time, and I like the random element of not knowing what I'll get to play :D

I have never seen a situation where the problem was a duo queue. Problems are individual players that may or may not be part of a duo. You could argue that having a duo means you're more likely to have two toxic people on the same team, but at the same time that means you're reducing the chance of one toxic person per team elsewhere.

Yes, duos will often help their friend more than others on their team, but that's usually for the best because they have a better idea of each other's abilities and are often communicating by voice chat. If I'm chosing to gank mid or top, and my duo partner is in mid, the gank will be better coordinated in mid than in top because we can sync up our timing better. Yes, top might need the gank more perhaps, but a successful gank in a place that doesn't need it is more useful overall than an unsuccessful one in a place that does need it.

eKatSS11/11/2013, 4:49:55 PM2 votes

If the duo that you encounter in duo queue causes problems to the team, they are having a negative attitude towards the team, which is reportable behaviour.

Moreso, with the upcoming team builder, I would expect similar changes to the ranked queue system to come (by similar, I mean better adapted to the problems you mention above).

Also, since (edit) in pre-season 4 you can now drop tiers, it is not in the interest of higher level players to carry their duo queue mate to higher tiers if they risk to lose games in the process.

Lampenputzer11/12/2013, 3:42:28 PM1 votes

Ranked should have a true solo queue and a separate group queue. Match groups up together so they don't cause problems for solo people. Let solos be able to opt into the group queue and always give them first pick or extra IP or some other bonus for filling out teams.

alakkadapoosy11/20/2013, 3:53:52 PM1 votes

no.

Lotus Steel1/17/2014, 7:30:27 PM1 votes

I find that no matter what type of queue I'm in, ranked or normal, that people attempt to push their "strategy" on the rest of the team ("top or feed," "I'm mid, I called it," "pick order, sucks to be you," "play leona or thresh plz").

I duo queue to reduce the amount of jerks I have to deal with. My client's even bugged to where I can't view the chat period-- and honestly, I'm not really looking to fix it. I can talk with my duo queue partner, encourage and figure out a strategy, and I can still see pings.

I found this older post because I searched to try and see what people thought-- if it was better to duo or single queue for placement matches. More often than not, I end up with a team who either believes in pick order for roles when they queue (when this benefits them the most) or believes in calling for roles when they queue (and for when this option benefits them). At least with a duo queue, I'm more likely to get a role I both favor and perform better in, and if I happen to have a bad game, I don't get blasted by four people, just three.

I don't think taking out duo queues will change anything about player behavior nor make improvements to the ranked system. Harsher tribunal rulings and a more dynamic ranking system that also incorporates player contribution to the team (KDA, damage output, damage taken, objective control, etc) will. I had a 3/15 Fiora player in one of my matches the other day who would consistently over-extend and who would never use their trinket to ward (not to mention the player always said to people running from a stupid 5v2 encounter this player initiated "thx for not helping"). They were given the role they called in Champion Select, too, despite being on the bottom. We worked around this player's wishes, being good teammates. Somehow, we managed to win-- and it honestly sucks that we gave this person, who was such a horrible player, a win.