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The 2016 Ranked Season: Updates on Dynamic Ranked and your feedback

RiotLyte·1/19/2016, 7:34:18 AM·164 votes·385,673 views

Last week, we began initial tests of new champ select, dynamic queue, and a new matchmaking system in North America and Turkey. Driven by the desire to try new features, we saw millions of games played and more ranked games than any preseason before. Compared to last preseason, as a percentage of total games played, the rate of Normal Draft games vaulted by 264%, and Ranked increased by 45%. We’ve also heard tons of feedback, and had our fair share of issues. With all that in mind, let’s share what we learned and what we’re doing for the 2016 Ranked Season, which kicks off around the world over the next 24 hours.

Historically, Ranked Solo/Duo was the place where similarly-skilled players came together to express raw mechanical skill, encyclopedic game knowledge, and their own ability to carry. On the other hand, players told us over and over again they wanted a more competitive experience they could play with friends that lacked the rigid barriers to entry and low queue population of Ranked Teams.

This led us to Dynamic Ranked, where you can queue up with as many friends as you’d like, as long as all party members are within one tier of each other. This new approach to ranked adds team play and even team leadership to the mix of skills mentioned above.

So we had two distinct visions for Ranked play in League, Solo/Duo and Dynamic. The easiest solution might seem like just adding the new queue, but segmenting players can be extremely risky because of potential queue time and match quality issues. These risks compound on servers with smaller populations that can only sustain two queues (currently Normal Blind & Ranked Solo/Duo in those regions).

Because a broad majority of players have voiced their opinion through their engagement, we’re kicking off the 2016 Ranked Season with Dynamic Queues. But there’s a bit more to talk about.

We also heard from some players who prefer to solely measure themselves against all comers. We’re sensitive to any large swath of players feeling like they’re losing their place in League and while we firmly believe in Dynamic Ranked as the future, the game’s social features don’t offer enough support for players looking for like-minded, similarly-skilled players today. Because of this, we’ll launch a new Solo Ranked Queue (no duo’s!) in the coming weeks.

We need to work out a few implementation details, especially for smaller servers before we can roll out the revamped Solo Ranked alongside its Dynamic sibling. Because Dynamic Ranked is an indisputably better experience for playing with friends, the Ranked Teams queue skips the 2016 season while we begin work to integrate the full team experience into Dynamic Ranked. Expect more details about improved organized play later in the year. To be clear, ranked queues for the 2016 season are:

  • Dynamic Ranked
  • A few weeks after season start: Solo Ranked

Some of you are probably wondering about Ranked Rewards, and because we’ve pivoted to supporting Dynamic and Solo Ranked, we’re still figuring them out ourselves. Expect most of the Ranked Rewards to shift to Dynamic Ranked and some concrete news in the first few months of the season.

Over the course of the last week, even up to Monday morning, we’ve made matchmaking upgrades for normal and ranked dynamic queues and the new tech allows for better monitoring and on the fly tuning than ever before. Marked improvements in overall match quality and queue times should already be making themselves felt on live. Here’s what we know after nearly a week of live testing:

  • Premade 4’s are now matching with other Premade 4’s in 98% of their matches, while Premade 5’s are matching with other Premade 5s in 96% of their matches. These numbers are up from the mid-80’s at launch.
  • We’re seeing queue times for high-skill and pro players drop dramatically and are working on further improvements.
  • Most players should now be seeing more competitive (where competitive means each team is equally likely to win) matches compared to the Solo/Duo Ranked queue from last season).

One pain point has been lock in failures in new champ select resulting in queue dodges. This issue compounded with the longer queue times of the initial launch for a pretty miserable experience. We believe the lock in requirement is worth sticking with because it encourages players to stay engaged with their team while drafting, and pushes overall time in champ select lower. Lock in failures are already trending downwards, but remind your friends to lock in during the first few days with new champ select! We expect to see this stabilize over the first two weeks of the system, and if it doesn’t, we’ll move quickly to address it.

Finally, we’re also aiming at a number of updates to new champ select and all dynamic queues over the next couple of patches. We’ll keep you posted on each of these in the patch notes, as well as matchmaking tune-ups and bug fixes:

  • Chroma and ward skin selection
  • Skin purchase in champ select
  • Preventing pick intent from being displayed to opponents during the final pick phase
  • Allowing players to bring the champion grid back up after a champion pick
  • Further improving the dynamic soundtrack
  • Matchmaking will better prioritize your primary position

The 2016 Ranked Season kicks off in NA at 2AM PST on 1/20. GL HF in your placements!

EDIT ::: Other servers will all get their season start dates over the next 24-48 hours.

1,283 Comments

Chamdin1/19/2016, 8:37:22 AM236 votes

so with ranked teams gone will there be no way to play ranked with my friends who are in lower leagues. For example I am plat but regularly play ranked teams with my gold/silver/bronze friends. Will I not be able to play ranked with my silver and bronze friends or will dynamic queue allow this?

ProfDrDeath1/19/2016, 8:02:20 AM133 votes

One problem I see with that:

With the removal of Ranked Teams, you remove the ability of groups of friends that have varying skill levels to play together on the ranked ladder.

For example, in my group, we were 2 Silvers, 2 Golds and 2 Plats when we played Ranked Teams between Christmas and New Year's (We rotated between us 6 for the 5 people to play).

Will mismatching elos be allowed in 5-man premades in the Dynamic Queue?

Deep Terror Nami1/19/2016, 7:36:39 AM76 votes

we’ll launch a new Solo Ranked Queue (no duo’s!) in the coming weeks.

Very impressive that you're actually doing this. Good work. Good work indeed.

Bethor Kookalian1/19/2016, 12:45:18 PM67 votes

@Lyte, I'm a player who has run a ranked team for over 2 years, and I strongly suspect that losing our ability to actually -queue- as Mysterious Arcana is going to seriously hurt the team's cohesion. The value I saw ranked 5s as offering was "unified progression", something that Dynamic Queue doesn't compensate for at all.

Overall, I'm really upset that I'm losing access to tool I used to keep my team together over the years.

Hawkeyzz1/19/2016, 11:36:39 AM61 votes

I find it very sad that Team Ranked will no longer be a thing anymore. I mean, what happens to the team's identity? Me and friends have had a team for a couple years now, and we became close around the team, around the team's NAME, grinding to get into Gold around it, and now it'll just be gone?

OBxUvRzNNT1/19/2016, 10:12:08 AM58 votes

Don't like this change at all...

So basically Solo Ranked will obviously become the new "solo/duo" as it's gonna be the queue that measures skill and will be the superior queue. The dynamic queue will replace Ranked 5s.

Doesn't seem so bad until you realize :

Solo/duo replaced by Solo ranked Ranked 5s replaced by Dynamic queue

That leaves us with no more duoing with a single friend in the competitive queue. And no more playing with people that are a tier away from you in a competitive queue, where there was Ranked 5s...

So RIP to all the ranked 5s team that have a bronze to gold, or silver to plat players, better get comfortable with playing norms because you can't queue in dynamic because of restrictions.

Libermann1/19/2016, 9:03:01 AM50 votes

Compared to last preseason, as a percentage of total games played, the rate of Normal Draft games vaulted by 264%, and Ranked increased by 45%.

I'm sorry, but that Draft games statistic is is horribly misguided. The only reason why I went into a Normal Draft game is because Teambuilder got taken away.

I never do Ranked so I never touch that, and I never want to go through the hell that is Blind Pick ever again. My only real option was Normal Draft. When you take away what was arguably the best thing League ever did, and put in a new queue, of coarse the new queue will spike. What people used previously got taken away, and they are only really left with the new option you forced upon us. Please don't associate a rising percentage of people playing a new draft or queue to be directly correlated with people enjoying that same queue.

As a casual league player, please bring back Teambuilder. It was the best thing that ever happened to league. If that is for some reason impossible, please allow the functionality to remain within the new normal queue. Allow players select one role and be guaranteed that role. Some players like myself only want to play one role. Forcing us to pick another role, whether we like it or not, isn't fair to the casual part of your player base that only wants to play one role. I think that this new queue is great, honestly, I do. The problem is that you guys forced a Ranked Queue onto the casual part of your player base. That is why so many people are asking for Teambuilder back. They want their guaranteed roles and champions back.

TheFistsofChrist1/19/2016, 5:11:03 PM41 votes

The deletion of Ranked 5s makes me very sad. My favorite thing about playing League of Legends was the sense of unified progress that I could have with 7 of my close friends on a ranked team.

Aside from the sense of unified progress, there is no now alternative where I can queue with my bronze and silver (I am plat) friends at all. I would predict that there is now going to be a huge influx of smurfs in bronze and silver, as people in plat and diamond will have to keep alternate accounts to play ranked with their friends.

Overall, I think the addition of a solo queue and dynamic queue is a cool change. Solo queue marks your individual skill without queuing with a friend, and dynamic queue allows you to play with a few friends. But I don't see how maintaining a third ranked teams queue detracts from these other queues. It is a totally separate experience from dynamic and solo that a lot of people will miss.

Bopes1/19/2016, 9:20:49 PM37 votes

I can't even begin to express how upset I am right now. Some of the greatest times I've had playing this game have been with my ranked 5's team and now that ladder is gone. I am honestly in disbelief. I can still remember the nights we spent trying to grind out of Bronze. We started from the bottom and had to work our way up. We had good games, we had god-awful games, but in the end we were a team and we had a blast the whole way. We were The Happy Canadiens. And now our name will be gone and our crew will no longer be able to play with one another in a serious ranked setting because we have some silver, gold, and plat players. Since before I even hit level 30, I fell in love with the idea of creating a ranked 5's team. The dream is dead now... Rito please, I beg of you, don't kill 5's...

Candlelit Dinner1/20/2016, 4:55:16 AM36 votes

DO NOT REMOVE RANKED 5's YOU ARE MAKING A MISTAKE! PLEASE LIKE THIS COMMENT EVERYONE WHO LOVES RANKED 5'S

La Bello1/19/2016, 8:04:30 AM32 votes

okay but what about Us Teambuilder fans who dont care about nor want to play Ranked?

is there still not going to be a coordinated non-Draft blindpick ?

How can we play specific champs in a specific role if they get banned?

Is Teambuilder coming back?

I want a garenteed Role/Champ not to sit through a lame draft and HOPE that I get my role....

ModWuks1/19/2016, 7:49:21 AM31 votes

I definitely appreciate the team's ability to be dynamic ;) and flexible. Thanks for listening to our concerns and the status update!

fishbeard1/19/2016, 7:47:59 AM29 votes

You want your precious solo queue? Fine. But it will be for reals solo this time.

Well played, Riot. Solid setup with the tryhard solo queue and the team-based dynamic queue. Phasing out the old 5's mode is fine with me, as well.

Looking forward to the tweaks and improvements in the new champion select, too. Even with the little hiccups, the new champ select and party system have been really refreshing. This season should be a good one.

Schuster1/20/2016, 8:35:51 PM28 votes

Everytime i log on to leagues i play with friends. Now that rank 5's is disabled i can no longer do that because all of my friends are different ranks from bronze-diamond. I speak for all of them and many others out there who can no longer play with friends in rank. shouldn't it be possible to have everyone play together and just go up against another team with the same mrr on average? This is a "Team Based" game and now that feature is removed, item 3070

Klej1771/19/2016, 8:24:06 AM26 votes

am i understanding this right? if i play new "solo q" i'm not gonna get like skin + champ at the end of the season ? or something like this? I feel it's like punishing me for my preference.

when i am playing with my friends i like to do it casual so we play normals, when rewards and only win will come to our play i feel like it's gonna make us angry on eachother when someone of us will do poorly. You rly should be not being punished for preference and choosing fun over wins.

Eleshakai1/19/2016, 12:49:30 PM24 votes

So in order to avoid the miserable experience of being the odd man out(solo matched with a 4 man queue), you have to give up all ranked rewards?

Well... that's... special.

I used to like following Riot's decisions as far as PB goes because they felt so player focused... now I like following them because they're hilariously bad...

Little Wolf1/19/2016, 10:02:44 AM21 votes

The only thing I dislike about this is the insinuation that solo queue will not have ranked rewards for whatever reason. That honestly sounds like a deliberate attempt to steer traffic away from it, but I don't think Lyte sits in the shadows stroking a cat and grooming fabulous facial hair, so I'll assume there is some other reason for it. This combined with the fact that it will be released weeks later does not bode well for SoloQQ's continued survival. Still, many thanks for trying to accommodate those of us who are dissatisfied with the new system.

DIktan1/19/2016, 6:01:41 PM19 votes

I don't really feel good with this changes

  • Longer Queues means less games and also they are gonna be worse (in dynamic you will not be able to comeback if they are coordinated, this meta is so anoying if you ever die 1 time, we saw how punish it can be in the EU LCS)
  • You can Solo rank but you won't get the big rewards at the end of the season (so you will need to play mostly dynamicQ if you want them even knowing that you are looking for a solo experience)
  • The DynamicQ experience when partying as 4 members is going to be HORRIBLE, the last one guy will suffer, the 4 members will suffer and that will happen for the other team too or even worse what if this "extra" guy is way better than his team and then he need to carry 4 "bad players" (sorry riot but your elo system is bad, I have seen plats 3 playing SOOOO bad and golds 5 doing everything SOOO good so the "they will be in the same skill level" is not 100% correct but this is just another topic wich will take me another post ) I don't really see why riot is making all this changes to a system that was working well also why you need to eliminate rank 5's? that was fun as hell, it was where the low elo can meet high elo and learn from them in a healthy environment, also its where I did a lot of friends (and probably a lot of players too) and play together and we were so proud of what we can acomplish in rank team by also improving as a whole

Im kinda mad and Iam a really patient person but this is just crazy riot has never undertstood rank was to be really serious (it doesnt care if it was solo/duo/rank 5) and normals was to play with friends and relax, league of legends had everything riot is looking for in this "dynamicQ" topic

want to play for fun with friends? -> normals want to take it seriously and improve? -> Solo/Duo want to improve and have fun with friends -> Ranks 5 why would we need a dynamicQ? Im kinda ok with the new champion select but the dynamic thing is just wrong

(if you are going to tell me something about my lvl, I used to play on NA and got 30, changed server and then this is a new account I've been playing since early season 3 )

Chespin20131/19/2016, 11:08:25 AM18 votes

OK so can we have Teambuilder back please? There was no point in removing it for trying out the new champ select so can we have it back now please? I like to play Teambuilder because I want to avoid fighting over roles and learn more about a specific role or champion because that is what fun for me since rank is something I do not find something fun as of right now especially now that dynamic que is here to stay and would rather much just have soloq instead. Blizzard already showed that dynamic que doesn't work like in hots there is no difference in saying it will work in league. If you guys wanted people to play together more why not give more incentives to play in ranked 5s or grouping up in normal's instead of pushing a idea for a system that was already showed in another game to be proven flawed and heavily disliked by the player base.

Shallers1/19/2016, 7:42:59 AM16 votes

Does this mean separate ladders and MMR's for the two separate queues as well?

NusCirtap1/19/2016, 8:17:38 AM14 votes

This was confusing. You first stated that separate queues were too risky, and then a paragraph later decide that it's what you guys are doing?

So the plan is to replace the current solo queue with dynamic, and then make a separate solo queue? Why would you not just keep solo, you know, solo, and add in dynamic as the new/separate queue? Does this mean if we want to join the solo queue ladder, we'll have to start over, as in our mmr is completely reset? And rewards will be shifted towards dynamic? Who is going to want to play solo queue if they have to start over, and most of the rewards are shifted towards dynamic? The entire reason people wanted to solo, was because they felt dynamic rank wouldn't mean as much as a measure of self progression, and bragging rights. If dynamic becomes the primary queue, nobody is going to care about solo rankings.

I don't see the new solo queue becoming popular, due to not being the primary queue, having to start over, and having rewards aimed towards a different queue. (Making assumptions based off how I interpreted the post, as details were not announced.) Due to this, it seems like you guys would eventually just remove it anyways. Was that the plan all along? It honestly seems to me like you guys just decided to choose dynamic, and threw in this solo-queue to temporarily hush the naysayers, knowing that it would fail as a secondary queue. It might've even been popular as a solo/duo (old system), but you made sure there was no chance it would survive by taking it out. I realize you want to make dynamic queue the primary queue, and based on your post, the majority of players supported it over solo/duo. If this is true, then dynamic would've survived as a secondary queue on it's own. Solo, due to the reasoning above, would not. If you truly wanted both queues to thrive, you would've made dynamic the secondary queue, and you must've known that. I'm heavily in support of the old system of solo/duo, but I honestly would have rather you guys kept dynamic as the primary queue, and not done anything else, than to present this fake solution. It's kind of a slap to the face. Oh well.

Garrotte1/19/2016, 7:41:23 AM13 votes

Will the Solo only queue use the old champion select system, or the dynamic version of people still only queuing for 2 roles?

Dutch Krampus1/19/2016, 9:20:20 PM12 votes

For over a year my old high school friends and I have been on a ranked team together, this is by far the worst update for us as of yet. I embrace champ updates, and like the new solo que lane selection. I never voice my opinions on changes because its all apart of the game but this one literally takes away my favorite part of the league. My teammates all live far away from one another and are bronze-plat solo que but ranked 5s gives us a chance to all be competitive together even from so many miles apart. Sometimes we do great, other times we get stomped but we always have a good time. Learn from one another and stay in touch by playing a few games of ranked 5s twice a week. We started out at Bronze 4, and are now silver 4. We had so much fun through the climb and really hope riot considers finding a way to keep ranked 5s. Thank you

Rotakn1/19/2016, 7:39:12 AM12 votes

Will you be able to queue in the Dynamic Ranked as solo still?

Yanashydo1/19/2016, 11:54:58 AM11 votes

Hello guys,

I'm just curious. Since Team ranked is gone, how then will work CS promotions into LCS etc. How you can keep track about top challenger teams?

Thank you for your response.

Indetronable1/19/2016, 7:58:36 AM11 votes

When will you show it in EUW ? :)

Zwirbs1/19/2016, 12:04:03 PM11 votes

You missed one HUGE bug that needs to be fixed. In champ select whenever a player picks a champ that champ's champ select quote plays. This is all fine and dandy EXCEPT FOR SONA who has the quote "Only you can hear me summoner" -_-'' NOW EVERYONE CAN HEAR HER RITO PLZ FIX

La Mechante1/19/2016, 8:48:34 PM11 votes

Not sure if it's a good idea to remove Ranked 5 to be honnest. No more identity for all the organizations who try to become known, elo in dynamic Q as 5 will be less serious than in ranked 5 because you can play with your friends or/and with your serious team. I hope you will realize it was a bad idea to remove ranked 5 and you will return it.

Voltt1/19/2016, 8:54:20 PM11 votes

So with no Ranked 5 teams, How exactly will eSports continue because they will have no way to tell which teams are the good challenger teams anymore without the ranked 5s ladder. And theres no way to tell if a Dynamic queue is actually a 5 man team or just 5 players who wanted to queue together.

disregardable1/19/2016, 7:53:18 AM10 votes

Can I throw in a feature request? Separate champion quotes from sound effects in the mute feature. It's honestly too obnoxious. I want to hear when it's my turn to pick, not an endless bunch of noise. Also, could you make the sounds that aren't related to you needing to take action less prominent in general?

Perkolate181/19/2016, 1:38:45 PM10 votes

My ranked 5's team spans from plat to bronze. I want to be able to do this still. Please dont get rid of ranked 5's. Very fun ladder to climb

Emperor Shd1/19/2016, 5:10:27 PM9 votes

Do you even think before doing things like that ? Or you just go on yolomod ?

WingedWeirdo1/19/2016, 9:12:47 AM8 votes

That's all really nice and good but why is TeamBuilder being replaced? TB was the place where you could play any off-meta thing you wanted, no flaming, because people could choose if they wanted to play with you or not. Also you could pick that one champion and role you wanted and play for 30 games in a row guaranteed, if you like. That was perfect for practicing a champ or for people who don't have a big championpool. In TB no one really cared about team comps and getting countered or anything, it's more about having fun and getting better at a particular champion.

All these perks are lost. You choose 2 roles, you never know which one you get, maybe you don't care but maybe there's only one role you want to play atm. That already means no 30 games in a row with the same champ in the same role (at least it's not likely), also your champ might be banned. If I choose Teemo Support most likely people aren't going to be really happy about it ;D In TB that wasn't an issue, someone would accept me in their group, I just had to wait for people who are actually okay with it. If I play off-meta I might get hit in the face with flame or even dodges.

g0n1/19/2016, 8:39:14 AM8 votes

we just put together a ranked team consisting of plat, gold and unranked players. is it possible that, once we complete our placements, we might end up not actually being able to play together because we get placed in different tiers?

420 0 The Dream1/20/2016, 6:34:46 AM8 votes

What about Team Builder? That was the only mode I played and you guys got rid of it...

AlexdInsane1/19/2016, 8:51:02 AM2 votes

In the solo ranked ladder are we going to be able to play duo with a friend, or its solo and only solo?