The Company that Tries Hard Even When No One Seems to Notice.
Okay, I'm mostly kind of making this as a rant in a way but hear me out. I'm not exactly a fan of things like auto-fill because even the devil himself plugs his ears to avoid the obscenity's I could speak about being filled into jungle or support when I main things like top, but at the same time, I understand why it's there. I understand that even with it, the system is still better than that obnoxious pick order nonsense that existed before everything we have now. I still don't think we need it in Bronze/Silver/Gold though but hey, I get what might be going through their heads here.
They ARE trying to make as many of us happy as possible in as many ways as possible by trying to allow us an increased chance of getting the roles we want to play. Unfortunately the initial introduction of this role selection setup though increased a bunch of people's queue timers quite drastically which eventually led to the addition of Auto-fill, why? Because people kept complaining about the confounded queue times and how they were taking so long just to get into a single game so Riot had to try and find a solution to the following conundrum.
"How can we, Riot games, make it so that people are still likely to get the roles they want to play while also lowering the queue times?"
Short answer, they can't. It doesn't work that way when the majority of the player base want top or mid. Someone has to lose out there if the queue timers are going to go down. So, Riot could choose to do nothing just to help guarantee people their roles but then they'll get accused of not listening and not caring about their players even more than they already do. So what then can they do? I'm sure you can see where this is going now. Ding ding din! That's right, AUTO-FILL! The dreaded nemesis of anyone who queue's up for one of the more popular roles that League has to offer.
With this system, the majority of players still win and queue timers can get reduced at the same time. At least 3 out of 5 people on a team can still get their primary/secondary roles AND the queue timer can be cut by nearly 1/3 to half! The system still sucks though, I mean I hate it, you hate it, we all hate it. Just because you or I would prefer longer queue times over this, doesn't mean that that's what the majority of players want. PLUS, it must also be considered that a good number of those like us who just want the longer queue times back just to be guaranteed our selected roles could also change our minds once we're actually faced with those queue timers again. If that happens, a lot of us would likely disregard our previous opinions about it and go right back to screaming and yelling at Riot to "fix their shit". No one wants to admit it, but those of you who this rings true for know it to be true somewhere deep inside your hearts. We're a community, unfortunately, that thrives off of casting blame and shame on anyone but ourselves. We take for granted everything Riot has given us, for free no less. They gave us this game and regular balance updates for years, FOR FREE! Why are we looking this gift horse in the mouth like this? That's easy, we've been spoiled. A lot of us have been made into ill-tempered brats that no matter what Riot tries to do to please us, we remain completely dissatisfied. We've forgotten how to feel contented with what we're offered. We want these problems fixed and yet we refuse to acknowledge that each fix is inevitably going to stir problems elsewhere. There is no magical perfect fix that Riot can offer and it's completely unreasonable of us to expect otherwise all things considered. I'm just sick of seeing all of this hatred being dumped on Riot when a lot of it isn't even deserved. Sure, they aren't a perfect company but at least they try to be. At least they make an effort even if we've grown blind to it. So they next time you think to criticize riot, I'm not asking you to filter or censor yourself or otherwise not do it all, but at least think it through. At least acknowledge that you don't know everything and you don't know what it's like to try and appease the masses in such a popular game before you chastise them for their inevitable failures. It's really not that hard to be a considerate thinker, it's just that it's unfortunately more convenient not to be.
If anyone read this all the way to the end, I thank you for your time even if we don't agree or see eye to eye, I at least appreciate your attempt to give my thoughts on this matter the time of day. And to you Riot, thank you for making one of my all time favourite games to date and I look forward to many more years with you and your game.
