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Queue health comes to patch notes

Riot·11/30/2016, 10:03:29 PM·7 votes·264,589 views

The new season is just a few days away, so this year we’re opening up communications when it comes to ranked.

To give you more information on how 2017’s ranked queues are performing, we're making their overall health a part of each and every iteration of patch notes. Here’s what it looks like:

Queue health

What does this update mean?

Ranked Solo/Duo Queue

Ranked Flex

FOUR'S A CROWD We will be removing the ability to queue up as four to reduce queue times.

To assess what “healthy” is, we’re constantly going to be looking at queue times, dodge rates, and position preference rates, across premade sizes, skill level, and time of day/week. From those, we’ll devise a simple graphic rating and stick it in patch notes. We’ll do this on a per-region basis.

Means queue times are generally low, matches are fair and role selection is well distributed. Awesome.

Means one or more metrics are veering towards… suboptimal, but the queue is still playable and we’re happy to keep it as-is. This one’s more of a heads-up than a warning.

Means we’re going to have to make some adjustments to Solo/Duo or Flex, and you’ll see exactly what we’re changing to help make the queue healthier.

One of the requirements for Ranked Flex to work is a minimum number of solo players to keep matchmaking smooth. We’ve prepared a plan to make sure we can respond quickly if we see long queue times.

The things we’d try first include:

  • higher weighted position preferences
  • scheduled queue availability
  • limiting Ranked Flex to pure five-person premades
  • limiting Ranked Flex to restrict four-person premades (which all regions launch with)

The latest updates will be recapped in the following patch notes. If we have to make massive changes quickly, we’ll likely make it part of the status page with an in-client notification.

Queue health updates roll out in patch 6.24, and we’re looking for feedback and suggestions. Let us know what you think!

387 Comments

PsiGuard11/30/2016, 10:28:03 PM180 votes

"limiting Ranked Flex to pure five-person premades"

Just saying, if you guys ever do this you might as well rename the queue 'cause it won't be flexible anymore.

AirKingNeo11/30/2016, 10:38:18 PM158 votes

When will you remove Autofill from normal Draft? People don't like it and it causes more dodges making queuing up longer.

MexicanPlaya11/30/2016, 11:44:27 PM52 votes

TURN OFF THE AUTOFILL!!!!

  1. [zombie-nunu-tears]
DeathBurst11/30/2016, 11:22:34 PM48 votes

I must confess, I'm a little disappointed. Saying "yo, the queue is healthy" isn't gonna change anything if people don't feel that way.

#If that's the only thing we're getting, I must ask: What is Riot trying to achieve with this addition to Patch Notes?

  • It won't change how people feel
  • It doesn't provide more context, such as "OK, it's rough for YOU because <reasons> but on average it's pretty good"
  • It doesn't provide data to refute people complaining with anecdotal evidence or likely false claims.

I really hoped we could get some quantitative stats, like "how often do people get their primary" or "what's the average queue time per ELO", some facts that we can use to actually discuss the situation.

Shinjusuke11/30/2016, 10:47:17 PM41 votes

Autofill needs to go.

Outright.

If you're having queue health problems, try not caring more about some roles than others so people don't look at Support as "the adc's bitch" and jungle as "everyone's bitch". Then you won't have queue health problems.

Xonra11/30/2016, 11:18:19 PM41 votes

It's like all of 2016 was a huge waste of time:

  • Remove solo queue
  • force dynamic queue
  • remove 5v5 team queue
  • bring back solo queue
  • turn dynamic queue into flex queue
  • turn flex queue into 5v5 team queue
  • have only solo/duo and team 5v5

wtf was even the point of all the ranked changes if they just brought back solo/duo (which I'm glad they did) and then just turn flex queue into the ranked 5s they removed? It feels like 2016's ranked adventure was a huge waste of time.

heisenburgwon11/30/2016, 11:25:44 PM35 votes

i feel like the autofill is not healthy for the game, we watch pros who specialize (and sometimes only) playing one role, and playing that role at a high level. it's really hard to improve at jungling when i'm repeatedly forced to play lanes. I'd much rather wait 10 minutes like team builder and get a team i actually want than have people tilted before the game even starts because they don't know or own any champs in the role their forced to play. Are we really expected to have 5+ rune pages for each role right out of the gate? when we're only given 2 pages?

BabyIon12/1/2016, 1:03:15 AM34 votes

You guys really need to work on how you rank supports. I main support and every season I am put into bronze. As a solo rank player, it's already tough trying to get a team to play well but when you are sometimes the best player on the team and a support, it is still not enough to pull up a rank. It's very dejecting because when I play on my other account, I play top or mid, and have gotten into silver 1 or gold 4 easily. I do not like to play those roles though so on my main I have tried to climb the latter as a support and it never gets me past bronze. I do not understand.

Always Forsaken11/30/2016, 10:06:26 PM24 votes

When can Graves have his cigar back :(

Pepperoni Bacon11/30/2016, 11:32:04 PM24 votes

Personally, if you want a boost to the number of players playing support, just have them lose like 5 less LP per loss than other roles. You'd see a huge bump in the number of supports, and personally I think it is fair to let the support lose less LP than the people trying to carry.

Jhinatonic11/30/2016, 10:36:19 PM21 votes

I think you guys shouldn't limit the Ranked Flex to pure Five-person premades, because as PSiGaurd said it won't be flexible at all then, as well as what happens to all of us bros who want to play as a trio xD

Thanks for keeping us updated though! Hope everyone has an awesome week!!! :)

Draykow11/30/2016, 11:08:10 PM19 votes

Have you considered removing Blind Pick completely?

NA is MI12/1/2016, 4:34:22 AM15 votes

As a support main, one of the biggest issues I see is that while I hear about other people complaining about getting autofilled to the support role, I find that there are often times 2 or more support mains in my games. Maybe as with fill there should be an option for supports to queue as only support so that way someone doesn't get autofilled into the support role while there are multiple support mains in the same game.

Lilybet11/30/2016, 10:42:13 PM11 votes

I definitely think it will be a good idea to weight first preferences more, especially when it comes to support. Support mains still aren't that common, so I know I would rather wait just a bit longer to find a game than be filled to my nonsupport secondary. There are people out there who wait for a long time just to hopefully get my mid secondary, so they can totally have it.

ÿëët 42012/1/2016, 6:02:40 AM11 votes

Hello riot! tl dr; autofill sucks and doesn't help queue time. Seriously. Maybe limit it to upper elos?

Thank you for asking. I am curious about autofill. Is there a way it can be changed? Not only is it annoying (WOW LOOK I'm support again...), but also has certain bugs. For example, there are ways to get rid of it (not telling how because I don't want it removed for when I use it, sorry everyone), and, worst of all, there is a bug that can cause it to happen in promo games. It seems to only happen on the last game, but for some reason when I was in promos to get to bronze III (yes I suck at this game) I was autofilled to support, and was unable to carry the game. This problem made me do promos 4 times. On the fourth, I had to pick Veigar support to carry the game. Veering back on topic, I understand how this mechanic is intended to help queue times, but this is not the case. What generally happens is I have to wait for 2-6 games to be dodged because someone on either team didn't get their role (dagnabbit, support AGAIN!). So, what happens is not only do people have to wait EVEN LONGER than they would have without autofill, but because of the way autofill works they are even more likely to get stuck with a role that they don't want, which results in trolling and feeding. I would say over half of my games contain someone who intentionally feeds/trolls or does so accidentally because they have no idea how to play the role they were forced into. Which brings up another topic. Why in blue blazes is there an option to pick your role if you are going to keep getting forced into support? It's a pain riot. A big pain. I frequently have to trade with support because they instalock leblanc and say "give me mid or I feed." That's my two bits on the issue. As a long time player (since season 3 I think?) I have seen the game in a much less toxic, much healthier place, and that was before autofill. Quite frankly, I would rather wait 5 minutes in queue than spend 10 minutes in queue having to sit at comp and keep re-accepting dodged matches, then 20 minutes of in-game frustration and toxicity galore, then suffer the -20 lp penalty of a trolled game. Thank you for reading.

PS please don't disable normal draft. I like to practice my role without having to have the ctrl + c of my role ready and the fastest connection to the server (cough cough blind pick cough cough)

Nose of Soren12/1/2016, 4:49:21 PM7 votes

Riot should do an in-client poll about auto-fill. I'm guessing that they would get near 100% negative feedback since it hasn't worked to get lower queue times since people just dodge. Not only that but at least in my games, the amount of trolling and intentional feeding has gone up tenfold because MOST of my supports didn't queue for it. We're willing to wait for everyone to get their role! It's the most enjoyable and non-toxic playing experience.

Leonerdo11/30/2016, 10:57:37 PM5 votes

When you put a link to this page, on this page. GJ Rito, much communication, such clarity, wow.