Thought About Team Builder
I've been noticing a kind of annoying incentive in the team builder queue lately, resulting in huge build times for anyone trying to build a team with fewer than a three-person premade from the getgo.
When I consider the team builder options (build a team/join a team) I imagine the intended experience is that you build a team to get the team you want, and you join a team to get a faster queue time (while still playing the position/champion you want). The problem is that any team joiner who loads into a room as the second through fourth teammate is going to want to leave, regardless of the team comp he's joining, because he wants to:
A) Have a faster queue; and B) Have a say in the team comp he ends up playing, insofar as he wants to see the finished product and not wait for it to morph into something monstrous.
Consider the player who joins as the third teammate. He's farther along than if he started building a team from scratch, but not much, since the first couple teammates tend to pop up fairly quickly. And now he has to wait for teammates four and five under the perpetual threat of any of the other players (though it is unlikely to be the captain) leaving because they either don't like the team comp or they've gotten bored waiting. In general I've found that finding a player for any given position isn't that difficult, but getting everyone to sit still long enough for five people to actually get in the room is pretty tricky, not even considering the people who don't like the champions everyone else has picked. I've had this process of cycling through people until they get bored or dissatisfied take as long as twenty-five minutes, with open positions being filled two or three times each. I understand there is a premium to playing the champion you want to play, but this could be more efficient.
What if we went back to the original queue incentives and stated formally that those building a team get input on what the team comp is, while those joining a team benefit from faster queue times. In other words, solo players should be disincentivized from leaving team builder queues, either through a queue timer or an ammo system like Rerolls in ARAM (which would preserve the ability to opt out of extremely unconventional/toxic/troll teams). This could drive build times down dramatically while preserving all the same options for players (team comps vs. queue times). The difference is just that solo players aren't doubling up on incentives.
TL;DR Limit the option for solo players to drop Team Builder queue because they're impatient or don't like the team comp. It will make their queue times faster, and if they want to decide the team comp, they should build a team.