Suggestion for Improving (Causal/Ranked) Draft Pick's Pick/Ban Phase

Good Afternoon Everyone,

We all know the importance of the banning/picking phase of (Casual/Ranked) Draft Mode, but in my opinion, this phase is hindered by the inability to prioritize picks due to the requirement that you can only trade with players who own both champions. Seeing how the purchasing of Champions is a fundamental part of League of Legends, I would like to suggest a new method that I hope would be considered a wonderful addition to Draft Mode.

Like another AsH1ghAsHodor has stated , the idea of “soft-locking” is required for this method to work. “Soft-locking” is the ability for a player to select a champion at any point during the pick/ban phase and have the selection seen by his teammates, but not the enemy team. Another property of soft-locking is that it will automatically become hard-locked after that player’s picking timer hits 0. To help identify soft-locking vs hard-locking, you can just grey-out the champion’s portrait in the player’s champion icon slot if it’s soft-locked.

Before I talk about the new method, I would like to state that the old pick/ban phase will remain completely unchanged. Everything will just be an addition to the old system.

New Method: With soft-locking in place, the current picking player(s) will be given the option to send a request to another teammate, asking if his teammate wants to hard-lock their champion. This request will be in a form similar to the current trading system. If said player decides to confirm the choice, that champion will be locked in and the picking phase will continue as usual. During that same team’s next picking phase, let’s say that Player 1 was the one that went last turn, then it’s now Player 2 and Player 3’s turn to either lock in their champs are send a request to another teammate to lock in their soft-locks. By the last turn, if Player 1 has not hard-locked a champion, then Player 1 will take the last picking phase. I would like to emphasize that the sole purpose of this method is to allow for a team to make more strategic picks, all while keeping the idea that the top player has priority and control during the picking phase.

I know that this method isn’t completely fool proof, so I will try to cover some of the possible abuses/questions and answer them.

• A player cannot initiate a lock request if that same player does not soft-lock a champion.
• If the timer runs out and a lock request has not been confirmed, then the player that sent the request will have their soft-locked champion locked.
• If the requested player changes his soft-locked champion while a request is still active, the request will be cancelled and a new request will be required.
• If nobody soft-locks a champion then the picking phase will continue as usual.

I would like to think that this game begins at the pick/ban phase, but in its current condition, it is only partially true. In a game where counter-picking and priority picks are an important part of the game, this is unacceptable. I welcome all forms of critique. Hopefully with our ideas, we can help improve League of Legends and make this game the best that it can possibly be.

Thank you!

My background: Started playing MOBAs with DotA 1. Migrated to HoN during its closed-beta phase and stayed there for a couple years. Started League of Legends during S2 and played a little bit in S3. Started playing Ranked in S4. I also play DotA 2 from time to time.

On a side-note, I made a similar post to this but posted it in the wrong forum section…