Now that a new season is starting, it's time to revisit teambuilder and implement it in ranked.
I made this post almost a year ago when teambuilder first came out. It outlined how I thought it could worked in ranked. Sadly, nobody at riot really seemed to want to respond. I get it, we were midway through S4 and any change like that would be hard.
Now we're between seasons, it's time to consider something like this. Soloqueue is full of toxicity and is one of the most frustrating aspects of League. Replacing the current queue model with teambuilder would alleviate a lot of these issues.
Ranked queue currently when you soloqueue leaves you up for any position, no matter how much you beg and plead you are likely to end up in a position you are less than optimal at unless people recognize your name and allow you to play that position purely based on your RNG position in pick order. Not only does this cause a large percentage of the toxicity, with the new teambuilder it is completely avoidable.
Bringing teambuilder to ranked is easy. You take off the champion selection and have us choose a role and position, queuing us up in a pre game lobby where we can vote on a captain, vote to kick players, and leave without any dodge penalty before queuing to be matched against another team and going to champion select.
Allow players to select their roles and positions like normal, perhaps even allow them to select a series of preferred champions (up to 3) or to leave all these fields blank and queue as "fill" for a faster queue time.
This will allow us to talk strategy, composition, etc. in a constructive way, we're all getting the roles we want, if people are being toxic mob rule dictates they leave. If you're unhappy with how things are looking before the match starts you can leave and find another team without facing a penalty.
This should replace the current queue system entirely in ranked soloqueue. Alleviating any fears on queue times.
EDIT: Clarification on the concept:
Will replace current draft pick soloqueue system so queue times aren't increased and its balanced.
People queue for ranked team builder selecting a position and role (Tank/Marksman/Fighter/Assassin/Mage - Top/Mid/Jungle/Bottom) and then queue into a lobby. People can queue as multiple roles, or as "fill" for faster queue times, but must select their role once they reach the lobby. EDIT: Possibly be able to select multiple roles in a check list whether it be champion types or lanes
They then vote on a captain who will be first pick and do the bans, this is the only advantage they have. Captain is selected by the person with the highest number of votes, or it is randomly selected among people who have votes. So if two people have two votes and one person has one vote, the captain will be random from the 2 people selected. If everyone votes for themselves, it will be random. Captain is selected upon the next phase, votes can be changed at any time during this phase.
During this lobby, if four people agree one person can be removed from the lobby with no penalty to the kickee, the team must then wait for a replacement. This can't be abused because four must vote for a kick, if a team has less than 5 people, then obviously nobody can kick.
Leaving the lobby also does not incur a dodge penalty, this way if you're not liking the way the lobby is turning out you can opt in for another team. This will be balanced because this doesn't take place durin the pick/ban phase so people won't be dodging to get a better matchup.
After a team has been built and ready, a vote for ready option will come up, when everyone is ready the team will be queued as normal, kind of like the current 5v5 teams queue, but only against other teambuilder queues. At this point captain votes will be tallied and the captain will be selected.
Once an opponent team has been found, things will behave like the current Draft Pick system, going into a ban/pick phase with the captain who was voted in first place, and the the four players placed randomly. If you dodge here you will incur a dodge penalty, which should now be increased to compensate for the increased time it takes to build a team.
