why is Team Builder so unpopular?

Worst Mid Ever·4/10/2015, 6:17:48 AM·23 votes·4,591 views

People were asking for something like Team Builder, where people could play their main role constantly to practice for ranked without having to fight people in normal champ select, for years before it was released. Despite this, for some reason it died almost instantly after release, and when I queue for a normal I still get people "calling" a role and then trolling or afking if someone else locks it. Is there some technical error with the matchmaking? The last time I played I was only getting matched with silvers, despite my normal MMR matching me with mostly plats and diamonds, that was last season though.

58 Comments

Renaille4/10/2015, 8:29:54 AM36 votes

Team builder isn't unpopular. Support and jungle are.

MeesterMoo4/10/2015, 6:28:18 AM18 votes

Team Builder is unpopular? I find a perfect game with no trolls (usually) in about 5-7 minutes max. I almost always go TB. What's bad about it? You can grab a few friends, form your comp, and then play. Is there something I'm missing?

Jamaree4/10/2015, 6:24:38 AM14 votes

People don't like waiting.

SmknWdl4/10/2015, 1:22:44 PM10 votes

I never even play normal anymore... too toxic. Team builder for life

Taryn4/10/2015, 3:31:22 PM9 votes

I love Teambuilder. Like 95% of my matches nowadays are with Teambuilder (the rest being ranked and ARAM). Nothing is better than being able to spam my favorite champion and role all day with no risk of someone else calling the role before me.

NorthernDruid4/10/2015, 11:11:15 AM8 votes

It never caught steam, so que times are long, so people aren't interested, so it doesn't catch steam, etc.

There's also probably a sizeable portion of summoners out there, who would be more interested if they didn't have to lock in a specific champion way in advance, or could que up for multiple roles at once.

GaleWinUnleashed4/11/2015, 5:39:55 AM2 votes

Team Builder isn't popular because Team Builder isn't popular. It's a self-feeding thing. I'd like to see what would happen if Blind Pick was disabled for a while.

Stark60004/10/2015, 6:31:42 PM2 votes

who wants to play a position with less gold less power and more ward responsibility?

hardly anyone.

Back in this game's infancy i stated that they needed to find a way to get supports greater strengths besides just CC. Because if they don't scale with gold they will be there to just assist other champions who have ACTUAL damage or tanking potential.

Synx74/10/2015, 7:20:40 PM2 votes

TB it is. Too bad "Find another team" button its way too much spammed , hence the waiting times.

SociopathFriend4/10/2015, 5:11:09 PM2 votes

Mostly I think it's the queue time.

Zarxis4/10/2015, 6:37:38 AM2 votes

Queue times can be fairly long when you play things that aren't LC$ viable. I remember practicing mid Zilean recently; it took me over 15 minutes to get into a match. When Bard first came out, it took me over half an hour. Also, not having bans is absolutely horrible. Why bother playing any champion that isn't overtly strong if you know you're extremely likely to be put against a team of the strongest current champions? Don't get me wrong; I hate Draft Pick (I don't want to talk about Blind -shudders-). 6 bans aren't enough, people don't follow pick order, trolls can't be reported before a match starts, it doesn't make sense that one person on each team gets to do all of the bans, etc.

If Team Builder had bans and some sort of way to prevent the constant kicking for trying to play unpopular champions (or even strong champions in an unconventional role/position), I might never use Draft Pick again (except for Ranked... Until Riot adds Team Builder to Ranked).

PL554/10/2015, 3:27:39 PM2 votes

Probably because if you want to play mid or top you need to wait 5 minutes or so to just find a team, maybe a little more to get that team completed. Every other role takes around 10 seconds to find a team.

Dengeden4/10/2015, 9:15:53 AM2 votes

Support and jungle sometimes take forever to find and then we have the retarded "we need this champ/class or we lose" mentality. That's the 2 main reasons I can think of.

BastionKross4/10/2015, 1:51:15 PM2 votes

Back on the old GD board, the idea of something like teambuilder would be brought up once in a while, and the conversation would always end up looking like this:

Summoner1: Dudes, we need a mode where you can just queue up for a role, so there's no more fighting! Summoner2: That wouldn't be very popular, the queue times would be longer. 1: They wouldn't be THAT much longer! 2: Oh yeah? How long do you think it would take to find an unpopular role like support? 1: Like three minutes, at most. 2: Your delirious optimism is both envious and frightening.

And look where we are. Summoner2 should have quit his dayjob and became a psychic. Then again, you didn't need the powers of Nostradamus to see that there were always going to be roles where you'd have a serious shortage. It doesn't matter how many players join teambuilder. I'm willing to bet that for every 20 players that use TB right now, you get 11 mids, 4 tops, 3 ADCs, and 1 jungler and support each. Until the roles themselves are balanced for player appeal, teambuilder will never work without extra incentives for unpopular roles. (I.E. double IP gain for supports and junglers as long as they're unpopular)

Drackolus4/12/2015, 6:36:41 PM1 votes

I use teambuilder pretty much exclusively, for the primary purpose of avoiding "top or feed." Also lets me pick my role... ya 'know, like teambuilder is supposed to. I'd rather play with people patient enough to wait 10 minutes for a match anyway. Maybe that's why I experience so few ragers.

indomitable14/14/2015, 11:24:55 PM1 votes

The team lobby where players call roles is toxic. The real question is why isn't that permanently disabled so the queue times on team builder go down.

Ixlin4/15/2015, 3:41:28 AM1 votes

As has been mentioned by several other people, the reason I generally avoid TB lately is the rampant game jumping. To say that it's frustrating to sit with two other patient people for fifteen minutes, while we watch an endless stream of people join, look at everyone else's choices, and leave. Or leave because the game isn't full yet. And it will drag on like that, seemingly endlessly sometimes.

I think the best thing they could do to revitalize team builder is limit your number of clicks on that Find A New Game button. Or even make them earn them by playing, like rerolls in ARAM.

MrJBravo8/20/2015, 9:13:39 PM1 votes

riot needs to put a limit to how many times you can back out of a group, team builder was meant to be able to play the role you want not hang out in the queue to wait for a perfect team, the problem is once you get the long awaited support, they decide they don't like the team and back out. Riot should implement punishments for constant backing out as it feels that people are just trolling

Malgana4/10/2015, 9:07:20 PM1 votes

30 min wait times aren't a good thing. Everyone just picks the most popular roles and you're left to wait forever for the non-popular ones, just like in WoW.

The reason this doesn't work in League is because you don't have quests and other junk to do while you wait like you do in WoW.

DrProfVibeCheck4/10/2015, 9:12:36 PM1 votes

What I do is use team builder when I feel like practicing a certain role or if I want to go supp or jg. I use blind pick if I don't care where I go. I usually just "fill". Point is, there is a time to use both.

Keevalroy4/10/2015, 9:18:42 PM1 votes

"Cuz muh time iz importunt! I don't want to wait in queue for a few minutes because I have the attention span of a squirrel and expect all my games to be instant pop."

stuffinstuff4/10/2015, 9:58:25 PM1 votes

I commenly use tb for things that my friends don't like (jungle shen Shen summoner 11 )and I'm still aparently "not a good jungler" even though I have a okay match history with him

Toa of Death4/10/2015, 10:29:31 PM1 votes

It baffles my mind as well. It's the best way to practice any new champs you want to try and, for the most part, there's a lot less toxic trolls than in Ranked or Draft Pick.

GhostOfShrimpmas4/10/2015, 11:19:33 PM1 votes

I haven't gone in a normal queue once since Team Builder hit. I'd rather wait ten minutes to get a team and play a fun game than have to waste 20 minutes bored and losing because I got stuck as support.

RoyaiChaos4/11/2015, 2:05:26 AM1 votes

Might be a good idea to mention you're on the OCE server.

Biffolo4/11/2015, 4:01:27 AM1 votes

Being a support main I would have no problem finding queue times, so that isn't always the issue. 1. The draft format is more like ranked, so will give me better chances to improve at the game (which is what im looking for) 2. No mirror matches.

Old Man Teeto4/11/2015, 5:27:59 AM1 votes

As a support/jungle main.

Team builder has the least teamwork I've ever seen so I avoid it if it's not with at least a 4 man premade.

Vreivai4/11/2015, 5:34:41 AM1 votes

Queue time, and the matchmaking is a joke.

"Matchmaking adjustment active, cool, maybe I won't be pulling highly ranked players since this is literally the first time I've used this champion at all outside of a bot game."

3/5 of the enemy team are Platinum+ on champions they main.

Virgin Ray4/11/2015, 5:52:21 AM1 votes

Well unless RIOT can make playing support and jungle more fun and rewarding than maybe it will become more popular?

Big Bang Bob4/11/2015, 8:38:42 AM1 votes

Not sure how it got here, but it's stuck in some strange loop.

People don't play it because it takes long, but it take long because people don't play it.

Hellioning4/12/2015, 7:36:58 AM1 votes

People who play the popular roles (solo lanes) don't want to wait for however long it'll take to search for a support/jungler/whatever. People who play the unpopular roles have no reason to use it because they're basically guaranteed their favorite role in any random blind/draft.

So you get the people who care about teamcomp, which tends to be people who play with friends in normals anyway (and thus don't need to use it) or people who play ranked.