Some personal thoughts on dynamic queue

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Hitting conversational critical mass on the internet is tough cookies with an upvote/downvote system. I took questions 'off' reddit and onto twitter because my responses were getting instantly downvoted and while that's a great sign of the present, passionate community sentiment, it's less great for getting visibility to the general public (I hate answering questions multiple times). I could just not give answers that get downvoted, but I don't think I can promise that.

So.

These are my personal thoughts. They get long.

If you don't care, scroll down. I have some general answers the team wants to get out (search for [answers]).

Some quick background: I'm currently plat, I only hit diamond in s5, I used to be a competitive gamer in CS (cal-m) / TF2 (only ADL leagues) / Natural Selection (cal-omega) / 3v3 TBC WoW (peaked for a moment at #1 in the NA BG9 ladder before burning out in hilarious fashion). I love ladder standings, I love competition, and I play League almost entirely solo.

I say all of that, by the way, because I see both sides to this issue and want to make it clear we're choosing one over the other (for now). That's a pretty hard thing to say, but it's true.

Clarification: Dynamic queue refers to the system where you can queue up with any group of teammates to compete in ranked. Role selection refers to the (generally positive) new champion select.

For the past 6-7 years, the ranked ladder has been an expression of solo/duo play. How you land on a squad of 4/3 sheep and herd them to victory. Your rank is a reflection of how you've 'made do' with whatever lambs the solo queue gods throw your way. Personally speaking, sheep-herding is one of my best skills and it's why I main support - every game is a puzzle where I have to figure out who's good at what, who needs to be coddled, and who's prone to rage the fuck out. There are some who rank up in other ways (sheer mechanics, yelling at their team, tilting the shit out of the enemy laner, who knows), but everyone has a 'how to survive solo queue' strategy and whoever climbed was the one who had the foolproof manual.

Today, the above is still true but it's been diluted with dynamic queue. Not only can you be paired with a 3-man or 4-man squad (your sheep-herding skills run over by a majority idiot stampede), but you're no longer matched up against other sheep-squads. Your solo queue strategy isn't just being tested against other solo queue strategies, it's also possible you could be beaten by new criteria: teamwork forged over multiple games, voice comms, a jungler that actually ganks (hah). Your personal rank is suddenly worth less because:

a) Others can get there via other means than your own (and your own standings come into question).
b) Text-based sheep-herding is nothing in the face of fully coordinated teams.

I say the above, by the way, neutrally. I think working with strangers is just as much teamwork as is getting a coordinated premade to make your way to the top. So why make the change?

Because in one scenario (pure solo queue) you value sheep-herding and stranger-collaboration 100%, but you exclude the latter completely (getting trusted teammates, building cohesion, long-term teamplay). In dynamic queue, you get 60% (I think it's more 70%, but I'll be a negative nancy) of the sheep-herding value and 60% of the team-focused skills. I say 60% because I don't think we have enough in-game features to truly make dynamic queue flourish (finding groups or friends, in-game voice comms, etc). It works, but not fantastically.

This is where the conversation - as many of you pointed out - fails. We think that 60%+60% is better than 100% serving solo players. The tradeoff is a value and, personally speaking, I don't know if it's one I would have made. But I can understand why we made it.

I also know the positives and I can't deny them. I've seen the presentations on both dynamic queue and the findings that lead us to chase dynamic queue in the first place. Before dynamic queue, ranked was a source of super high tension and burnout - it was all on you or you and your buddy.

We also saw that players who played together enjoyed the game more (satisfaction), played together longer, and were generally just happier with League of Legends. These players were also equally competitive and wanted to get into ranked, but the moment they did, they either got a team of 5 and tried to engage with teams (no bueno) or they went solo / duo into ranked and ended up burning out.

Ranked teams, by the way, were insanely difficult to work with and sometimes outright broken. Not only were the populations not sustainable in some regions (leading to incredible queue times), the match quality / fairness (that is, both teams have a 50% chance of winning) was borderline schizophrenic. We know some players loved the combination of a competitive ladder and the wild-wild west competition of diamond top laners carrying their friends through gold, but we just couldn't sustain it.

So we had these competitive players throwing themselves against the solo queue wall and burning out - either leaving or going back to their variable group of friends to queue up in normals and have fun. There are a lot of them. We decided we wanted to support their competitive spirit, so we did.

... And in doing so we really hurt the players who loved solo queue for what it was for 6 years.

This is the tradeoff, and I (and I know Rioters who come and talk to me every day) am genuinely sorry we've undermined what many of you hold so dear.

I firmly believe both sides are equally competitive. Someone who plays with friends who are within at least a tier of each other (come on, at least do that) is playing League of Legends just as hard, just as competitively, just as passionately as a solo queue player who's buying wards for her mid-laner because she knows he's getting chain-ganked but refuses to get vision.

I don't care which audience is 'better' than the other, but I do wonder if it's better to serve one 100% or to serve two 60% (maybe 70%). I do know that more players are playing ranked than ever before, and more players are playing together than ever before (obviously). I don't mind internet harassment, but I think I'm a unique one so I won't talk about it.

I also don't believe this is new information to anyone, but I did say this would get long.

So no, we're not saying "you think you do, but you don't" - we're saying that the meaning of ranked, of competition in League of Legends, is teamplay via _any_ means - not just sheep-herding.

This is a shift, and if you believe we've alienated you, or if you fundamentally disagree, I'm genuinely sorry but it's a shift we're committing to for what we believe is better for the game.

Perhaps in the future we can get better at supporting both sides.

[answers]

Q: By restricting diamond+ to 1/2/3 aren't you contradicting your focus on teamplay the spirit of dynamic queue?

A: Yes, but it's a necessary tradeoff because it's just not fair at the highest levels. We don't want to 'revert' dynamic queue due to the above gains, but aren't willing to compromise match fairness at diamond+ for a philosophy.

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Q: No 5v5 at the highest ranks means college / challenger teams can't really practice.

A: Yes and we're planning on solving for that ASAP. We're thinking along the lines of time-boxed "5v5 vs. 5v5" dynamic queue windows, but it will take a bit of time (we'll keep you updated).

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Q: How does autofill work?

A: It'll tell you when you may be prone to autofill before you queue.

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Q: How does a solo player even have a chance against premades and the like?

A: We mentioned this in the thread but I'll be more explicit: via matchmaking algorithms we are constantly balancing to ensure that a solo queue player should always have an equal chance of winning their game, regardless of the premade size they're playing with or against.

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Q: How can you value teamplay without voice comms?

A: Our stance on voice comms has changed. Absolutely makes sense for premade parties, we'd like to sort through the voice chat with strangers (opt-in scenarios?) but it's not something we're against. I hate to be the guy who says maybe one day, but our #1 priority is LCU and that's a massive undertaking.

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Q: Why'd you string us along about solo queue?

A: Hanlon's razor. We made a foolhardy call on monday that solo queue was returning, then began full investigations and back-end work to support it. With every week we'd discover new data that said "nope" but then we'd say "oh but if we fixed this, maybe it can do something" so we'd fix that and wait to make a call. Then a miscommunication went through and someone assumed because we'd already promised solo queue in that one post, we were _definitely_ going to do it, so they reaffirmed (twice? three times?).

In the background, we were realizing more and more it was unfeasible. When it came to bigger solutions (not algorithmic tweaks) we didn't want to take solo queue off the table, so that one communication that said "still might be solo queue!" was done because we genuinely thought maaaaaybe.

I'd say about a few weeks ago we had full alignment and agreement on no solo queue in its current iteration. We then decided to shoot that video (three weeks ago?), edited it, and localized it because pushing it out in just english for an important message is a pretty bad experience.

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Q: When will we get individual meaning back in ranked?

A: No ETA. Sorry.

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Q:

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