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Introduction
So since several days there is a heated discussion on reddit and several LoL community sites about a feature suggested by someone called "Onaprayer". It even went so far, that professional LoL players re-posted his suggestion thus generating even more discussions.
As far as the suggestion goes it is a pretty simple concept, that I and probably a lot of other players had in their heads for quite some time (we just did not make the suggestion for one reason or another). The point is to modify the Ranked Solo/Duo Queue's to not just randomly throw five people together in a team but to let the players decide before the game what role they want to play. This should be realized via picking your role before you get into the queue (five icons, one for each position e.g. "Solo Top", "Jungle", "Mid Lane", "Carry" and "Support"), then the system would match you with people who have picked the four other roles. It probably is best if I just post the picture Onaprayer created:
This would effectively prevent mass trolling and fights over certain popular positions (ye I am talking about you "Top Lane" and "Mid"!) making the matches not more balanced (that is up to each player) but at least more organized.
The idea in general found a lot of positive voices asking for it to be implemented, but at the same time there are also a lot of critics who do not like this "feature" at all. Most of them say that the search-times would grow into astronomical numbers, mainly because no one is playing Support these days. Also certain people could just pick one role and in Champion Select pick something completely different. Another big argument is that by doing this Riot would force people to play a certain "meta" thus killing any possible evolution of the game.
In this personal blog I just want to share my view on this, in my opinion great, idea and I also want to try to explain why certain arguments from these critics are just plain wrong.
1. Queue Times because of lack of certain roles
Yes, this is probably the only really valid argument for not implementing this system. High-ELO players already have to wait for up to 3 minutes in order to find a game. With this feature even in the Low-ELO segment it could take minutes to find a game.
However it is not because there is a lack of certain roles. I for instance often find myself fighting over the Support role (I only can play Mid Lane and Support, shame on me) in ranked's and normal's and I am only "Silver III". If anything the Jungle-role is underpopulated. The two most contested ones are Top and Mid with at least two calls for each of them during champion select. From my experience the ADC role normally does not get called at all, there just always is one member of the team who picks it and everyone is fine with it.
So basically there are not enough Jungler's and from time to time there is a shortage of Supporters. For High-ELO players that should not be a problem at all. They theoretically know most of the champions and can play every role on a decent level, so if you see that your waiting-time with the current role is somewhere around the 10 minute mark, you switch your role to Support or Jungle and you get a game instantly. On the lower levels this would force the people to play other roles than the ones they are used to thus passively helping them understanding new aspects of the game. So it's a win-win situation in my opinion!
2. Picking one role beforehand and then just insta-locking another
Of course this will happen! Just because we implement this system does not mean that all those toxic 13 year old kids will go away (nothing against 13 year old's just using them as the most colorful example). But, since we all will know what role each player has picked we then can just report them after the game and get them banned even faster than right now. I am sure it also would be easier to convince the other team to report them since you make a commitment before the game and if you brake it, well you deserve to get reported. No more All-chat fights about who called the lane first and who troll-picked! Also for the tribunal such cases would be way easier to solve. They see what lane the player picked before queuing up and then they see 9 reports saying that he picked a completely different role, easy decision, no?
I don't like the idea proposed by some people in other discussions, where you just can pick certain champions according to your selected role. There are champions like Elise and Oriana which can be played in different positions but mostly are played in a certain role (Elise = Top, but also can be played as an effective Support).
Forcing a certain "meta" and killing LoL's growth
Ok, now that's absolute ******** and I am going to explain why.
Let us first look at an example. Here we have Jonny "NoName" Average, he is an ordinary LoL player with some hundred games played. He is currently seeded Gold IV and he loves watching Counter Logic Gaming playing in the NA LCS, also he is a fan of Phant0mLord and RainMan and he plays AD-Carry. This moment Jonny queues up for a Ranked match and he wants to play a game-breaking strategy. The team-composition should consist of four support champions and one AD-carry (Of course Jonny will play the carry, what did you think?!). The four supports will just shield/protect Jonny's champ and at the same time stun/disable the enemies while he is ****ting all over them. Oh man this is such a brilliant idea, don't you think?
Now let us think about how high is the chance that Jonny will be able to convince four total strangers, who also have several hundreds of games under their belt, watch the LCS and other popular streams, to tag along with his "new meta" and play four support-roles while he is playing an ADC? Well I think we all agree that his chances are not very high. The others probably will just laugh at him and call him a troll, then pick what they are used to. Maybe Jonny will be allowed to play his ADC but only with the other roles being filled by the other members of the team.
The funny part is, that world-class team "Taipei Assassins" played exactly the same strategy some weeks back in the GPL and totally destroyed their opponents with it. Still it did not become the "new meta".
This basically shows us that the "meta" is there not because of some random fact, it is there because it (currently) is the best way to play the game. Professional players who compete for thousands of Dollars on a daily basis would not just settle with an inferior composition, another team would just come up with a better comp and dominate like it happened during IEM Kiev with M5. It was not a completely new "meta-game" but their aggressive play-style and counter-jungling was too much for the other teams at the event and look what we have now, lots of ganks and early pressure, all thanks to M5 (yes and later on to the Asian teams).
It is not certain players or habits that force us to play this "Solo-Top/Jungle/AP-Mid/AD-Carry/Support" meta-game. It is the game itself and its mechanics that promote such compositions. In order for them to change the whole game would have to change and that is very unlikely to happen in the nearer future. So implementing this new queue-feature would not force a certain meta onto the players, it would just encourage them to play what is the most effective way, because the enemy team surely will try to do that to.
Also with good team communication there is still room for different compositions. You still can play 2vs1 lanes, or AD-centric compositions, or for god's sake Lulu in the Jungle. You will just have to talk to your teammates and not insta-lock like you did before. If anything this feature promotes team-play and thoughtful picking of champions and compositions.
So since several days there is a heated discussion on reddit and several LoL community sites about a feature suggested by someone called "Onaprayer". It even went so far, that professional LoL players re-posted his suggestion thus generating even more discussions.
As far as the suggestion goes it is a pretty simple concept, that I and probably a lot of other players had in their heads for quite some time (we just did not make the suggestion for one reason or another). The point is to modify the Ranked Solo/Duo Queue's to not just randomly throw five people together in a team but to let the players decide before the game what role they want to play. This should be realized via picking your role before you get into the queue (five icons, one for each position e.g. "Solo Top", "Jungle", "Mid Lane", "Carry" and "Support"), then the system would match you with people who have picked the four other roles. It probably is best if I just post the picture Onaprayer created:
This would effectively prevent mass trolling and fights over certain popular positions (ye I am talking about you "Top Lane" and "Mid"!) making the matches not more balanced (that is up to each player) but at least more organized.
The idea in general found a lot of positive voices asking for it to be implemented, but at the same time there are also a lot of critics who do not like this "feature" at all. Most of them say that the search-times would grow into astronomical numbers, mainly because no one is playing Support these days. Also certain people could just pick one role and in Champion Select pick something completely different. Another big argument is that by doing this Riot would force people to play a certain "meta" thus killing any possible evolution of the game.
In this personal blog I just want to share my view on this, in my opinion great, idea and I also want to try to explain why certain arguments from these critics are just plain wrong.
1. Queue Times because of lack of certain roles
Yes, this is probably the only really valid argument for not implementing this system. High-ELO players already have to wait for up to 3 minutes in order to find a game. With this feature even in the Low-ELO segment it could take minutes to find a game.
However it is not because there is a lack of certain roles. I for instance often find myself fighting over the Support role (I only can play Mid Lane and Support, shame on me) in ranked's and normal's and I am only "Silver III". If anything the Jungle-role is underpopulated. The two most contested ones are Top and Mid with at least two calls for each of them during champion select. From my experience the ADC role normally does not get called at all, there just always is one member of the team who picks it and everyone is fine with it.
So basically there are not enough Jungler's and from time to time there is a shortage of Supporters. For High-ELO players that should not be a problem at all. They theoretically know most of the champions and can play every role on a decent level, so if you see that your waiting-time with the current role is somewhere around the 10 minute mark, you switch your role to Support or Jungle and you get a game instantly. On the lower levels this would force the people to play other roles than the ones they are used to thus passively helping them understanding new aspects of the game. So it's a win-win situation in my opinion!
2. Picking one role beforehand and then just insta-locking another
Of course this will happen! Just because we implement this system does not mean that all those toxic 13 year old kids will go away (nothing against 13 year old's just using them as the most colorful example). But, since we all will know what role each player has picked we then can just report them after the game and get them banned even faster than right now. I am sure it also would be easier to convince the other team to report them since you make a commitment before the game and if you brake it, well you deserve to get reported. No more All-chat fights about who called the lane first and who troll-picked! Also for the tribunal such cases would be way easier to solve. They see what lane the player picked before queuing up and then they see 9 reports saying that he picked a completely different role, easy decision, no?
I don't like the idea proposed by some people in other discussions, where you just can pick certain champions according to your selected role. There are champions like Elise and Oriana which can be played in different positions but mostly are played in a certain role (Elise = Top, but also can be played as an effective Support).
Forcing a certain "meta" and killing LoL's growth
Ok, now that's absolute ******** and I am going to explain why.
Let us first look at an example. Here we have Jonny "NoName" Average, he is an ordinary LoL player with some hundred games played. He is currently seeded Gold IV and he loves watching Counter Logic Gaming playing in the NA LCS, also he is a fan of Phant0mLord and RainMan and he plays AD-Carry. This moment Jonny queues up for a Ranked match and he wants to play a game-breaking strategy. The team-composition should consist of four support champions and one AD-carry (Of course Jonny will play the carry, what did you think?!). The four supports will just shield/protect Jonny's champ and at the same time stun/disable the enemies while he is ****ting all over them. Oh man this is such a brilliant idea, don't you think?
Now let us think about how high is the chance that Jonny will be able to convince four total strangers, who also have several hundreds of games under their belt, watch the LCS and other popular streams, to tag along with his "new meta" and play four support-roles while he is playing an ADC? Well I think we all agree that his chances are not very high. The others probably will just laugh at him and call him a troll, then pick what they are used to. Maybe Jonny will be allowed to play his ADC but only with the other roles being filled by the other members of the team.
The funny part is, that world-class team "Taipei Assassins" played exactly the same strategy some weeks back in the GPL and totally destroyed their opponents with it. Still it did not become the "new meta".
This basically shows us that the "meta" is there not because of some random fact, it is there because it (currently) is the best way to play the game. Professional players who compete for thousands of Dollars on a daily basis would not just settle with an inferior composition, another team would just come up with a better comp and dominate like it happened during IEM Kiev with M5. It was not a completely new "meta-game" but their aggressive play-style and counter-jungling was too much for the other teams at the event and look what we have now, lots of ganks and early pressure, all thanks to M5 (yes and later on to the Asian teams).
It is not certain players or habits that force us to play this "Solo-Top/Jungle/AP-Mid/AD-Carry/Support" meta-game. It is the game itself and its mechanics that promote such compositions. In order for them to change the whole game would have to change and that is very unlikely to happen in the nearer future. So implementing this new queue-feature would not force a certain meta onto the players, it would just encourage them to play what is the most effective way, because the enemy team surely will try to do that to.
Also with good team communication there is still room for different compositions. You still can play 2vs1 lanes, or AD-centric compositions, or for god's sake Lulu in the Jungle. You will just have to talk to your teammates and not insta-lock like you did before. If anything this feature promotes team-play and thoughtful picking of champions and compositions.
but really. while it is good to think up ideas to remove trolling/playing roles you suck at...the system is balanced in the role department because most likely the other team also has to deal with a couple players being put in roles they aren't the best at....and the trolling thing? i just don't see this combating it because they can just pick a role say adc and pick swain when they get in game...how are you going to combat this? only allow them to select certain champs for a given role? that's getting pretty controlling no?
as far as destroying the meta goes and the gripes about this system in regards to that i would say that in solo queue you implement it....as the meta is really the only way for 5 random people to work somewhat cooperatively...and than take this system off for team ranked and so forth...that way teams can still 'break' the meta.
regardless this is a tough thing to fix...brainstorming is good.
Riot should be able to do this :P
I see no downsides so far :D