Clear words from Riot Games – The Solo rank queue will not be reintroduced in League of Legends.
For a long time, League of Legends (LoL) had two queues for ranked games. One of them was the Solo/Duo queue (Solo-Queue), where players searched for a ranked game alone or with another player. The other queue was for teams of 5 players who registered as a premade group for a ranked game.
The end of Solo-Queue and the beginning of Dynamic-Queue in League of Legends
Because they saw the Solo Queue system as outdated and “not good”, the developers at Riot Games designed a new queue for ranked games that works from Solo to 5 player teams. The system is called Dynamic-Queue because it can adapt to any team size. Additionally, there is a role selection in this queue, allowing players to choose 2 roles they would like to play.
A large portion of League of Legends players are dissatisfied with the Dynamic-Queue, as the system has not been in the game for long and still has issues that need to be improved. Players in higher ranks sometimes experience over 50 minutes of waiting time for a ranked game. In rare cases, solo players may even face a team consisting of 5 players who registered at the same time (premade).
Role selection in LoL
The selection of a specific role currently does not work as expected. With the planned changes, players should receive their primary role much more often! Many players likely know the problem: If you do not register as a support player, you rarely get assigned your primary role. This graph makes it clearer:
In the coming days, changes will be implemented to further increase the chance of receiving the primary role. In the future, it is desired to continually improve this feature.
Team fairness in LoL games
The quality of games will also be improved by addressing fairness. Because even though these games are quite rare, it can happen that a solo player must play against a 5-man premade team. In the range from Bronze to Platinum, it occurs as a Solo/2 player/team in 1 out of 1000 games that one plays against a 5-man premade team. In the Diamond range, this occurs in 1 out of 150 games, and in the Master+ range, it even happens in 1 out of 25 games that one must play against a 5-man premade team.
The win rates currently look like this (All ranks included)
Premade teams will receive a stronger handicap to ensure that games against solo players are more balanced.
No 5-man premade teams in high Elo in LoL
To ensure the quality of “elite games”, particularly strong adjustments must be made in the high Elo area. Currently, it may happen that you must play against the world champions SK Telecom T1 if you register at the wrong time. Since fairness should be the priority in League of Legends games, starting from Diamond rank 5 or higher, players will only be able to enter the ranked queue with a maximum of 3 players simultaneously.
However, the developers are considering allowing 5-man premade games in high Elo at certain times. These would be specific hours on certain days of the week when significantly more players are active in ranked games.
Long waiting times in high Elo of League of Legends
Recently, work has been done on the matchmaker system so that players in the very high Elo area experience an average waiting time of 17 minutes instead of 30 minutes. The selection of a specific role in combination with the limited number of players in elite Elo causes long waiting times. Here, priorities will be adjusted so that players receive their desired primary role less often, but can find games faster.
If the waiting time for a game is too long, an autofill mode will be activated. If the two roles that a player has selected result in an extremely high waiting time, the autofill mode will choose a role that the player has not selected, but that has a significantly shorter waiting time. However, this autofill matchmaker system should only intervene in emergencies – the developers want to minimize the number of players affected.
A roundtable with LoL developers and players
To discuss the problem and bring more clarity to the topic, RiotPwyff, RiotSocrates, and the lead developer of the Dynamic Queue, RiotLobster, sat down with YouTuber GBay99 and ex-pro player Scarra to discuss the individual points.
