At the beginning of Season 6, Riot Games promised to bring great changes to ranked League of Legends play. One of such changes was the creation of dynamic queue, a new way of creating ranked teams that was comparable to group finders in the MMO genre. Players would now queue for specific roles, such as top, mid, bot, etc., instead of being forced to play something based on their pick order. While many players found comfort in this new system, there was a major flaw in it: players could now queue as a group of five in an ecosystem that was previously capped at only two players joining together.
This has created numerous problems for queue times and fair matches, specifically at the highest level of ranked play. It has also made the challenger ladder effectively pointless as players can now just climb with their friends. Although there are mechanics in place to limit the benefits of grouping as a full team, the negative effects of it have clearly been shown. Hilarious cases such as SKTelecom T1, the reigning World Champions, playing against a group of five random players have even occurred. But the worst part of this situation? Despite Riot continuously claiming to be bringing solo queue, they’ve effectively descended into their classic style of backtracking and making false promises.
Solo queue was originally promised with the addition of dynamic queue. When speaking on the issue, the development team in charge of this area simply made it sound like they had to fix the problems with dynamic queue before they can push solo queue live. Initially it was said to be just a few weeks out. Weeks turned into months. With the most recent statements, however, it seems like it’s never going to be released publically. Riot Socrates has even gone as far to say, “We’ll be honest: there’s definitely a world in which solo queue doesn’t return”. His full statement can be found here.
Prior to making this statement, Riot Socrates made a post that could effectively be perceived as attempting to justify the omission of solo queue. Their reasons boiled down to it decreasing “toxicity”. The full announcement can be found here.
While for a large portion of the player base this decrease in negative attitudes is a plus, League of Legends is a competitive game with the need for a proper competitive mode. The lack of solo queue has even lead to professional players, current and former, speaking out against the company and their design philosophies.
Despite the outcry from prominent members of the community (and the community itself as a whole), it’s unlikely that Riot will go back on their decision. They’ve been known to never falter on their decisions, even when it acts directly against the most dedicated members of their fanbase. The previous example of this being the sandbox mode that professional players have begged for since the start of competitive play.
Or maybe they will implement it. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below and remember to follow us here at eSports Guru for all your competitive League of Legends needs!
