It would be such an easy fix tho!!

ALL of these AFK's come from a game where someone dodged and they were put back into the queue automatically.

If people just went back to the pre-launch lobby when in a team, or to the home screen when solo instead of auto-queuing then the problem should all but vanish. You kind of have to be present to hit that "enter the queue" button

The solution is VERY simple: kick them if they are AFK and give them an elo penalty, don't requeue them. Also remove the function that automatically makes them join if they are AFK; if they don't press "enter now" or "finish what I am doing" they should be removed from the queue and given an elo penalty.

At the very least, in ranked, the offender should be kicked from the queue with the dodge timer applied.

The same should apply for failure to ban.

Glad to know that i'm not the only one that had these thoughts!

While i'm on a roll, Why not implement a system much like Dota had - If somebody doesn't connect to your game within the first 5 minutes the game ends and you lose no rating for it.

Nothing worse sitting through a game that you basically know is a loss from the first minute - and just when you think there's a hope, your AFK rejoins @ 15 minutes and repetitively gets ganked as a level 1.

As you folks have pointed out, there are indeed some good and simple fixes to this problem. That doesn't necessarily translate to the implementation being simple, however. Changes to the core game loop like this can be deceptively sensitive. Regardless of that, let me at least affirm that the value of these types of changes have not been lost on us. If there is an opportunity to provide a more detailed and meaningful update, I will be sure to keep you all posted

Riot, hire thi--oh wait...

That's all fine and good, but what about if a player picks his champ, lets say he does the bans and picked first, then he goes to the washroom, and gets a drink because he figured that he had like 2-3 minutes before the game actually started. He leaves, comes back, only to notice that another champ select has started, and he got a random champ. Maybe he had his volume on high to listen for the "Welcome to Summoners Rift" while he's making a sandwich. Should he get penalized because somebody else que dodged while he thought he was safe to do something?

I'm not condoling these actions by any means, simply describing a possible situation. Stuff comes up, why penalize for being afk, just remove them from que, and let them re-que with a delay. That way everyone is happy.

condoling isn't a word

Maybe that would be an acceptable answer if it were a new problem, however....

It's been over 2 years and counting... I'm sure the value of these changes have not been lost on you guys. 2 years is like 10 minutes in Riot time. Am I right?

There should be a "ready check" prior to going into the champ select screen. The "Play Now or Finish What I was Doing" popup could probably modified to serve this function. If a player doesn't choose either option, the game is cancelled. The non-responding player is dropped from queueing and the rest of the players in the broken match are re-queued with high priority. No one gets punished and everyone's happy.