Okay, here's how I imagine it. You queue up, and 5 boxes appear. (Top,Mid,Adc,Support and Jungler.) You check how many boxes you wish to play(I would choose top mid and jungle)

Once you enter the game, you would have at least 1 of each role in your team. But seeing as many people would check more than 1 box, you could discuss with your team what role would prefer.

I don't think the idea is to box in players into certain roles or heroes. I mean, if you get a team where everyone checked every box, you can just discuss what team comp would be better.(Depending on pick order and bans)

Just because you check support only, doesn't mean that you have to play Soraka or Taric exclusively. The player will have to support, but with the hero and strategy wants to. ( Like a kill lane Pant support)

My God. This is the most essential thing LoL needs right now. I'm so tired of getting pigeonholed into roles I don't want to perform -- and simply shouldn't because of my rune specialization -- because some idiot insta-locks his hero. What normally happens is some ****** insta-locks and the rest of us sit around like "lolwut I called this or that and now I can't," the timer runs out, and we end up with no ADC or no tank. Hence, a 5 minute lockout from trying to start another game. I'll be shocked if this isn't at least under development by the time the next patch is announced.

This is it. EXACTLY IT. To the point where it needs to be posted again.

There have been upwards of 100 threads on this issue. Kiddington chimed in once a long time ago, and nothing since. Riot, please do something about it. Trolls are ruining your game with "top or feed".

This is the number 1 thing this game needs right now. I play top with my group of friends but if I ever want to play top in a solo queue it's just not going to happen.

Your biggest problem: You believe that there are only 5 roles.

Currently Riot has 12 "attributes" for champions.
Pusher, Jungler, Support, Assassin, Ranged, Stealth, Recommended, Mage, Carry, Tank, Fighter, Melee

For argument's sake, we can take ranged, melee, and recommended. That would still leave us with 9 "attributes."

But where do these 9 "attributes" go into your "roles"?

A year ago:

the "ADC" was a viable (and sometimes preferred) mid, and an "APC" was the protected role bot. Fighters were junglers, Tanks were top, Supports were often substituted for assasins, another AP, or even an additional fighter. Junglers were commonly not even considered a 100% must have role in every ranked game.

Your assertion of the supposed "current meta" might not even be the most viable meta since patch, and yet you want to create a match making system based on it. Um... ok?

If you look at Taipei Assassins (season 2 champs) picks for a lot of their games, they occasionally didn't have a tank, or a solid AP. This is contrary to the "meta."

Actually it would propagate your idealized meta into an accepted standard. If you learn to do something a specific way, you tend to want to continue doing it that way. (Humans are creatures of habit)

When the meta changes (as it always does) from your ideal meta, the players who learned on this new system would:

a) complain
b) quit
c) get reported because they have no ability to adapt their solidified idea of the meta because they learnt only one meta

Don't believe me? Linux is a free operating system that is capable of performing 100% of mundane office tasks and is completely free. Instead of buying the hardware and installing Linux, businesses spend thousands (or more) on Windows, even though learning Windows7 (or now Window8) is about as complicated as learning Linux for the average middle aged + office worker. Why? Because the employees and employers prefer what they know.

So this pre "role" selection doesn't lock people into roles, but rather trains them to adhere to roles that will likely not exist in the future, or change greatly. What is the point then? To legitimize your demand for a champ select report system? To give you a new official reason to lock people into your ideal meta? I am confused... because it seems like your solution creates many problems and solves none.

Hello Vesuvias. Thank you for posting the detailed reply, I will attempt to answer as best I can.

Well, considering most players, including professional players, shout-casters and Riot employees themselves consider these roles the standard, I'm not sure why you consider this "my biggest problem" or choose to personalize your statement to me alone when it is in fact the standard most people have come to accept.

As you so mentioned, these are precisely attributes, not roles. Hence you have attributes like "Recommended" or "Stealth", they do not serve the purpose of specifying what role the champion is supposed to cover but only what design attributes they possess.


Given the fact that I played in those days as well, I am aware of this. However you must realize that the current meta is what it is because, through trial and error, experience and a better understanding of the game, the general consensus has naturally gravitated to what the meta is at it's current point.

I encourage you to double check when a thread was originally posted before making an erroneous comment like this one in the future, considering this thread was posted some time prior to the patch.

There seems to be confusion on your part as to what "Meta" is supposed to mean. "Meta" is only a word to express what is currently considered the most generally efficient use of an element in the game. Naturally there are different strategies that are viable for specific objectives, like what what you might call a "Kill Lane" for example. This by no means concludes that the Taipei Assassins, or any other teams that have used varying strategies, play "contrary" to the meta, especially considering that apart from a few specific elements for a certain strategy the rest is played on par with the meta, and also given the fact that they still play most of their games with a standard distribution of roles.



Once again you attempt to personalize. "I" (specifically) have nothing to do with what the current meta is. I reiterate the fact that the current meta is what it is because through trial and error, experience and a better understanding of the game, the general consensus has naturally gravitated to where it currently is. The general consensus as in the consensus of the entire player base. Is it unanimous? Of course not. Is it a big majority? Absolutely. Which indeed makes it an accepted standard, and I'm not sure how you can not see this if you don't already see it.
There is truth in that people tend to follow the standards in place, after all it is the easiest thing to do. But I don't see that as a bad thing, on the contrary, as this truly does give newer players an easier platform from which to start from until they're experienced enough to delve into the more advanced, it also gives them a familiar environment and a better opportunity to learn the basics and synergize with other players considering this standard is already widely used by most of them. I confirm what I said before.

This is a logical fallacy and simply untrue. Once again, meta is formed through general consensus. So it doesn't make any sense to say that people won't adapt to the meta shift because the very fact that the meta has shifted means that general consensus caused the shift by adapting new standards.
I see 2 possibilities of what I think you meant to say but you worded it incorrectly:
1. You meant that some people lag behind the changing standards and when they see something new that they haven't seen before they resist it. But that is not because they don't follow the meta, in most cases it's because they're not even aware yet that this new element is actually now part of the meta. For example, Katarina recently became one of the top bans. A while back she wasn't considered a legitimate ban. One player complains when Katarina gets banned and says it's a stupid ban and thinks the player who banned her is trolling. This player simply lacks the updated information of what general consensus agrees is a good ban at this time and will eventually catch up.
2. You meant that a player is aware of the currently accepted standards, but through his own ideas or theory-crafting, has come to the conclusion that one standard is not good, or that he found something else that he thinks works better. For example, a player decides to go with 2 mids instead of a jungle and a mid. The player thinks this method is legitimately better but the other players complain and think he's trolling. Are those other players resisting the new meta? No, because one person's opinion doesn't dictate the meta, general consensus does, so that "idea" is not actually part of the meta. However, if the innovation of one or a few people actually show promise and start making sense to most, the meta will eventually shift if most people agree that the new idea is viable. Another example, Lee Sin was only considered viable as a jungler or top for a long time. Then some people, most notably Froggen, came around and started playing him mid. They tested it and found out that it can work well. Many people saw how successful he was playing Lee Sin mid and now because of that the meta has slowly shifted to accept Lee Sin mid as a viable option.
Do you see what I'm getting at? The metagame is a conglomeration of standards formed by the community. Successful ideas or strategies have the power to update or change some of these standards. It is ultimately the majority that will decide upon what a standard is, after all, "standards" become "standards" because the majority agree and accept them as their own.

You actually answered this comment yourself. Most businesses will use Windows instead of Linux because "the employees and employers prefer what they know". It's a known fact that the most used operating system is Windows. So it simply makes sense for them to go with what people use. Does that mean Windows is the best operating system? That's up for debate. You might personally think it isn't but the general public have their own opinions and they decide to use Windows. So that makes Windows the "standard". Perhaps one day a different operating system will convince everyone it's the way to go, and at that point the standard will change. That is how it works.


I can't help but sigh at this comment. It's rather nonsensical to say role selection would train people to adhere to these roles, considering players already consider these roles a standard. Likely not exist in the future? Perhaps, perhaps not. But it's been around long enough to know it's a true standard that is here to stay. If eventually someone demonstrates ground breaking strategies that convinces everyone a dramatically different role composition is better and everybody starts using that, then there's no reason Riot can't adapt their systems to the change of standard.
I'm not sure how you can overlook all the problems a system like this would almost definitely fix. It would solve arguments where a team can not amicably agree who gets what role. It would solve trolling where someone who didn't get the role they wanted decides to ruin the game for everyone else. It would solve instances where many find it necessary to dodge and wait 30 minutes because of a troll. It would solve the problem where some people love playing a specific role, it makes the game fun for them and unfortunatly they don't get the role they want and are forced to play a role they do not find fun. It would solve the problem where 3 hard headed people decide to all go top. It would solve the problem where nobody wants to support and the person forced to do it is someone who has never supported and doesn't even know that he's supposed to ward or leave the cs for his carry, then, after failing badly during the first 5 minutes of the game decides he doesn't have the patience to continue playing and disconnects, forcing his team to continue the game 4v5.

I mean, I could go on and on and I'm sure many people already relate to many of these examples (there's a reason why so many threads about this are being posted all the time), but I'll leave it at that and hope you can see the big picture.

I despise the idea of adding any kind of role-queue to the game, for a number of reasons:

1. Team compositions are now essentially chosen by the matchmaker instead of by players.
2. Role queues are a prime target for trolls who, say, choose ADC and then pick a mid.
3. Role queues will not assure that a person is good at their role, nor does it ensure that they will work with our team composition.
4. Regardless of what anyone argues, it DOES stagnate the meta because now you're limited to having 1 jungler, 1 mid, 1-2 tops, etc. See point #1.
5. LF1M support please.

So basically a role-queueing system would solve little to nothing while at the same time introducing new issues into the game which don't need to exist.

Hi Wolfynsong, thank you for your feedback.

As mentioned in the opening post (and contradictorily by yourself in your next statement), this queue system would not tie you down to a specific position and force you to play it. The goal of this specific system would be to match a group of 5 people that can potentially cover all standard roles without conflict.
But once again I attempt to clarify that given the fact that you won't be locked into your role, if an opportunity arises where you decide to go with a composition different from the standard you have the absolute freedom to do so.

Looking at it from a broad perspective this is actually the contrary of what is most likely to happen. Taking into account how many people decide to troll with the current system because they don't get the position they want, the new proposed system would alleviate this problem almost entirely. These players would have no more motivation to take such action.
Then would remain the "true" trolls that just troll to troll, but then again those already exist and would exist regardless of a system like this, and this system doesn't actually facilitate what they try to do any more than the current system does. But frankly, looking at how similar queue systems like these have worked in the past, these types of trolls are an extreme minority and should not pose a problem in most cases. But that is something Reports/Tribunal/Riot will still handle when it does happen.

Neither does the current queue system. However with the proposed queue system, there is at least more likelihood that someone choosing a role themselves is more equipped to play that role than someone who gets forced to play a role because he didn't call the one he wanted to play fast enough or his teammate gets to pick it before him.
Let me ask you this, who would you rather have on your team between these 2 players if all you knew about them was this: Player 1 usually plays mid, he enters champion select but doesn't call it fast enough and is forced to jungle, or Player 2 who usually plays jungle, selects jungle when queuing, enters champion select and picks a jungle.

See point #1.

This is actually the only somewhat legitimate argument I have heard so far. Yes, Supports are in the minority overall. Yes queue times will go up. But I can tell you that it would be no where near the increase you may think. Considering the enormous player-base that queue up at any given time in League of Legends, the fact that queue times are incredibly low already, and the fact that I don't believe the disparity between Support and other roles are anywhere near the disparity of roles in some other games that you might be thinking of (I would love Riot feedback on this), queue times will only increase slightly, and will remain acceptable.
But regardless of that, let's think of the benefits. Can you really say you would rather queue up faster but risk getting stuck with someone who never supports, has no clue what to do, and will probably waste your time anyway, then to wait a bit longer to be queued with someone who actually does support, likes supporting and is more likely to play his role well and help you win the game? So I guess at the end of the day it's a legitimate concern but not actually a legitimate argument.

I hope this helped.

Please vote! And let me know if you have any concerns.