It's only been two months since the League of Legends' ranked queue reopened, and already many of us have started to climb the ladder. A perfect time for Riot Games to address our concerns by communicating their avenues of work for the upcoming year.
Players' expectations
The starting point for any reflection is first and foremost the opinions of the players. Here are the points on which the community would like to see improvements, or even consequent changes:
- Improve the quality of matchmaking without compromising waiting time and availability.
- Improve transparency around the rating and matchmaking systems.
- Improve the satisfaction felt as players progress.
- Make rewards more recognizable and relevant to the time spent in the league.
- Make sure players can find people they want to play with.
Matchmaking
When you start a game, you sometimes have that unpleasant feeling that your game is already lost. The goal of the development team is to make sure that the current system balances the opposing players as well as possible — in short, to no longer have a huge feeling of hopelessness at the beginning of some games. Two improvements regarding matchmaking in ranked mode are currently tested and should be released in a future patch:
- Auto-fill balancing: These updates aim to balance the number of auto-fill players in each team.
- Duo Queue Balancing: This update aims to balance the number of arranged groups in each team.
Once implemented on the live servers, developers will keep an eye on it to make changes and enhance the system as needed.
Adjustment for new players & autofill players
These features are currently under development and at this time we don't know when they will be implemented. Riot Games is currently studying two possible solutions:
- New Account Rating: The developpement team believes they can we can better identify the true level of new Ranked players by taking a more holistic look at their playing style.
- Role-based auto-fill: Riot Games aim at balancing the number of auto-fill players in each team, but they would also like to balance the auto-fill roles as much as possible.
Other improvements
In addition to the changes mentioned above, the team also wants to change a few points for the rest of the season such as better detection of bad behavior, better transparency between the rank, the MMR, the promotion series and the Flex queue.
- Game spoiling behaviors: Riot Games are trying to develop better ways to manage unwanted behaviors. For example, they are experimenting with better ways to detect and punish intentional feeding, players leaving the game, rigged victories and anti-gaming. They also want to keep us informed more frequently when they have sanctioned toxic behaviors that we have reported.
- Transparency in Rank and Matchmaking Rating (MMR): The hidden link between a player's visible rank and their matchmaking rating has led to much confusion and frustration since the introduction of the tiering system a few years ago. Riot Games would like to explain player ranks more clearly.
- Promotional Series: Riot Games know that too many promotions have become a source of frustration. They are taking a close look at the current promotion system and will be making changes to improve its place in the competitive ecosystem.
- Flex Queue and Organization: Between social competitive queue for groups and quasi-competitive queue for those who want to try new things, it is difficult to understand what the real role of the Flex is. Riot Games are looking at lowering the restrictions on group creation to make it easier for us to play with our friends and how to link the Flex Line to the rest of the competitive ecosystem.
After months of tests, Riot Games seems to finally be satisfied with Wukong's rework as they announced on twitter that the current build will be the one making it to live servers on patch 10.6!
