In an attempt to balance competitive integrity, Riot is looking to possibly remove Solo/Duo Queue from League of Legends in exchange for a "Solo Only Mode".
Here's what we know so far about how Ranked play might evolve in League of Legends Season 12.
Riot may remove Solo/Duo Queue
In their most recent developer blog, competitive gameplay project manager, Riot Codebear, and part of the marketing communications team, Riot Riru, detailed Riot's thoughts on the competitiveness of the League of Legends season so far.
From competitive integrity to progression opportunities, and a narrowing down of team and organized play, Riot set out goals for the remainder of the season that point out that competition exists within both an individual and team level.
"From a high-level viewpoint, Solo/Duo Queue is currently in one of the healthiest states we’ve ever seen," the League developers said on the blog. "Autofill is at its lowest ever global rate hovering between 0.5% and 3% of player games. Queue times are at a 2 year low in many large regions and hovering firm in our small regions. Lastly, MMR accuracy is strong, where 99% of players are playing with those within a maximum of 2 divisions of their rank with a steady win-prediction accuracy to back it up."
But even with what they consider "one of the healthiest states" the game's ever been, both Riot Codebear and Riot Riru still see some problems with Solo/Duo Queue, elaborating that they consistently point to their "accommodation of premade duos" and that it "directly adds quality and population volatility into the matchmaking mix."
In order to deal with this issue, Riot is playing with the idea of a "Solo-only" queue, that would force premades into either Ranked Flex or a designated premade queue. Although this is only a tentative project, Riot believes this "Solo-only" queue would not only reduce boosting but would tackle the autofill problem as well, while also giving Ranked Flex a bit of favorability in play.
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This change will mean that players will have to ditch their synergized duo queue partners and instead rely on their individual skills and willingness to work with their teammates. For that reason, we can only hope the new game mode makes it to live servers.