RIP Duo Queue
Will Riot Remove Duo Queue?
League of Legends is supposed to be a fair game, but has duo queue been fair? Many players have complained about players duoing with their buddy to help them gain a few ranks and improve their MMR.
Well, it seems that Riot is going to have some plans for solo queue in the future and not everyone is too excited about them. Let’s check out what Riot might implement in the coming year.
Implementing Solo Only Mode
With Flex queue being a barren wasteland, Riot wants to shift some of the player base away from solo queue and into the flex queue. At least that’s what it seems like according to the latest dev post Riot released.
Flex Queue was created back in season 6 and to be honest, it’s never really caught on with players. It’s not a game mode most take serious – honestly, I’ve never met anyone who cares about their flex queue rank – and it seems like Riot will try to make Flex Queue happen.
What Is the Problem with Flex Queue?
As already mentioned, Flex Queue is not taken seriously. Players are able to queue up in parties of 2, 3, 5 and alone. It was introduced to replace the 5vs5 Team Queue that had been part of the client previously, and most players rejected Flex Queue from the beginning.
Not only that, but Clash has since replaced the 5vs5 Team Queue as well, so that has left Flex Queue even more in limbo. The wait times for games, if you’re not in a team of 5 already, take extremely long, mostly because teams of 2 rarely play Flex, preferring to queue up in SoloQ – understandably.
So, anyone who is in a queue of 3 will have a hard time finding a team. Those who do play duos in Flex are either people who want to boost their friends playing with them, or solo account levellers who will then go on to sell the Riot account.
What Can Solo Only Mode Improve?
According to Riot, solo only mode will bring nothing but improvements to the game. According to them, it will make both solo queue, as well as flex queue, much better.
Flex Queue will increase in these areas according to Riot:
- An increase in queue population
- Drastic improvements to match quality
- Significant decrease in queue times for parties of 3
- Increase in overall match quality and competitiveness
- Increased opportunity for group/organized play
While solo queue will also improve in these areas:
- We would expect an even further decrease in autofill and secondary rates
- Queue times could decrease by up to ~5% for 99.9% of players
- Winrate advantages due to team disparities would vanish completely
- Boosting would be eradicated
- We would expect between-team and within-team MMR for 99% of players to be within one division’s rank of each other during peak hours
What do you guys think? Will these changes help players out in solo queue and their climb, or will it dissuade people from playing solo queue completely? Would you be willing to actually play flex or will you stick to normals when playing with friends? So many questions, what will Riot answer?
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Riot to Implement Revival MMR
Another point that Riot touched upon in their dev post is the struggle of returning players to find their spot in the meta and on the elo ladder. Therefore, they’ll be looking to implement revival MMR to give players a better starting point based on their previous rank and MMR.
This means they’ll change MMR decay, so players won’t have to play 50 games of smurf hell before finding the right elo for their skill.
[...] we’re implementing a more dynamic approach to Revival MMR and MMR decay across all queues that should provide those players with fairer matches in their first 5-10 games back as they rediscover their muscle memory and game knowledge.
By introducing revival MMR players can get attuned to the new meta and work on rediscovering their skill without having to quit again because of smurfs and other toxic players.