Riot actively looking at League’s competitive integrity, pondering a “Solo-only” queue in the future

Three months into the 2022 season of League of Legends, the game has fallen victim to a multitude of balance changes, as well as continued issues that plague ranked queues. Riot Games has offered players a look into what it thinks the competitive season looks like thus far and what players can be expecting in the months to come.

In a new developer blog, Riot Codebear, competitive gameplay project manager, and Riot Riru, part of the marketing communications team, detailed Riot’s collective thoughts on the competitiveness of League so far this season. Between competitive integrity, progression opportunities, and focus on team and organized play, Riot established goals that it’s seeking to attain as the season continues, acknowledging that competition exists at both the 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 devs said in the post. But issues are still present with boosting and the balance of MMR that the teams feel are slightly problematic and impacting competitive integrity. 

Codebear and Riru also noted that many of the disparities that do occur in solo/duo queue can be attributed to the influx of premade parties, particularly those made up of three and four players. This impacts queue times and greatly affects the non-premade players’ ability to get their primary role.

To compensate, Riot is investigating the creation of a “Solo-only” queue, which would force premades into either Ranked Flex or a designated premade queue. Though this is only in conception, the teams believe that a “Solo-only” queue would reduce boosting, the chances of autofill, and more, while also increasing the popularity of Ranked Flex. In doing so, the devs reiterated the importance of balancing all of League’s game modes to make them readily accessible to all players.

Riot hopes to dive deeper into competitive integrity across all of League’s available modes as the 2022 season progresses. The devs will provide more information on the creation of a “Solo-only” queue “if it’s an area [they] can realistically move forward with.”