After weeks of conversations regarding the usage of Champion’s Queue, the North American League of Legends pro-exclusive queue, changes are being implemented to make the experience better for those who have access to it.
Riot Games outlined in a new developer post that it is actively aware of issues regarding the Champion’s Queue experience. This includes controversy surrounding how much the feature is used by players, as well as the quality of matches expected within a queue solely accessible to the best League players in the region.
Riot, alongside the LCS Players Association, Amateur Committee, and Academy Committee, is working to address four key points impacting the Champion’s Queue experience: scheduling, match quality, player base, and voice comms. It believes that a combination of these factors has led to the decline in usage of the exclusive queue and hopes to address these issues accordingly before the beginning of the next Champion’s Queue split.
The second split of the queue ended yesterday, with CLG Academy’s Dhokla finishing at the top. To allow players to “reset” following the conclusion of this split, as well as to compensate for the end of the LCS and Academy seasons, there will not be another split in the spring season. Instead, there will be a brief pause between now and the beginning of the summer season, which has been pushed back until May 31, in hopes to “better align with the start and end of the LCS Summer Split Regular Season.”
Riot will also be experimenting with a new MMR system for Champion’s Queue, which it believes will increase queue times—which players have complained are already very high. To compensate for this, the player base will be expanded to include players from the upcoming Proving Grounds Qualifiers. The devs will also be adding a feature for players in the Champion’s Queue Discord server to see what roles are needed in games.
The issue of voice comm usage was raised as well since the feature is optional in this queue like in normal League parties. Riot will be looking into making players have to opt-in for voice comms when partaking in Champion’s Queue.
Changes to Champion’s Queue are expected to be instituted over time as Riot identifies where fixes can be made. The summer season will begin on May 31 and last until Aug. 21.
