Thought: Queue Sniping

Riot's new Accept/Decline system for queuing is almost welcome, though certain aspects of its implementation are wanting. That said, I may have found out why some people decline so abruptly and so frequently.

A little history is warranted. Duo-queuing used to average the Elos of the two players, but this ran into several problems. First, the inherent communication advantage between the two players wasn't accounted for. Second, if there was a large Elo gap between the players it was far easier for the better player to abuse the entire enemy team than for the entire enemy team to abuse the lesser player. As a result, Riot changed matchmaking to inflate the Elo of duo-queues to compensate.

As long as there have been ranked games there's also been the practice of "queue sniping". Upon seeing a friend queue for a game, a player also enters the queue hoping to be matched with or against the player. The lower your Elo the less likely you are to be matched together, but it's fun to try. Ultimately it's never been a problem because dodging cost Elo (though it doesn't anymore) and also time, and has remained simply a fun thing to do between friends.

The new Accept/Decline system, designed to weed out players who have gone afk, can be used to circumvent the duo-queue handicap via queue sniping. All you need are two or more players with similar Elo and a form of voice communication. Simply queue at the same time as your friends, vocally announce when your queue pops, and accept or decline depending on whether your friends' queues pop as well. This doesn't guarantee you'll be on the same team, but you have an even chance.

The problem is that players now have some measure of control over their queue; it becomes possible to game the system. Consider three friends queuing together who only accept a match if all three pop the same queue. Half their games will have all three friends together, and the other half will have one friend against the other two. In the former case the three have a huge advantage over their opponents in coordination and thus have an inflated chance of victory. In the latter case it's incredibly simple for the one friend to feed information to the other two (e.g. jungler/roamer positions) and clandestinely throw the game. In any case it ultimately only requires a little patience to gain an unfair advantage and inflate one's Elo.

Obviously this isn't good sportsmanship, but in the anonymous cesspool of the internet a great many people simply don't care. The allure of near-guaranteed Elo gains is bound to attract anyone who has either figured this out themselves or heard from somebody else.

The last I was on the PBE Riot had removed the Accept/Decline system, but I don't know if that's an intentional change we'll see in the next patch or simply a quirk of that environment. That seems an extreme solution when Riot could simply impose penalties on declining games, but in either case something should be done