It's no secret that the vast majority of players primarily play ranked games alone or with one other person. That's an odd situation for a game based largely on teams of five players competing against one another. While the interface for ranked teams has improved considerably from Season 1, arranged teams still haven't taken off. I believe I can identify a few of the root causes.
There are three core issues holding back arranged teams. First, the quantifiable incentives for playing ranked teams are identical to playing alone. Second, there are no social mechanisms which aid and support recruitment. Lastly, teams looking to compete have limited opportunities to do so. Because of these issues ranked teams are largely a hassle lacking justifiable reasons to bother.
We can understand the need for incentives better by examining the history of the 10-man/25-man raid divide in World of Warcraft. 25-player raids initially had superior rewards, attracting most of the attention and players. Later, 10-player raids were changed to feature the same rewards as 25-player raids. As a result of this change 25-player raid groups have been dying out. Because 10-player raid groups are easier to manage logistically and are less mechanically demanding they have become significantly more popular.
The solo queue/ranked team divide is the same. It's easier to dive into the queue solo, or with a duo partner, than to try and coordinate five or more people in a ranked team. At the same time the rewards for playing in a ranked team (e.g. influence points, end of season skins) are identical. It should not be surprising that players follow the path of least resistance and stick to solo/duo queue the majority of the time, and use normals or temporary teams when they happen to have more people around.
Recruitment is also a critical problem facing any player who wishes to create or maintain a team. Finding players whose schedules, mindsets, and skills match the needs of your group is difficult. Were League of Legends an MMORPG the basic mechanisms of the game itself would normally cause people to meet, socialize, and eventually cluster together. Because League of Legends lacks those social mechanisms players are left scrambling to recruit strangers from games or the official forums.
It's for that reason that most ranked teams tend to be either groups of real life friends or higher Elo players. In the former case the social circles and circumstances of real life act as a surrogate social mechanism. In the latter case the smaller pool of players makes repeated meetings common, resulting in a semblance of community. Not all teams follow these paradigms, but in most cases it's an outside social factor that acts as the catalyst for the team's creation.
Finally, even with due rewards and recruitment mechanisms, there's very little for your average team to strive for. The opportunities for competition are too limited to support the millions of players who might join a team. Go4LoL is the most notable open tournament and occurs weekly, but it can barely handle its current volume of teams. While it's important to avoid putting the cart before the horse, any effort to increase the popularity of ranked teams must include a plan for providing avenues for competition.
While the root causes are as I have described, fixing them is incredibly tricky. Balancing rewards, providing recruitment/management support, and creating competitive opportunities are all time-consuming, difficult problems to address. Moreover, it's not clear to what extent Riot should attempt to handle the latter two issues themselves, or leave it up to the community to create their own tools and competitions. One can hope that Season 3 will see an increase in ranked team emphasis, but for now it's not clear if or when ranked teams will take the limelight.
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