Finally, League of Legends is getting a team builder

League of Legends might be the world's most popular game, but ask any regular player and they'll be able to tell you a whole host of problems with it. One of those has always been that if you're playing solo queue, as soon as the team chat loads, everyone calls their position. Sometimes that works, most of the time it doesn't, with two people wanting mid or top and nobody wanting to play support. Riot Games is hoping to change that now though, with the introduction of a team builder matchmaking queue.

The idea for Team Builder, is to do away with all that pre-match bickering, which can sometimes create bad blood with a team before the first minion has spawned, and get everyone on the same page. Not only can you designate the champion you want to play and your position, but you can even select different strategies to try out. Double jungler, all mid, invade or not, you can choose that and the matchmaking system will then link you up with other players that want to do the same thing.

Team Builder does even more than that though. It takes into consideration your experience with a champion and position. If this is your first time with a champion – ranked or not – or the first time you've stepped into any specific role, you'll be matched with other people that don't have much experience in their chosen position either. If you're a veritable pro, then you're more likely to be put with people that have done nothing but play that one lane since Season 1.

Some people have voiced concerns that Team Builder will enforce the meta too much and mean that nobody tries new strategies, but Team Builder lets you customise the type of game you're looking for and what positions are available. If you're going for a triple-mid strategy, it might take a bit longer but it will match you with other players that want to all cram into the one lane.

The other question being put forward by the community at the moment, is whether this will replace matchmaking once it leaves public beta? For now, the answer is no, as Riot is looking for feedback on the system before making any drastic changes. It's also expected to be a slower, if more accurate, matchmaking system, so not everyone may be interested in taking longer between games.

Depending on its popularity and effectiveness though, this could well be the way we matchmake for soloQ in the future.

Kitguru Says: This is one of those things that me and my buddies have talked about as a “why haven't they done that yet?” feature, so it's great to see it finally coming into the game. All Riot needs to do now is add the ability to play again with your matchmade team and my wishlist would be complete. 

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