Flex queue is causing matchmaking problems, players still wait on solo queue

Update, November 15: Riot has released a fix of sorts, and players who have already been placed will be re-placed after one additional game. That has caused ... further issues.

Update II, November 15: Riot Socrates posted an update on the boards, with an apology and a timeline of what happened.

TL;DR: Because we crossed some wires with matchmaking (seriously, Diamonds in Bronze!), your placement was probably inaccurate and match quality wasn’t very good. We’ve rolled everyone’s MMR back to its last-known accurate state (the start of preseason), and anyone who has completed placements will need to play one more game to get re-placed.

With the release of the preseason patch and a change in how ranked play works, Riot unveiled flex queue last week, with the hope that it would provide a group-focused alternative to solo/duo queue now that dynamic queue is going away for good.

For those unfamiliar: dynamic queue was the matchmaking system introduced last season, wherein players could queue in a group of any size (up to the maximum five per team in a game). In the past, Riot had only offered a solo/duo queue for ranked, meaning you could only queue up as a party of one or two.

This year, solo/duo queue is coming back, but flex queue was added as an alternative. In flex queue, you can queue up as a group of one, two, three or five (not four). It’s a completely separate ladder from solo/duo queue, and replaces the previous ranked 5s ladder.

But here’s the problem: somehow, with the addition of flex queue, it appears that everyone’s MMR (their hidden rating that tells the game what skill level players on their team and the enemy team should be around) has been, well, borked.

Riot Socrates posted on the boards Saturday that Riot was aware of an issue with placements from flexed queue, and was issuing a fix. But the problem has persisted in a very visible way, with pro and ex-pro players stuck in games with low-level players.

The result of this, anecdotally, has been a whole lot of stomps, with one team getting carried by a player well above the skill level of everyone else. At this point, flex queue is basically glorified normals, which isn’t really a problem during the preseason, but if you’re at all familiar with the League community it won’t surprise you to know many folks are vocally upset about this.

As for solo queue, it was originally announced that it would be shipping Monday, November 14, the day of this writing. That will no longer be the case, although it is still scheduled to be released during the 6.22 cycle.