League of Legends role selection is drastically changing

Before the start of the 2016 season, Riot Games changed the matchmaking process. What had once been a bit of an unorganized free for all to get the role you wanted was now handled by selecting a position before the matchmaking queue even started. This new system proved somewhat contentious within the community. Many liked this system and appreciated the way they were more often able to play the roles they preferred, while some felt that it increased matchmaking times by too much and cut out player’s opportunity to play a variety of roles.

Seeking to alleviate some of these issues, Riot is preparing to add an amended version of the Position Select system to the PBE for testing. This new system is called Position Preference. In Position Preference players, will select their two strongest roles, in the same way that it currently works on live, but will also be able to select their weakest role.

Riot Games

This new system will allow Riot to keep queue times low by sometimes giving players their third or fourth best role occasionally, while still ensuring that they are never given their worst role. This should help to keep the aspects of the system that many liked while also adding in the variety others felt was lacking from Position Select.

According to Riot this new matchmaking system will be added to the PBE in the near future and, following a successful test, will be brought to one region to ensure that the ratio of players to roles is acceptable, before turning the system on globally.