Team Builder

"Hello Summoners!
Lyte here, and in this post I’m excited to talk with you about Team Builder, a new feature coming to PBE in the near future where you can queue up for a specific role, champion and position and get connected with four teammates that also preselected their preferred role. The goal is to build a balanced team where everyone’s in agreement on where they’re going and what they’re playing, and in doing so help lay the foundation for good teamwork.

How often have you logged on to League of Legends and thought, “I just want to play Renekton today.” Or maybe you want to try a new strategy but can’t find four friends to premade with. We’re always asking how we can make the League of Legends experience better, and one thing that comes up a lot is how players want to feel like they’re in control of their pre-game experience.
Good teamwork doesn’t just start when the minions spawn or at the first big teamfight. It starts in champion select. Champion select sets the tone of the game and greatly impacts whether you feel like you’re going to have a fun match. So we asked ourselves: what’s the ideal champion select? And how can we improve this process so it happens more often?

An ideal champ select is one where all five players get their preferred role and feel like they’re all on the same page for the upcoming match. The current matchmaking does a good job of matching up players of similar overall skill levels, but doesn’t have any way to know what a player’s intentions for a given game are. Sometimes things work out perfectly and everyone gets the champion and role they wanted without a hitch. But if multiple players are looking to play the same role or lane, a consensus has to be built in a relatively short period of time. That’s time that could be used to get to know each other, agree on a strategy and build confidence that it’s going to be a fun match.

Team Builder is intended to bring players together that complement each other’s expectations and intentions from the moment they enter the lobby. When everyone’s aligned on who will be going where and playing what, the only thing left to figure out is how to dominate the opposition.

Once we had a model for how Team Builder would bring players together, we started looking at matchmaking and how we could evolve it to help further enable good games. One of the most important things for a team’s enjoyment is making sure that they’re matched against similarly skilled players.

With Team Builder we’ll also be rolling out a smarter matchmaking system that can dynamically account for your experience with a given role, position or champion. First time playing Ahri? Learning how to be a solid Marksman? Venturing into the jungle for the first time? Team Builder’s matchmaking will take all of these factors into account. .
Our goal for Team Builder is to bring players together and build better teams. Because good teams win more games, make bigger plays, and most importantly, have more fun.
To us, that’s exciting, and we’re looking forward to your feedback. See you in Team Builder,
Lyte"

He continued:
"I just want to take a moment to thank some of the Rioters who worked on this feature:
Robbypoo, RiotComplex, statuskwoh, RiotWorldPeace, RiotTantrum, davin, btab, MissMechaZero, RiotLobster, stopthief, Exekias, Amazoe, Scezumin, VonBurgermeister, Ryedan, RiotNeuroCat, RiotJayway, Taurendur, whever, Drevarius, RoamingNumeral, RiotSeb.

If you see them around the forums or a future event, make sure to give them a fist-bump!"

davin also joined in to respond to comments on this "reinforcing the meta":
"It actually does not enforce it--leaders of a team will be able to set whatever parameters they want. Double jungle? Five man mid? Make it happen!

But, because team collaboration is the name of the game, your teammates will need to be bought in by queuing for that position and accepting the plan beforehand. It's built into the system to allow for flexible meta expression."