I’ve been playing a lot of Ranked Solo games recently, if only because I miss draft mode. Actually, that is the only reason. I don’t like ranked. I don’t like the attitude of the players. I don’t like that my own expectations of my teammates rise dramatically when I play ranked and so I don’t like how often I’m disappointed.
I’ve dropped 150 points or so over the past week and a half, largely because my teammates have made some very foolish choices. As an example, I had a team captain today who set up a Rammus pick with the bans. It was a nice move, and we could have had what many consider the strongest pick in the game on our team. Instead, our captain chose Ezreal because no one wanted to switch for Rammus, giving the other team the pick he had baited for us. Trust me, I would have taken Rammus had I known, but he just switched and locked without saying anything after no one offered to trade. Amazing.
That little story aside, I wonder what the value of Ranked Solo will be when normal draft comes out (it is coming out, I promise – Marc Merrill confirmed normal draft to me over Twitter last week). Personally, I would mind if Riot did away with it. Ranked and Solo just don’t work together in my mind. They are competing principles. I understand that it was necessary when Season One launched; players needed a place to see the new game modes, even if they were just playing solo. When the same options are available in normal, why keep it around?
More likely than not, it will stay around. Players will always want that quantifiable measure of success, as arbitrary as it sometimes seems to be (seriously, how did some of these people get past 1200). Personally, I won’t be going anywhere near ranked, unless I suddenly have a regular play schedule with four other people and we can run ranked 5s.
