Team Builder - The Reasons behind its lack of Success

The majority of League of Legends players love to play their Solo Queue and Ranked play modes. The highly competitive aspect of this mode, and the ability to see where you rank in your region is highly alluring to a lot of players. Though with that being said, sometimes you'll get stuck with some incredibly toxic teammates in multiple matches strung together which turns you off from playing any more ranked for the day. Having a few of these games might keep you away from Solo Queue, but you're a League addict, you still want to get some games in while you have the time to do so and now you have a decision to make. What normal game mode do I pick? Do I even feel like playing a normal game, or perhaps an ARAM? Hell, maybe I'll play some Dominion or that new game mode that's only out for a few weeks! 

I've got choices, but don't know what to choose!

Now this is where the problem begins to be highlighted upon Riot's introduction of the Team Builder system. As a League of Legends player, you have a surprising number of choices of game modes to play. Even though there's only 4 different maps to choose from, there's 10 different game modes on top of that. If we want to be more specific as to where Team Builder fits, then we'll only fit the three game modes that are all in contention with each other. Blind pick is the first normal game mode that comes to mind. It's without a doubt the fastest way to get right back into the game without suffering too many drawbacks that other modes like Normal Draft and Team Builder have. Queue times are quick and picking, although a little chaotic at times, is fairly short as well. For the majority of players who are done with Solo Queue for the day, this is the game mode of choice. The biggest drawbacks of blind pick mode is the fact that you have very little control in what champions you face, and the potential for mirror matches exist. 

Now for the players who tend to like the idea of the Ranked system, which utilizes a ban/pick system, then you'll likely look into playing some Normal Draft games by yourself or with friends. Although picking is a lot more organized in comparison to blind pick, queue times tend to be longer, the ban/pick phase tends to last a lengthy time as well, and the likelihood of people dodging because they don't like the enemy or their own team comp is fairly common here.

The Current reality of Team Builder

Team Builder tends to take the worst of both worlds in these two game modes. Queue times are fairly long here, if you're picking a fairly popular role, and some captains are incredibly picky with what they let in to their team composition. This leads to players being agitated at the amount of time taking to find a full team of five players and leaving before the game is even assembled.  Just like blind pick, Team Builder also allows mirror matches to occur, likely to speed up the process in finding a team to face off against.

Now in an ideal situation, when a new champion is released everyone would love to flock to Team Builder so they can guarantee themselves some playtime with their recently acquired purches, but the reality of the situation is that most other players have the same idea in mind, leaving you with long times before a game actually begins. One of the issues attached to this is that the playerbase of a region is spread quite thin over a multitude of different game modes to choose from. If Team Builder was the only normal game mode made available to players, queue's would speed up drastically, even for those who are looking to fill the already popular roles. However it's not as easy as disabling the other game modes. As we've mentioned before, each of the game modes are slightly different from one another; just enough to keep all three modes as regular everyday maps.  

 So why bother with Team Builder at all?

 As it stands, Team Builder is the only way in which you can guarantee what role and what champion you want to play without having to worry about pick order, or loading the fastest into the pick mode like you have to in Blind Pick mode. It's the ideal place to pick up a new role and get some real hands on experience, but simply takes too long and frankly isn't worth the hassle that it is to get it going on most occasions. Riot has stated that they're looking into ways to make Team Builder a much more popular mode, and by streamlining a few things here and there, I believe it's possible for them to do so.