Why Wild Rift’s Position Preference is needed in League of Legends Season 12

Wild Rift is testing a new way to queue up for ranked with Position Preference. It’s different from the current position select you know. However, it’s clear that it needs to be made permanent: Not just on mobile, but League of Legends PC too.

When position select was added to League of Legends in Season 6, it was a massive step forward. Veterans of the MOBA will tell you of their struggles of having to load into champion select, rapidly typing your role in chat, and hoping you were first.

If you weren’t, it’s likely your second and third-preference roles would be snapped up by others. Then you’d be stuck in the jungle, knowing you could carry this game from mid. The enemy team has a jungle main, and they’re styling on you.

Boom, there goes 18 LP.

Position select made sure that players primarily got their main role. Teams were fairer ⁠with no more stacks of four support players instantly losing you the game in pick-ban. If you didn’t get your role, you were autofilled ⁠— but you were guaranteed your main role next game.

Over time though, the system’s flaws have been exposed. You might be content with playing multiple roles, but if you get autofilled into that one position you hate, it’s doomed. There’s no way to manually adjust your preferences outside of your primary and secondary positions.

That’s where Wild Rift’s Position Preference system comes in.

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No longer will your autofills be a random lottery where you have to pray you don’t get that one role. Instead, you can completely control what roles you want to play. It’s exactly what ranked needs, and would make for a perfect addition for League of Legends Season 12.

What is Position Preference in Wild Rift?

Position Preference allows you to queue up for all roles at once in ranked. However, instead of selecting your primary and secondary roles, hoping you don’t get autofilled, you can preference 1 to 5 ⁠— 1 being your best ⁠— what roles you want to play.

It’s a strictly better version of position select. The autofill won’t doom you if you don’t get your primary role. You don’t have to worry about the lottery of hoping you get your two selected roles without being autofilled.

“In the end, regardless of what you choose, we’ll make it a priority that you get your most preferred positions as often as possible,” developer Ed Knapp said in a March 27 dev blog.

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You can clearly set out what you want to play; and if you are happy to play every role but AD Carry, you can make sure you (basically) never get it by putting it as your lowest preference.

“While we cannot guarantee you’ll never get your least favorite position, we’re aiming for you to get your top two in a majority of games. And when you don’t, we’ll use your preference settings to favor your third and fourth choices,” Knapp added.

Make Ranked Great Again

With the removal of Promotion-Demotion, Riot are making big strides into making ranked a great game mode once again. Those who have fallen out of love with the competitive aspect of League might be renewed to come back with the grind being less taxing.

Position Preference is another string in that bow. There are two major facets where it will make League of Legends ranked better: Queue times and game fairness.

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Position Preference is basically a revert to the old days where all you have to do is press “Play” and do nothing else. However, behind the scenes, the system is working in your favor to get your desired role once you set it.

Because you’re queuing up for all positions at once, it’s likely games will be found quicker. Sure, you might not be in your main role every game, but at least you’re practically guaranteed to not get your least favorite.

This means, especially in smaller regions where high elo queue times can take hours, you’ll likely find games quicker. Not only that, but you’re less likely to get shafted once you get in-game.

Position Preference is still in testing. However, if the League of Legends team isn’t considering it for Season 12, they should be.

It doesn’t fix all of the flaws in ranked, and there won’t ever be a perfect system everyone agrees with. It’s clear League’s current ranked system is fundamentally broken. Position Preference will go a long way to fixing it.