RiotKiddington explains Queue Dodging

"Your thread covered many topics, let’s just discuss about queue dodge for the sake of time. Please excuse my poor English

Queue dodging is a complex problem that involves much deliberation and consideration. We have a queue dodge system with a queue dodge penalty because we need to strike a balance between the need of players who wish to play the game and those who want to dodge the game (of any reason). Why Riot not just have a “free queue dodge” system of some form? The answer to this question is simple because it is too prone to abuse.

There is a segment of our player base that loves to queue dodge for the sake of dodging. These players would dodge a game with or without any reason. Perhaps they did it because they do not understand the implications of their actions, or perhaps they have alternative motives. We need the penalty to prevent (some) players from dodge the games repeatedly.
Then there is another segment of our player base that will queue dodge for competitive reasons. Let’s take current ARAM game mode as an example, the ARAM mode supposed to be all random in champion selection, and by logical extension of ARAM design, there should never be any “troll pick” or “mid or feed”. In reality: ARAM games currently have one of the highest queue dodge rate. Based on this information, have you considered why that is the case? Were these queue dodgers indifferent about their games? Or they cared too much about their games, and they will, at any instance of perceived disadvantage dodge the queue? One can’t deny there is a segment of our player base that would utilize the dodge system to enhance their competitive advantage if no strong discouragement exists. We need the queue dodge penalty to keep this group of players in check.

One group of players we also need to take into consideration are those who want to play the game. There are times when I have a perfect team and the other side queue dodged (for whatever reasons), and this really sucks for me. Now if this happens 7 times in a row, it would really make me feel bad. This is not without history, we have seen last year when the Dominion queue dodge system failed to enforce queue penalty for months, the consequences of that bug were devastating. It will take 7-8 tries before a player can successfully launch a game. Once we fixed the dodge penalty bug, the number of tries needed to launch a game dropped dramatically.

There are many other scenarios that we can discuss in the future (regarding League Points). We designed the dodge penalty after carefully analyze the data we have gathered from years of observation. The penalty system is designed to be strong enough to discourage repeat queue dodging but it is weak enough to allow occasional queue dodge. In the end, it is all about an act of balance to improve overall player experience."