At the start of LoL season 11, Riot removed duo queue from ranked for Apex tiers. Now, there could be a chance it will come back.
Riot is making some huge changes in Season 14. Not only is the map different with brand-new jungle monster changes. Along with those changes, Riot have also removed mythic items.
Now, Riot Iksar has revealed that the devs are thinking of adding even more changes to the League of Legends season and one of those could be a return of duo queue for Apex tiers in LoL. But is that such a good idea?
LoL: Apex Tiers Could Have Duo Queue Once More
Duo queue in Apex tiers in League of Legends was a thing once upon a time... until Riot realized that it could be a bit unfair and therefore removed it from the game.
In League of Legends, the Apex tiers refer to the highest ranks in the game's competitive ladder. These include Master, Grandmaster, and Challenger. Master is the entry-level for top-tier play, Grandmaster is above Master, and Challenger is the highest, consisting of the most elite players in each regional server.
For low elo plebs like 99% of the players, having a friend on your team will not impact the game too much. Why? Because lower MMR players, and even high MMR players, do not have the same macro and micro knowledge of the game.
Having just one player on the team that you can talk to and discuss strategies with can make a huge difference in Apex tiers, but in low elo... even if you are talking to a friend, let's be real, you aren't making those sick plays anyways.
Team has been doing an AMA on reddit today and we got a question asking for our progress on ranked, matchmaking and smurfing. Here is an update --We've had a heavy focus on matchmaking, ranked, smurfs, & bots in the last couple weeks -- many changes on the way or being worked...
— August Dean Ayala (@RiotIksar) January 16, 2024
That's why, to keep the Apex tiers as competitive and fair as possible, Riot removed duo queue from the Apex tiers. At the time, Riot stated that removing duo queue would "reflect the best individuals on the server" and that "duos at the top level make it difficult to provide fair matches due to low player count at that skill level".
Now, three years later, Riot Iksar has stated that there could be a change in this policy. He stated that the team is currently looking to open duo queue up for Master tier, but that the devs are currently just doing some research on the idea.
He also added on that there could be differences between regions depending on their findings. This means that some servers could get duo queue in Master tier, while other regions don't.