Getting autofilled into a position that you’re uncomfortable with in a game of ranked League of Legends is always frustrating. An equally frustrating situation is having to play alongside someone who’s unfamiliar with the role that they’ve been autofilled into.
In a thread to the official League subreddit posted earlier today, players discussed the effects of autofilling on a lobby, and whether it’s really a kiss of death for a team if they have more autofilled players than their opposition.
“I don’t care (that much) if I win or lose but the game quality is just mega one sided depending on how well the autofills try not to lose their lanes/roles,” the original poster of the Reddit thread, a user named Adventurous-Ideal554 said. “I just don’t understand how one team can have three fills while the other has zero and the game gets matchmade.”
While an autofilled player is often out of their element in a ranked game—especially considering they never prepared to play the role the game handed them in the first place—it’s more common than not that they turn in a subpar performance than a blisteringly good one. Unless you’re a well-versed player who can confidently play all five roles, getting autofilled is a serious detriment to your team’s chances. If you’ve got more than one player in a role that they’re not ready to tackle, it’s likely that a loss could be in the cards.
Autofilling is a practice that’s commonly used by the League client to shorten queue times. When fewer players at your rank are queuing up for less popular roles, you could get swung into one of them despite the fact that you picked some other roles in your pregame lobby. The lobby will always tell you when autofill is active, although you can sometimes be protected from the mechanic by voluntarily playing a less-frequented position.
The most commonly agreed-upon sentiment was that it really matters which position on your team is the recipient of an autofill. While it’s never fun to have an autofilled player on your team, you’d much rather have someone autofilled into a less-effective position like support or top lane, for example, than autofilled into a game-defining role like the mid lane, where a bad early-game performance can cripple your team’s chances just a few minutes into the contest.
“The type of autofill also matters a lot,” a user commented. “Having a mid lane main autofilled is a lot less bad than having a support main filled to [the] top lane.”
Another League player argued that the jungle position should never be subject to autofilled players, which we’d tend to agree with, considering how different and niche it is from the other roles on the Rift. Still, jungling has been made substantially easier over the last two League seasons, and getting autofilled into the jungle isn’t as intimidating as it once was.
