The Autofill system in League of Legends is meant to lessen headaches, not increase them. However, dissatisfaction with the system has led to Riot explaining in a recent post exactly what’s going on with the mechanic, how it’s improved since launch, and where it’s going next.
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The root idea of Autofill in League of Legends is to make sure that each team has a healthy range of heroes and to assign roles so that players won’t fight over them. What this boils down to, for the most part, is assigning some players to support in each game. Unfortunately, supports haven’t traditionally been as fun to play as other roles. Riot have attempted to both force players in the role of support with Autofill and make them more fun to play and more dynamic than just being a healbot.
Most tweaks to the Autofill system since it was implemented are tweaks that only seem to lessen the need for its use. If you were recently Autofilled, you’re less likely to see it happen in the next game. If you play support, often you’re less liable to get Autofilled. Your first pick is heavily weighted, so just because you choose support second doesn’t mean that the feature will pass up your original choice.
In the Ask Riot post, it was noted that Autofill is far from finalised. In the future, there will be a way to let players know how likely they are to get Autofilled so that the Autofill process is more transparent. The Autofill process is not exactly ideal at this point and takes some choice away from players, but it has worked better than classic League of Legends where five people just argued and trolled if they didn’t get their way.