Riot Adding Custom and Group Queue in LoL Arena

Riot addresses one of the major complaints of 2v2v2v2 by adding a custom and group queue in the next version of LoL Arena.

Even though there are rotational game modes such as URF, ARURF, Nexus Blitz, etc., Riot has been reluctant to put a permanently new one on League of Legends. In Patch 13.14, they finally came up with a new mode called ‘Arena’ where people would fight as a pair vs another pair.

This 2v2v2v2 Arena became instantly popular providing a fresh room to breathe for the ones exhausted from playing ARAM and SR. However, among all the positive reception, there were a few desires left unchecked. For example, the new mode only allowed you to queue up with your duo. Groups of 2 or more were not available, making it hard for friends to play together.

However, that was the v1 of the arena, which Riot used as a sort of testing ground for the new and finalized version. With the next more polished edition of the Arena, Riot fulfills many of the wishes the players had the last time. Those include adding custom and group queues, balancing out the champions’ power disparity, refining the stage gameplay, new augments, challenges, etc. among many others, as Riot Maxw3ll describes in the dev update.

For this article, the focus will be on the custom and group queues.

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Custom and Group Queue

With the return of Arena, you can now queue up as groups of 2,3, and 4 together, meaning the pre-made queue can have a total of 4, 6, and 8 players. Having all 8 players means you can have a totally private match. And if you play as a group of 2 or 3, Riot will fill the remaining empty slots using their matchmaking algorithm, based on Arena MMR.

Besides the liberty of more pre-made, you can also choose who will be on which team. So, it is basically giving you the custom matchmaking power for all intent and purpose. The only difference is that while custom matches didn’t have an ELO rating, this Arena queue will always calculate that even if you play with 8 pre-made.

Riot has decided to not have split queues (ranked and unranked) for this one since they believe it creates a disparity in terms of population. But if the mode gets enough traction, they are open to adding it in the future.

Release Date

The second release of Arena is scheduled to arrive with Patch 13.23. Patch 13.23 will be deployed on all official servers starting from November 21, 2023.

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