Choose your role before you even get to champion select with this upcoming League of Legends feature.

It would seem as though Riot has been on a crusade as of late to help emphasize player teamwork and cooperation in League of Legends. As mentioned in the company's "Teamwork OP" video released last month, teamwork wins matches and, most importantly, helps players continue to have fun and enjoy the game. Today the next step in the "crusade for more teamwork" was revealed. Riot's Lead Social Systems Designer, Jeffery Lin aka "Lyte", announced on the forums that a new "Team Builder" feature would be making its way to the game's Public Test Environment in the near future.

As many League of Legends Summoners out there know, one of the most frustrating parts of playing a match can start at the champion select screen. Unless you've chosen to queue up with a pre-made group, chances are you'll be competing for your role more often than not. Losing your role to someone else who called it just seconds before you, or refuses to give it up due to pick order, can be overwhelmingly frustrating and often times make for a less than enjoyable match.

This is where the new Team Builder feature shines and should give players more chances to play what they want to play.

"An ideal champ select is one where all five players get their preferred role and feel like they’re all on the same page for the upcoming match. The current matchmaking does a good job of matching up players of similar overall skill levels, but doesn’t have any way to know what a player’s intentions for a given game are. Sometimes things work out perfectly and everyone gets the champion and role they wanted without a hitch. But if multiple players are looking to play the same role or lane, a consensus has to be built in a relatively short period of time. That’s time that could be used to get to know each other, agree on a strategy and build confidence that it’s going to be a fun match.

Team Builder is intended to bring players together that complement each other’s expectations and intentions from the moment they enter the lobby. When everyone’s aligned on who will be going where and playing what, the only thing left to figure out is how to dominate the opposition."

The team builder will function similar to a LFG system—something MMO players might be familiar with—allowing you to queue up for a specific role in a group. And while the feature does suggest that Riot may be comfortable with the current Meta-game in League of Legends, a mixture of balancing and theory-crafting from players can always serve to change things up in the future. With the Team Builder hitting the Public Beta Environment soon, it'll be interesting to see how the final version of this feature ends up working.

"Our goal for Team Builder is to bring players together and build better teams. Because good teams win more games, make bigger plays and, most importantly, have more fun.

To us, that’s exciting, and we’re looking forward to your feedback. See you in Team Builder"

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See you in game!

Corey "Cyglaive" Jenkins

Follow Corey on Twitter @Cyglaive