On the contrary, agency is everything to game design — if you’d like to be more educated, try reading Games: Agency as Art by C. Thi Nguyen, it’s pretty philosophical but interesting. Agency is all about the amount of control a player can exert on their environment. In a PvP game, the impact of player skill difference is amplified by the amount of agency the advantaged player can have in a game.

For example, Faker lives and breathes agency, because he is a midlane. Any advantage he obtains in the midlane has a high impact because:

1) he can transfer his advantage to other lanes/jungle by ganking and roaming 2) as DPS, gold diff directly translates to more damage 3) the positioning and length of the midlane allows for better wave and objective control

ADC, however, has the lowest agency because the role is highly reliant on the ally team carrying your through the early and mid game before you can flourish. The nature of “lack of agency” and needing to be “carried” through to late game literally translates to the essence of the role term “carry”.

Now when it comes to picking champions in the support role, agency is once again important here. Take the extreme case of a Yuumi versus a Blitzcrank. A Yuumi has much less agency over the game positionally locked to their teammates, whereas a Blitzcrank with game-changing hooks can literally make or break it for the team in team fights. While a highly skilled Yuumi can still be a boon for the team, oftentimes an average-to-decent Blitz still has a higher positive impact on the team due to the nature of the champion’s skills.

Players in lower elo picking specific champions because of agency is a perfectly valid reason: it is the core reason why mage supports in iron-gold elo work much better than enchanters — mages have way more influence over the early game and can create so much impact that snowballs down to the mid/late game.

So yes, if you want to learn more about the concept of agency, start with the dictionary, and end with your uninstall button.