Day/Night Cycle in League of Legends?
Every RTS based on Warcraft III, or designed with Warcraft III ideas in mind has had a Day/Night Cycle.
The only RTSes I can think of off the top of my head that don't have a Day/Night Cycle are Starcraft and Halo Wars (and that is me VERY LOOSELY using the term RTS).
Considering that the MobA genre is simply a mod of an RTS engine, why not have a Day Night Cycle? League of Legends could only benefit from it, as it mixes up the game play and makes roaming a bit more dangerous.
In League of Legends a Day/Night cycle could be easily implemented.
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Add a semi-circle counter to the top-center portion of a Player's screen that depicts the time of the game and how long until a Day or Night will end.
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This semi-circle will slowly rotate clockwise slowly showing either a yellow half (day) or a blue half (night).
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During the Night time a Champion's Vision range drops from 1200 to 720. This is a great deal less of a penalty than most MobAs. DotA for example drops their Hero Vision from 1800 to 800 at night. (40.0% vision penalty vs 55.5%).
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A game of League is designed to end in around 35 - 40 minutes. A Day/Night cycle could last 9 minutes total; 4:30 for day, and 4:30 for Night. This allows roughly 4.5 complete day/night cycles for the duration of a 40 minute game (9 Days and 9 nights).
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Ganks become more threatening at night. Since vision is reduced at night, the threat of night time ganks force people to play more defensively, making some characters that are designed to be hyper-aggressive, play defensively for a change.
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It fits thematically. Since Riot retconned their Lore for the Institute of war, the League of Legends is no longer a magical semi-realm of Valoran, but a physical place bound by the laws of that planet (unless Riot wishes Valoran, and therefor Runeterra not to have a Day/Night Cycle).
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Day and Night DO NOT affect Ward and Building Sight Range. This is a fact that most people get mixed up, some people think that a day/night cycle will reduce the vision of Wards and buildings, thus making wards obsolete. This is false all buildings retain their 1095 sight range, and wards retain their 1100 range regardless of Day or Night. Thereby making Wards an even more valuable asset (and making that Yellow trinket upgrade worth something to lower-tier players).
Let me know what you think of a Day/Night Cycle in league.
Will it be a healthy addition, or will it change the game too much?