Thoughts about the game from someone not great at it.

Greetings fellas, today I want to point out some of my personal observations as a gold, Garen main as it pertains to the current skill ceiling debate. First of all let me preface any criticism in regards to my skill level. Such criticism does not disprove my arguments and is considered a fairly terrible argument. My inability to play well does not disprove my basic understanding of the game Cheers.

The current debate seems to be about skill based champions.

So let's first define what we mean by skill based champions: Skill based champions are: Champions with a unique skill set which has several unique and complex mechanics which can be leveraged to outplay an opponent, Such champions should follow the rule of Hard to Play, Hard to Master. As such it is expected that champions like them will be used properly only in higher ranks.

However this is wrong. Why? Because mechanics are not the only reason people are Diamond. If you have a gold player with excellent mechanics but terrible macro planning and you give him a champion which can consistently out play the whole enemy team the result is rather simple he will rise through the ranks. The same applies for all the players which are more mechanics based.

I split the game in five main components.

Macro Play: Macro play is the second least important element. Why? Because simply teams especially in solo que do not pick champions with a certain strategy in mind except in the highest levels of play and the macro decisions in the game tend to be rather few there is. One Major Objective Victory. Two Important Objectives Dragon and Baron with decreasing importance. Nexus Towers objective with decreasing importance Red and Blue objective with high importance in the very early game but severe drop in importance below even tier 1 turrets Mid lane inhibitor with decreasing importance Sid Lane Inhibitor with decreasing importance Mid lane tier 3 turret with decreasing importance Bot/Top lane tier 3 turret with decreasing importance Mid lane tier 2 turret with decreasing importance Bot lane tier 2 turret with decreasing importance Top lane tier 2 turret with decreasing importance Mid/Bot lane tier 1 turret with decreasing importance Top lane tier 1 turret with decreasing importance Plates It disappears Farm Enemy Jungle camps by importance. Your Jungle camps by importance.

Special constantly changing position through out the game Herald.

That might seem complicated in paper but is not most of the time we instinctively make decent choices and when games drag out such decisions have less and less significance in the game.

Vision Play:Arguably the least important aspect of the game. Why? Because it has three issues A)Most players have a base understanding of where the enemy probably is, B)There is a lot of champions with high escapability and cases when knowing the enemy player has a lack of vision can lead to over confidence. Finally sometimes even when you know exactly where the enemy team is you can't win a fight even by ambushing them.

Lane Play: of truly middling importance a lane that loses can get back into the game even if they are far behind in farm. Certain champion item spikes are strong enough where even when at a disadvantage through superior mechanics they win.

Jungle Play:I would argue one of the most important aspects of the game which has recently been nerfed in importance. Junglers pretty much are the fix and uppers which mostly play the Macro game and Pick and choose which lanes need help.

Mechanics Play: The can of worms itself arguably the most important part of the game. You would have noticed that i didn't put fights under macro play. Why? Because while positioning is immensely important good enough mechanics trump macro strategies especially in late game where Aram like fights can devolve into an one sided slaughter based on just a few champions.

So what can riot do to increase the importance of Macro play? Well for starters they could increase the number of objectives. A classic example is probably the runes in Dota. People will argue that the new dragons do increase macro play but in reality they don't they just add a few map changes which pretty much make it so you need to know the changes in the map,the same way plants do. And create variant dragons which fall in different points in the Macro importance list but do not increase the number of choices. So how do you increase the importance of Macro and Vision for that matter?

Well a small expansion in the size of the map with a few new objectives added could be an interesting option to be tested. For example adding a few camps below the bot lane or above the top lane. Increasing the number of players in the game could also be an interesting experiment first attempted as a custom game mode. Adding things inside the base could also be interesting. I am not a game designer i am just throwing out ideas. What if for example you could pay gold to higher mercenary creeps in the game after level 11? or repair defenses and build new ones? Again I am just throwing ideas out.

But it is a matter of fact that: Bigger map=More importance to vision/ More Macro play. More players= Personal skill is less important.

Now if such goals are desirable that is debatable.

Now let me expand in the Mechanics part since mechanics are not quite that simple. I know I know this post is already insanely long but let me explain. I did separate the laning phase from Mechanics and there is a good reason for that Losing lane winning game is a meme for a reason. However the laning phase itself contain mechanics. I will talk about the top lane and the concept of sustain. The goal of sustain based champions is to maximize the amount of resources you can gain before diminishing returns force you to back. With that goal there is the concept of trades a champion trades health and mana to get resources the one champion which consistently loses either chooses to retreat or is made to retreat while donating gold and exp to the kind sir which made him do so(He gets killed). But what happens when Champion A) Is a heavy trade/sustain based champion but Champion B) does only need him to overextend and thanks to superior mechanics can kill him even though champion B is at 10% of his HP and champion at 60%? How can champion A beat a player with champion B? What happens when winning trades consistently does not end up rewarding you with more xp and gold and you lose simply because you can't out sustain and trade someone which simply can always beat you in a fight?

I am just throwing my thoughts to the ether I am not advocating any specific changes because frankly I don't have a diploma in game design and I am just a mostly casual player. I am more than happy to be corrected. However I would prefer if it was done civilly.

Thanks, for reading my post summoner and good luck in the rift.