Games are lasting too long.
The following is entirely my opinion based on my experiences, as a measly norms player, it may be wrong, it may be different to your opinion, but that's entirely up to you :)
I've found this season, that unless a team surrenders or have a clear disadvantage(trolls, feeders ect) games tend to run 35min+ on average because its harder to close out the game. Last season, I'd average game times between 20-30 minutes, unless it's one of those epic nail biting ones where you're stalling to make a comeback.
But this season, comebacks are extremely painful, they take so dam long and aren't as enjoyable as last season. You'd usually comeback last season through dragon control(or sneaky steals), split push or when the enemy does something stupid, which made the game more intense IMO. But this was when dragons gave 900 gold(180 per player), so if you controlled dragon, you could comeback reasonably quickly through global gold, even if the enemy was ahead in towers and kills. Now dragon's all about the race to 5 stacks, and until you hit 5 stacks, killing dragon grants pretty mediocre rewards. It is because of this that games are drawn out, because this new dragon no longer grants enough power to a team to rule the mid-game. Dragon's Might (1 stack): +8% total attack damage and ability power Dragon's Dominance (2 stacks): +15% damage to minions and monsters Dragon's Flight (3 stacks): +5% movement speed Dragon's Wrath (4 stacks): +15% damage to turrets and buildings Aspect of the Dragon (5 stacks, repeatable): Doubles all other bonuses and your attacks burn enemies for 150 true damage over 5 seconds. Lasts 180 seconds. I'll admit, I enjoy the third stack as Nautilus, but stack 4 is only useful if you can siege and/or have a powerful split pusher. But because teams stall, perhaps sneak a drag here and there, these stacks take a very long time to achieve unless absolute map control is achieved.
Naut jg was pretty average last season, but I actually enjoyed stalling, because it wasn't about dying over and over until your team finally has enough items to tango with the enemy. I'd time drag(when we didn't have timers) and do it every 6min on the dot, and that's how we won, in low ello people underestimated the power of 900gold/6minutes globally. We'd catch up rapidly, sneak a tower here and there while protecting our base(when inhibitor towers weren't teddy bears). Surprisingly, most teams can get 1-2 inhibs, but stop there and don't progress. Keep killing and dragoning
Now, if your the loosing team, with average scaling (so you don't have a hyper scaled kog or nasus to carry), there are no ways to even out the game unless the enemy team runs into you while your at the fountain. Towers are somewhat helpful, but you can only kill so many before they run out. And as I said, if your catching up on drags, your only delaying as it take for ever to break even( for both teams to have 4 drags it takes 48minutes). I hate this, it's so freaking boring, it's like, playing chess but at 1/100 of the speed. I want to surrender every 20min if they have a lead, to save the trouble of a 50 minute game that we "might" win.
I propose a reasonable global gold bonus to drag, 500, 100 each(keep the current stacking mechanic). This would increase the importance of securing it, providing more fights. More fights would mean if it's one sided, more gold is funnelled into the winning team allowing them to end the game sooner if they know how. It would also speed up games in general, as more money=more items faster. So even if the drags are even, Hyper scaling adc VS early game terrorist will favour the scaling champs as they get their core sooner and hopefully start winning fights in the process.
