Regarding the Decision to Eliminate Twisted Treeline
I have been a dedicated LoL fan since early Season 3. I have played several thousand games, about half of which are on Twisted Treeline. I played through college, grad school, and beyond: and for most of those years, it’s not even a question—TT is what brings me back to League after all this time. Riot, please don’t do this.
There is a cozy intimacy to 3s. Getting just 2 other friends together, you can weave a tightly-knit strategy that frankly feels fundamentally more unique than the SR experience. Also, TT is better-paced than the Rift—rare is the game that goes on longer than 30 minutes, yet when that happens it’s because the teams are neck-and-neck right until the very end. It’s exhilarating. It’s explosive. It’s peak League of Legends in many regards that are not the case with its more well-known counterpart.
The decision-making process articulated in Riot Mort's recent dev notes titled "State of Modes" is fundamentally wrong-headed. In the TT section, he hastily glosses over some surface-level metrics and reads in them an inane and caricatured story, as if TT were just another side-fascination like Dominion or ARAM. In actuality, TT has a whole community which is more committed to this game mode than SR----not in spite of that drive for competition which attracts others to Summoner's Rift, but because of it. We play TT because we mean business, and because we think the meta is in our hands. I have seen more innovation in any single season of 3s than in the 6 years I've been playing LoL in 5s.
Yet despite these merits, Riot has fumigated the map with poor balancing, minimal support, and numerous negative incentives for years. When have they ever given parity to TT? Why not have pros play skirmishes on the map to increase visibility? Why have they almost never given it an exclusive game mode? One round of TT-only URF could have done wonders. Equity of rewards would also have been extremely beneficial. Mort writes as if Riot has given this secondary competitive mode a fair shot. You most emphatically did not.
Yet despite all this chicanery, Twisted Treeline's fans stuck by it. Why? Because at its core, TT is almost everything that makes SR fun in a more concise and flavorful package. It takes less investment and creates a strong auxiliary competitive scene with its own well-established identity. And crucially, it also gives smaller teams of friends an outlet for a safer and more friendly way to play this game.
Which brings us to the elephant in the room: LoL has a major toxicity problem. For many of us, it is noxious to the point where we only get by through ensuring we have full-team queues. TT lowered the bar for entry for players who wanted a competitive-yet-friendly experience: the core principles of play remained in-tact, as did the integrity of the competition. And despite Mort's brief commentary on fairness, I and many of my TT-loving friends have often remarked on the lived experience of a more fair dynamic in this mode. The elements of play are more controlled because they are fewer in number, and so when we lose, we feel more confident that we deserved that outcome. TT's smaller player pool encourages improvement, not frustration; and I assure you that SR can feel just as unbalanced. Your MMR system is not as bulletproof as you seem to think it is, but that's a whole statistical argument that I think most community members probably would prefer to read somewhere else.
Nonetheless, I could write a 20-page analysis on why this is the wrong decision. I scarcely imagine that you would welcome such a contribution, so I won't do so unprompted. I am just sad to learn that I will no longer be welcome in the League of Legends community starting next season. As a philosopher by training, I used to dream of bringing my talents to Riot to innovate an entire line of competitive attractions. TT was evidence to me that they weren't just interested in beating DOTA at its own game. Now I just feel sad to be proven wrong about the franchise which once changed my life as a gamer.
End note: I've used some harsh words of criticism here towards Mort and his articulation of Riot's position on TT. I actually have a strong appreciation for Mort and have usually found his prose to be inviting, relatable, and refreshing in dev notes, commentary, etc. I hope that if he reads this, he takes it as propositional argumentation and not a personal attack on his wonderful tenure as the front face of League's game design.
I would eagerly welcome the opportunity to sit down and discuss this matter with him further.
