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Reason Normal Draft was removed but not Blind Pick

Lunnainn·11/10/2016, 7:01:23 AM·4 votes·1,509 views

I mean, I get it. Dynamic Queue is out again, and you want people to use that, and one way is to take away other queues from the players so that they have no other options than to play the few queues out. Solo/Duo queue is pulled, so people wanting to play ranked is forced into Dynamic Queue, and if people have normal queues left they probably wont touch Dynamic Queue.

And let's be honest, it's Dynamic Queue under a new name, nothing else. We didnt want it last year though, so I dont understand why you dont take the hint - stop pushing it down our throats. But hey, for some reason you want us to play it. I cant fathom why - some people want to play the game, without playing with their ratings. Accept that, Riot. And no, Blind Pick isnt "playing the game". Have you actually been playing Blind Picks yourself?

(Reason I ask, is because you guys decided to not implement Item-set generator in the new client, with ALOT of your own employees admitting to never having used the feature themselves, and using THIRD PARTY PROGRAMS to do the exact same thing. Yes, I'm still pissed off about that fact too - 3rd party programs that in any way affected game-files and/or gave you an ingame edge, was a permabannable offence, right up until the moment you guys started to endorse stuff like Championify to do just those things, both alter gamefiles and giving you an ingame-edge - what else would you call "hey, these items are the highest winrate on this champion!"? Why did you change stance? It couldnt be due to the fact that... lets say... several Riot employees were using Championify themselves?)

NOT in a 3-4-5 man premade, but queued up Solo in Blind Pick, consistently, playing 4-10 games in a row, several days in a row, SOLO Blind Pick? I dont get the feeling you have. You havent experienced the solo Blind Pick. My suggestion is that you do just that, under non-Riotnamed accounts. (Non-Riotnamed accounts is important, because we all know people behave WAY different "when the boss is looking" and when you think you can get away with being a toxic little asshat).

But here's the kicker; the reason Normal Draft was removed, is because without Blind Pick, there's no way for new players to play Draft, since they dont own 16 champions (or 20, if the new 10-ban system is going to be implemented). If I recall correctly, ARAM and TT isnt available until after a few levels. That means, new players cant play Draft game-modes in any way unless they spend money (RP) to buy champions, and thus making League not a "free-to-play"-game. This is because, if they cant queue up for games, they cannot gain IP, and therefore they cannot buy champions enough to start playing Draft.

The issue isnt only new players, per se, but all new accounts, including smurfs. That's why Riot "cant" remove Blind Pick - it forces people to buy RP to buy 16-20 champions, just to be able to play the game. I can understand why they dont think they can remove Blind Pick, in a scenario where they want to limit the number of queues available for players so that we head over to Dynamic Queue.

Yeah, sure, you can argue about this whole thing about higher-%age games in Blind Pick vs Normal Draft all you want - there's a reason for that. Accounts CANT play Drafts unless they spam games in Blind to get enough IP to buy enough champs. Even so, the negative impact the removal of Normal Draft did have on alot of players (yes, me included) is severe enough to have Riot reconsider that removal.

My suggestion is this; Remove Blind Pick. The game-mode itself is a blight. To adress the problems of new accounts being forced to buy RP to buy enough champions; Rething the idea that accounts start out with no champions. Almost no other game has this - I can only think of HotS. I might be wrong, but either way, that's not the point (the League vs other games on no-champs-accounts). Make the 16 (or 20) champions with the lowest skillcap, or the lowest cost, available for free. Give them automatically to new accounts. That way people can spend their IP on runes instead, which has been an issue people been taking up for years.

Hell, the best version of this I can think of, since alot of people probably will claim that it will hamper champion diversity, is this; Make a pool of 32 (or 40) of the lowest cost champions/lowest skillcap (or 24 or 30 respectively - "champ-amount-req+50%", or in my original example, twice the amount of champion required). Then give that pool of champions to every new account, for them to pick out their favorite champions. You give them the pool of 32 champions, and out of these 32 champions, they pick out half that will make out their required championpool so they can start playing Draft.

That way, every account in this game is suddenly available for Draft games, every account is suddenly able to start gathering IP for their runes, and Blind Pick will actually be obsolete. And all of a sudden, if any game-mode is necessary to remove in order for your Dynamic Queue to have a population, Blind Pick can be it.

I know, low level accounts that is still levelling cant play ranked, but as soon as they hit 30, most of them doesnt own enough champions anyway and still cant play Ranked. That's easily fixed with my suggestion, and people can start playing ranked as soon as they hit 30, and if they dont wish to play ranked, they can still play the Normal Draft with the rest of us.

I can imagine you want people to pay RP for champions to "speed up the process", that's why you still sell the Digital Collector Pack of champions still. But your greed actually trumps players wishes?

I tell you what. Force "survey" on every player at their next login, where they only have to answer one question; "Would you still be playing more Blind Pick than Normal Draft on a regular basis if we re-enabled Normal Draft?". You have the technology to force such a click - you did it with your information about pre-season this time. You can make that into a Survey. Do this on each of the servers that have Normal Draft disabled; meaning you sort out NA, EUW and BR answers.

If that survey comes back with 90+% "Yes", I conceed. Then you have your proof that people dont want Normal Draft over Blind Pick. However, that means you give away champions for free, the amount needed of people to play Draft-mode.

I'm pretty sure you wont do it though. Giving away 16-20 champions, even if that would be the ones costing the least, or letting people chose 16-20 champions out of 32-40 champions.. We all know why that would be, too.

Even if that would seriously update your standard in comparison to other games.

But please. The players you screwed over isnt happy, and we're less happy with this, than we were with the ranked-changes last year.

TLDR; Give us back Normal Draft. If you need to remove anything, remove Blind Pick. In order to let people play, give away the same amount of champions required to play Draft-games for free - could be any champions of your choice or let people select from a pool. That also makes people able to immediately gain IP in order to purchase runes in their preparations for Ranked games when they hit level 30, instead of "wasting" IP in order to buy champions.

P.S. I am completely serious about this, too; If you dont re-enable Normal Draft on my server, I have been taken away the only game-mode I consistently played, and I have no reason to keep playing. I am also not paying for a transfer to EUW with the risk of having EUW Normal Draft eventually removed - I'm not paying anything in order to keep being able to play. I've spent enough money on this game, I'm not paying a dime more in order to have the only game-mode I play available for me. I wont even accept a free-transfer to EUW, since I have an entire friendlist and other progress done (for example my honours) that I wouldnt be able to keep. That means, if you dont bring back EUNE-Normal Draft, I wont keep playing. There's no reason for me to keep playing a game, where the only game-mode I'm actively using is removed. Dead serious.

And yes. I'm beyond pissed off. I'm as civil as I can manage to be. Take it or leave it.

5 Comments

MadClown11/10/2016, 7:33:34 AM2 votes

I don't think riot cares if you leave them game.I am honestly not yet sure why they removed draft in the first place. As of my personal opinion I really hate blind pick simply because getting the role I want will be hard since I have to call it as fast as possible, but I might connect later, then there is a lot of instalockers etc.

Packun Flower11/10/2016, 7:48:15 AM2 votes

Riots gone bonkers.

First SoloQ now Draft. Holy shit. they just cant stand the fact that they were wrong about DQ and people just hate it.

Lunnainn11/10/2016, 7:55:10 AM1 votes

To be honest, I dont think they care about me leaving either. I know "one players threat of leaving" is a laughable concept, but I'm straight up telling them that's how it's going to be. If they dont care, then they dont care, but then I'm actually out. I'm never going to recommend this game ever again to any players - what for? "Hey, you play blind pick for 30 levels. Then you play blind pick enough times so that you can buy 16 champions, which has an increased cost, not accounting for any of the expensive champs you want to play. That is, if you dont want to spend a buttload of actual money to buy champions. And then you can stick to either blind pick, or you can move over to ranked, where you will get shit on because you dont have enough or the right runes, and while you're getting shit on you have your rank tanked to the very bottom. What is blind pick you ask? Why, it's the bread and butter of every player that wishes to play ranked in the end - you pick a champion, in a random team, fight for what role you should be having within your own team, and then play versus an enemy team you have NO IDEA what they are, and thus making it extremely risky to playing ANYTHING except a very select few of champion that is versatile enough to deal with most crap - THAT is blind pick! Have fun!"

Good luck getting any new players interested after that. And sure, you could probably phrase it better; but I wont. This is the only way I'm going to talk about League if Normal Draft isnt re-enabled, because that's the harsh truth. I'm not going to sugarcoat League for them, when this is what is literally going to happen.

To be honest, I dont think they care about thousands of players leaving either - it'd probably only concern them if upwards hundreds of thousand people actually leave, and probably wont do anything unless several hundred thousands of player actually left.

And they know that's not going to happen, because people play this game like a drug. Alot of the players are going to "cope" and "adapt" and start playing ranked, despite not actually wanting to play ranked. I know, I've been one of the "addicted" ones, playing several games a day, almost every single day for the last 3 years, but this is actually going to be my last straw.

And I agree with you on the parts you said about Blind - those are but a small part of why Blind Pick is a blight.

My two cents on how this will go, is that people consider themselves forced into Blind or Ranked, toxicity is going to spike up, Ranked Toxicity is going to flow down on other game-queues, actual toxicity is going to cause an increase of permabans and new accounts created for the sole purpose of being throwaway accounts and this cycle is going to continue. Meanwhile, Riot isnt going to care one bit. They're going to provide band-aid solutions such as chat-restrictions, x-amount of games in non-ranked queue, etc. May be that I drag the amount a bit longer than the actual outcome will be, but I bet we're going to see that trend.

Lunnainn12/6/2016, 9:26:18 PM1 votes

There's no reason to make every champion available, a smaller pool of the total is enough (20 champs in a 10-ban-system is, what, just short of one sixth?). One sixth of the pool available isnt "going downhill". It's barely even making a dent. I assume Riot knows most people just give up and buys a bundle of champions on new accounts instead, and I guess it's enough for them to not wanna miss out on.