[RIOT PLS] We NEED more vision designs like Frost Queen's Claim
Frost Queen's Claim is a great example of vision mechanics done right:
- It showed you the direction of the two closest enemies, which is valuable information.
- It revealed them, and was one of the few instances of True Sight that players had.
- And crucially it let your opponents outplay it! It gave them plenty of time to react, since the ghosts had to actually travel, they had a limited travel speed, and they were highly telegraphed. Players could dodge and avoid and out-maneuver the ghosts in tons of ways.
(Notice how I don't even list 'slows enemies' as that was just icing on the cake.)
The effect was, in short, a far healthier implementation of vision mechanics than WARDS.
Wards are the worst expression of vision mechanics. Most of the time they're INVISIBLE meaning we can't dodge or avoid or outplay them. Half the time we don't even know where they are. We're required to rely on a handful of specific counter-items to deny vision rather than our own cleverness or reflexes, which we could do if wards telegraphed or communicated their presence.
Remember when Vision Wards (Pink Wards) were invisible? And then RIot made them visible? How much better that was for League and for gameplay! AMAZING. And then Riot turned the Pinks into Reds and what else? What do the Red (Control) Wards do? They COMMUNICATE THEIR PRESENCE whenever they disable a ward. That's valuable information you can play around! What about the Blue Trinket and Red Trinket? They both COMMUNICATE THEIR PRESENCE. They have very obvious recognizable particle effects that make it clear what the enemy can see. They're both great.
When you know what the enemy can see, you can play around that. When you play around what the enemy can see, you are using STEALTH in the most accurate sense of the word: cautious and surreptitious action or movement; the quality or characteristic of being furtive or covert. This is the definition of stealth that every stealth game since the early 90's adheres to.
Yet WARDS don't really allow for stealth gameplay. How are we suppose to sneak by these things that we can't see, that we don't know are there? I legit don't understand.
I don't understand why you give us these cool information effects like Rek'Sai's Tremor Sense and Warwick's Blood Scent and the Sweeper's Silhouette and the Farsight Eye but don't apply any of that kind of design to WARDS???
Why not give us more cool unique vision effects? Why not implement those designs on wards? Why not let us deny vision, not by destroying wards, but by avoiding or dodging them entirely?
