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Will Riot ever support their game beyond SR?

Sluiceway·1/18/2016, 2:12:52 PM·8 votes·789 views

I was just thinking over some ideas I wonder why Riot has not implemented yet, so I thought I would make a short list.

  1. Make Featured Game Modes permanent (not counting Legend of the Poro King, as that is part of the Snowdown event).
  2. Visual updates to Twisted Treeline and Crystal Scar.
  3. Add branches of the LCS for Twisted Treeline and Dominion.
  4. Add additional levels of AI difficulty.
  5. Unlock champion mastery in all matchmade game modes.

I know #5 seems off given the amount of bot farming that happens, that I why I put it last in the hopes that the other four improvements that precede it will encourage Riot to pay more attention to their other game modes, as well as increase their populations, so botting will be addressed in more than a token way.

17 Comments

Zero Skill Tank1/18/2016, 3:26:31 PM3 votes

CS and TT just aren't working as well as SR. Riot made some effort in the past to make them work, including complete TT relaunch and map-specific balance changes to champions but it just never gained popularity. TT feels like worse version of SR, so why would anyone bother playing it? ARAM is very dfferent and so it has it's share of players.

  1. Add branches of the LCS for Twisted Treeline and Dominion.

Won't happen. Riot wouldn't want to drive attention away from SR esports.

Minarde1/19/2016, 2:04:33 AM3 votes

On the contrary, #5's actually the most likely one on there, since it's the only one Riot's mentioned they're "actively discussing." Riot's explicitly said permanent Featured Modes aren't happening, besides maybe a queue rotating between various Featured Modes; visual updates would take a massive amount of work, but could happen when Riot finally becomes embarrassed at how outdated TT and CS are after a few more SR updates. There's no way LCS-TT or LCS-Dom are happening before visual updates and even then would require Riot to train/hire a bunch of people who actually know those maps. AI difficulty's probably low-priority on a to-do list somewhere. In order of decreasing likelihood, it's 5 > 4 >> 2 >> 1 >> 3.

In general though, Riot's probably not going to support alternate maps much, if at all. They went all-in on SR years ago. The main problem is the same one it's been for ages: Riot doesn't support alternate maps, so players don't support alternate maps, so Riot doesn't support alternate maps. It's a difficult issue to address precisely because of how long Riot's let it persist. Riot would need to consistently demonstrate a desire to support alternate maps in order to win back player trust. However, this would take a long time, and Riot doesn't want to throw that many resources into something that's not SR.

Dynamic queue's raised an interesting question though. In the past, one of the reasons Riot used to deny a ranked Dominion queue was that the vast majority of League's playerbase wasn't interested in ranked, and so a ranked queue wouldn't significantly increase Dom's playerbase. Coincidentally, one of the reasons Riot used to introduce Dynamic queue was that the majority of League playerbase is interested in ranked, but not in the current ranked system. I'm curious how the new ideas behind Dynamic queue would work on the Crystal Scar.

Sluiceway1/18/2016, 8:40:53 PM3 votes

I understand that there probably won't be a DominionLCS, I just put that in as wishful thinking because a sponsored and broadcast competitive scene would draw attention to the map and make Riot actually care about it (since Riot cares for the LCS above all), which would, hopefully, bring in new players (the same for Twisted Treeline).

1374341/18/2016, 2:20:00 PM2 votes
  1. If feature game modes were permanent they would quickly go stale and die out (some of them start to wear thin even by the end of their rotation).
  2. Twisted Treeline does not need a visual update. Dominion not popular enough for it to be worth throwing resources towards a visual update for it.
  3. Dominion doesn't even have rank because of the low player population. Forget about anything regarding e-sports and it.

People are not ignoring Dominion because they think it is ugly, they are ignoring it because they don't like the gamemode. The only way to change that and increase player population is to completely change it.

sheldonbunny1/18/2016, 4:09:13 PM2 votes

There is a competitive scene for 3's, but sadly just not enough. I would love TT to get more notice. I started out on that map and I still prefer it, it's meta and gameplay to SR.

They have mentioned wanting to extend masteries to other maps, but with no time table.

Erockandroll1/18/2016, 4:23:32 PM2 votes

item 3104

finally has 30% crit chance. Finally the sum of all it's component items.

Was this change ever Documented? I definitely don't remember seeing it.

that aside, I think the biggest problem with making the other two maps an LCS match is simply the game length. other factors aside, 15-20 minutes really isn't long enough to support when you consider all the setup you would have to go through first. It just wouldn't make for an interesting spectator attraction. At best, it would be a good mini game.

As for featured game modes, they could probably stand to bring some of those modes to the lesser played maps. (like they did with Hexakill TT)

Rebonack1/22/2016, 8:17:56 PM2 votes

Dominion could really use a visual update.

As far as why people don't play it, most of the coherent answers that I've been able to get fall into one of three categories.

  1. It's just pointless running around. This is simply a lack of experience, as any long-time Dominion player can tell you that strategic decision making is a HUGE part of success on the Scar. Part of the problem is that a lot of players take their cues from watching what LCS players do, and because there's no competitive Dominion scene, many players are completely lost. Kick-starting a competitive scene could help, but so could adding some aspects to the map that make good play a little more intuitive such as objectives in the Jungle to encourage good Jungle control.

  2. It doesn't feel like you win, it just feels like you don't lose. Purely a feel thing. This could be fixed by setting it up so that you gain points rather than losing them. Once you reach 500, your Nexus fires a death ray at the enemy Nexus, destroying it. Or if Riot wanted to get really creative, the death ray could destroy the wall in front of the enemy Nexus exposing it for your team and opening it up to a final push, something Rift players would be more familiar with.

  3. There's no ranked, so why should I care about getting better? This comes back to the no support feedback loop. Riot doesn't support the map, so neither does anyone else. A visual and gameplay update, combined with streamed tournaments, would change that in a hurry.

ZT Xperimentor1/18/2016, 4:45:52 PM1 votes

I was hoping they'd add another map or game mode; but then they spent 2 years just visually updating the rift. I wouldn't say it was a waste of time, but I know I wasn't the only one content with how it looked before.

Thing I've noticed, most of the champions they've reworked, don't show up as AI in bot games (nor customs) anymore. I'd like to see this addressed if they won't do the former.

Still agree on making alternative game modes permanent by all means.