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Riot, Injecting the game with more snowball mechanics, Non Tournament setting VS Tournament setting

RedCyclone·2/20/2018, 9:26:47 PM·6 votes·333 views

The problem with snowball mechanics is that they are taken in a very different perspective in and out of tournament play where money and fame is on the line

In your typical game setting, most peoples goal is to start snowballing asap and never stop, this is why we see that more games are over before the game timer even sees 10minutes

In a tournament game setting, yes you still want to snowball but there is something that takes priority over even that, and that is Do not let the enemy begin snowballing and prevent every chance they get to do so so this leads to more stalemate situations where both teams are stalling off Baron/dragon ect too scared that it may fall into the enemy hands, they want to win and do not want to make a single mistake that could cost them the game

So we get shorter and shorter normal games, while tournament games stay largely the same length

1 Comments

Teridax682/21/2018, 2:25:41 AM5 votes

This is why I think snowball mechanics in League ultimately fail to achieve their goals properly. In non-pro play, they accelerate games, but also come at a significant cost in perceived fairness, and therefore game quality overall. In pro play, the higher the stakes, the safer players play, so snowball mechanics actually tend to make pro games last longer, in addition to becoming significantly less interesting. It is not that uncommon for pro games to last well over 30 or even 40 minutes, and for half of that time to be an utterly bloodless, protracted laning phase.

As much as I'm personally okay with shorter games, I do not think achieving that through additional snowballing has done League any good, and I think Riot needs to rethink how it awards leads, and how their matches are paced. As many players have now pointed out, champions snowball so hard and so quickly that the outcome of fights rapidly become a foregone conclusion, leading to the feeling that the game is over then and there. Despite that, the fact that the winning side then has to go through the motions of dismantling enemy structures, and advance all the way to the Nexus, also leads to the feeling that games last for far longer than they should on average, even when total match durations are already quite short. Because of this, I think toning down stat leads afforded by gold and experience, and focusing on generating leads through much more reliable progress through the opponent's structures instead, could potentially be a way of ending games quicker, while still allowing for comebacks, without having to rely on huge and volatile swings in raw power.