- Certain champions are already nearly impossible to play.
Certain champions are difficult to get past picks/bans ATM, but not impossible. ~60%~75% is the most any champion really achieves, outside of Ekko and Kassadin who achieved something like a 95% ban-rate.
60%~75% is still getting through 1/4 games, which isn't unplayable or impossible. Not frequent, but it allows some players practice on those champions in ranked.
With 60% more bans: not so much. Top bans likely would be in the 95% range, requiring a critical hit on a D 20 to just make it through bans.
Which is much closer to impossible and a huge difference in difficulty playing a certain champion.
If a champion is being banned so often that its permabanned, its obvious people don't want it in their games and the champion should be looked at.
Or people are lazy, figured out what the top bans are, and then decided to ban those champions.
With a guaranteed ban every game: it would also be much easier for everyone to fall into a routine with bans and just ban the same thing over and over again without giving it a second thought.
With a 40% chance to not get a ban each game and your teammates having some share in your choice because of the ban limitations, there's at least some incentives to think about who you ban each game.
- Again, I believe that Riot should move to one of two pick/ban systems:
First is Ban -> Pick -> Ban x2 -> Pick x2 -> Ban x2 -> Pick x2.
Second is Ban -> Pick -> Ban -> Pick...etc.
First time you've mentioned that plan, it changes a lot about your argument in the Opening Post and dramatically changes the picks/bans phase.
I'm not sure that would actually improve anything though.
The 2 solid functions I see picks/bans doing At the moment is:
- evening out first-pick advantage in picks.
- offering a safety net to catch the occasional OP disaster.
First pick advantage is actually a pretty huge deal in a lot of games, and grows into a bigger and bigger deal the higher Elo you go. Chess and Go both struggle with this, as the player that goes first at a certain level has a much greater chance at winning.
And Picks/Bans is ultimately a turn-based ordeal so it has this problem, but how the ban phase plays out ATM does a pretty good job at evening this out. Mind-games can be played with leaving power picks open or they can be banned out, and bans gives 2nd pick a good shot at equalizing the field with power-plays, and bans gives 1st pick a shot at equalizing the field in regards to being counterpicked.
Having 6 bans before the picks also allows a pretty strong net to catch champions Riot really dropped the ball on and are actually game-breaking strong.
Changing the pick/ban phase to pick/ban/pick/ban/pick/ban or ban/pick/ban/pick/ban/pick completly destroys these 2 advantages the current pick/ban phase offers, as such systems would give massive potential to abuse game-breaking picks while also giving a clear advantage to 1st pick, especially if I'm to assume your intent with this system is each player picks and then bans during their turn to go.
1st pick gets their choice of power-picks, can ban their counter, and has 0 champions banned out from them.
10th pick has to deal with 10 banned champions.
- Pick/ban windows could be lessened, drastically reducing this effect.
No argument there.
- Picks/Bans are supposed to give you an advantage/disadvantage, otherwise we might as well do away with the system entirely and make it blind pick.
At it's heart, LoL is a game about gaining a lot of small advantages though: which is ultimately what picks/bans is now.
With more bans, it can easily turn into a big advantage or huge advantage in every game, which especially sucks if it's based on whoever picks first, as it could reduce a lot of competitive games to a coin flip, or at the very least a pick/ban strategy game.
LoL should be a MOBA, not a pick/ban minigame.
- More bans aren't supposed to help balance. Its about evening out each player's 'impact' on pick/ban phase, and finally getting Riot to move to a different pick/ban system.
Why should Riot move to a different pick/ban system?
If it isn't broken it doesn't need to be fixed.
Mostly I'm getting you really want more bans to have everything neat and tidy with 10 bans 10 players.
If Riot actually gave attention to 'perma-banned' champions, bans wouldn't stop any specific thing from being played.
Maybe, but with sociology it's worth at least considering very large groups of people tend to make stupid decisions.
Not that every popular ban is a "Trump for President" kind of disaster, but considering LoL is played on the internet and the general quality of a lot of it's players, I wouldn't put it past the community to have their moments of making a pretty average champion completely unplayable and perma-banned for no good reason given 10 bans (and the current ban order).
Considering LoL is a global game, applying that to region-specific champions being locked out could be a huge disaster with more bans as well: as Riot would be left with the decisions of nerffing or re-working a champion that's fine for the majority of the player base or just waiting out the community's ban obsession.
