Hey Riot Here’s a Cookie

I grew up playing football, basketball, and baseball so I know about what makes competition fun and rewarding.

League in its current state is drifting away from competitive energy which will ruin it.

My analysis below is aimed strictly at high levels of play

Problems: -1 early mistake is more costly than similar mistakes made later, why? -this creates a game where mistakes should be avoided at all costs especially early -early leads are often too hard to overcome -games are decided too quickly -lack of incentives to play aggressively with a lead -not feasible to play aggressively when behind

Reason: when you get a lead in the current meta you often can just play on auto-pilot to finish the game off without the enemy having a chance to decide the game.

Comparable analysis League: when you are ahead in gold you actually are STRONGER, which is ok by itself. The problem is the way it’s being applied. In league when you are ahead you have no reason to push your advantage unless you’re facing a super scaling comp. All you have to do is avoid fights until you find a fight where you can’t really lose the fight. So this game becomes avoid mistakes whether you are playing aggressive or scaling comp... that’s not what competition is about. Competition is about constantly challenging your opponent regardless of fear of making a mistake Basketball: 60% failure rate behind 3-point line is GOOD. 1 mistake in league = game over. Also if basketball were like league the team that starts hitting shots early will automatically win the game because they will just start shooting better because their innate stats allow that. Baseball: a 30% success rate at the plate is GREAT. 1 mistake in league = game over. If baseball were like league if you hit a home run on your first at bat you’ll guaranteed hit home runs on your next 3 at-bats. Football: when you get a lead on your opponent your lineman gain 25 pounds of muscle and run a 4.3 40-time regardless of size, good luck to enemy team hopefully they can overcome that!!

If the points I raise above don’t make sense to you then maybe I should just give up on this game as it will never be a truly competitive game. Perhaps it should and always will be a game of patience and preparedness

If not please consider my recommendation

Recommendation Scaling income from cs/monsters inverse to gold differential -the leading team will have similar/same income as live -the losing team will have live gold value + some differential based off gold differential -Scaling tbd. Something like 0-10k gold differential = 0-40 additional gold per creep and monster. Adjust to effectiveness. Could be linear, logarithmic, or exponential. I’d need to try it to see what works best

Reasons

1. Forces team with the advantage to “cash in” Their advantage. If you get ahead you would need to force a fight quickly for an objective to utilize this lead. Sitting on your hands will just bring the game closer to parity
2. Gives the losing team something to fight over. Whether it be the defense of the objective or just the creep/monsters. Now when you are behind you can actually feel like you are being productive
3. This may be the most important aspect though I haven’t thought it all the way through. This change will improve the ability to solo carry and truly reward individual play, how? Let me tell you. Let’s say you are playing Cassiopeia (a high skill-cap monster at all stages of the game that scales exceptionally well). In live if your team falls behind 5k gold at 10 minutes the game is likely over regardless of how well you’ve played. But with the scaling gold differential changes there may be a chance still. Let’s say in this 5k gold deficit at 10 minutes scenario that you as Cassio have been playing well. You are 1-0 with 80 cs. It’s safe to say that you are on or near par for any individual player’s gold at this point. Now the fun part starts. Since you are on par the additional gold you receive from the gold differential mechanic will actually accelerate you past anyone on the enemy team. So while your teammates will be struggling to come back to par you actually have the ability to scale past the enemy with proper, aggressive play. It’s now on the enemy to shut you down

Considerations

1. Adjust death timers as needed to allow for aggressive play without being over punished
2. Adjust live scaling champion stats to prevent this mechanic from being abused
3. Make neutrals (dragon/baron) spawn more often but slightly less rewarding
4. Make turrets stronger. Both hp and damage
5. Minions probably need a boost as well
6. I’m sure there are more issues to be addressed but I’d like to see how the game feels with this change

Would love to work for Riot someday so feel free to reach out.