The Problems With the New Draft Mode

TL;DR: There was little thought put into UX and much thought put into art. This emphasizes form over function and hurts the interface. The ideas stolen from Heroes of the Storm are stolen poorly.

The bad: 1.) There was no reason to remove team builder 2.) Insisting on locking and then not allowing a lock during "desired pick" trains your user incorrectly and is bad UX 3.) Shrinking the size of chat is bad UX 4.) Using most of the middle panel and a large majority of the screen for what amounts to art only (mostly center panel) is bad UX 5.) Moving the commit done button is bad UX. This is the single most important call to action on the screen, and it isn't always there. Which means I will have to scan for it until kinetic memory kicks in. This is probably the single worst piece of UX decision making since the Google buttons that don't do anything (look it up for those who don't know what I'm talking about). 6.) Heroes of the Storm correctly lets you show your desired pick as the game picks mature. Someone else change takes my pick? I got countered? I just change. Because Riot changes the central panel for art work they can't do this. They also lose the chief benefit of the feature they are trying to copy. 7.) Forcing lock in...why? What user benefit is there? None. Zero. Zip. Steve Jobs long ago worked on getting rid of the "save" button for the exact same reason. The user wants it saved just like I've already declared my pick. Forcing me to commit when I've committed is sloppy UX. Worse, because of the way ranked works and the punishments for not selecting you ACTIVELY PUNISH YOUR PLAYERS FOR ALREADY DECLARING THEIR INTENTIONS. This is unconscionable. 8.) There was no reason to split bans. The three game theory cases are: In all cases selection is slowed because of reaction speed. In the case of solo draft you increase the chance of both troll bans and uncoordinated bans (ban "thought" is spread amongst multiple people) while you decrease the chance of one rogue troll banner (which is of limited threat because of the number of champions), the final case is team play where one guy is usually driving the bans anyway so you slow down selection in this case too. 9.) Reducing the size of the text for masteries and runes is not useful. Again this is done because of the choice to increase the size of the art. 10.) You don't really get your lane...not really. 11.) Wait times at all levels of play have increased by a SUBSTANTIAL margin. I suck. I'm at the bottom of the pyramid. Mine has gone up by 2-10 times depending on time of day. My normal wait of 50-70 secs is now 3-10 minutes. I hear it is worse at the top of the pyramid. I should note that's with me always selecting fill as a secondary. Sometimes fill as a primary. 12.) The countdown to chose your intended pick starts...with the animation still playing in the central panel. CHOSE NOW YOU ONLY HAVE 35 secs..but you must wait for ~ 5 secs so that our artists feel important. 13.) Increased "noise" in select. You have increased the level of noise. This makes me playing casually more difficult because I can't hear when I need to pay attention.

The good: 1.) Showing champ select intent is good. It helps notify what not to ban though I've already seen this used for troll bans (first game in). However, because of the poor implementation (see 2, 6, 7 above) the usefulness of the feature is crippled. 2.) Being able to play with more than one other guy again reduces trollishness and toxicity since I'm less likely to complain about people I know. It however comes with a steep cost for the "true" solo player who will now be boot stomped with wild abandon (I know...I've already done it). In general though I think the good outweighs the bad. 3.) Increase size of summoner abilities is a good call...even as you decrease white space and font size for the other two things I need to pick (see: 9 above)