Boards›Gameplay

The gold flow in this game creates a Prisoner’s Dilemma

Ghiefelstein·6/22/2015, 11:15:31 AM·3 votes·660 views

Players in League have a choice: they can cooperate with their team or try to carry alone. The optimal situation is if everyone works as a team, since that gives the best chance of winning. However, for an individual player there are strong incentives to be selfish. In reality that means that people don’t cooperate, even if it is in their best interest. This is known as the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

Now there are many reasons to refuse teamwork, like not trusting others or thinking you are better than them. Those psychological factors are hard to change. But we can change the game systems that reward selfishness and punish helping others. Specifically, let’s look at how you can earn gold in this game.

You get rich by taking all the minions and monsters and only stop farming to intentionally steal kills. Trading kills is also always worth it. Things like helping with invades, warding and securing objectives cost time and gold. Those who try to earn the most gold for their entire team end up poorer than their selfish counterparts. The support role is even dedicated to sacrificing income to funnel gold into the carries.

Ideally, making your teammates richer should be rewarded with gold instead of punished. And not just for supports, but also for that Nasus who comes down to secure dragon, or that mid laner who helps with an invade, or that jungler who wards for his lanes. But we can’t put a gold value on every ward placed, assist gained, etc. It would be easily abused and impossible to list all forms of teamwork.

Luckily we have a way to identify good teamwork. Look at the amount of gold your teammates have. The richer they are, the better you were as a teamplayer. Therefore it makes sense if you get a larger share of ambient gold if your teammates are richer. And players who steal farm and kills from their team deserve a little less ambient gold. The total amount of gold per team stays unchanged, but it is distributed a little more towards cooperative players.

What do you think? Is the current gold flow rewarding you for the right things? How would you reward teamwork in League of Legends?

tl;dr

  • Gold flow rewards selfish behavior and punishes teamwork.
  • We can encourage teamwork by rewarding it with gold.
  • Giving more ambient gold to cooperative players could be a way to do that.

6 Comments

Pisdov6/22/2015, 11:23:08 AM3 votes

your first mistake is believing this is a team game. league isn't a team game. make any post about matchmaking, trolls, etc.. and the community response is always "carry harder."

BluePolarizer6/22/2015, 11:20:55 AM2 votes

Dragon used to give gold. Now it gives a snowballing and potentially game ending buff instead.

End result: mid and ADC get stronger, top, jungler and support get way poorer.

Baron used to give regen, now it gives flat AD/AP and siege.

End result: ADC gets stronger, mids/jungle/support/some tops get weaker.

The final result: most selfish role (ADC) gets stronger with all the jungle changes and gold changes.

Provengreil6/22/2015, 2:03:24 PM2 votes

If successfully making your teammates richer was rewarded with (more) gold, it would just further cement a lead you're already building and give an opposing team fewer chances to come back, making early game champions king and late game ones non-existent. the lead you get is already there, a more powerful teammate upon whom you can rely to handle a fight even better next time.

Trading kill for kill is almost never worth it, not always worth it.

The optimal situation is not for YOU to be fed, it's for YOUR TEAM'S CARRIES to be fed. that might be you, it might not be. feed them, protect them, stay in position if you are one, and win.

for your TLDR:

-gold flow rewards good play. good play => CS lead => kill lead => tower lead => stronger team =>stronger teamfight => victory.

-we DO encourage teamwork with gold. we call them "Assists." teamwork is often rewarded, however, with something better: a victory banner.

-item 3096

Alljoy6/22/2015, 1:47:36 PM1 votes

I think I've said this quite often to people on here but I do believe that Riot finetunes League mostly for premade 5 v 5s/Ranked 5 v 5s, where SoloQ is simply the cherry on top so to speak where most of the issues regarding trolls, uncooperative team mates and the likes are all circumvented in the former.

WillHealForHonor6/22/2015, 3:26:13 PM1 votes

For me the prisoners dilemma is that u can be passive in lane and farm up.. and if all did it u would all be fed for mid game and then u could grp for objectives,, but people wanna SOLO CARRY SO THEY take chances and die alot.. and that makes it bad to be passive.. just see competetive play.. thatrs the smartest way to play but no one does it.. because u need to be more fed than the opponent is ;)