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Game Structure: Snowballing Early, Early Game, Toxicity, and More Action

Stacona··7 votes·678 views

Laning phase is either complete snowball or complete passive.

You see more action with less rewarding kills and less punishing deaths, who cares if you die or not, the game is meant to have fun and is not meant to be stressful - this includes ranked play.

~ Reduce kill gold to 100 (assist gold is still 50% of kill gold). First blood reduce to 200 gold. (Bounty gold is still in effect, same cap, but takes longer to reach that cap since kills are worth less.)

~ Re-scale respawn timers to be non-existent in the first 15 minutes, but then super scales after that point to meet back even by like the 30 or 40 minutes mark or whatever.

~ Create full speed homeguard effect from the start of the game to get back to lane faster, reduces the need for teleport somewhat, but there are other reason why teleport is needed. May even buff homeguard speed and make it last longer early on, and then scales down to normal as the game goes on to 20 minutes.

~ Remove all experience from kills and assists unless you are behind the dying target's level (not even with levels, behind in levels).

~ While the first turret in each lane still stands (furthest from your base), your minions that go past it move 60% slower, this slowly weakens over the first 10 minutes of the game to normal speed.

~ Remove deaths to be view able by all players. The focus should be playing the game and having fun, not worrying about your team flaming you because you died once or twice. This may encourage more people to play tanks and supports in solo queue and reduce the levels of toxicity as well since all they can see is team contribution rather than seeing how many times you died. You can see your full KDA AFTER the game is finished in your match history still, but you do not need to see your deaths in game, it brings down yourself which causes you to play worse and only encourages toxicity from your team from players that pay attention to deaths and flame you for it.

I would like to see more action in the early game, without the stress of being massively punished early and having someone snowball out of control. Having deaths less punishing early on until mid game and less rewarding kills overall should encourage more aggression in the game since there is less risk for dying since enemy's reward is less.

In a game like League of Legends people are so uptight and worried about fucking up. Honestly, we need to make a game fun again, remove stressful elements even in a competitive environment and play to have fun, I do not care if it is ranked or normals, the game should emphasize fun first and foremost to play in. If we remove the stress of worrying about dying and snowballing the enemy team with a massive reward and encourage taking risks and having fun with the game then it be more fun.

I want to remove the aspect of this game of feeling like you lost the game in less than 10 minutes in because you wanted to play the game instead of being hyper passive and doing nothing until you have your core item(s) and then do something significant. Also want to remove the reward for a jungler camping a lane over and over again, removing someone's fun in the process and cause that lane to snowball out of control. You are not in a pro league or going to be a pro player, this is never going to happen, this is being realistic here and so when you spend time on a game it should be always fun whether you win or lose and not fun 50% of the time (aka whenever you win) and even then it may not even be fun to be in, there is such thing as stressful wins in this game.

By the way, I am not referring to high intense scenarios of going to late game as stress, but even then that is a perfect example where higher reward for kills and greater punishment for deaths creates an unwillingness to "pull the trigger" and do something. So late game you obviously do want the game to eventually end so that cannot change, but why do we need that element from the very start of the game? Early on should encourage a lot more aggressive, which include deaths, and to reduce toxicity removing deaths to be viewed by everyone will help with that as well. Honestly, how many times have you heard this "you died X times, you are trash, I do not need to listen to you"? Even though you may know exactly what to do later in the game and those deaths was because you got camped, but toxicity is only there to bring harm and put people down, remove fun from the game, so I think removing the death counter is better for everyone and the game.

Anyways, I wanted to give my thoughts on things and present a solution on the matter. Not down for whining and complaining for the sake of doing so, rather be constructive in some form to help improve this game for the future.

LATER! <3 [sg-kiko]

Bonus Idea: ~ Remove all experience points earned from everything and just have ambient experience over time.

This would be a massive change, but one where everyone levels together at the same time. Everyone being equal on the same level makes people less scared to be aggressive for both parties, it also opens up the meta and allows for brand new stuff to be played.

For example, mages are in the middle lane because the lane is short so they can solo it since faster to get back to their turret, but also because of solo exp to get more levels and ability power spikes. Imagine being able to have a mage in the duo-lane instead of a marksman. You can also have a dedicated roaming support and have three solo lanes since experience gains is ambient. Maybe we could see more melee / short range compositions since they do not need to worry about fighting over that level advance / level 2 power spike and dominate the level from there.

This is a very big and bold idea that would massively change the game, but stuff like this is worth throwing out there and discussing.

12 Comments

Teridax682 votes

I agree with much of the core idea here: personally, I feel any MOBA already has a very good way of snowballing, and that's by taking structures all the way down to the Nexus. The more structures you take, the closer you are to victory, and that is enough for games to be won or lost. What I do not like at all, is when snowballing works to make player-versus-player combat progressively easier for one side, because that doesn't actually enable skill, and has proven to be conducive to both very one-sided matches (trying to fight against an opponent with a lead leads to increasingly predictable losses), as well as stalling in higher levels (pro teams know they'll be at a significant disadvantage if they give their opponent even a small lead, so they choose not to risk it). Accelerating the pacing of games via snowballing in League has been a critical mistake, because it has not only affected quality of games in a significantly negative manner, but the positive tradeoff has also been comparatively small, since teams don't always close games as fast as they could.

In this respect, while players should get to see the fruits of their victories, those victories should translate to objective captures, rather than permanent advantages in combat. A team should definitely be feeling the heat if they're pushed down to their Nexus, but if a game feels like there's no hope of one side winning at all, it should end there and then, as having it drag on any further is unnecessary and frustrating, especially for what is meant to be a piece of entertainment. Because of this, unless a player plays so exceptionally well that they really do carry the match, I feel champions on both teams should be kept on a relatively level playing field, perhaps with fluctuations based on power curves, but otherwise without having just a few plays define combat for the entire rest of the match.

Stacona1 votes

Which is why I say that death timers should be both 0 seconds to 5 seconds at most for the first 15 or even 20 minutes of the game. Reduce kill gold massively, including first blood, and remove kill/assist experience entirely unless you are behind the character's level. Death timers to reach back to long timers by late game after a 15 or 20 minute break point, but I rather see a ton of action early on without fear of getting hyper snowballed on punished for playing the game, and by late game be more cautious with dying because death timers are really long and the enemy can take a lot during that time i.e. Dragon/Elder Dragon, Baron, and Towers/Inhibitors.

Less kill reward and less punishing deaths makes for more action, and somehow Riot thinks making the kill reward greater and deaths more punishing would add more action, but it does the opposite and if you do die then you feel hopeless unless the enemy team throws the game (europe and north america does this a lot, you know, throwing the game). High respawn timers for late game make sense because you want to get kills and end the game, but early game you should be encouraged to get kills, and some gold makes sense for getting champion kills, but experience makes no sense (unless you have a comeback EXP mechanic in place if you kill a target above your level).

I think it would be a cool thing to try out global experience over time, that way everyone levels at the same time, and this opens up more strategies for players too. You like it if you snowball out of control, but at the same time those matches are not that fun because the game becomes too easy, and you hate snowballing against you because you feel completely helpless (because you are) and the game's fun is sucked out of it. Ambient EXP over time, equal to everyone, I think would be interesting to test out and see how it works out - some champions may end up being weak initially, but that is why you have balance patches to bring up some champions like mages who rely on out leveling everyone, but level parity would make the game easier to balance and not have someone snowball out of control - also encourages aggression because you do not need to worry about being out leveled and never be able to come back in the game for dying once or twice, should reduce camping to shut down a target too, plus will make supports more appealing to play as well being on level parity with everyone else in the game.

We should reward action. To do this kills need to give a lot less and deaths be less punishing early on until mid-late game. Less punishment for dying makes players more willing to do "stupid shit" aka try a tower dive or go for a 1v1 or 2v2 skirmish, if they die then they can run back to lane and no big deal. We should not fear dying early on, and if you die should not give the enemy a level lead, a huge gold lead, and take your tower while denying a bunch of minion gold (hence to why pro play sees such little action in high stakes games).

Ashen Rider1 votes

Add back in the cooldown reduction when using summoner 12 on towers.

Stacona1 votes

I don't think people want teleport to feel more mandatory to take, also that involves taking a summoner spell that not everyone takes, so it does nothing to encourage aggression in every lane or reduce death penalty in the early game.

C9 Squeeky 1 votes

So you're wanting to turn SR into ARAM?

Stacona1 votes

Considering ARAM is All Random All Middle, no. But ARAM is the most popular game mode / Howling Abyss so clearly people like it. Less punishing deaths and less rewarding kills offers more aggression and risk taking since players are no longer afraid for messing up, but having kills with so much rewards and your team flaming you for dying it makes people be passive and never want to take a risk.

C9 Squeeky 1 votes

How does reducing reward for kills offer more aggression & risk taking?

Stacona1 votes

You make dying less punishing, if you are not afraid of how many times you die in the game and have deaths hidden to reduce flaming, then more people are willing to fight know that they are not severely punished for dying once or twice and the opponent snowballs out of control. The high reward for kills makes you really want to get kills, which means you really do not want to die since you do not want to snowball your opponent, so you take the safe route and be defensive do not take risks.

C9 Squeeky 1 votes

When you say to have deaths hidden, you're referring to KDA score right? Because it'd be really weird if I didn't know an ally died in a teamfight lol. I can see how that would reduce flaming.

Stacona1 votes

Of course you can still see if a champion is dead or not, the score is hidden, that is the thing that does nothing but bring toxicity to a game - showing the deaths in KDA does nothing else, so just make it KA (Kills and Assists) and show the important information, not something that allows for flaming and toxicity.

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