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I absolutely love the current game flow, BUT....

Malicious Metal··27 votes·11,788 views

Ah, we all know these kinds of sentences that come with that infamous "but", eh?

I'm going to be honest, I'm really enjoying the current preseason as the game flow feels a lot better now. Laning phase is longer, actually winning it means something, tower gold, dragon gold and lower objective timers make for a more fast-paced, dynamic experience and the games closing out faster makes it easier to enjoy the game before moving on to the next match. It's pretty bloody great and the rune stat changes make certain champions feel a lot better too.

#BUT

The way the game's played out on a micro level just feels terrible at time. The macro experience is superb as objective play and rotations are rewarded but on the micro level the game's still, and maybe even more, all about DAMAGE. It's through the roof and it does drain the strategic aspect out of a game that's actually got a lot of it going for it already.

It's not just overwhelming burst but certain champions' DPS just becomes BPS, but that might just be me being everything BUT a fan of stuff like item 3124, but moving on. The problem is that while strategic play is rewarded in the grand scheme of things, most interactions rely simply on dumping as much damage as possible on some fool and winning off that, which is, and excuse my french, Funky Bullshrimp.

What Riot needs to do is trim away excessive damage without sacrificing the game's current momentum and the way it's played out. Which is easier said than done but it's what they should strive to achieve by doing systematic changes rather than nerfing a few outliers.

Just my two cents on the meta right now, I enjoy it a lot but it might also be me usually playing with friends right now.

20 Comments

Moody P12 votes

Wouldn't adjusting damage also adjust the flow of the game? I can't see how it wouldn't

LankPants8 votes

Of course it would. If you take the most common suggestion of significantly increasing the power of defensive stats early and nerfing the early burst output of keystones there'd be several flow-on effects to gameplay, just off the top of my head

  • All ins are disincentivised, short trades are more favourable as it's harder to turn around and punish properly.
  • Junglers clear healthier, meaning ganks are more favourable. Early jungle power would almost certainly need to be toned down.
  • Fights are far more likely to end indecisively, meaning the average time to take a Drake or tower will go up.
  • Assassins and kill based supports see a large drop in power while immobile mages, ADCs and enchanters are large beneficiaries.
  • %pen becomes generally more valuable while lethality and flat MPen are generally a little worse.

Those are just the points for how flow and strategic choices such as champ select and itemisation would be impacted off the top of my head, I'm sure I missed plenty. It would be impossible to change something as fundamental as early damage without impacting game flow. Personally I don't see this as a problem since I think game flow is generally still pretty bad.

boo9101 votes

{quoted}

Of course it would. If you take the most common suggestion of significantly increasing the power of defensive stats early and nerfing the early burst output of keystones there'd be several flow-on effects to gameplay, just off the top of my head

  • All ins are disincentivised, short trades are more favourable as it's harder to turn around and punish properly.
  • Junglers clear healthier, meaning ganks are more favourable. Early jungle power would almost certainly need to be toned down.
  • Fights are far more likely to end indecisively, meaning the average time to take a Drake or tower will go up.
  • Assassins and kill based supports see a large drop in power while immobile mages, ADCs and enchanters are large beneficiaries.
  • %pen becomes generally more valuable while lethality and flat MPen are generally a little worse.

Those are just the points for how flow and strategic choices such as champ select and itemisation would be impacted off the top of my head, I'm sure I missed plenty. It would be impossible to change something as fundamental as early damage without impacting game flow. Personally I don't see this as a problem since I think game flow is generally still pretty bad.

my only point of argument is jungle. I think that if jungle clears are healthier, it'll make them stick around in the jungle more, letting them have the choice of farming up or ganking a lot

Thefrostyviking1 votes

The top tier junglers already clear with health maxed out almost constantly though, graves, elise, xin zhao comes to mind right away.

Rather if you wish them to farm more, lower the rewards for clearing each camp along with respawn timers to ensure they have to properly catch the camps and do not have any notable downtime.

D357R0Y3R7 votes

meddler acknowledged that defense is a noobtrap on carries

hopefully it gets adressed

GigglesO1 votes

{quoted}

meddler acknowledged that defense is a noobtrap on carries

hopefully it gets adressed

I've been complaining about this for about 3 seasons now...

They need to buff defense items and nerf tank defense stats.

charge attack6 votes

I disagree. I think that the damage is a small problem but the pacing makes the game unfun.

There’s no chilling/relaxing while playing a league game even in normals. If I wanna chill and just farm it up for a couple minutes while chatting with my friends it just doesn’t work.

I need to actively do things or well lose. Giving up 1/2 deaths feels like the end of the world instead of just “a bad early game”. I can’t try out wacky builds in normals because by the time I get my AP items on Jax or my revolutionary rageblade Udyr build - the games already over. If you don’t spike at 1 item you suck.

Games are pretty much forced to end at 30-35min because of how easy towers are to take. Comebacks don’t feel natural as the game momentum can swing from +5k one team to +5k another team and the game ends instantly from there. Instead of turtling/scaling/getting picks. One throw is enough to completely shift the monentum and insta-lose you the game.

The only thing comeback changes did is now it doesnt matter who’s ahead early - SOMEONE is ending the game at 35minutes.

Raiyza2 votes

[{quoted}](name=charge attack,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=JcJgnNVd,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2018-12-02T14:11:10.184+0000)

I disagree. I think that the damage is a small problem but the pacing makes the game unfun.

I need to actively do things or well lose.

This I am fine with. I want the game to be constant playmaking. Micro and macro.

The biggest issue is that there is no longer time for that. Damage is so high that the moment you get CC'd, you are dead and fall behind. Now that turret plating gives gold, its even worse.

Spank the Fox3 votes

“Giving up 1/2 deaths feels like the end of the world”

“The game swings from +5k one team to +5k another team”

While not ignoring the gross exaggeration in this post, do you not see the contradiction?

You’re making an argument about an unstoppable snowball in one paragraph, and then two breaks later, you’re talking about rubberbanding comebacks.

charge attack1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Spank the Fox,realm=OCE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=JcJgnNVd,comment-id=00020001,timestamp=2018-12-02T16:28:12.647+0000)

“Giving up 1/2 deaths feels like the end of the world”

“The game swings from +5k one team to +5k another team”

While not ignoring the gross exaggeration in this post, do you not see the contradiction?

You’re making an argument about an unstoppable snowball in one paragraph, and then two breaks later, you’re talking about rubberbanding comebacks.

I think that was my mentality before preseason changes and what I thought after preseason changes. My idea is that the fast game pacing, whether comebacks are possible or not, just isn't fun.

Cosnirak1 votes

I'm obviously not who you responded to but I don't see those things as contradictory at all. "Feels like" doesn't mean "is." When you give up a couple kills for nothing early on you are really far behind. It doesn't make comebacks impossible, just unlikely and limited in how they can happen. But people sometimes do throw, and when they're far ahead but then throw hard the rubberbanding can be really extreme. A single kill can give a team 1.5k gold (w/ at least 1 assist) + some xp directly plus the many benefits of the enemy team not having their strongest member for a bit. That's MASSIVE. A single lost team fight can swing the gold directly by 5k (w/ a baron take) alone.

If the team that was behind is a team with strong scaling and the one that was ahead is much better early and the bulk of the gold swing goes to the scaling focused carries on the team that was behind... that can be more like a 10k gold swing in total effect.

And the thing is, that 5-0 team fight from behind can easily be the result of 1-2 errors or clutch plays. It's still fairly unlikely, but when it does happen it still feels unfair itself as well due to how hard things swing. It doesn't just put the team that was behind back in the game and still needing to outplay the other team a few times to pull ahead, it puts them firmly in the driver seat and that feels wrong.

Kyovulpes1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Spank the Fox,realm=OCE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=JcJgnNVd,comment-id=00020001,timestamp=2018-12-02T16:28:12.647+0000)

“Giving up 1/2 deaths feels like the end of the world”

“The game swings from +5k one team to +5k another team”

While not ignoring the gross exaggeration in this post, do you not see the contradiction?

You’re making an argument about an unstoppable snowball in one paragraph, and then two breaks later, you’re talking about rubberbanding comebacks.

welcome to boards where they also want later games just without _late game carries _ and also in the same realm somehow tanks be durable, able to still be a threat, but don't want them doing crazy damage or CCing them for too long, I guess they just stand there I guess?

crazy part is that whole post, while we can see is contradictory, still made sense to him so hey just another rant I guess

Janna Me Fiddle1 votes

[{quoted}](name=charge attack,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=JcJgnNVd,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2018-12-02T14:11:10.184+0000)

I disagree. I think that the damage is a small problem but the pacing makes the game unfun.

There’s no chilling/relaxing while playing a league game even in normals. If I wanna chill and just farm it up for a couple minutes while chatting with my friends it just doesn’t work.

I need to actively do things or well lose. Giving up 1/2 deaths feels like the end of the world instead of just “a bad early game”. I can’t try out wacky builds in normals because by the time I get my AP items on Jax or my revolutionary rageblade Udyr build - the games already over. If you don’t spike at 1 item you suck.

Games are pretty much forced to end at 30-35min because of how easy towers are to take. Comebacks don’t feel natural as the game momentum can swing from +5k one team to +5k another team and the game ends instantly from there. Instead of turtling/scaling/getting picks. One throw is enough to completely shift the monentum and insta-lose you the game.

The only thing comeback changes did is now it doesnt matter who’s ahead early - SOMEONE is ending the game at 35minutes.

It does depend on your champs tbh, there is an opportunity to come back, however it requires a lot of coordination and willingness to give up early objectives.

For instance, I had a game as Viktor, stuff went wrong early, MF got ahead but it didn't matter as long as I kept wave clearing and stalling past her spike until I got to mine, enemy team got tetchy and tried to 3 man turret dive, got shutdown gold off MF and the enemy Jungler which got me my spike.

From then on it was just a matter of outrotating, catching them on the rotation swap and snowballing an objective from it. By the time it got to 40 min, MF was no longer a threat as I could two shot her with a Lichbane Q and E.

However I hold no illusions, the come back was off them overplaying their hand and trying to turret dive while I had my W and stopwatch ready, I play MF myself and know that if she's going for fast turret rotations, she will snowball even off forcing a back and can easily go 1k+ gold up within a couple of minutes. the turret plating gold right now is just ridiculous, especially if you have a support that knows to step away to let you get the full 160g per plate.

I'd halve the gold because right now? It's just giving lane bullies that know what they're doing are just going to crush the lane and then the game with effectively two free longswords worth of gold, plus CS advantage.

Thefrostyviking3 votes

Ah i totally agree with you here^^

How does one measure if someone is dealing excessive amounts of damage though?

I mean i can play Ashe and feel that a Shaco poping out of invisibility and nearly instantly doing 80% of my health even when slightly behind is completely over the top but at the same time he is useless if he cant do that much, but i still absolutely despise the way he deals that damage though.

Then for DPS, it can indeed be taken too far too as you mentioned with the example of say a kog sending out 7 autos in 3 seconds later on all loaded with Max HP, True and onhit damage is kinda over the top as well, and plenty of other champs can pull feats that have similar effect.

We also have a problem with some champions, a number of tanks+azir+ryze, for instance having so high mastery requirements that they are generally entirely useless for soloq because they have gotten a huge amounts of nerfs to keep them from being insanely OP in pro play, and despite some still are.

For instance I am pretty sure that just the worlds that we had Ornn was played in around 14 games or so, in soloq he had 45% winrate but in worlds he had 63% +,,,,,,,,I can appreciate a champ that has a high skill floor and rewards mastery in exchange but at some point it becomes a bit silly.

....However back on topic which was damage, DPS should be easily adjustable if someone really wants to do it even if its a big job but i dont think the non DPS cases are quite so easy to deal with, and many champs have mixed parts bringing say both some DPS and some burst.

I cant really think off any good way to simply "fix" the damage, maybe pump power into defensive stuff?

Gilgayu1 votes

Noxus blitz is coming back. i know it has nothing to do with this thread, but if you never played it...

TRY IT

SanKakU1 votes

I feel like they are just very slowly making small, ninja changes to make tanks more appealing again. Not sure if it's on purpose or not. I think DH actually helps them because you counter DH by building sustain(health regen).

Aseraan1 votes

And how does that counter it in any way you still get blown up at teamfights or even in smaller fights.

SanKakU1 votes

You want to prevent them stacking it in lane, the health regen items do that. Also as a tank you'll have resistance boots and some other items with resistances usually. I feel like I shouldn't have to explain this, but the fact of the matter is that tanks barely even exist right now.

Cosnirak1 votes

My current main issue with the game flow is how turrets work. The outer turrets go from unkillable but still worth hitting for the gold, to purely worthless paper. I think some of my issue with it might be a matter of perception.

I'm used to trying to take turrets and feeling rewarded by the big amount of gold they gave upon doing so. But now it's more like turrets fall almost automatically based on a timer and don't give much so I shouldn't see taking them as that big of a goal, but getting to where the turret is before that happens to beat on the plating is a worthy goal. That whole dynamic change is really weird.

I think I would prefer it if turrets were between where they used to be and where they are now in terms of giving gold. A little less from plating, a little more from killing them (but not as much as before). I think I'd also prefer it a lot if all the towers after the outer towers were a little stronger in both durability and how much damage they deal.

Mimr1 votes

I'm not a big fan of the current game flow... if you've managed to build a nice lead during the laning phase the game wins itself for you, new bounty system be damned.

I think a big reason that the towers feel like absolute paper after the 14 minute mark are the insanely buffed minions though. Especially caster minions gained a TON of AD.

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