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Are games nowadays too short?

Catberry·10/9/2017, 2:11:06 PM·41 votes·8,710 views

Hello all, I was wondering if I could ask your opinions on something...

I've been playing casually on and off since Season 5, and have noticed one thing in particular, especially during this season: games seem to be incredibly short nowadays. From my experience, matches seem to only last 20-25 minutes at most, and can even end around the 15-18 minute mark! This seems to be quite an issue, as entire matches seem to be decided within the first few minutes, and it is incredibly easy for one team to snowball a lead out of control. Match this with paper mâché towers stuffed with first blood gold, and it is incredibly difficult to mount a comeback, not to mention usually quite unenjoyable to attempt to play from behind, as in all likeliness there will be very little chance for your team to achieve victory, unless of course all of the enemy team dced consecutively for a good 10 minutes.

Has anyone else been finding this an issue? I am by no means the most experienced player, as though I have been around since mid Season 5, I have been playing very inconsistently since then due to a myriad of reasons, however even as the low elo scrub that I am, I feel that this is quite a balancing flaw currently. I wanted to ask everyone else's opinion on the matter, and see if we can get a discussion going about this, since I do see it as an issue currently (maybe others will disagree, but I find is somewhat broken).

What suggestions would you propose to fix this issue? Buffing towers? Nerfing Rift Herald and first blood tower gold? Let me know below, if you would care to.

80 Comments

RiotNot Surrendering10/10/2017, 1:06:14 AM26 votes

Oftentimes, the feeling that games are too snowbally is actually misdiagnosed as: won games are drawn out for too long. If the game is decided at 10 minutes, forcing players to stick around for the entire time is probably bad.

On the flip side, your experience of games feeling like they are over, when they actually aren't may be misdiagnosed as "comeback mechanics are not clear". We do a reasonable job of displaying bounties and other rubber banding mechanics for gold, but not for XP.

xJLx MCHammer10/9/2017, 4:34:32 PM22 votes

The length is fine

It's the snowball affect that is bad or feels too quick

LexLutheran8710/9/2017, 4:57:34 PM9 votes

I think the length is fine... I'm just tired of one sided snowballs. It's usually a clownfest fiesta on one side or the other (bronze here).

For match making, maybe they could look at not just mmr but also ball park winrates, and match them in lanes. I can reliably predict which of my lanes is going to feed off their butt by that alone 90% of the time, and since most matches are decided in laning phase for yolo que, it could at least help build some competition.

i cant move wtf10/9/2017, 2:18:22 PM5 votes

Better players should be able to close out games sooner. I personally like this. I still get 40-50 min games every 10 games or so.

5050BS10/9/2017, 9:15:00 PM3 votes

The current problem with the game is that by 10 minutes you can tell who will win but by 15 minutes there could be enough question that people wont FF because "They could throw" and yes they could but most likely wont.

This is in part because the first 10m is sooo unforgiving.

A top or mid lane could be evenly matched and someone makes ONE small mistake and die and that lane is now FULLY lost. The advantage the winner gets from a early kill or even a early forced back is too much. THe Snowball is now rolling and now the FULL team has to play very well to offset that snowball. If your team is not understanding of the WHOLE map its lost. There is no winning that match most likely.

This should not be. The game should not be set in the first 10 minutes. By 20 minutes should be a hmm it looks like X side is ahead, at 30 minutes is where it should be at the current 10 minute mark.

The game should not be COMPLETELY lost because of player is bad (shows how messed up the MMR system is).

Hyrum Graff10/9/2017, 7:54:04 PM3 votes

When games were averaging 35 min, they were usually decided around the 25 min mark, unless the winning team screwed up. Now, I'd say games are just under 30 average, and decided just under 20.

I'd prefer games that are a solid 30 average or maybe just under (where we are today), but aren't decided until 25. I didn't vote because none of your options fit this.

GigglesO10/10/2017, 4:16:55 AM3 votes

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What suggestions would you propose to fix this issue? Buffing towers? Nerfing Rift Herald and first blood tower gold? Let me know below, if you would care to.

Lower damage.

Cyrosi10/9/2017, 5:15:10 PM3 votes

I think I'd be ok with longer games, as long as said games were generally less than 45 minutes (then I could just assume they'd be an hour for safety reasons if I had to go somewhere later). But the short games don't really bother me. Although I'm a relatively new player, and so don't really have any expectations. I think my one comment (as someone who knows next to nothing about MOBAs in general) is that I feel like towers don't do anything mid-late game.

I'm not really sure what to do to fix that. But when I can be sitting next to a tower and someone lvl 13 can go in range and try to kill me, be there for 3-5 seconds, and get away with impunity, (regardless of weather or not I live) I sort of feel like the towers are useless. I get that they can't insta-gib people or diving wouldn't be a thing, and that they can't take away a % of damage all the time, or tanks/melee wouldn't be as effective. But I feel like they need to do a little more than they do at the moment.

Maybe they could deal more damage to you the more you get hit by them?

BladeSingularity10/10/2017, 3:01:28 AM2 votes

I'd say, depending on your ELO and playstyle, you can still get longer games. I recently had a 50 minute game, because the two teams were fairly even, and the lead kept going back and forth. But other times, it's a 20-30 minute fiesta, because one team gets ahead immediately (the exception being when your team manages to hold the base and turn the game around later). So I guess it depends on how and with whom you get queued.

Durzaka10/10/2017, 2:21:45 AM2 votes

Even as an ADC main I really dislike the game length.

Half of my games are over at 20-25 minutes. Even if I snowballed and am doing really well, I barely get to feel my power before we close out a game.

CoolKnightST10/10/2017, 4:47:36 AM2 votes

The issue right now is that their is no middle-ground. Take Zed for example. The original win condition goes like this:

  • Early: Win lane
  • Early-Mid: Roam
  • Mid-Late: Splitpush
  • Late: Splitpush, Catch & Cleanup

Taking Herald is suddenly mandatory to finish it in the midgame. So the stakes are very high.

Now let's watch what lcs does:

  • They take scaling champions
  • They are not going for the early game, they are going for the midgame
  • Herald is just a bonus (yet gives them an extreemly edge when used well)

It's really clear to see item 3504 + Tristana for example is a really midgame monster. She's spiking way to early, yet has the monsterious lategame security as well. This is what wrong with league right now:

  • Earlygame Team Comps: Their is not enouge options if it does go lategame (splitpushing, catching, etc)
  • Midgame Team Comps: This group seems the only group that is fine right now. Maybe champions are partly shifted into this group to supposely fix them. Yet this group is rather broken as well. Especially the ones with siege.
  • Lategame Team Comps: They spike way to early, almost make them a midgame champion

The fixes are rather simple:

  • Buff up splitpush/catch options so early champions can compeet in the lategame.
  • Slightly nerfs the midgame of lategame champions again or nerf their lategame to compensate for their stronger midgame.
  • Buff or introduce new support items that can compeet with item 3504 that can push the meta in different directions.
polyfibre10/10/2017, 5:07:59 AM2 votes

The length of games also depends on how skilled the players are?

SnakDatSmilesBak10/9/2017, 11:06:23 PM1 votes

Holy shit this is so biased, you're not going to get good representation here. Your poll is especially problematic.

ARAM ZooKeeper10/10/2017, 4:29:43 PM1 votes

Its because the matchmaking creates such unbalanced teams. Often the W or L is determined by Riot before the game even starts, at least at the lower ELOs