[Response] @Safelocked: Dev Diary/ Gameplay in 2018 --- Vision & Stealth
Sight / Vision has a lot of little problems that need to be fixed:
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Why does League have one icon for both being debuffed with True Sight and being debuffed with a regular Sight reveal? Example(s): Cait's E Yordle Snap Trap (True Sight) vs Jinx's E Zap! (Standard Reveal); Lee Sin's Q Sonic Wave (True Sight) vs Lee Sin's E Tempest (Standard Reveal).
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Why are there instances where an effect renders an invisible character (i.e. Shaco, Vayne, Eve, etc.) visible to their opponents, but no icon is present? Example(s): Fizz's R Chum The Waters, Thresh's Q Death Sentence, Kled's Q Bear-Trap-On-A-Rope.
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Why are there instances where an effect grants the True Sight debuff but the icon present is a unique one, specific to a particular character or item? Example(s): Rengar's R Thrill of the Hunt, Nidalee's P Hunt, Twisted Fate's R Destiny.
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Why is the icon associated with True Sight (the pink eye icon) only used on one (1) item that doesn't even grant True Sight: Duskblade of Drakkthar?
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Why impose a Ward limit and then restrict it to different types of wards, having different limits to each? There are two different wards (Yellow Totem Trinket Ward and SightStone Wards) that are both classified as 'Stealth Wards' with a limit of 3, but then there are the Red Control Wards with a limit of 1, and then the Blue Farsight Wards which have no limit?
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Why is Clarity™ stated as a core design philosophy for League of Legends, but the iconography and telegraphing of the sight and vision elements is muddled and confusing, and has been allowed to exist in that state for (going on) 5 seasons now?
Players should fight their opponents, not the game. We strive to present information in a clear and precise way so that League can be about dominating opponents with skill and teamwork – not through bookkeeping hidden information.
"Clarity means we want distinct, transparent mechanics in everything we design. When the outcome of a game hinges on a player’s ability to quickly assess the situation, information needs to be clear and accessible. This doesn't mean we tell players the best play to make, but we should make sure they have the right info to make calls as best they can." --- Ryan "Morello" Scott
I mention this quote about Clarity from Morello because the way wards work, and have worked for years now, is that player's are forced into very minimal artificial interaction with them. They either have to bookkeep hidden information, or they must purchase a specific counter-item to interact with the wards that they know are there. That's the opposite of organic gameplay.
This also ties into stealth, which is not a handful of specific abilities that turn characters invisible (even though that's what Rioters call 'stealth' since forever, which itself is a holdover from League's RTS and MMORPG predecessors). Stealth is a process and a type of gameplay, more akin to splitpushing or tanking. There are abilities that enable or allow for stealth gameplay, but stealth is: cautious and surreptitious action or movement; the quality or characteristic of being furtive or covert. Every player and every champion can use stealth provided they have the right mindset and make use of the innate environmental elements of League like brush and the Fog of War.
Also relevant:
TheDangerousTaco: Why is there no rune that gives you the option to increase the vision effectiveness of wards, and champions? Like increase all sight radius by 10-20% or something
- RiotFearless said @TheDangerousTaco: We didn't want to make runes that would feel like a "support tax," or a thing that a team should expect their main vision contributor to pick. There's also very poor communication of vision radius, because we never change it, so the play against case would be poor without a significant amount of work.
The italics are mine. Why is it that wards are so poorly telegraphed? Why don't they communicate their presence to the enemy?
Supposedly that would make wards too easy to dodge or avoid, but that is stealth gameplay. Every stealth game since Thief: The Dark Project has offered players ways of dodging or avoiding the enemy guards by making those obstacles overtly communicate their presence, or giving players the tools they need to find those obstacles without giving themselves away. In League, players are tasked with dodging or avoiding something that they can't see, and 90% of the time, don't know is there. Players must then infer that they have been seen, which is cool, but this is often reactive instead of proactive gameplay - you've likely already been seen and given up valuable information. There is very little that a player can do to proactively avoid a ward. The most proactive thing they can do is to ward a place before an enemy does, and then, upon seeing that enemy ward the same area, maneuver around that area.
If wards communicated their presence, and made it overt which areas they defended, then players could plan their ganks around them and out-maneuvering them becomes a matter of mechanical skill and reaction time rather than bookkeeping or guesswork. It would also mean that wards could afford to be more powerful in the effects that they offered, either covering a larger area, granting an audible ping, granting True Sight, or some other cool feature. If wards were fallible, if they could be dodged or avoided as such, it would mean players could deny vision not by destroying wards or using their specific anti-ward counter-items, but by dodging and avoiding wards entirely, which is stealth gameplay.
