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Definitely Not Dominion is poorly designed and not fun.

LGBTCute·10/9/2016, 5:52:41 AM·6 votes·746 views

Essentially, here's what happens:

  1. There's a fight at the top turret.

  2. Whoever wins that fight wins the game.

  3. The game drags on for another ~15 minutes.

The basic problem with DND is that there is nothing to "trade" for the top turret. The other turrets are too close to base, the mid buff does almost nothing, and the super-minion is "yawn". There is no sense of "they take this objective, but we can take this one." A team with top control has no need to fight for any other objective except the easily defended turret near their base.

I have played this mode every time it's been up, with a variety of champion choices, organization levels (5 voice-com friends vs. Solo Q), strategies, etc. etc. etc. I have seen a very small amount of close games, but those games are usually intentional clown fiestas where neither side cares about victory and just wants to rolfstomp ham. (I am okay with that in RGM, but even for that, most other game moes are better.) In any game where teams are trying the slightest, the outcome is the same about 95% of the time:

Whoever takes top first and makes the most basic attempt to keep it will win the game. And most games drag on for way too long with no chance of a comeback. I am not someone who plays normal summoners Rift and thinks "Well the other team got an early lead so let's quit." I like to be able to fight back, and even if I lose I don't get upset because I always felt there was a chance to outplay right until the end. Whether i like or dislike the flavor or style of other game modes, I see frequent close matches in them, or at least I can enjoy them despite getting beaten, because I feel there is a chance.

tl;dr - DND victory is decided in the first two minutes, then drags on forever and is boring.

This is poor game design.

8 Comments

aspects110/9/2016, 6:00:46 AM3 votes

they should return old dominion kinda, but keep some stuff like the relics(but maybe put more of them on the map?) and the thing in the center(but reduce its point value since it actually isn't worth that much)

specter42410/9/2016, 5:58:37 AM2 votes

Removing the bot lane was the dumbest mistake.

Rebonack10/9/2016, 5:56:17 AM1 votes

And the worst part of it is the original Dominion was probably the least snowbally mode in the game.

But instead of getting Dominion in the rotating queue we got this clusterfuck of awful design.

Just to add to the snowballing problem? The deep jungle vision means that the team who is ahead can, with any degree of organization, lock the enemy team into their base and capitalize on the secondary objectives if they feel like bothering with them for some perverse reason.

Emojay10/9/2016, 5:57:48 AM1 votes

I don't like it either. Should be like ARAM, where it's always available. All the fun, spiced up game modes (ascencian, arurf, hexakill, doombots, one for all) should be on roatation! Cuz every time I see this on rotation I groan. Same with hexakill, but who cares cuz I like twisted tree line. Hail the shadow isles!

Saianna10/9/2016, 8:45:03 AM1 votes

That's one of the reason why Dominion was so unpopular ;)