Would you play ranked ARAM, if it ever existed?

Snowman Arc·May 21, 2018·4 votes·1,701 views

To stop abuse, of course, just for ranked ARAM, all champs would be unlocked to avoid the RNG of ARAM accounts.

15 Comments

Ok sure but whyMay 21, 20185 votes

Getting a champ you don't like against a team full of op champs is bad enough

Having 4 morons make you lose would make that even worse

DrCyanideMay 21, 20183 votes

No, absolutely not. Ranked and ARAM are polar opposites, trying to join them would result in the worst experience League could offer.

I Love ThreshMay 21, 20183 votes

I already spend my life on ARAM so yes I would.

Pandemic PunchMay 21, 20182 votes

I definitely would if all champions were unlocked for it. It would get me back into aram. After 2100 games of normal arams, it doesn't feel worth it anymore if there is no progression of any kind

ChalzeMay 21, 20182 votes

I know the point of you saying "if it ever existed" but there's a reason why it doesn't and never will. That reason pretty much answers every question you can ask about it existing even as a thought experiment

MinardeMay 21, 20181 votes

"Riot disliking non-SR maps/modes" doesn't have much, or any, relevance to the concept of ranked ARAM though.

ChalzeMay 21, 20182 votes

I didn't mention anything about Riot disliking anything...it's the concept of ranked being strategic and competitive whereas ARAM almost always runs on chance and luck (and is by far the least competitive gamemode Riot's released that's available on a regular basis [by that I'm excluding rotations like URF etc]).

So I can say what you said "doesn't have much, or any, relevance" to my argument.

Besides, Riot doesn't dislike non-SR maps/modes, they're just way less popular and thus they don't need nearly as much attention than SR in general.

MinardeMay 22, 20181 votes

The impact of luck and chance is minimized over the long-term, and, coincidentally, ranked consists of a large number of games. It's a similar reasoning as to why "OMG I'm stuck in Elo Hell and can't climb because my teammates are bad" is generally considered a laughable excuse. I might agree with you if the topic was about tournaments, which typically have to work with a small number of games due to time constraints, but that's not the case for ranked.

On the other hand, Riot very clearly does dislike non-SR modes. From way, way back with "'We'll keep Treeline in mind while balancing' yet Trynd and Singed (I think? It's been a long time) stayed top-tier with no nerfs" and "'We're committed to supporting all game modes' and Kass being pick/ban for 2 years in Dominion" and "Dominion draft dies due to a 'no dodge penalty' bug persisting for months despite being fixed for SR" to "minion skins and updated projectiles only for Rift" and "TT/ARAM only get Champion Mastery a year after SR and even RGM modes get it" to more recently with "Champ Mastery 6/7 is still limited to SR" and "Ranked Season Missions explicitly exclude Ranked TT." You can argue that balance work is reasonable, since there's bigger payoffs for focusing on SR, but not addressing the QoL and/or League feature issues is just ridiculous.

A significant reason why non-SR maps are less popular is because Riot doesn't pay them attention. Riot neglects the modes; players ignore the modes because of that neglect; Riot justifies the neglect with the lack of players. It's been the same cycle for at least seven years.

ChalzeMay 22, 20182 votes

The impact of anything is minimized over the long term, but no one who plays ranked would care about the long term, a few chance based losses is more than enough to discourage the average player. Besides, anything chance/luck based on the long term wouldn't be taken that seriously since, again, it's chance/luck. Skill however is absolutely more compatible with anything long term.

Less attention on less important/common things is neutral, neglecting is negative. Riot doesn't dislike non-SR maps/gamemodes, they already have enough on their hands on SR alone. Besides, SR is the main and primary map/gamemode anyway. I'm assuming what you're seeing as a subjective liking towards non-SR maps and putting more attention on the flaws of them, I'm seeing as an objective view of their playerbase's priority. And it's not ridiculous, everything on Earth is a business and it makes sense. Is it unfortunate? It is, I still really want to play Dominion again from way back ago. That's still hella nostalgic to me, especially way back when I only had 15 to 20 mins to spare. But I completely understand Riot's priority on SR.

You may argue the third point, but I'd argue this, though it isn't a counter argument since it doesn't directly oppose yours. When champions are made, they're generally made around the mechanics, flow and sometimes meta of SR. You can only tweak the numbers so much of certain SR based mechanics. I mean, so far the most 'influential' changes for those maps/gamemodes are different items which is already a pretty good solution when it comes to balancing. Besides, your argument has it's own cycle but if you want to insist that the root cause of the 'snowballing' of your argument is Riot neglecting the modes, then sure, you can say that, but I have equal amount of argument in supporting the statement that the 'snowballing' was initially caused by lack of players.

But what's the ultimate truth of the third argument? They both happened simultaneously at equal rates, thus both sides of that are valid.

MinardeMay 23, 20181 votes

I agree that skill is more compatible long-term than luck, which is why the concept of ranked ARAM works. Luck is a factor in every existing ranked queue currently. There's luck via teammates, luck via opponents, luck via matchups, luck in-game (e.g. crit, jungle), and even luck via technology (e.g. power outage, network failure). These sources of chance are certainly frustrating, yet ranked still works because personal skill is more consistent than chance over a large number of games. That applies to ranked ARAM as well.

I also agree with you that focusing on SR is a reasonable business strategy. However, what's the benefit of restricting Champion Mastery tokens to Summoner's Rift? It can't be maintaining competitive standard, since ranked (e.g. ranked TT) is considered more competitive than unranked (e.g. normal SR) in every other instance. For Missions, what's the reasoning behind "Win a game on SR" rather than simply "Win a game"? Or "Win a game of Ranked Solo/Duo or Ranked Flex (must be 5v5)"? Or even "Players don't like feeling forced to play different game modes, so Missions will now force you to play SR"? Focusing on SR isn't ridiculous, but discouraging players from playing other game modes is.

As a side note, number and mechanic tweaks have been pretty influential as well. For instance, change in Dominion to Kass ult dropped him from "pick/ban" to "strong," and Thesh passive changes moved him from "terrible" to "good/amazing." Tweaks to GP and Nasus in ARAM made them feel better too. Item differences are probably the most noticeable simply because of Riot actively trying to keep champ changes subtle and minimally disruptive.

C9 Squeeky May 21, 20182 votes

I miss when we had some sort of recognition like how we used to get badges for Tower kills and stuff. Idk about Ranked ARAMs, not all games are winnable no matter how well you play.

VonyaloMay 21, 20181 votes

MinardeMay 21, 20181 votes

Yes, absolutely, though there's a few more potential tweaks besides champ availability that might be nice (e.g. bans, rerolls, promos/placements). Among other things, it'd be nice to be recognized for generalist skills, especially since the other ranked queues continue to emphasize specialization.

Thee Pie ManMay 22, 20181 votes

I enjoy ARAM a lot, I like the idea that it comes down to individual skill versus the champions you get which is why I think it should be completely random or not random at all personally. (Like keep all 5 mid but just be allowed to pick champions?)

I don't think I'd feel good playing Ranked ARAM though, like other people have pointed out. If you get really OP champs on either side it's a pretty big stomp fest and it just doesn't feel good, the nice thing about ARAM is how much you can jump in and out of it but if you made it Ranked people would be dodging whenever they didn't like their teams, even with leave buster eventually the mode would stagnate until it died probably. I really like the idea but champions are too imbalanced. They'd have to make it so you were guaranteed certain roles or something. Like a few poke, a tank etc per team. And then just randomize out of those what a person gets.

Baka RedMay 22, 20181 votes

I don't believe I would, because if we had two different queues, we would most likely not have the required number of players to keep both queues healthy and one or both queues would suffer the fate of Dominion. Also, Ranked queue with luck based champions sounds weird; yes, there would be some skill expression in trying to fix bad team compositions with weird builds, but they would still be underdogs against the lucky superior team composition. I don't believe the rank would really mean anything in ARAM.