Thought about a recalibration of death timers

FightOn·Mar 21, 2016·1 votes·563 views

I was thinking earlier today about a previous game where we won, despite a ~20 kill deficit. The reason is a late-ish game ace that allowed us to close out a game that we quite honestly, should have lost.

My point in this is that come late game, a death is extremely punishing, as it should be.

However...

What if some of the global objectives (Baron, Dragon) included some sort of modification to the death timer? As an example, 3rd dragon allows a 20% death timer reduction (one use, per champion) or something similar? It might give teams who are behind a better chance at a comeback and at worst, be mostly ineffective to teams who are snowballing.

It'd need to be tweaked and balanced out, but I'm sure there's an opportunity to tweak the timers and have a fun impact to gameplay?

Thoughts?

7 Comments

KakitaMikeMar 21, 20161 votes

What about shorter death timers, but the clock resets if another teammate dies while you're still dead?

Chaos Milk TeaMar 21, 20161 votes

Well that would really make people rage at the one feeder. 0.0

"YOU DIED RIGHT BEFORE MY SPAWN DAMMIT"

FightOnMar 21, 20161 votes

Oh, now that is an interesting idea, though it could generate individual frustration (though it shouldn't).

Or conversely, what if spawn timers decrease as the number of those dead increase? Example:

Person 1 - 40s timer Person 2 - 35s timer Person 3 - 25s timer Person 4 - 10s timer Person 5 - 5s timer

(Numbers arbitrary, would require evaluation)

How might that affect risk / reward? Result in less aggressive play? Hmm, hard to say.

Either way, I believe that rethinking respawn timers is a good idea, there's a lot of opportunity to affect global gameplay with a few small tweaks here and there.

KakitaMikeMar 22, 20161 votes

I also like the idea of leaving the timers where they are, but reducing them by some amount whenever someone on the enemy team dies. I like the idea of death timers being just another game mechanic. Maybe items that altered the time you're dead. like +5sec on a rageblade or devourer, -5 secs on certain shoes, just another cost evaluation.

FightOnMar 22, 20161 votes

Originally they had a summoner spell that adjusted the amount of time dead. If I recall, they have runes that adjust time spent dead, but I wonder what the data shows about how often they're actually used - I'd be stunned if they were used at the elite levels.

Now... tying to an item; that's VERY interesting - talk about a risk/reward. For example, with the 6.6 changes to Titanic Hydra (which was an OP item before) - what if instead of adjusting damage, instead had a +15% death timer hindrance to it. One of those "when it's good, it's really good but when it's bad, it's really bad"

To that end, there's a LOT that could be done if death timers were adjustable by itemization. Hmm....

ValyrianBladeMar 22, 20161 votes

I'm going to maintain a point I made ages ago: Death times should be a function of 3 things: Game length, Player level, and most importantly number of player's own deaths.

Why isn't the last point considered? I don't care if there's an annoying fed opponent and your whole team is trying to come back and finally kills him late game and you want him to have a high death timer so you can accomplish a lot while he's dead. That's not fair to him. If someone has made it 45min without dying, why is their first death a 60 second timer when everyone else's first death was like 8-15 seconds?

I have literally lost games on my first death. Made it to late game with a score like 8/0/11, got killed for the first time, and lost during the 60 second death timer. That was back in season 4, and I thought it was stupid then, and it's only gotten worse now.

If you're not dying all game, your reward should be shorter death timers. You can even reduce kill xp and kill gold to balance out the snowballiness. This would make more exciting competitive play. It would make the game feel more balanced. An early kill is just as important as a later kill, as the early kill is needed to start racking up their death timers.

I see a system that's sort of like: Base timer of 5 seconds Increased by 0.25 seconds per minute of gameplay, to a maximum of 20 seconds Multiplied by (1+ champion level / 10) (so maximum 2.8 * 20 seconds = 56 seconds) Multiplied by 0.5/0.75/0.9/1.0/1.05/1.10/1.15/1.20/1.25 capped.

So even at the 60 minute point, if it's your first death it's only 28 second timer. If it's your second it's 42 seconds. Fourth is 56 seconds. 9th death and onwards is the maximum of 70 seconds.

Maybe it needs a few tweaks - it seems a lot more fair to me though.

It ALSO has the added benefit that stomping someone actually means something. Currently if say Vayne falls really far behind but her team does alright, she just comes back huge and is still a huge threat late game. Already having 9 deaths would make her death timers a lot more punishing.

FightOnMar 24, 20161 votes

This - I kinda like the idea. Of course numbers would have to be tweaked but from a gameplay perspective, makes a lot of sense.

The long and short of it is that it stands to reason that death timers need an adjustment somehow. What that adjustment is, I'm not certain; but the current configuration could be improved upon, that's for sure.