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Hextech rewards encourage suboptimal play...

ValyrianBlade··4 votes·469 views

I'm getting tired of this.

Making sick TP plays, snowballing other lanes so hard that they can get solo kills in lane easily. Only for those solo kills to sufficiently lower my kill participation so that I only get an A+ instead of an S or S-, and thereby don't get rewards I probably earned.

All while I'm purposely not playing my favourite champions because I've already earned chests on them and want to earn a chest in normals on a different champion. So I'm not even having as much fun as I normally would.

Yea, the allies I'm making plays for are getting the S and their rewards, but if I didn't join a premade with them, I don't get anything.

I can see this just going on and getting worse. Why should I ever do anything to try to help an ally? The mastery system has no recognition of making a play that prevents an ally from dying. I'm better off (in terms of mastery) letting him die and taking the kill afterwards than I am getting an assist and saving him (or saving him and us not getting the kill when he's worth more than the enemy there).

Why should I rotate? I TP'd bot and gave them 2 kills, then directly went to mid and gave mid a kill and in the process lost my turret. So I probably lost some points for my turret dying even though I gave my team 3 kills and a turret in each other lane! It was the right call for the team, but my mastery score probably would have been better if I just stayed in lane and got a kill on my lane opponent instead.

Yes, I'm BM'ing because the last 3 or 4 'good' games I've played on a champion I haven't earned a chest on yet, I felt like I played well and I got an A+ while allies got S- or higher. Most of these games I took early leads and allies were even or behind and I made rotations to help them get ahead and they ended up carrying late game. Mostly because I'm keeping up map pressure to ensure we keep our lead, instead of joining in and throwing random projectiles at a caught enemy who's already dead anyways. I thought it made more sense to secure that inhibitor turret than to throw extra damage on to the support that Thresh just hooked and is going to die anyways because a Kha'zix and Katarina both jumped on him already.

I get that you want to reward premades. Aren't the keys enough though? Can we please just give chests to everyone on the team if any ally scores an S? Or if you're afraid of someone who does really badly getting it, give it to everyone who got an A- or higher when an ally gets an S?

And long term, I think you're going to hurt your game here. I'm already tiring of picking suboptimal champions for a team-comp or my playstyle because I've already earned chests on them. That's with only 3 chests so far. Imagine once people start getting 20 or 30 chests... they're going to be playing a champion they hate over and over trying to get an S, which in all likelihood they won't get because they hate the champion...

I'm starting to think I should just start ignoring this reward system. I was better off without it. I think the system and idea are great, and I appreciate the ability to start getting some more champions for free especially as I'm IP-poor, but I'm enjoying the game less and less as I avoid playing my favourite champions in an effort to get virtual loot...

6 Comments

Prozzak1 votes

If you put cosmetics above your own personal fun that is your own fault. You are not forced to play other champs to get the chest, it is your choice. I stopped reading after you mentioned that.

Riot is giving free stuff. Be happy, I know I am.

ValyrianBlade1 votes

I wish you read more because I did circle around to that at the end :P

Anyways, that's part of the suboptimal play though. The system encourages you to not play who you're best at. That's probably as bad as encouraging you to play more selfishly than for the team. Both are suboptimal. In a team game, I don't want my ally "champion-X"-god to pick champion Y because he already has a chest on X, even if X is great in our team comp and Y isn't.

I am happy to get free stuff (again, I circled back to that), but I just feel like this system could use some tweaks, as it may end up hurting the game in the long run otherwise...

Prozzak1 votes

Outside of removing the system from ranked (which I doubt Riot would do) I don't think there is much they can. Pretty sure Riot put the system in this way to force people to pick up new champs and widen their champ pool.

I have been meaning to do that awhile myself, and this finally gave me some motivation to do so. However, I am doing it in normals. I could see too many people doing it in ranked.

Zarkkast1 votes

I stopped reading at the first paragraph because you obviously think the mastery system is based off of KDA, which is not.

Your teammates getting solo kills is not the reason you're not getting S.

ValyrianBlade1 votes

I'm aware that it's not the sole thing.

But kill participation and KDA are definitely components and you're delusional if you don't think that's true.

Damage dealt to champions, relative to what others deal, is also a component.

So if I get someone a bit of a lead and they run with it, it seems pretty clear that they'll get an S and I won't.

Believe me, I know how to get S's. I get them almost every decent game I have on Jinx, because she's a greedy snowbally champion and I play her that way.

But honestly, try doing the following:

  1. Sign up for a replay service (such as replay.gg) (so you can prove it)
  2. Play every game with the following rules:
  • Don't attack an enemy that's already certainly dead, continue to focus the objective (i.e. don't get an assist if you're not actually helping secure the kill)
  • Prioritize roaming and ganking an allied laner over killing your lane opponent. Give the kills to that player when possible.
  • Don't tax CS on those roams
  • If you're not mid, willingly trade your lane's turret for mid turret (mid is more valuable)
  • Don't run out of a teamfight if your team can win it and you still have damage up (i.e. if you can die in a won teamfight, rather than survive a lost teamfight, do it).
  1. Take a screenshot when you get an S rank, and come back here and post the link to the replay of the game.

I feel like everything I've suggested here is good team play and contributes to winning games. It also seems to not help towards getting better mastery scores.

I've gotten S+ in games where my team is feeding pretty bad and I accept we've lost and stop playing for the team and just do whatever I feel the best move is for me individually. I get A+ when my team is doing okay and I make plays to get them ahead and let them really get rolling.

It should really be the opposite. This is a team game. I shouldn't be rewarded for playing selfishly and losing. I should get rewarded for helping an ally get a lead and having that ally snowball out of control. Anyone can play with a big enough lead - it's getting the lead that's the hard part.

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