Yeah, this game has seriously terrible design.

deadlychuck · 2017-07-10T11:39:22.132Z

Riot has let their game slip into a design more akin to that of a shitty mobile moba It took the least compelling parts of a moba (the basic premise of map and team design) and the least compelling parts of mobile games (the short games and post hoc mechanics to end them faster) as the direction for this game. It threw away most of it's old strategy and has pushed any remaining strategy to the pre-game lobby. It's just a shitty action game, that's intended to get you in and out of matches as fast as possible. Then in respect to balance, it's like a black box, where all that matters is the details of the start and end of the match. Then the conflicts that occur between this black box approach to balance and the changing of game duration. Game duration is completely in the hands of riot, so having it so tied to balance is just painful stupid. Now, i don't totally blame riot for this kind of stuff, there are some forces, namely a Chinese company with a black and white animal as their logo, which only care about numbers, and couldn't give two shits about the integrity of the game. They see another game doing something, and they then want every other game to reflect that game. Even though the games might have fundamentally different designs, which can't reasonably be changed to conform to what makes another game successful.

La Belle SauvageJul 10, 20173 votes

Perfect response.

sobi999Jul 10, 20171 votes

Firstly there are alot of things that OP has said are true from my experience. I have no stats to back it up but i am pretty sure this has been happening to so many people as i read discussion every few hours and see this topic crop up now and then.

I joined League in mid s6 and i remember every other game being 40+ minutes where no side knew who was going to win until that deciding ACE. If you check my match history i have had consecutive games that have lasted 20minutes or so. Not even 20 but 10 minutes as it was at that time, when the whole team decided to FF. However when someone tried to surrender one person's mind had changed so we had to wait to surrender at 20minutes with 4 votes.

I was one of those players who never ever ff'd because i believed that you could turn around the tables on the enemy. Although as i played league i have realized that team mates just give up far too early and league's mentality has completely changed to give up as soon as the enemy team has even a slight lead. I do credit riot for preventing toxicity as much as possible but tilted team mates just constantly surrender and bring down the morale and if that wasn't enough they'll just feed in a way that couldn't be reported.

Not to mention, the enjoyment of winning also has gone down since the enemy team gives up far too early. With all honesty i can predict enemy surrenders few minutes before they even surrender as it has become a norm to give up. Games are so much one sided now that you'll be able to predict the outcome of most match-ups within 10-15 minutes. Lethality had fkd us over but i am happy that has been resolved but because the games were so boring i left league for 4+ months and came back. I believe i will take another break from league but this time try out another moba incase that appeals me more. I know no one gives a damn.

Currently I have resorted to temporary game modes such as Poro king and etc. I am sure riot is trying its best to not to make league stagnant and boring but i think all their efforts are backfiring. I don't know what the majority think but my personal experience has not been too good as of lately. This is coming from someone that just started in mid s6 and actually loved it. I am sure those who joined in s4 or s2 probably want league to be reverted to its old self.

RalanrJul 10, 20171 votes

In my experience, season 6 is where shorter games started.

sobi999Jul 10, 20171 votes

Yh i did join pretty late and didn't get to experience the best of league :(

HyperiönJul 10, 20171 votes

S6 was also when they changed the jungle again..

A lot of the high tier games are decided by the jungler. Whoever has the better jungler wins.

That is what caused the snowball affect the worst.

If you look at the LCS. The first gank is the most important. Who ever lands that gank, sets up for the next 3 objectives. Say they get a double down in bot lane. There is first turret and dragon.

Then, they lane swap, take that turret, and herald. So on and so forth. If the jungle wasn't the deciding factor in many games, games would last a lot longer.

deadlychuckJul 10, 20171 votes

The rest of your post is literally some tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory for which you have no basis and no evidence to support.

No the rest is based on information which i know through a friend working at a big game dev with their own moba. Talking to tencent, they've been told to do things like lower the game time or change the pacing of the game, based on different mobile games which have become popular in China. Given the size and monopoly that tencent has on the gaming market in china, and many other east asian countries, you've basically no choice but to listen to them, if you want to have your game marketed in those regions.

If you don't enjoy the game, stop playing. That's perfectly fine. However, don't shit on a game simply because you don't enjoy it anymore. I don't like candy but I don't go into grocery stores and gripe at people every time they buy some and claim it's because "candy just isn't made the way it used to be, now candy sucks but it used to be really good." Those people don't give a shit. They just want their fucking snickers bar.

No, if that's how you'd approach something fine, but i'm not going to just not criticize an organization. They aren't incapable of making mistakes. So i'm going to tell them, that they've fucked up. Also, your analogy is inaccurate. In the same analogy, it'd be more like your local grocery store starts reducing what else it offers, and significantly increasing the shelf space for candy products.

Very Hard EngageJul 10, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=Hestia Chan,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Va26HeU2,comment-id=0003,timestamp=2017-07-10T12:25:10.704+0000)

Could you provide any evidence to support any of these claims?

If you don't mind, I'll shit on this post real quick:

This is 100% subjective. You may think the map is boring, others love it. Saying it's poorly designed is like saying Overwatch is poorly designed, or Football is poorly designed. It's not shitty, you just don't like it.

short games? short games? This is a huge problem for me. The average game time for League is a reasonable 30 minutes. Though, when speaking of measures of central tendency, it's important to discuss the pros and cons of which measure we use. This is an average, or a mean. The mean is basically the best measure in this case because no games are lasting 10 minutes and no games are lasting 2 hours. Games are certainly over at 15 minutes due to FFing, and some games certainly do last up to an hour long. Complaining about short games with this in mind makes no sense to me.

I don't even know what this means. League is incredibly more complex than it's ever been. The champions, the items, the structure of the game itself, it all leads to an incredibly diverse game where the exact same champions can be present but the game play out in very different ways. There is a plethora of statistics I can use to back this up; win rates of different champions, pick rates, item buys, game length, individual summoner win rates, just to name a few.

Yeah, good one. Like I said before, just because you don't like a game doesn't mean it's shit

I'm actually trying very hard not to flame you, but this is wholly ignorant and disregards individual players in every single game. You're acting like whoever picks a the right champs is guaranteed to win, and extremely fast. This simply isn't true. At all. Again, provide some sources and reasons for why you think this, otherwise I just just as easily dismiss your claim since no evidence is being presented.

This is just plain stupid to say. Would you say it's a coincidence that worse players have longer games while better players have shorter games? A likely reason is because better players will know how to use their leads to gain more leads, which makes it more likely they will win a game, while worse players have no idea how to do this and ultimately any leads either team acquires mean nil and the game is decided by which team players better as a whole. Riot isn't saying "Okay, we want games to last 20 minutes long" and this is obvious by the way they balance the Rift. The added resistances to turrets to prevent lane swapping is a great example of this.

The rest of your post is literally some tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory for which you have no basis and no evidence to support.

If you don't enjoy the game, stop playing. That's perfectly fine. However, don't shit on a game simply because you don't enjoy it anymore. I don't like candy but I don't go into grocery stores and gripe at people every time they buy some and claim it's because "candy just isn't made the way it used to be, now candy sucks but it used to be really good." Those people don't give a shit. They just want their fucking snickers bar.

i've been around long enough to teach you a thing or two about league.

games are objectively decided in the first 15minutes of play every time (in seasons 6 + 7), whether the game ends at 30minutes is another story, and whether or not the enemy team miraculously throws it away is irrelevant, those account for < 5% of matches. where first blood turret has a 72% win rate.

whereas in season 3 + 4 + 5 you had turn moments, you could team fight, you could poke, you could wave clear + stall + scale into 5v5, you could split push QUICKLY and sneak a tower/inhib. if you are behind and try it nowadays you just get shut down due to league of mobility. teams were not nearly as mobile back in the day and a split pusher could hide in brush and wait for you to get close and blow you up, BECAUSE EVERYONE COULD DO IT. or they were capable of straight up winning the 1v1. now if the enemy team is ahead your class is irrelevant, your champion choice is the only one that matters.

this leads to games being decided on champion select, i have a good 85% prediction rate on whos going to win based on champion picks and checking their OP GG ALONE, nothing else matters.

i see first time jungle game on yi, i see a 500 game rammus main on the enemy team.

i see an all ad squishy team comp up against naut/zac/darius.

i see a team with 0 melee champions up against a thresh/amumu.

its disgusting how much influence matchmaking has in todays day in age when that simply wasn't the case back in season 3+4.

the most outrageous offense in league today is lack of dragon gold. no dragon gold = no comebacks.

the second worst offense in league is MORE MOBILITY, literally nothing since vel koz has had 0 mobility (feb 2014) ((one of the most fun + balanced champions))

you literally have no means to gain gold back over your opponents without hard stomping them in team fights, which you're not going to do without items. and they're just favored because they're already ahead due to scoring first blood through cheese.

obsesseJul 10, 20171 votes

games are objectively decided in the first 15minutes of play every time [...] whether or not the enemy team miraculously throws it away is irrelevant, those account for < 5% of matches. where first blood turret has a 72% win rate.

I've been around long enough to teach you a thing or two about logic. 72% =/= 100%, nor does it equal 95%. You can't say that the game is decided in 15 minutes every time if you use statistics to prove that it isn't.

now if the enemy team is ahead your class is irrelevant, your champion choice is the only one that matters.

I completely disagree, although it's a fairly moot point anyway.

you could team fight, you could poke, you could wave clear + stall + scale into 5v5

You can literally still do every one of those things.

you literally have no means to gain gold back over your opponents without hard stomping them in team fights, which you're not going to do without items. and they're just favored because they're already ahead due to scoring first blood through cheese.

Again, you absolutely can stage come backs when behind. When the enemy junglers ganks top and gets first blood, what are you doing as jungler for your team? If nothing, then yeah I think it's going to be pretty hard to get the gold back. See, in League, you have to do things to net advantages for your team. Enemy jungler ganks bot, try showing up for a counter gank or do some counter jungling or get some some vision down for your top/mid laner or gank either one of those lanes. The enemy team should still have a slight advantage, but you can greatly diminish their lead by being reactive/proactive on the next play.

This all brings me to a much larger point about statistics around win rates and League in general. Most people in the community do not understand statistics. That's perfectly fine, until we start a conversation about them specifically. See, you might look at the first turret blood 72% win rate and think 'wow this game's snowballing is out of control,' however there are variables that you aren't considering. For instance, If a player gets first blood and later wins the game, your logic is that first blood gold is so great that it won them the game. What about the disparity between player skill? Maybe the player who got first blood is just a good player, therefore they know how to get smaller leads that ultimately net them a larger lead. The same concept applies to first turret blood. It may not be the gold that the team gets from first turret blood, but the actual team's skill simply being greater than the enemy team.

You may then look at matchmaking, which is a totally fair point. Since no one but Riot knows how games are being matched, it becomes difficult to talk about. I'd like to believe that Riot has a decent system in place, though it doesn't always seem like it.... However, we are playing an online video game, so you're going to lose games that aren't under your control. Similarly, you're going to win games even though your individual skill level is lower than the enemy team. I definitely agree with you that team comps are very important in league, but they certainly aren't the end-all of any game. There certainly is a much greater emphasis on draft, as seen in the pro scene, and I think that's a really thing. After some of my games I think, wow we got out drafted hard. Sometimes I'm able to win those games, sometimes not. If my team is generally better than the enemy team, comp matters a whole lot less. Which brings me to another point, better players will likely know how to draft better. I'd be very surprised if a Silver player had a large champion pool and excelled at each of their champions, but I would expect them to be good at one of two champions. Similarly, I wouldn't expect a Bronze team to put a lot of value on things like first turret blood, CS, item power spikes, level spikes, vision, first drake, herald, etc., because they're bronze players. If they appropriately valued those things, and played around them accordingly, they wouldn't be bronze.

Very Hard EngageJul 10, 20171 votes

dont give a fudge how you think or feel about the situation.

the facts show different. waaaaayyy different. i understand you DONT want to go back to long drawn out slow games, but those are the games you could impact with skill and knowledge.

champion choice is everything in todays day and age and i can play a large number of champs, but me being 1-0 or 0-0 doesn't change the fact that my bot lane went 0-6, camped by eve, which they could not predict due to vision changes or a difficult matchup because they were first pick and showed their pick to the enemy team.

the only saving grace is that after a large number of games played it evens out to have happened on the enemy team enough times too.

obsesseJul 10, 20171 votes

dont give a fudge how you think or feel about the situation.

Then the conversation is over

Very Hard EngageJul 10, 20171 votes

was never a conversation, it was you spilling your feelings onto the internet, back up what you say in the next argument you partake in. I've presented you with facts, you're free to accept them or deny them.

just know that every one of them has already been established.

obsesseJul 10, 20171 votes

wow you're a bright one aren't you?

Extraneous variables aren't "my feelings." If you had a single brain cell to understand statistical analysis, you'd know that. Of course I can't imagine some mouth breather to sit through and read any of the actual points I made, so end this with a kind "go fuck yourself" and move on.

deadlychuckJul 10, 20171 votes

Oh as far as the rest of this wall goes... i'll just respond quickly.

This is 100% subjective.

No, the map design is one of the least compelling parts of mobas, which is why riot hasn't bothered wasting resources on making new maps.

The average game time for League is a reasonable 30 minutes.

Sure, the mean game time might be 30 minutes, but that's likely due to outliers, where games get turtled out against a team who doesn't know how, or lacks the team comp, to break it. Which often leads to games that last 50+ minutes, while the team behind stalls out until they can catch up in active gold. (active gold being the amount of gold spent on the champion)

A more accurate measurement would be the median game time, as it would avoid these kinds of outliers.

Like I said before, just because you don't like a game doesn't mean it's shit

You're correct, this has nothing to do with any kind of argument. This is just me being angry at the design direction riot took the game.

You're acting like whoever picks a the right champs is guaranteed to win, and extremely fast.

I don't think you're understanding what i'm saying. This "black box" balancing approach probably isn't something that riot even wants to do, but it's what works because that's what the community at large wants. The boards constantly shouts down people who complain about actual in game balance of champions, things like thresh, lee sin or yasuo, who can be completely overloaded, and regardless of win rate, will still have insanely high play rates, because they give players a disproportionate degree of influence over the game. This kind of disregard for a champion's influence in the game, is what i'm referring to with "black box" balancing.

Look, i get what you're trying to do, but you can't take every single sentence someone says as an argument. Not everything i'm saying is in an attempt to make a valid or sound argument. There are somethings which are subjective, but they are at least commonly enough held opinions, that it's worth stating them.

obsesseJul 10, 20171 votes

but that's likely due to outliers

Look bud, it's not due to outliers. An hour long game is nowhere near long enough to affect the game time drastically. Though I don't have other statistics, such as the standard deviation, but just you saying that shows your tenuous grasp on statistics, in general. No offense, but that's kinda my point. When you don't know anything about statistics I think you should refrain from sharing your opinion on statistics.

The reason we don't use the median in this scenario is because there aren't any outliers. There are millions upon millions of league games being played, using the median simply doesn't make sense. In fact, I'd argue that the median would be much higher than the mean in this case. There are going to be far more 50 minute games than 10 minute games. So, if anything, the median would push you even further from your point that games are too short.

To your black box point, I think it's very fair to say. People like fun champions. However, what people find fun also varies. Not everyone thinks Yasuo is fun, as seen on the boards (lol). A thing about pick rate (Yasuo has a very low pick rate, actually) is it may not be due to fun but utility. Riot would have to completely gut thresh and lee sin in order for people to stop playing them. This doesn't mean people don't play other champions, like Elise, Gragas, or K6 (or blitzcrank, lulu) for various reasons. Historically, Riot hasn't been afraid to nerf extremely popular champions when they're too strong. Expect some pretty major changes leading up to worlds (compared to the recent patches). There will be at least one patch that will define the worlds meta where Riot unveils larger changes than they have been.

I'm sorry if my replies come across as aggressive. You are sharing your opinion and that's totally fine. All I'm trying to do is say that if you aren't enjoying League then it may not be because of the game itself. League would not be alive today if it never changed. Some people appreciate change and are attracted to it, others dislike it and avoid it.

Yeah, this game has seriously terrible design.

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