New Feature Idea: "Always Blue"
So, I came across a few interesting articles--here, here, and here--which, while about a year old, make a few interesting points:
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Blue side has a fairly sizable advantage (about 56% winrate) simply due to camera positioning. This can be shown by looking at statistics from One For All Mirror mode, which eliminates complicating factors such as baron/dragon positioning, pick order, etc.
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This advantage decreases by at most 1-2% with increasing player skill.
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There is evidence that Riot has addressed this by adjusting their matchmaking to favor placing higher-ranked players on red/purple side (at least at the time of the writing of those articles).
So, here's my thought: On the one hand, it feels unsatisfying to have such a significant intrinsic advantage for blue side. On the other hand, I wouldn't really want to see the map stilted to be more favorable for red, since the imbalance is more based on people's perceptions than anything "actually" unfair. But then I thought: Why can't both sides be blue?
Specifically, it would be very simple to simply invert the display for red/purple side. Then it would be just like playing blue side, except the positions of baron/dragon would be flipped (across the river and across sides of the screen). Everything else would actually be the same. (E.g., red side's blue buff would be across from dragon, which with the inversion would be on the top side of the screen; so, it would be in the same position as blue buff normally is when playing blue side). I'm sure it would take a little getting used to, but I think it would lead to more fair games of League of Legends, and it seems like a cleaner fix than adjusting matchmaking to compensate for the imbalance.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. (The post has gotten downvoted a couple times, which doesn't surprise me, but I'd be really interested to hear why people don't like the idea.)
