Why does it feel like games are won in the first five minutes?

Jbels·Dec 16, 2015·10 votes·564 views

Why does it feel like that? I know it shouldn't, and I know it probably isn't the case. So why does it feel like it is?

19 Comments

Sythriel DrakenDec 17, 20154 votes

Because champions can win games single handed these days. All it takes is 1 intentional feeder on your team to feed Any of the juggernauts, ragebladers, or snowball mages and it's impossible to come back from that.

Sire HippingtonDec 17, 20154 votes

There are plenty reasons for this

Harder lane snowballing: Minons early on are worth more gold compared to the ambient gp/10 in preseason, so a cs lead has more impact. Kills in lane also snowball the lane harder thx to the global shutdown gold. If the opposeing laner has two kills on you, and you can get a counter kill, with the oldshutdown you were pretty close again, with the new there is still a rather big gap between him and you, while your other lanes get a small advantage. Which means a comeback in lane is they harder to pull of. ** Easier to kill towers: ** A tower is worth nearly as much gold as a kill for the guy takeing it down(if alone), and ads another 125g to everyone else, so it's worth a total of 775g, so more than 2kills+1assist. Aditionally it opens up the map and makes it harder for your opponent to savely pick up farm and easier for you to invade his jungle. So getting early towers is huge in extending a lead. It also makes closeing out games easier, especially via splitpushing. ** Lower total shutdown gold**: While Killingspree shutdowns give a bit more gold total, assists no longer add to the shutdown gold, which lowers the total shutdowngold distributed over the entire enemy team.

Vision: A darker map makes it harder to move around once your behind, cause randomely finding an enemie 1v1 in the darkness usually means you're fucked. Aditionally, the two main comback moves are a deathbrush or getting a pick on in between map rotations. With the dominant vision tool beeing blue trinket, which has it's biggest strength on checking brushes from a save distance, it's way harder to get an succesfull deathbrush. And for catching people in between rotations, you need some vision to find the alone. The poor early vision also makes it easy for earlygame junglers to snowball things out of controll, as you simply can't keep vision on all potential gank paths while your opponents get informations on your warding habbits.

Rift Herald Another big objective to push an advantage. If toplane snowballs, it becomes a rather easy to pickup global gold that usually transitions into one or more towers and thus even more global gold.

Winninons If your team gets and level and/or tower advantage, your minions get stronger. This makes waveclearing and csing harder for a team that is behind, and if bith teams group, the winning team will outomatically have pushing lanes, which usually translates into easier towe takedowns.

Change in damage-tankiness ratio With the itemchanges lately, starting at patch 5.16, and the damage focus of new masteries, tankiness in the game overall went down, while damage went slightly up, and more damage compared to tankiness means mistakes more likely result in death rather than a retreat. The nerfs to LW and BotrK at the same time make it harder to deal with tankiness once they get ahead. A snowballing tank easily gets nearly imortal.

Meta The moajority of the currenty popular champions are rather feast or famin. Toplane is dominated by guinsoo's users, fiora, illaoi and poppy, and only poppy has some impoact if behind, the rest is all about winning their lane, and if they loose it, they become usless. At the same time, if they get a lead, the snowball absurdly hard. The 5 highest pickrate jungler(plat+) are lee, rengar, master yi, vi and shaco. Only Vi does atleast something from behind, the other 4are mostly reliant on snowballing. 5 off the 6 most popular champs in mid are assasins, and the other one is lux, who has a poor time dealing with the opposeing frontline if behind. Supports and adc diodn't change much in this regard, but the new frosqueen's active does make snowballing an advantage by forceing fights/creating picks easier while it also helps to avoid deathbrushes. Most teamcomps lack a proper frontline, it's often 3-4 carry comps, which naturaly is more snowbally. Damged focused comps also are faster at takeing objectives and thus can snowball a lead harder. If jax gets a solokill, he will most certainly be able to kill the tower on the back of it. If a maokai gets a solokill, he will hardly get the tower to 50%.

So while over in 5min is maybe a bit overexaggerated, games are certainly pretty snowbally this preseason. As a result, the vast majority of the high winrate champions have a powercurve that has it's peak in under 30min, and falls of later.

2000boxesDec 17, 20152 votes

because you probably are really negative when you play games so once things get messed up you lose hope instead of trying to make a comeback.

BoosterinoDec 17, 20151 votes

Not really. But in all honesty, when I lose my lane, the game just isn't as fun. I still give it my all. whether my teammates feed or not.

2000boxesDec 17, 20151 votes

if you can't have fun after you lose your lane then you can't say you aren't really negative

BoosterinoDec 17, 20151 votes

Well, then I'm just a stinking noob, aren't I? Gnar

2000boxesDec 17, 20151 votes

yes

RebonackDec 17, 20152 votes

This is one of the reason why I enjoy Dominion.

Plenty of anti-snowball mechanics in place. Games aren't lost until you're staring at the defeat screen. After over 3000 games I've only seen a team surrender four times.

PDE5 InhibitorsDec 17, 20152 votes

Because you can tell which team got the hurr durrs after 5 mins.

BoosterinoDec 17, 20151 votes

And when you're losing a game, it feels like it drags on forever.

BaunjoDec 17, 20151 votes

What seperates good players from bad ones is that they know how to play from all scenarios, whether it be:

Behind, and they know how to overcome that and get ahead

Even, and they know to get ahead

Ahead, and they know how to stay that way

A lot of people do not get that.

JbelsDec 17, 20151 votes

Thanks guys, your different perspectives have helped me

BoosterinoDec 17, 20151 votes

Your welcome. (Realizes they're not talking to you) Leaves.

JbelsDec 17, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Facerolls Galore,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YmPRh3wH,comment-id=00050000,timestamp=2015-12-17T04:34:10.298+0000)

Your welcome. (Realizes they're not talking to you) Leaves.

Even you

NaramielDec 17, 20151 votes

The entire goal of the new pre-season is for games to be decided as early as possible.

GlockHammerDec 17, 20151 votes

It "feels" that way because that's how it is, you feel the game is won or lost because it is won or lost. Like one of my last games, went like 17/4 on trynda and demolished my lane opponent and the opposing team, but still lost the game because my team saw every skirmish and teamfight won as an opportunity to farm instead of pushing our advantage. Ofc, the opposing team started picking off dragons, nashor, objectives and eventually our stupid farming team.

Knew I would lose when we were 5-5 because I had 4 kills on their toplaner and my team had spread their kills out to different champs and kept feeding their adc. Also, everyone know's tryndamere can't carry alone and if you can't splitpush cause your team is getting picked off all the time when you're not there to babysit them 24/7 it's over... 1 single cc is enough to demolish you as you won't be doing anything unless you can stay on top of your opponents anyway (needing a team that actually backs you up or takes pressure so you can actually split).

But well, that's life and that's lol.

JbelsDec 17, 20151 votes

{quoted}

It "feels" that way because that's how it is, you feel the game is won or lost because it is won or lost. Like one of my last games, went like 17/4 on trynda and demolished my lane opponent and the opposing team, but still lost the game because my team saw every skirmish and teamfight won as an opportunity to farm instead of pushing our advantage. Ofc, the opposing team started picking off dragons, nashor, objectives and eventually our stupid farming team.

Knew I would lose when we were 5-5 because I had 4 kills on their toplaner and my team had spread their kills out to different champs and kept feeding their adc. Also, everyone know's tryndamere can't carry alone and if you can't splitpush cause your team is getting picked off all the time when you're not there to babysit them 24/7 it's over... 1 single cc is enough to demolish you as you won't be doing anything unless you can stay on top of your opponents anyway (needing a team that actually backs you up or takes pressure so you can actually split).

But well, that's life and that's lol.

It just feels really shitty all of a sudden that nobody knows what the most optimal Keystone is at any given patch, or how not to get caught overextending, or how to not go for risky plays that have a higher chance of backfiring than paying off

GlockHammerDec 17, 20151 votes

{quoted}

It just feels really shitty all of a sudden that nobody knows what the most optimal Keystone is at any given patch, or how not to get caught overextending, or how to not go for risky plays that have a higher chance of backfiring than paying off

Hah, I honestly consider myself garbage at this game. Even then... I wish my team would have taken risks instead of just farming. Me and Rammus literally had 90% of the kills at one point but that was just because me and ramus were skirmishing and picking the opposing team appart together. We stoond for every single gank in that game.

But that was as far as we went, our mid, utterly refused to group with us because fizz had handed him his *ss and somehow that was my fault.

Despite that. I didn't get a single gank that game, on the conctrary, I literally took the brunt for my team getting camped the whole laning phase, and keeping the opposing (jungle)Tryndamere busy trying to control my snowballing, taking all pressure of both bot and mid who somehow managed to still lose their lanes.

And proceed to farm.. ofc... I say:

Falling off doesn't exist if you can finish the game before the opposing team gets the chance to catch up, and catching up doesn't exist if you don't push any advantage, the game isn't about having the strongest champ or dueling 1v5, the game is about destroying the fucking nexus. I can't see why so many fucking people fail to realise that.

JbelsDec 17, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Hah, I honestly consider myself garbage at this game. Even then... I wish my team would have taken risks instead of just farming. Me and Rammus literally had 90% of the kills at one point but that was just because me and ramus were skirmishing and picking the opposing team appart together. We stoond for every single gank in that game.

But that was as far as we went, our mid, utterly refused to group with us because fizz had handed him his *ss and somehow that was my fault.

Despite that. I didn't get a single gank that game, on the conctrary, I literally took the brunt for my team getting camped the whole laning phase, and keeping the opposing (jungle)Tryndamere busy trying to control my snowballing, taking all pressure of both bot and mid who somehow managed to still lose their lanes.

And proceed to farm.. ofc... I say:

Falling off doesn't exist if you can finish the game before the opposing team gets the chance to catch up, and catching up doesn't exist if you don't push any advantage, the game isn't about having the strongest champ or dueling 1v5, the game is about destroying the fucking nexus. I can't see why so many fucking people fail to realise that.

It really just feels like snowballing is more important than staying safe (or trying to) and working up to your powerspikes. We have Zed, who rushes Youmuus and is suddenly able to just go around killing whoever he wants to, or Yi/Jax gets Rageblade, and suddenly everyone on the enemy team can't even 1v1 them anymore. Riot keeps hitting Rageblade with these lovetap nerfs, and then wondering why the item is still broken. And I really feel like in their haste to give help to Zed, they didn't wait to see how outside changes would affect him.

I've said this before, but it really feels like Riot just doesn't think ahead on these things