New Player Experience

Having recently levelled new accounts in different regions to see if server response would be better in any of them, I have several things that Riot could fix about the new player experience.

1. Smite is unavailable at level 1. This means that no one can effectively jungle, so players get trained in a meta that doesn't exist at higher levels. Additionally, the smurfs levelling new accounts get testy about having to share their "solo" lane.

Fixes: Let Smite be level 1 OR finally rebalance the jungle so that Smite and the associated tools to go with it aren't mandatory for level 1 jungling.

2. Players getting matched without a jungler vs. players with a jungler is a one-sided game. Any reasonably good jungler can keep just enough pressure on a 1v2 lane top to keep it in the game while still providing a massive power multiplier to the other lanes. And if there is no enemy jungler, they are even more effective than a normal meta game, since they have two sets of buffs and more camps to clear. Additionally, they can secure dragon/baron much more easily. I have been on both sides of this matchup many times, and it is almost always a lopsided curb stomp.

Fixes: Either fix Smite as above OR don't match teams of under 10 with over 10.

3. The Keystone mastery provides a second power breakpoint. If you are laning against someone with a good keystone for their champ, you are at a severe disadvantage. An anecdotal example: The mirror match Garen vs. Garen. The Garen with Keystone was using Thunderlord's Decree, so when they'd engage against each other, he'd get an extra Levelx10 damage from the trade. Given the low health pools at low levels this was significant. It can be overcome by greater skill, but it does create a massive and unfair advantage. Similar to the Smite advantage but smaller in effect, a team with 5 Keystones vs. a team with 2 Keystones is an uphill battle.

Fixes: Either make sure that the matching system balances out the number of people with the Keystone on each side, OR

Riot should assign a default Keystone to every champ. Until you're level 18 and can choose one, the default is chosen for your champ. This means that everyone always has a Keystone's power, but doesn't have to be expert at the game; it removes the newbie trap of having level 1 players pick a keystone badly, but keeps the power between two players more balanced.

Alternatively, look at fixes for #5 and implement them instead.

4. The massive power breakpoint at level 20. At level 20, you can purchase tier 3 runes. An entire page of 20 T3 runes makes a significant advantage over 19 T2 runes. As a result, matchups between people across this breakpoint are also lopsided.

Fixes: Make T3 runes available from the start, and reduce the cost. Delete T1 and T2 runes. Let players gradually power up their champions instead of having a massive power breakpoint when they can change over from T1 to T2 and again to T3. Like masteries, having runes is an integral part of playing the game, and the large cost to kit out even a single full rune page is excessive. If you buy only a couple of champs by level 20, you will barely have enough to build a single rune page at level 20. Since you need about three pages to cover even the most basic selection of roles, this is artificially limiting.

5. Champions don't play correctly in the early game with no runes or masteries. Now, you might be saying that this is only a problem for smurfs, not for new players, and yes, it does feel bad to play a champ you know and have a harder time last-hitting or securing a kill because you're missing a big chunk of your early power. But it's also a problem for new players who train their muscle memory on slightly nerfed versions of themselves and then have to constantly readjust as their power curve goes up.

This is most felt in the early game when non-scaling runes and masteries have the biggest impact ratio to champion power, but early laning often decides much of the midgame advantage.

Fixes: This one is actually more complicated than the others. I don't have a quick and easy fix for it. I do have some general suggestions: Consider whether the thirty level system is still serving the desired purpose of easing people into the game. Consider whether breaking the paradigm of the game, i.e. that two champs start on the same footing vs. the WoW paradigm of "I farmed better gear before the match, therefore..." is worth the "levelling experience" when it makes it so lopsided.

6. Threes is dominated by bots. And not good ones. I mean a few player-created levelling scripts that do fun things like farm while they're being killed and "retreat" when they're nearly dead....often into an enemy turret. I prefer three's for levelling because the games are fast and you don't need people to understand the more complex lane and jungler meta. Having a jungler or not has less impact there, so the absence of smite isn't as important. But it's unplayable when on average 3 of the players are scripts. I've been in many games where I'm the only human.

Fixes: Step up your anti-script efforts.

7. The lane-based queuing system is unavailable until later levels. The lane based queuing system solves so many causes of toxic behavior. People who instalock a lane and then crowd it. People who "mid or feed". Having 4 people all try to ADC at once. Top throwing the game because they had to share a lane. The problem is that you don't let people do it until much later.

Fix: Copy over the new draft system. Then remove the bans and the make it blind pick. Voila: A version of teambuilder where you pick your lane, but not your champ. Then remove the current blind pick queue. Result: When combined with the fix for smite, you have people training in the dominant meta from the start, and you remove all of the lane-assignment drama from champion select.

8. More than half the players you play against are experienced players building new accounts. It makes for very uneven matchups. Person just learning matched against smurf means a dominated lane and probably the game is over, but you still have to wait out the 20 minutes.

Fix: Give the folks a way to just buy level 30 on a new account. Please. Let the experienced folks just go play ranked.

9. (General) Surrender should be majority vote, not 4/5 or 3/0. This is a general issue, but it is more heavily felt in the lopsided lower level games, especially the threes games with a script. When you have a script feeding the enemy team, you just want to move on, but you can't because they won't vote yes.Similarly, when a duo-queue pair decides to troll a 5's game, they can hold everyone else hostage to the game instead of letting the other 3 get out and move on. Majority should be able to surrender a lost game.

Additionally, move the surrender timers up. With the pace of the game being faster, there are games that are decidedly lost by minute 10. MOve the surrender timer to minute 10 in 3's and 15 in 5's.

10. (General) Surrender should be cumulative, not vote trigger. After a surrender has been requested, people should be able to change their votes at any time after that, and as soon as enough change to yes, surrender the game. This avoids the "Stop asking for surrender" nonsense. You ask once, and then when enough people agree, the game is over.

11. (General) AFK people who don't respond to a surrender call should automatically vote YES OR have the vote calculated as if they don't exist (like offline folks). I shouldn't have to wait out a 3v5 game because the afk folks won't vote.