Honestly the perfect Ideal game length should always be kept on 30-40 minute scale

PhantomGG··86 votes·16,946 views

Ideally I feel league of legends should take 30 minutes to complete. This time frame is not to long, and not to short, while giving the losing team a fighting chance to fight for late game. I feel games where even if a team plays clean and proper, it should take them a minimum of thirty minutes to complete a game. I feel games should never be any lower than 30 minutes unless the enemy team played so horrendously bad, that the winning team was capable of absolutely crushing them. I feel if the losing team plays good, and finds ways to stall, they should be able to force the game to 40 minutes to attempt a come back, but I don't feel we should bring back the old strats of. "let's pick all safe late game champs and never do any risks" I also feel at the same time, we should not promote the current "end at 24 minutes" meta for it completely shuts out the losing team.

Early game metas are bad because: The losing team feels like they have absolutely no chance to win, and for the most part they don't. Winning these games also feels boring, for as the winner, you felt like you were never given a legitmate challenge. These metas also really devolve interactive game play, for the losing team is stripped of any options they could of used to make the game harder for the enemy team. These metas are often the result of Tanks being nerfd and towers being to easy to kill and damage creep being to high.

Late game metas are bad because: It devolves skill and instead rewards the teams that play completely safe and avoid all risks. I feel in every moba, no every game period, risks should be promoted and encoraged. So we see metas, where a players skill to make a risk sucesful is rewarded and highlighted. Vs a meta from back in the season 3 days of. "Oh i picked vayne, ryze and jax, brb gonna afk for 30 minutes and make no risks what soever to then auto win the game". These metas are often the result of, champions that are suppose to be late game themed, being given to many tools to play safe during the early game, which defeats the whole point of "late game". You can't really call a champion late game themed if they are strong early game to. Tanks and mages being to strong, while assasins and early game junglers being nerfed are also critical factors to these metas coming to existence.

THE IDEAL league time I feel should look like this. A meta where both late game and early comps are promoted, a meta where the losing team is given options to make a come back. But a meta where smart and strong players can close out at a efficient and reasonable time frame if they know how to keep full control.

0-10 Minute: Lane phase 10-20 Minutes: Team Phase 20-30 Minutes: End Phase

Late Game 30-40 Minutes: Over Time Phase

Lane Phase: The point in the game where laners face off against each other while junglers look for ways to to get their team a lead. Of course all members should try their best to end lane phase as well, not just junglers

Team Phase: the point in the game where lane phase has ended, teams are grouping up, picking off towers and focusing more so on obtaining objectives

End Phase; The phase in the game where the team with a lead should be looking for a way in how to end and should end around 30 minutes

Over Time Phase: Both teams played very well, and the majority of the game was pretty fifty fifty and could of gone either way, because both teams played good with their own share of mistakes, the game took 40 minutes

Personally I feel most players prefer the timers and how i described the game, for whenever the game feels unhealthy, it's always when game timers are either way to short, or way to long. I very rarely hear people make over the top complaints when league of legends is in a thirty minute meta.

45 Comments

Critmaster Garen24 votes

0-10 Minute: Lane phase 10-20 Minutes: Team Phase 20-30 Minutes: End Phase

id say

0 - 15 minutes: lane phase 15 - 25 minutes: teamfight phase 25 - 35 minutes: lategame phase

average game time should be aimed to be around 35 minutes. the reason is, so we can have distinct game phases where different types of champions have enough time to shine and impact the game in their own way.

if you cut down games to 20 to 25 minutes like now, there is too much overlap. even if you make champions scale faster, it means that "midgame champions" have like 2 or 3 minutes of power spike to impact the game before "lategame champions" take over, where theyre probably still stuck in lane for some reason.

thats exactly the situation we had with crit marksmen.

these short games are just shitty and not enjoyable. game health overall is suffering because of riots agenda to make this game shorter and faster than it can bear.

DNFVixen1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Zmg2FfMs,comment-id=0003,timestamp=2018-06-18T18:50:10.378+0000)

id say

0 - 15 minutes: lane phase 15 - 25 minutes: teamfight phase 25 - 35 minutes: lategame phase

average game time should be aimed to be around 35 minutes. the reason is, so we can have distinct game phases where different types of champions have enough time to shine and impact the game in their own way.

if you cut down games to 20 to 25 minutes like now, there is too much overlap. even if you make champions scale faster, it means that "midgame champions" have like 2 or 3 minutes of power spike to impact the game before "lategame champions" take over, where theyre probably still stuck in lane for some reason.

thats exactly the situation we had with crit marksmen.

these short games are just shitty and not enjoyable. game health overall is suffering because of riots agenda to make this game shorter and faster than it can bear.

I agree on this very much so.

Darkone700120 votes

Its not even that games are only end in 24 minutes, its that people FF at 15. the battle is determined by the first blow basically, whoever is the farthest ahead by the 10 minute mark is, lets be honest the most likely to win, whoever got first blood is very likely to have first tower to, and that person now has a massive advantage over others, so Its not so much that if fought out they only last 24 minutes as most my matches last roughly 25-35 minutes, some going past 40. The problem is, there is no reason to fight them out, if conquer irelia is 7/2 and has got her tower by the 8 minute mark. the match has been decided before it has a chance to unfold. thus FF at 15.

SpongebobIsLife7 votes

meh, I'd say 25-35. If it was 30-40, there'd be much less reason to play early game champions.

Lauchmelder10 votes

But with 25 being the minimum there's barely a reason to play lategame champions either.

Wimbledofy6 votes

25 being the minimum, means that it is the minimum, which means it doesn't happen all the time. If it's the minimum then of course there is a reason to play lategame champs, you just have to be able to get past that point.

TeCoolMage2 votes

There's barely a reason to play early game champions if you can't close the game before the enemy reaches their power spikes and kills you repeatedly...

25 should be the minimum because early game champions have win conditions that fall apart when they can't fight late game champions

Lauchmelder2 votes

I disagree. 30 should be the minimum.

Earlygame champions should be a viable choice and should have the power to end a game early by getting ahead.

Think a team of 5 earlygame champions obliterate a team with 5 lategame champs and end the game in 25 minutes. That should be possible.

It should also be possible that a team of 5 lategame champions can reliably stall out a game to 45-50 minutes.

Best case would be to adjust the average gametime for midgame champions without making early and lategame champions obsolete. Aka the average gametime should be:

Minimum -> max reliable gametime for earlygame champions (aka the point where they start falling off hard) Maximum -> min gametime needed for lategame champions to get rolling

I think that's something all of us could agree on (more or less)

Slice n Dice em2 votes

Game duration in start of season 5, and still people used to play leesin and elise quite frequently. Early game and laning phase lasted 1st 20 mins of the game. So when you are extending the total duration you are also extending the duration of early game.

LegitBusinessman2 votes

{quoted}

meh, I'd say 25-35. If it was 30-40, there'd be much less reason to play early game champions.

There were metas when Lucian and MF did just fine on those game lengths, so thats not accurate.

Dope Solo5 votes

We have late game camps that don't peak until 30+ min Kassadin , and strong earlys that never actually fall off Talon. I can see how some people would say the game is kind of shitty right now.

Daddy Ants2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Dope Solo,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Zmg2FfMs,comment-id=0004,timestamp=2018-06-18T19:18:21.260+0000)

We have late game camps that don't peak until 30+ min Kassadin , and strong earlys that never actually fall off Talon. I can see how some people would say the game is kind of shitty right now.

Talon's stats as a whole are just too high.

He's desperate for some nerfs.

ignyte5 votes

Yeah, i miss the days of 40+ minute brain melters. i get it, people dont have the same time they used to, or whatever. but even losing in a 40+ minute game didnt feel too terrible. If both sides kind of tried their hardest to win, nobody was trolling or flaming or gave up at 15 minutes , it felt ok to lose.

also i think people have generally just lost their passion for this game. every godamn game someone is typing " go next, cant win , u suck, top trash, jungle difference, over powered yadda yadda " and just give up.

not a lot of people are trying. even browsing the forums so many " this game is trash why are you playing" or " lOL i quit last week, wtf why havent you quit yet? dog shit game "

its really disheartening. it feels like Family Guy in a way. people used to love it, people still fiercely defend it, but the general passion is gone

ClaireRedfield1 votes

I loved 40+ minute games personally, I enjoyed losing but REALLY loved winning them. A game that went on that long usually meant people on both teams where playing really well and it was a mental battle.

You're absolutely correct about player passion being sucked out and I feel it as well, I for one just come back for URF and get sucked into play a few matches with my friends and a few ranked games just because. I'll just be waiting until near end of season to hop on each of my accounts and play my placements for end of season rewards then go back to playing other games while reading patch notes for a really hopeful revert of league into something enjoyable again.

I still very much love league as a game but I hate what it's become and want nearly no part of it outside of passively observing it and sometimes showing my face to talk about it here and there.

Azadethe2 votes

Miss them? They still happen at the same rate as always. The only time they don't is when a team gives up.

And Riot's pushed an average 25 min game since Season 3. Not like short average games are anything new....

heroikc4 votes

Snowballers, assassins, electrocute, limited if any recovery, 0 bodyguards, true damage everywhere... What else could shorten the game?

Isolice2 votes

stealth

heroikc2 votes

{quoted}

stealth

I think that's only compounding issue...But yeah, the ones who have it have burst too.

Sire Hippington2 votes

the state of vision, we have poor vision early to protect vs ganks, and later on it's cleared out so easily that the team with map controll easily denies any vision from the loosing team. It's about as bad as it was in the old oracles days, just that we now also have a dark map early on...

heroikc1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Sire Hippington,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Zmg2FfMs,comment-id=00010001,timestamp=2018-06-18T20:27:43.561+0000)

the state of vision, we have poor vision early to protect vs ganks, and later on it's cleared out so easily that the team with map controll easily denies any vision from the loosing team. It's about as bad as it was in the old oracles days, just that we now also have a dark map early on...

Not sure if that is really an issue; just a battle for vision.

Karunamon2 votes

Well, they could nerf turrets again...

heroikc1 votes

{quoted}

Well, they could nerf turrets again...

To be fair, it was compensation nerfs...but yeah, with how bad the situation is, reducing turret durability is the last thing anyone downhill wants.

AirKingNeo3 votes

True damage where exactly?

heroikc2 votes

{quoted}

True damage where exactly?

Conqueror, infinity edge, Darius, Fiora, Yi, Cheap Shot, Ahri, Ignite...Plenty of places.

AirKingNeo4 votes

SO:

Weak and not a problem, something no one builds, never been a problem, not a problem right now because conqueror gives no ad, an actual problem, a low tier rune that gives 10-40 damage which is not a problem, ahri isn't a problem, ignite is overbuffed but its not this "huge true damage problem" that is a complete myth

TeCoolMage1 votes

Oh but the WHITE NUMBERS they trigger my fragile beliefs on balance so hard!

I see true damage I cry

Elewd2 votes

I hated when games were longer than 35 minutes, it was awful, to the point i switched to aram and dominion because they were quick gamemodes. since dominions reoval i stick mostly to aram and its honestly way more enjoyable, if the game is a loss im out in notime, while in SR games im stuck for the longhaul even if im losing

Serika Zero2 votes

I love how you guys claim that you despise snowballs or unbalanced games and now this thread which proposes exactly that has at this moment 31 upvotes.

0-10 Minute: Lane phase 10-20 Minutes: Team Phase 20-30 Minutes: End Phase

Late Game 30-40 Minutes: Over Time Phase

Here's a few things about LoL you don't seem to understand:

  1. laning phase usually lasts until the 1 or more tier 1 turrets fall (with a few exceptions but rarely). to force the lane phase to last exactly 10 minutes, turrets should be indestructible for 10 minutes and to force team fight phase at 10+ minutes you would need to instantly destroy turrets at 10 minutes. Sweet right?

  2. Team Phase

Team Phase: the point in the game where lane phase has ended, teams are grouping up, picking off towers and focusing more so on obtaining objectives

Essentially you want to kill most split push champions as well as assassins. As these characters do not want to group. To do this, you will have to delete: Aatrox Akali Camille Diana DrMundo Ekko Evelynn Fiora Fizz Gnar Illaoi Irelia Jax Jayce Kassadin Kayn Khazix Kled Nasus Rengar Riven Shaco Shen Singed Sion Talon Trundle Tryndamere Udyr MonkeyKing Yasuo Zed

If you have a better solution as to how to force teams to group instead of looking into split pushing or assassination, I'd like to hear it. Also, note, team fights, outside of bronze, and probably outside of silver, often happen when you reach your power spike items. And only a select few champions can obtain their power spike items by 10 minutes, a lot of them need 2+ (as in 18+ minutes per average game time).

Which means, most players will avoid team fights in 10-20 minutes mark if they know what they are doing and their heroes didn't reach their power spikes. Which is again where assassins come into play because they reach their power spike faster, at 1 and 2 items compared to other classes, and this allows them to assassinate people and be stronger even in 1v2s.

Which means: you need a sever gold influx in the first 10 minutes to make up for this predicament. Such as: double minion gold and double ambient gold. And again, assassins are really strong at 2 items and a bunch of other characters want more than 2 items. And ofc once more, this can be "solved" with the severe increase in gold, as well as deleting of most if not all champions mentioned above.

Next:

  1. 20-30 Minutes: End Phase

End Phase; The phase in the game where the team with a lead should be looking for a way in how to end and should end around 30 minutes

nop, this won't happen. Why? again, items, power spikes and hp of objectives. Given how you forcefully keep turrets alive for 10 minutes, the other team can just turtle behind them for those 10 minutes. And given how assassins and split pushers are deleted, most things that are left are adcs and control mages.

Which translates into: farm till 6 items games. And look around baron. One bad team fight ends the game.

Late Game 30-40 Minutes: Over Time Phase

Over Time Phase: Both teams played very well, and the majority of the game was pretty fifty fifty and could of gone either way, because both teams played good with their own share of mistakes, the game took 40 minutes

So, the only way to force "late game" at 30-40mins, give both teams and influx of 100.000 gold to reach their late game state. Which btw, will now proceed to literally kill all early and mid game game champions: Aatrox Ahri Akali Annie Ashe AurelionSol Camille Darius Diana Draven Ekko Elise Evelynn Ezreal Fiddlesticks Fizz Garen Graves JarvanIV Jayce Karma Kayn Khazix Leblanc LeeSin Lissandra Malzahar MissFortune Mordekaiser Nidalee Nocturne Olaf Pantheon Quinn Renekton RekSai Rengar Riven Rumble Shaco Skarner Teemo Udyr Urgot Vi Volibear Warwick Xerath XinZhao Yorick Ziggs Zoe

As if they are unable to snowball until this point, they become worthless. So, they either have to be buffed to the point they can snowball hard, or just #delete.

such a beautiful balance change.

Seriously people, are you even thinking about stuff before suggesting them?

PhantomGG2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Serika Zero,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Zmg2FfMs,comment-id=000e,timestamp=2018-06-19T05:26:01.099+0000)

I love how you guys claim that you despise snowballs or unbalanced games and now this thread which proposes exactly that has at this moment 31 upvotes. 10-20 Minutes: Team Phase 20-30 Minutes: End Phase 30-40 Minutes: Over Time Phase

Here's a few things about LoL you don't seem to understand:

  1. laning phase usually lasts until the 1 or more tier 1 turrets fall (with a few exceptions but rarely). to force the lane phase to last exactly 10 minutes, turrets should be indestructible for 10 minutes and to force team fight phase at 10+ minutes you would need to instantly destroy turrets at 10 minutes. Sweet right?

  2. Team Phase

Essentially you want to kill most split push champions as well as assassins. As these characters do not want to group. To do this, you will have to delete: Aatrox Akali Camille Diana DrMundo Ekko Evelynn Fiora Fizz Gnar Illaoi Irelia Jax Jayce Kassadin Kayn Khazix Kled Nasus Rengar Riven Shaco Shen Singed Sion Talon Trundle Tryndamere Udyr MonkeyKing Yasuo Zed

If you have a better solution as to how to force teams to group instead of looking into split pushing or assassination, I'd like to hear it. Also, note, team fights, outside of bronze, and probably outside of silver, often happen when you reach your power spike items. And only a select few champions can obtain their power spike items by 10 minutes, a lot of them need 2+ (as in 18+ minutes per average game time).

Which means, most players will avoid team fights in 10-20 minutes mark if they know what they are doing and their heroes didn't reach their power spikes. Which is again where assassins come into play because they reach their power spike faster, at 1 and 2 items compared to other classes, and this allows them to assassinate people and be stronger even in 1v2s.

Which means: you need a sever gold influx in the first 10 minutes to make up for this predicament. Such as: double minion gold and double ambient gold. And again, assassins are really strong at 2 items and a bunch of other characters want more than 2 items. And ofc once more, this can be "solved" with the severe increase in gold, as well as deleting of most if not all champions mentioned above.

Next:

  1. 20-30 Minutes: End Phase

nop, this won't happen. Why? again, items, power spikes and hp of objectives. Given how you forcefully keep turrets alive for 10 minutes, the other team can just turtle behind them for those 10 minutes. And given how assassins and split pushers are deleted, most things that are left are adcs and control mages.

Which translates into: farm till 6 items games. And look around baron. One bad team fight ends the game.

Late Game 30-40 Minutes: Over Time Phase

So, the only way to force "late game" at 30-40mins, give both teams and influx of 100.000 gold to reach their late game state. Which btw, will now proceed to literally kill all early and mid game game champions: Aatrox Ahri Akali Annie Ashe AurelionSol Camille Darius Diana Draven Ekko Elise Evelynn Ezreal Fiddlesticks Fizz Garen Graves JarvanIV Jayce Karma Kayn Khazix Leblanc LeeSin Lissandra Malzahar MissFortune Mordekaiser Nidalee Nocturne Olaf Pantheon Quinn Renekton RekSai Rengar Riven Rumble Shaco Skarner Teemo Udyr Urgot Vi Volibear Warwick Xerath XinZhao Yorick Ziggs Zoe

As if they are unable to snowball until this point, they become worthless. So, they either have to be buffed to the point they can snowball hard, or just #delete.

such a beautiful balance change.

Seriously people, are you even thinking about stuff before suggesting them

I love how you think making a giant post makes you sound smart (it doesn't btw). When in all reality, I simply tried my best to keep the post short and to the point to reach a wider audience.

This post isn't about "balance' this post is about the most satisfying sweet spot for the ideal league time. Historically people enjoy the thirty minute clock, and complain mostly when the games are dramatically to long, or dramatically to short.

I than go into explaining why both early game meta and late game meta sucks, and the most ideal meta is when teams can play both strats, and we HAVE HAD patches where that existed. What stops those metas from existing is over the top game changes that makes riot have to start the math problem all over again in how to bring it back to the sweet spot of balance.

I can easily explain and pick apart your points, but fact is, it simply isn't worth the time and effort. This posts pure discussion opener is to say.

"30 minutes is fun" "40 minutes should be possible if both teams played a very fifty fifty game" "early game metas suck and here's why" "late game metas suck and here's why"

You are trying to make this topic about balance, which isn't what it is at all.

But what can I say, literally everyone here clearly understood the purpose of this post and gave their own two scents of what metas and game times they feel are the most fun and fair to play on.

Everyone except you : P

Serika Zero3 votes

your thread "Honestly the perfect Ideal game length should always be kept on 30-40 minute scale"

purposes a situation. I broke that as why that situation is beyond absurd. The "game length" shouldn't be kept on xx minutes. You should depend on how well you do, and on what champions you pick and on what items you build. Not having it set before hand, as you, the almighty phantom wants.

Doing that is just going to lead to a shittier design than dynamic queue time a few seasons back. You probably thought about this for like 20 minutes during shower and posted it here. I don't like riot or their balance team either, but at least they put more effort in their changes and thinking on how to do them than you ever will.

Hammermancer1 votes

or... with those champions... you could like... adjust their scaling to make all champions scale at late

i never saw the reason outside of what is more or less allowed cheese to pick a 'mid game champion' Like i know why but i don't know why it's allowed,

Automated Riven1 votes

I disagree. 0-10 should be laning.

But there isn't enough gold generation for 30-40 minutes to be late game. Late game is defined by items rather then game time. So late game comes during 5-6 items which doesn't happen until 35-45 minutes. So if late game is a thing games have to last 40-50 in a long game.

20-30 minutes should be when an early game team is closing out by playing to their win conditions.

40-50 is where the late game team shines. 20-35 minutes is all mid game.

(This is based on gold acumulation)

Azadethe1 votes

I'm almost full build on AD champs by 31 minutes.

Automated Riven1 votes

Which ad champs? And which build. If you talking all 2900 gold items like triple lethality into GA or some shit then sure. If you looking at multiple 3.5k gold items then your looking at like 35-40 minutes.

(This is emphasized farther if you don't have an insane gold lead)

Azadethe1 votes

Pyke Jungle Sion Jungle Vi Jungle

I don't exactly play that many AD junglers.

Automated Riven1 votes

I went and looked at a bunch of the top 10 players in na on op.gg leaderboard. Jungle was the only role that had 4 items completed at 30 minutes. (including boots) everyone else, even tho they were averaging 8-10 cs per minute was looking at 3 items at 30 minutes. So ya. 35-45 minutes is 5-6 items complete.

Tundra Hunter1 votes

As a jungler main, I hate this short game meta. Junglers now, to be decent, have to be early jungler (since all that matters is early lead). And the balance team, to balance this, make jungler strong early and absolute crap late. I hate that. (of course, except the Yi strategy which is an exception)

I hate that role / champions have to be "strong early" or "strong late", every role / champions should be relevant all game long................. especially the jungler where you don't have lane interaction - botlane scale for late but that's okay because they still have fun in lane.

Playing jungle and only be relevant in the first 10 min and then only to smite baron is sooooooooo boring =(

Solidair31 votes

40 minutes is too long. I think 30-35 is the sweetspot.

wispyy1 votes

30-40 or 30-35 is good because it gives every type of champ to do well

mack91121 votes

after 30 minutes so many champions turn to crap though

TeCoolMage1 votes

I think 25-45 is better because more dedicated early and late game comps generally don't really lie between the 30-40. Especially early vs. mid where you have a shorter amount of time before they catch up, or late vs. mid where you have to get farther into late game to get a big enough advantage

3TWarrior1 votes

Ideally, the games would have a notable investment time but a comfortable one as well

even matches as quick as 10 minutes COULD BE fine if they weren't HYPER STRESSFUL with how the game is setup

someone actually had a useful post by the developers about the same kind of thought process, but I don't remember which thread it was in

EyesOfTheFox1 votes

While I don't mind games only going 30 minutes, there are a lot of things in the game right now that are not built for that kind of game speed. Late game champions for instance currently never make it to that late game, and Elder Dragon has gone the way of the dodo, and from what I remember about the jungle changes you get more exp later in the game for the camps. If they tune everything to match the speed of which the game has now become, I think we'll be in a good spot.

Gramps691 votes

Get rid of Rift Herald for starters, and buff tower health & damage

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