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The entire pre-season patch feels incredibly random and half-assed

SaltyToplaneGoat·11/22/2019, 4:39:45 PM·3 votes·1,836 views

You can definetly notice that there's less than 20% of Riot currently working at this game, and mostly those apparently are not the "main crew" from the looks of it. Not a single one of the changes pushes league into a direction that appears visionary, and in general everything seems to be change for change's sake without a coherent plan behind it. But even with the focus on change it just does not deliver.

The biggest part here is the part that SHOULD have been the biggest impact: MAP CHANGES. But not only are bot and top alcoves maybe nice but in itself nothing really special except in that they are another middle-finger to non-mobile champions, the dragon-map changes are ABSURDLY UNDERWHELMING. Either DO IT FOR REAL, or DON'T DO IT AT ALL. This is not even about how absolutely garbage the wind-drake mod is, as if they had completly ran out of ideas at that point, but rather about the others as well. Why are there no effects into the bases and the lanes? Why is river itself barely effected? We get some puny changes in the jungle that even get ignored for most of the game, and that's it.

Here's how it SHOULD go:

  • Infernal Drake now also burns a part of base walls and certain terrain adjacent to lanes.

  • Mountain Drake actually creates terrain EVERYWHERE. All lanes get slightly slimmer, certain passages are straight-up blocked off and require detours.

  • Ocean Drake: the River starts flooding, now reaching all buff camps and the lanes. Brush spwans massively from it, even on the lanes, all other brush is enlarged.

  • Air Drake: The jungle paths are filled with a complex wind-tunnel pattern that massively BOOST everyone going into one direction, but massively SLOWS when going in the other. Those winds should obviously shove people towards objectives.

And to make alcoves more interesting: in both of the alcoves a "portal stone" is added. When you recall on one, instead of your base you end up on the other - making these parts of the map actually strategically relevant aspects instead of "mostly dead space" as people can jump from top to bot and back assumning no hostile interference.

See? Is that so hard? These ideas might not even be good, I don't even claim that, but at least they'd be getting us somewhere compared to this luke-warm nonsense we've been served in this patch. And the rest of the patch? ABSOLUTE NONSENSE. Just look at Elder Drake for that matter. Just remove the execute. There is literally no point of having it in the game when it is already overloaded with damage.

Seriously if you already have an event like preseason coming up at leadt make an attempt to draw in people from other project to at least throw something in - and not let the amateur skeleton-crew keep fiddling around with things that obviously are above their pay-grade. Get me some of the people that actually remember how the game was in season three or four and what principles it was built on. Seriously I get the feeling that some people on their design team are a shorter time in the game than some players, and that's just not a good sign really...

8 Comments

KABLUMP11/22/2019, 4:44:45 PM2 votes

I also kinda wish we could get more than one map changing drake at a time

Like... go back to full random spawns and each dragon death changes part of the map, then you have sort of a 'war torn' look with paths and bushes changing locations, more fruit, etc.

Steeds of Time11/22/2019, 4:49:19 PM2 votes

This is the most unhealthy preseason since i start playing in S5. The game strays away from the strategical gameplay it used to reside on, everything ends quicker than ever, either be teamfights or matches in general, supports are being gutted, tanks are becoming fossils, balance will be harder to maintain. So many new features for such a unpolished gameplay that needs to be stabilized instead of anything else.

Your suggestions make plenty of sense. Especially the cloud drake one. Out of all the map changes to elements, thev cloud feels the most underwhelming both visually and mechanically speaking. It does not affect the visuals across the whole map at all.

And the Elder Drake execute? Just. Why.

Ashe mage AD11/22/2019, 5:00:28 PM1 votes

Dude, shuddup, they still got nightmares from the backlash of 'too much changes' xD

Hayaishi211/22/2019, 5:09:45 PM1 votes

The coolest feature of the dragon changes is the whole map transformation thing but they decided to focus more on making dragons OP rather than focus on fhe fun aspect of the game.