Boards›Gameplay

The problem with Summoner's Rift and why we need a new map or a complete overhaul.

WoonStruck··3 votes·705 views

Summoner's Rift was originally a map like any other MOBA. You build resources, and use those resources to fight the opposing team. When the game was released, you could ALWAYS make a comeback with a gold swing, especially given the gold swings baron gave, because the ONLY resources in the game were gold, exp, and the very temporary baron buff.

Now we have more resources added to the game that are relatively healthy. Rift Herald is a temporary siege/split push buff, basically. Elder Dragon is a temporary combat buff. However, they have very unhealthy things attached to them considering the other aspects in the map. Herald basically secures multiple plates, which create an irrecoverable gold jump, along with first tower gold, which is another irrecoverable gold jump. Elder Dragon scales the permanent dragon buffs on the map even further, along with becoming more powerful with each dragon. Basically guarantees one team wins if they had the lead early, even if the other team managed to stall out...which is bullshit.

However, we also had dragons changed from providing gold to providing permanent buffs that you will ALWAYS have over the enemy team. The enemy team does not get equal opportunity for these buffs. This makes it extremely likely that a team that wins early stays winning because there is an irrecoverable stat gap. Then you have Elder Dragon on top of that.

Towers also went from providing global gold and exp (a way to make sure everyone becomes more relevant as your team occupies more ground) to providing local gold that is split when shared. This is probably the only change Riot has ever made that actually reduced snowballing. However, this change means that providing more support for one specific lane doesn't benefit your team as a whole. You choose one lane and basically sacrifice the others to the whims of the enemy jungler, which I guess is fair.

All of this combined makes balance extremely difficult because its hard to gauge mid-late game power of many picks because their scaling vs early champs is thrown off due to the irrecoverable resources Summoner's Rift now provides. The map will never be well-balanced unless EVERY champ is essentially equal, which will NEVER happen. They all have different strengths and power curves, but Riot discourages hard counters, making abominations like Kai'Sa a cut above the rest.

Also, itemization in this game sucks ass. Pls work on it.

1 Comments

Whisper871 votes

To your point about balancing and irrecoverable buffs with drakes and such...sorry to say it but that's kind of the point. Riot didn't want the game to be as formulaic and repeatable.

The drakes were specifically designed with the fact in mind that they would NOT be balanced depending on the teams/champs picked. They knew that 1-3-1 comps would go nuts with cloud and mountain drakes, but infernal and ocean would be meh. They knew ocean would be sick for scaling comps to get early, or for teams playing against siege at any point in the game. It was part of the inherent design to deter teams/players from having repeatable, set plays. If I'm playing a 1-3-1 comp I don't give a crap about, say an infernal early on. I'd ideally like to end the game before that matters, and the AP/AD from a single infernal is not that amazing considering most of the fighting, if any, will be in small skirmishes, and the towers I'll be split pushing down have resistances to a Mountain would be waaaay better. So in that context it makes more sense for me to set up plays with mid and jungle around top, rather than drake. So get solo laners rolling and potential take an early herald to start the snowball. I think this was only partially successful as things like ocean tend to just be rather good across the board agnostic of comp in the early game. But it did work to a certain degree. You see people sacrificing Cloud drakes for other map plays all the time. So it works

The part that I agree with you on, is the amount of gold swing that can occur from a single play, specifically when you look at plates and tower first blood. Here's what I would like to see:

  1. Remove one of the turret plates, but maintain overall damage reduction. So for example if each plate reduces turret damage by 20% and grants 150 gold across 5 plates, instead we'd have 4 plates that do 25% damage reduction each. Same total HP on turret. A tiny bit less gold overall, and reduces the amount of impact you get out of 1 big play as you'd be more likely to only get 1-2 plates rather than 3-4. But at the end of the day the tower shouldn't really take longer to kill once you get the ball rolling. The idea there would be that if you keep the pressure up, you'll be able to continue to take plates. But if you don't keep your play clean, the other team will be able halt your momentum. Takes slightly longer to take the first play or two, but once you have the first two down the turret actually dies faster. But you get just a smidge less gold from killing the tower.

  2. Reduce the amount of gold granted by tower first blood, but slightly increase the flat global gold from all towers. Again the idea here is to just slightly curb the advantage you get from striking first. If you get first brick and keep up the pressure, you'll be on a roll because the overall gold increase will be higher when you start taking additional turrets. But if you start playing like a bunch of monkeys and chasing kills, if the other team takes a couple unanswered towers they'll be fully caught up.

The overall idea here is to curb the impact of one single big play, but actually increase the impact of consistently clean play. Right now there is too much value to be had from say, bring mid and jungle bot for a 4v2 dive, soaking up like 3 turret plates plus first brick. The game in its current state prioritizes being the one to strike first over consistency. My thought here with these changes is that one sided, clean play will be just barely less effective in like the first 8 mins, but will be significantly more snowbally heading into the mid game. So we're looking at more comeback potential in the mid game, and slightly less snowbally early game, but again if you play well in the early game and continue to do so as lane phase breaks down...then you probably have a slightly increased chance of winning.

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by WoonStruck

Riot's Round Table sessions are full of lies.
Memes & Games107 comments
316
votes
Don't get me wrong, new champions are nice...but when are you going to focus on balance?
Gameplay164 comments
207
votes
Riot, you can't use your excuse for reworking Maokai when Lee Sin exists.
Gameplay173 comments
201
votes
Meddler, you said Assassin items would be made melee only if ranged started using them too much.
Gameplay89 comments
157
votes
Increasing Vlad's healing will not fix his issues.
Gameplay148 comments
157
votes
Remember when Riot said they'd remove Dynamic (Flex) if queue times were too high?
Gameplay123 comments
154
votes