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The problem I see with Riot wanting shorter average game times

i cant move wtf··31 votes·12,726 views

League is a game that's late-heavy by design. In terms of gameplay, the champion you pick will be the most different from all other champions at level 18 with 6 items. That's the point where all of your abilities are maxed and your scalings capped.

Conversely, your champion will be the most like all other champions at level 1 with 0 items.

So in the context of reducing the average game time, a by-product is that games feel very similar regardless of the champion you pick because most of the time spent in game is in the early parts where champions are the most similar.

The result is games feeling much more bland and repetitive, coming down more to who drafted the best stats regardless of how the comp operates when the champions really start differentiating themselves past the 20 min mark. No one gets to play their champion except maybe the 1 or 2 players that got extremely fed.

I'm not trying to bash Riot here though. There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting shorter game times, but the fundamental design of the game contradicts short games. Hypothetically if they wanted shorter games without compromising a meaningful draft and strategic champion picks, they could invert the differentiation curve so champions are the most different at level 1 and the most similar at level 18 with 6 items. A change like this would mean that "late-game carries" wouldn't build damage, they would be inherently damaging at all points in the game (maybe by dealing % health damage or something) and be extremely squishy, forcing them to itemize tank and defensive stats so they don't get 1-shot by everything. "Tanks" would be the opposite. They would be inherently tanky regardless of the items they build but would generally favor itemizing damage so they could actually threaten the backline they like to get on top of.

I think Riot just needs to pick one or the other. Either longer games with the current design or shorter games with massive overhauls to how the champion classes scale and itemize.

27 Comments

mack91124 votes

Plenty of champions in the game are designed around winning games early and closing early.

Late game champions are a risk as they should be since thay can scale well and do not need to push early plays to secure a lead.

The game should not just be an auto win for one side just because the game went past a particular minute mark.

Games average about 30mins now and that is equal enough time for early game and late game champions to feel impactful.

LightIsMyPath2 votes

How so? Early game (or mid game) champs play the game for 70-80% of the time in a game ending at 30 mins, late champs for 20-30

LTK KoRo1 votes

Because late game champions actually have a chance during laning, while early game champs are fucking terrible in late unless they're fed.

I have seen multiple times stuff like idk, Fiora solokilling lvl 2 Renekton (just an example), while the reverse scenario with lvls 14-18 happens very rarely. Late game champions have bad laning, sure, but it isn't really THAT bad unless you're camped, or if enemy is a much better player.

LightIsMyPath1 votes

Are we considering the opponent being bad asf as a chance? I mean, I have beaten zeds that miss everything and right after missing qs they ult with everything in cool down leaving their 2 shadows allineate on a straight line. I wouldn't exactly define the matchup a fair chance one for this. A bad play is a bad play and can happen no matter your champ. Just look at last year's Rekkles' Twitch. He was in his powerspike with a lulu behind and he suicided trying to flank the whole enemy team with all their cooldowns up. Does this mean twitch late is fair?

The thigh guy2 votes

Don’t you love how scaling picks are so worthless tho?

I mean, they only managed to hold off til 38 minutes with EVERYTHING against them. It’s not like they deserve a massive boost in power at that point.

LTK KoRo2 votes

At once when scaling is in good position it automatically changes to the best strategy, due to it being reactive and relatively easy to pull off.

It's a controversial opinion, but i believe that current aggressive meta requires more strategy and mechanics to pull of than scaling meta. Currently teams are forced to be proactive, try to snowball as much as they could. Back in the days you basically could ignore drakes (unless there was an Mountain/Infernal trifecta), ignore tier1 turrets and just give up everything pre-15 just because your carry will scale soon tm anyway.

I don't know how about you guys, but before patch 8.11 mostly lategame comps were played in pro. Amount of early-mid game comps was really small, and most of them fell flat (Spring split MSF comes to mind)

Kaisha2 votes

There's no strategy to running around stupid fed insta-deleting ppl that have zero counter play.

LTK KoRo3 votes

There's no strategy in turtling in base for 30 minutes until your ADC can insta-delete ppl that have zero counter play.

Saying stuff like that is easy, but we both are wrong.

HeeroTX4 votes

Actually, wasn't the whole POINT of buffs like Baron and Elder (even before its recent bonuses) supposed to make turtling in base a DIFFICULT strategy to pull off? Plus, IMO, there's better design-decision ways to deal with turtle strat (if it becomes too ubiquitous) than "make it so everyone blows up too easily/early to ever turtle effectively.

LTK KoRo2 votes

The Baron and Elder got buffed because turtling was too easy, yes, that was the point of the change, you just worded it differently.

There of course are better options than current meta. But boards tend to polarize stuff like this, there are more options than "everyone blows up" or "we turtle and then ADC blows everyone". I don't know how we can find middle ground here, but im 100% sure that turtling by itself shouldn't be the main strategy, it should be last resort when your main strategy fails.

HeeroTX2 votes

Turtling will NEVER be the "main" strategy because the aggressor always has the initiative and gets to set the pace. If I have you reliably pushed to inhib turrets, then I get to decide when we fight for Baron or dragon or which turret we're fighting over. You have the advantage of support from your turret, but I can always pull back and reset and I can also array my team as I want for an ambush with objectives outside of your base. "Turtling" only works on the assumption that your team can win one big team fight and THEN take over initiative. (ie. take Baron or other objectives) If you can't beat that strat more often than you lose (10-20% success rate on turtle seems reasonable to me) then you DESERVE to lose.

But why did turtling become so common? Thank the community for that. Even in this burst heavy version of the game we're in now. Heck even last season when turrets were dogcrap and EVERYONE could blow you up at ANY point of the game in 0.5 secs, what do we tell low elo or noob players: "play safe". OK, ignoring the fact that this tells me exactly NOTHING and doesn't take into account whatever champion I'm playing or like to play, that's the stock advice. I'm down 1 kill, "play safe". I'm behind in cs, "play safe". The jungler is hidden from me, "play safe".

The players have been CONDITIONED to play this way. Every season there's people who come on here complaining about the tactical decisions of their rando teammates in solo-q. And no one wants to listen to their whining, so instead of having a level-headed conversation about what tactical plays people SHOULD make and commiserating with the guy who's jungler is jacking off in a bush for 20 mins. We tell everyone "you can only rely on yourself, so when the ambushers are out there 'play safe'". The translation of this is: some of your teammates WILL concede their matchups, so just turtle up as needed and push out when you get the means. Once 1 or 2 players accept that this is the "only" way to get thru their early game, then the whole team is forced to concede ground (or else feed to the team that has initiative over the "safe" lanes) and so your only option is to "turtle".

The thigh guy3 votes

[{quoted}](name=LTK KoRo,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=duEB74h4,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2018-12-11T19:09:10.509+0000)

At once when scaling is in good position it automatically changes to the best strategy, due to it being reactive and relatively easy to pull off.

It's a controversial opinion, but i believe that current aggressive meta requires more strategy and mechanics to pull of than scaling meta. Currently teams are forced to be proactive, try to snowball as much as they could. Back in the days you basically could ignore drakes (unless there was an Mountain/Infernal trifecta), ignore tier1 turrets and just give up everything pre-15 just because your carry will scale soon tm anyway.

I don't know how about you guys, but before patch 8.11 mostly lategame comps were played in pro. Amount of early-mid game comps was really small, and most of them fell flat (Spring split MSF comes to mind)

Not really. The issue is also that these champion that snowball so hard aren’t hard to play. I hate to say this, but insta gibbing people with all point and click or undodgeable abilities is not difficult.

As for scaling being easy to pull off. I mean I guess. You still have to not feed out your ass.

Early snowballs are not that skill reliant nor do they take much strategy. It’s litteraly “me pick talon, me win by default”

LTK KoRo2 votes

Some of these champions are easy, sure. But it's not like every earlygame champion is a faceroll. Most of early game champions rely on the decisionmaking rather than mechanics. For example great Xin Zhao players arent the guys who click Q fast, great Xin players know how to abuse their lvl 2-3 spike, and it isn't actually simple. Skillshots aren't the only expression of skill in league.

Well there's nothing really hard in not-feeding when turtling as a strategy is strong. Right now it isn't, but lets say during patch 8.1 literally anyone could turtle and wait for lategame.

And eh, early snowballs can be skill or strategic reliant, but usually they rely on enemy misplays. I have seen multiple good organizated snowballs. Let's settle on the Talon pick. If Talon manages to ward enemy chickens at 4:00 and then proceed to kill enemy jungler when he saw him clearing raptors. Nothing especially fancy, but we saw that Talon pulled here a strategy, he predicted where enemy might be soon and capitalized on it.

Strategies are bigger or smaller, and im sure that 100% of players utilize SOME kind of strategies.

Sire Hippington2 votes

most different from all other champions at level 18 with 6 items

exept marksmen, thx to crit/rageblade they all become mostly rightclick bots as their AAs **HEAVILY **outscale everything else on their kits so they are the most deverse in the early game when landing something like caitlyns Q actually matters rather than doing half an AAs worth of damage like at 5-6 items.

But i agree with the overall statement. In it's roots, League was designed for longer games, reaching the pinacle at those lategame teamfights with 4-6 items, the balance and structure of the game always revolved around haveing a distinct early, mid and lategame which requirers a certain game length so each aspect can get enough room. However, since ~S5/6 Riot trys to force that conept which was intendet for ~40 min games on average and tries to squees it onto a ~25min template and it just doesn't work that way, the core desing of league never was ment to have such short average game times.

Glory972 votes

I've becomen so numb already. Numb from reading this exact argument, or presenting this argument myself. I've upvoted every one of these post, yet we haven't seen any response from riot.

I screamed inside when I read, that riot wants URF to be the future of league of legends. On that day, I knew this game would be going downhill, and so did all the other players. For several years now, the playerbase kept saying that league of legends shouldn't change towards that direction, that we don't want 15-minute-oneshote-clownfiestas

Riot doesn't listen to these arguments and concerns of the players. Because they think they are right with everything, and all the players who voice out their opinion, are only a "vocal minority", that is not able to represent the average player.

HeeroTX2 votes

The problem with the "shorter game times" direction, is it is capitulating to League's biggest "flaw". League of Legends, as designed is SUPPOSED to be a TEAM game. People enjoy playing with a good team and/or with their friends. Most (granted, not ALL) people enjoy playing games, even long ones with a GOOD team, often even if they lose, the game still feels good if you feel like the team meshes well and works together. People DON'T like playing with toxic players or people who they feel are not up to their own skill level. They want out of those games ASAP and want a new game to wash out the bad taste of those games. The preferred solution would be to make games BETTER, make it easier to get in a game with those good players that you want to play with. For whatever reason (and there's multiple options to choose from) Riot has decided that's too difficult, so instead they've moved in the direction of "quantity over quality".

If 1 out of 10 games is good, you're (ever so slightly... I guess) more likely to get to that 10th game if each game is only 20 mins rather than if each game is 40 mins. I think for some of us, this has the unintended consequence of the game ITSELF being bad, so now instead of 1 out of 10, maybe its 1 out of 25. Overall the experience is worse, and Riot is frantically swapping you into games hoping you get that 1 dopamine hit fast enough to not get irritated at all the bad quality around you.

MankeyMadness1 votes

Lee and Panth are only unique champs at level 4. Beyond that they're not terribly different from other melees bar Lee's kick one shotting squishies if he R the tank at the right angle

autonymm1 votes

If they want shorter games, make it so that level 18 with 6 items comes sooner. Increase experience and lower item costs.

Papuga1 votes

Or increase gold gain but you then run into the more snowballing since it's easier to stay ahead when you get ahead. Maybe just up the passive gold and experience.

Basically get the TT experience but in SR. Heh.

Games on TT seem to last longer these days then SR ones. Feel free to come by, we'd love some new faces!

sobi9991 votes

Games are on average 20-30 mins long, any shorter and i can guarantee you that it will not be league anymore. The real issue right now is the lack of strategy. Regardless of your class, every champ, more or less has the ability to 100-0%. Sometimes champs can deal 2 health bars with their whole kits so they really do not need to use all of their abilities. Just the other day, a rengar did 3.4k damage in 0.65 seconds. What is the counterplay to that? Its basically a kill fiesta, similar to FPS games.

Pika Fox2 votes

Rengar is easy to counterplay, when the little icon appears above your head, stand behind your tanks and flash his jump.

HeeroTX3 votes

HAHAHAHA, who plays tanks? [sg-soraka]

sobi9991 votes

Flash is on 300 seconds cooldown. A squishy has no way of surviving this burst and rengar would hardly pick on you when your surrounded by your team. His ult gives him visiona and MS for a reason. This is yet another problem with the state of the game where mobile champs are much more prioritized than immobile champs. Funnily, they even have more burst.

Pika Fox2 votes

Doesnt matter if flash is on a 300s cd or 1500, flash his jump, easy win. Hes now out of position behind your team and easy to collapse on.

And youre an ADC, if you isolate yourself to be a free kill, thats your fault.

sobi9991 votes

It does matter, rengar is not the only one in a team that can pose you threat. You could have already used a flash. I also did not mention if i was an adc, i said a "squishy". That can also be a mid or support player, and in some occassions top/jgl. Either way, the moral of the story was that there is no counter to his burst, not that there was no counter to his kit.

Doing over 3.4k damage in 0.65seconds would mean that you would have no chance of using any of your abilities. It's not rengar i am pointing towards, it's the damage creep i am referring to specifically.

Pika Fox1 votes

Then youre out of position and deserved to die, play better.

MiD Enforcer1 votes

I find it hard to believe that he game no longer take stretegy. Do you guys even honestly play the game to say something like that?

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