When is riot going to try and give us this teamcomp option. The new jungle is basically a failure. They had to implement this devourer bullshit to blow up the shitty meta that resulted. Let us have a jg item that comes in pairs and allows the sharing of gold between jglers.
Really diverse meta that can come from this. Farming jungler paired w ganking. Two gankers. Support and ganker. Tank and support for protect the carry. Think it over riot. duo jg
Renthaeus1 votesI can be the jg Kayle that goes around healing
Bonipherus1 votesI like the idea but I think the actual problem with this is the map. The map being the way that it is would restrict jungle farm mainly due to the few camps available. Shared farm would essentially halve a jungler's already lower income. Also duo jungle meta would likely lead to more conservative play from laners due to increased jungle presence, thus bringing back a farm meta to the lanes. Also duo jungle meta, in the limited jungle space there is, could lead to extreme cases of snowballing. For example: the enemy team poaches some of your buffs by bulling you out and then when you try and counter jungle them, they are already in the lead and they kill you. Your junglers will have nearly no opportunity to catch back up with good play from the enemy team. They would always find you and prevent you from farming or stealing your farm. This is all because of the map having such limited space for four dedicated junglers to interact.
Obvioulsy there would have to be some huge balance changes to support this but you'd also essentially create a new meta where one of the champion classes won't be used anymore. And that would likely be the support. So all support mains would be highly against this.
I also think the noticeable skill of junglers would be lessened with this meta. Junglers already have to do so much in the game and they often already go unappreciated.
There is just so much to talk about with proposed changes this broad.
If I were to design a map with a 2 jungler meta I'd have to include jungles not only between the lanes but jungles on the outside of the outer lanes to increase the amount of camps available while simultaneously lessening the area you could be found by the other junglers.
Woook3r1 votesIf I were to design a map with a 2 jungler meta I'd have to include jungles not only between the lanes but jungles on the outside of the outer lanes to increase the amount of camps available while simultaneously lessening the area you could be found by the other junglers.
I had the same thought already. Some sort of structures or jungle areas in the other corners of the map. Maybe straighten top and bot lane out a bit? Maybe a sanctuary from roaming jglers or an extra jungle camp area? Expand the map?
Regardless, you had some excellent thoughts. Thanks for sharing.
Bonipherus1 votesDid you ever play Dawngate? The servers were shut down because the game couldn't compete with other top MOBA's. Anyway the wiki is still there and they had some really great design ideas. Check out their map and their jungle. They include these other objectives in each corner of the map that offer some extra strategy. There's more in that game that I also like but I'll stop here for now. Anyway, just let me know what you come up with
Woook3r1 votesDid you ever play Dawngate? The servers were shut down because the game couldn't compete with other top MOBA's. Anyway the wiki is still there and they had some really great design ideas. Check out their map and their jungle. They include these other objectives in each corner of the map that offer some extra strategy. There's more in that game that I also like but I'll stop here for now. Anyway, just let me know what you come up with
Dawngate looks really good. Its a shame it went down.
Bonipherus1 votesDawngate really was a pretty good game but think a big problem with the game was it's lack of a target audience. DOTA 2 is targeted more toward "hardcore" gamers while Heroes of the Storm is for the very casual and gets bonus appeal from Blizzard characters. Smite appeals to those who prefer a more action-oriented feel to their MOBA's. But who did Dawngate appeal to? What was their hook?
Woook3r1 votesDid you ever play Dawngate? The servers were shut down because the game couldn't compete with other top MOBA's. Anyway the wiki is still there and they had some really great design ideas. Check out their map and their jungle. They include these other objectives in each corner of the map that offer some extra strategy. There's more in that game that I also like but I'll stop here for now. Anyway, just let me know what you come up with
I really liked that there were objectives in the jungle. Additionally, the paths that make the jungle up are much straighter. I think that if you changed the jg paths to be more like this it could have a significant impact. The jungle in league is small but it feels larger than it is because of the curvilinear paths. It takes longer to walk a curve between two points than a straight line. Also, because you have to go around all of these corners, that time you spend is fought with danger because vision is often blocked. For instance, you cant just peek around a corner of the jg and get a long halway of vision. Vision is sort of slowly revealed around some of the curves. Do you think I am hitting on anything with that idea? Dawngate does seem to have more straight paths in the jg. It may have many bushes in the way though. Remember I did not play the game.
Bonipherus1 votesYeah Dawngate had some flaws and I do love discussing this kind of stuff and I am able to address those if needed but we are discussing the jungle so I need to not type up a report on something not-so-relevant haha.
Alright to start off with jungle "lanes" or "pathing"
Now, I'm not trying to get into a subject of "optimal" jungle pathing (what I am defining as the best possible way for designers to place the jungle paths in a specific area. ex: this section should come out this way more and meet the lane at this location at this angle; this area creates a crossroad section at a spot that isn't good for ganking) because when weighed against other jungle problems this is, for the most part, a miniscule problem. I do admit that rearranging all of the paths in all of the jungle areas in the game could shake things up a bit (maybe even more than I think it could) and it'd be an interesting experiment to try out, but I digress.
As for corners. I believe that there is undoubtedly such a thing as too many or too few corners to have in a jungle. As for why corners are good for the jungle in general is to create an area where vision is more difficult to obtain. You don't have minions going through the jungle granting you vision, you don't have turrets in there, there are tons of bushes, etc. This creates a higher level of danger to the jungle because you just never know who might be in there with you. If the jungle was more open then you could see ganks and invades coming from a mile away, and making those tricky escapes become that much harder to execute when the enemy's vision isn't as impaired. Corners and walls create blocked vision for your you, your allies, your enemies, and wards. Even if you aren't hiding in a bush, you can take your enemy by surprise by hiding just around that corner. There's a video about corners and taking advantage of them on youtube that I'll link below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GvOztvPFc8 (all credit goes to Jeremy "Gaming Curios" for this video. I own nothing.)
Did Dawngate have too few of these corners? Not necessarily, the map sort of makes it seem like the jungle lanes are actually bigger than I think they were. I'll see if I can check out a couple Dawngate videos and analyze the jungle paths a bit.
Oh and I have to quickly talk about jungle objectives. Dawngate had 3 jungle buffs instead of 2 (not including dragon and baron, I'm talking about the ones you walk around with and transfer upon death) along with what they call "money pigs", a camp that is specifically made to grant a lot of gold upon it's kill.
And you have the wells. The wells are 4 jungle objectives that are almost constantly going to be competed for in some way. They sort of function like the the twisted treeline altars except that Dawngate's wells give passive gold instead.
Junglers in that game just had so much more going on to make a double jungle meta viable.
Also, we need to be discussing the biggest problems first and this first problem would be accommodating 2 new jungles on each side of the Summoners Rift map. Here's some of the problems:
And here is the biggest question of all: Is Summoners Rift, as it is now, too iconic to be changed? Is adding 2 whole new jungles simply unfeasible? if so, then would adding the jungle just to the top side of the map still be too much? and if you answer yes to both of these questions then we need to focus on trying to get an entirely new map instead of discussing changing the Rift.
Woook3r1 votesYeah Dawngate had some flaws and I do love discussing this kind of stuff and I am able to address those if needed but we are discussing the jungle so I need to not type up a report on something not-so-relevant haha.
You seem to be talking about the pathing in dawngate as if they were a problem because they are simple and lack some of the chances for opportunistic kills around corners and such. I want to challenge this.
With regard to pathing only, League is to Halo: Reach as Dawngate is to Halo 2 or 3.
The pathing in both League and Reach are very frustrating until you grasp the subtle effects that are at play and I think that the subtle effects corners bring to League uniquely can dominate entire games because of the snowballing that can occur around them.
While it IS nice to have subtle effects to work around in a game, its NOT as intuitive as SOME people would like. The kind of corners that both of these games have lend gameplay to have MANY more situations where one player gets an easy kill around a frustratingly long blind arc that another player needs to navigate. If you dont know to respect that specific arc, in and of itself, you will die alot along it. Specifically, I am thinking about the central curve in Powerhouse map for Halo Reach and the area between red buff and the river in league. The key idea around these areas is general riskiness under conditions where little information is available. And remember that Halo Reach was not well received. I dont want to put too fine a point on things, but I wonder if League has some inherent toxicity because of certain pathing mechanics, pass over wall skillshots, and low movespeed early game where snowballing is most dramatic.
The key issue is the sense of frustration and helplessness that new players may feel in certain areas of the map without knowing WHY. I for one, did not know that I needed to think about the map in the way I currently do and I still dont always understand in a detailed fashion WHY I would be at a disadvantage in this area or WHY I know that my enemy will die if he walks to me here, at this specific point. I only learned about this through pure pattern recognition (gut feeling that this fight has turned out badly many times "before" or so and so will loose if he just moves forward slightly). It took a lot of games before that lesson sank in.
Now lets mention what those blind corners force out of the League of Legends. I almost never had a sense that I was working on a level playing field when I was first learning this game. I was either wrecking or feeding. I think that can sometimes be why you see so much qq in this game. There are these unnoticed subtle effects that cause snowballing and even if those subtle effects don't directly effect the game after 20 minutes, the snowballing remains. Now, after 300 games or so, I finally understand what it actually is that puts me at a disadvantage and I dont get into those situations. However, I think that I am still using basic pattern recognition. I dont always understand why this or that is a bad fight to take, I just know it is because of experience.
I feel like I haven't fully fleshed out this idea. For the sake of brevity, I have just raised the challenge that pathing in league might be "toxic" to a set of the gaming population who expect to always be on fair footing with the enemy.
EDIT: I am editing this post at the moment. It does not flow from the segment about halo reach to my true point EDIT 2: Finished Editing.
Bonipherus1 votesOk I don't play halo so I'm telling you straight up that i probably only grasped about 30% of what you said at some points.
Yes, I was pointing out how the sharper corners of League's jungle can be used to both teams in offensive and defensive ways. And because the jungle is a dangerous place, bushes shouldnt be the only place to worry about looking. If they were then warding the jungle would basically just be like warding the river: stick it in that bush (yes there are optimized placements for wards in bushes but lets not get into the nitty-gritty on that point).
But when it comes to the jungle, you should quickly understand the added danger present. Specifically because of the lack of vision. That narrow hallway by red buff shuts off your vision to your side and you can only see so far out. Not to mention that you have to worry about anyone in the bush or behind one of the walls there.
The jungle brings with it that high risk/high reward scenario.
We can argue about the risk vs reward of the jungle often being unbalanced and thats an issue to address, definitely. We can't go over every scenario but here is what players should quickly discover after going into and dying in the jungle.
About the fair footing thing: Usually I hate the "well everyone can do it so therefore it's balanced" argument. But with some context I think I can argue it in this case. League isnt a game where you are always on even footing with the enemy. Yes, ideally you want to start the game on 100% even terms but, like chess, you want to accrue advantages over your opponent and then capitalize on them. The best way to win is to accumulate small advantages and and take advantage of those advantages. Your opponent should be attempting to gain their own sort of advantages and the teams should play around the different advantages that they and their opponents have gained during the game.
Teams that are behind can lay in wait and try to catch their opponents making a mistake to reduce, neutralize, or even reverse the advantages they created. Likewise, teams that are ahead can do the same to create an even greater advantage-gap between the teams. The blindspots create both a catch-up strategy as well as a snowball strategy.I think this aspect, at its core, comes down to experience, teamwork, and planning and/or effective on-the-fly shotcalling.
Riot has done a pretty good job of reducing the amount of snowballing that you'd often see in the game but we will always see snowballing happen because of how teams will look to capitalize on their advantages and to not "play the enemy's game". By "play the enemies game" I'm talking about things like nidalee getting fed and the team wanting to sit back and poke you down. To counter this you want to strategize and find a way to overcome that advantage. You could do this in many ways: buy a righteous glory to better engage on the team, buy mr to reduce the effectiveness of the spears, or (you guessed it) lie in wait and ambush the enemy team when they unsuspectingly come looking for you in the dark section of the map.
"There are these unnoticed subtle effects that cause snowballing and even if those subtle effects don't directly effect the game after 20 minutes, the snowballing remains. Now, after 300 games or so, I finally understand what it actually is that puts me at a disadvantage and I dont get into those situations. However, I think that I am still using basic pattern recognition. I dont always understand why this or that is a bad fight to take, I just know it is because of experience. "
Ok I believe this is a problem not about how quickly people learn the game but more with the lack of "baseline-experience" given to players. Everyone knows the turorial in League is a big joke; it teaches almost nothing other than how to use a skill, how to use the shop, to stay behind minions, and to kill towers and then the nexus. Proper tutorials should include many, many different sandbox-style tutorials and challenges to help teach players about things such as cs, vision, kiting, etc. instead of just throwing the player out to the wolves.
I don't know much about DOTA 2 but I do know there are many guides prevalent that the game links new players to and it has some sort of coaching option where someone can basically show you tons of stuff about the game and how to improve.
Also the lack of a replay feature doesn't allow players to really look back and recap on their games to learn what they did wrong or right.
I also think there can be more to be done to address the amount of snowballing in the game overall (maybe introduce better "comeback" strategies or items). Here is a link to an old post about the cost effectiveness vs slot effectiveness of items in League compared to DOTA 2 which I found insightful to the issue of snowballing through items. http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=4275036
These game play features, or lack thereof, may be the real culprit behind your complaint of snowballing in League of Legends.
Erockandroll1 votesA lot of people already mentioned the problem with Double Junglers. The one thing you could try is off Junglers. Like the Cinderhulk top laners who invade the enemy Jungle and pressure out the enemy while bringing extra Neutral objective control to the table.
Of coarse the Problem with Cinderhulk top lane was that Cinderhulk + Challenging smite was done because it was OP. Not because having an off Jungler was a good strat. But I should think that it could be a good strat. Even if people find taking smite in lane to be annoying.
Woook3r1 votesA lot of people already mentioned the problem with Double Junglers. The one thing you could try is off Junglers. Like the Cinderhulk top laners who invade the enemy Jungle and pressure out the enemy while bringing extra Neutral objective control to the table.
Of coarse the Problem with Cinderhulk top lane was that Cinderhulk + Challenging smite was done because it was OP. Not because having an off Jungler was a good strat. But I should think that it could be a good strat. Even if people find taking smite in lane to be annoying.
Lets talk about counter jg. Its like the binary knapsack problem. You want to get the most counter jg in but you have to take camps in chunks rather than as like a stream. After one camp, you might have a ton of room in your knapsack, but not enough for even one more camp. Dawngate has those passive gold gen regions. Seems to not have that problem
Nekusen1 votesfunny thing, back in season 2, riot wanted to eliminate junglers and make the jungle something lanners did when they could roam or were being pushed hard