@Riot - What Are Your Thoughts on Teaching Basic Skills In-Game?

Hey Riot, can we talk about basic skills in League of Legends and how they are often go unlearned by so many players? I'll be brief.

I feel that too many players many it to Level 30, and more importantly Ranked play, without learning core skills.

So many players concerns I see here and in-game boil down to this. Come on, we've all had games where our team just couldn't function due to a lack of basic skills and play patterns.

• Top pushed to enemy turret and wondering why the jungler won't gank
• Jungler has no wards on key objectives and complains that buffs/dragon keep getting stolen
• AD Carry keeps focusing on engaging in a fight while the enemy has twice their CS and got a BF Sword on first back
• Mid doesn't keep river warded and doesn't ping when the assassin leaves to go bot lane
• Support times engage on enemy lane perfectly and their AD Carry doesn't follow up
• Junglers come to gank but laners totally reveal their presence

And much, much more.

I feel that this is extremely simple...in fact it's really just to be expected. Pretty much none of this is explained in the game. Unless the player really likes going through these forums, or the LoL subreddit, or whatever,they simply aren't going to figure a lot of the 'team-work' aspects out on their own.

---

I hereby propose a series of League of Legends practice scenarios that must be completed before a player is allowed to play Ranked queue. It's probably best to just place it on Summoner's Rift but only score the player for accomplishing the skills the test is checking for. Taking out the nexus will still cause you to fail if you didn't meet the objectives.

1. Farming - This one is easy. Begin a game, tell the player to go to a lane (sending a bot opponent to each lane) and give them to get a certain number of last-hits her minion wave. Increase the amount needed per wave. Killing the enemy doesn't matter, you lose if you do not get enough last hits in the allotted time.

2. Vision - Notice how the game never really tells you how to use wards? Let's fix that. Start a game and tell the player to grab yellow trinket. Tell them to place a ward and have a bot programmed to move through the river in it's path so the player can see them coming. Have the mini-map flash to draw attention to it and tell them to keep an eye on it. Score the player on being by their turret whenever the enemy "jungle" enters their lane. Consider an advanced version with bots coming from both sides of river mid lane and also score the player on how many wards they place.

3. Counter-Vision - Also never explained in-game. Make the player get red trinket and pink wards. Have bots place wards in typical places on the map. Score the player's ability to find and kill wards.

4. Jungle - This will be more of a longer scenario. Start the game and tell them to buy Machete. Direct them to a camp, probably Gromp or Krugs. Tell them to smite the enemy when it appears to introduce smite buffs (and how they help clear). Have them clear a couple camps and then buy an Trailblazer. Have them smite a camp to show off the buffed smite. Have them smite rapters so they can clear a ward placed bot bots in mid lane. Then try to gank. Have them swap to Chilling Smite and tell them to smite the enemy to make ganking easier. Then direct them to kill dragon to introduce dragon-buffs. Maybe cap it off having having bots in the lanes ping to request a gank (not too frequently of course) and score the player on going to that lane.

Consider some other tutorials for things like initiation, pushing creep waves into tower to try and deny farm/damage turret, have players moving between lanes so they realize they aren't stuck their until big team fights happen, etc. As long as every basic role is covered (AD Carry, Mage/Assassin, Support, Tank/Fighter, Jungling) then every player should start ranked with the basic skills they need to actually succeed. It won't fix everything, but when everyone has to prove a basic level of competency to even queue up then we should be able to reduce "elo hell" problems like a complete lack of vision, terrible farming, no idea how ganks work, etc.

Please let me know if we can make this happen Riot. I know it will take some work (a ton of work) but I really feel this will go a long way towards making the game better, healthier, and more fun for everyone.