Reworking the Twisted Treeline: Does a MOBA even need straight lanes?
So Riot has pretty much admitted they have given up on any other gamemode besides Summoners Rift. Dominion and TT are overflowing with bots, but who cares lol? But that's not the only reason TT is, and has not been, really popular apart from a really smale circle of diehard fans.
The main problem twisted Treeline has: it's pretty much Summoner's Rift's light, fat-free, low caloire version. Poor man's rift that offers nothing unique and engaging and all aspects you have in SR are here in a weak and tuned down way. Map design? Way more pirmitive. Jungle? Lol, you call that lump of open space a jungle?! Apart from the altars that give boring and unengaging stat buffs and a slightly changed boss-mob that gets ignored mostly anyways this map has absolutely nothing going for it.
Other than Dominion, that can at least bring up a completly different concept of how to play and how to win, TT offers nothing.
If you play the current TT you are pretty much wasting your time on a less engaging version of SR - but it doesn't have to be like that!
Fist of all, let's move away from this mode being SR-Light and desconstruct a MOBA to the most basic things: teams and a winning condition that mostly includes destroying the enemy main structure in whatever way possible while controlling one champion and working in a team.
Multiple straight lanes? Towers? Minions? All secondary.
And now, let's keep thinking about the thematic setting of the map, which is a scary ass forest on the Shadow Isles, corrputed by undead magic gone wild. Question: Do scary Horror-Forests have nice paved roads with zero visibility issues? I THINK NOT. If anything, I imagine rather claustrophobic setting, narrow, winding paths leading through a darkness housing unimaginable horrors.
If we add those two things together we can think of something that would be way more fitting: The enitre map is a jungle, only a narrow path winding its way through the darkness, connecting the main objectives of each team. To reduce vision you don't only have resort to brush and walls, but also smoke walls and other things that simply prevent vision to the other side (I personally imagine rifts with green spooky energy mist to shroud certain areas in mystery).
On top of that you could add neutral areas that are directly harmful to stand in: hostile jungle mobs that attack you once you come too close. Areas so contaminated with dark magic it drains your HP. Areas that slow. Areas that silence. Simply throw everything that sounds dangerous into this map to create a fearful place, hostile to all living things.
Of course going the direct way to the enemy base would be faster than using the long winding path(s), but then you would have to venture through rather dangerous areas that might as well get yourself killed. That's the feeling this map is supposed to convey IMO.
I wonder... are there any dedicated TT fans on the boards? I'm curious to hear your opinion to all of this.
