A Hostile Environment: Why the new jungle has diversity issues (and how to fix them)

Okay, so aside from the (justified) response to the Veigartastrophe, I think it's possible to discuss some other issues, before they get even worse.

Beginning of the season, you reworked the jungle. You reworked a lot of junglers. You reworked Jungling items. You didn't rework Jungling masteries (because masteries are a whole 'nother boat). (and by masteries, I mean the whopping two. jungling masteries.)

Net result: one, maybe two, real types of junglers thriving. 4, maybe 5 junglers tops. The rest are "contenders" at best, ignored at worst. Best they can really hope for is a longshot.

The root cause of the new Jungle issues is what I call a hostile environment. That's what happens when you create an environment where everything gets harder for everyone. Picture if you will, a room slowly filling with water and with an escape at the top. Obviously if you can swim, you don't see a problem. If you can't swim, you're literally going to die. Technically this is a hostile environment because everyone, including the swimmers, is being "hurt." It just so happens that the swimmers are more easily able to adapt to the situation. In game terms, however, in any multiplayer environment, the athletes or gamers can actually make the environment more hostile, and in the process, they benefit from shrinking the pool of competition or even just making the game harder for the players involved, which gives them a slight edge over players who did not expect the change.

For a more literal example, go back and look at the performance of the 2011 Dallas Mavericks versus the Miami Heat. The Mavericks applied a two-part strategy against the opposing team:

1. Apply a full court press. This means that they were aggressively defending the ball as soon as it entered the hands of the opponent, forcing that player to spend a lot more energy getting to mid-court, giving them less time to shoot and less chance of a rebound.
2. Calmly and casually stroll out to mid court when you get the ball back. Take your time and relax.

Those things seem at first to be polar opposites in strategy but they work very effectively to one goal: To exhaust all players on the court.

If you've ever done exercise at a gym, the first person you spoke to probably warned you never to take breaks during your exercise routines. It turns out that your body has many features that allow it to conserve energy. If you do exercise, take a break, and do more exercise, you get exhausted faster, because your body can't conserve energy the way it expects.

So, if you want both teams to become exhausted, you create a situation where players are getting active, and then relaxing, and then getting active, and then relaxing...

And it turned out that the Mavericks outperformed the Miami Heat in those games by quite a bit - you can even see the devastating effects of the strategy by just looking at the 4th quarter scores. LeBron James had almost nothing to show in the fourth quarter and was the butt of quite a few jokes at his expense.

In that situation, one team literally obtained an advantage over the other, simply by virtue of initiating the hostile environment. It's that powerful.

That's enough of example time. Back to League. The new Jungle, is absolutely, without a doubt, a hostile environment. You tried to make the Jungle harsher for all players in the hopes that it would inspire diversity. But it turns out, this did the opposite. That's actually the normal response. Every hostile environment always lowers the diversity of everywhere it is applied. We can, however, fix that.

Firstly, you want to make sure that every Jungler can fulfill most of the roles that a Jungler is expected to fulfill. a) take advantage of the jungle as an alternative to a lane so that your team uses all of the gold routes available to its maximum potential. (i.e. farm the jungle, make sure you can do it) b) gank lanes. c) provide vision. d) deny enemy vision. e) secure objectives.

Ideally no jungler should fail at any of those roles, and every jungler should have one or two of those roles that they are "very good" or "awesome" at. We don't want one champion to be the best at more than one of those at the same time.

You chose to create 4 jungle swords: one for farming one for ganking one for dueling (?) one for counterjungling (?)

And it turns out that the one for farming was so good (read: desperately needed) that it had to be nerfed over and over. You basically had to beat everyone over the head with the stalker knife before they used it.

So let's rework these.

Instead of focusing on roles, let's just make 4 awesome swords that do all of the things you'd want, but in unequal measures.

Sword 1: smite aoe stun when farming minions and some self heal. Sounds familiar. Slight boost to gold when smite killing dragon or baron. this sword is a bit selfish and greedy, but presents nice and unique rewards if you let it deliver.

Sword 2: Smite grants bonus gold when smiting monsters, also Smite slows enemy champions. Each time you do, you gain a smite trap charge. "use" the smite sword to place a trap down in a bush. It does no damage, but grants vision of enemies that step on it. these traps are stealthed. killing a champion with your smite grants double charges. stores up to 5. traps last 10 minutes. This version of the sword is a lot more aggressive with the smite, but grants your team defense against aggression by giving you vision of impending deathbush ambushes.

Sword 3: Smite heals when farming minions and grants an illegal totem ward charge. you can place illegal totems in bushes around the map. the first champion entering range of the ward gets feared for 1 second, then the ward disappears. stores up to 5 charges, gain a charge on smiting a large monster. gain double charges in the enemy jungle. illegal totems are visible and have 1 hp. this smite is a LOT more aggressive and gives some seriously strong incentives to invade the enemy jungle. how hilarious would it be to yo-yo the enemy jungler with fiddlesticks and a couple of those wards? put one in a bush, fear someone into that bush and with a ward behind you, you just ruin their ability to stop your counter jungling.

Sword 4: Smite debuffs enemy champions or large monsters and creates a pickpocket (or pirate) next to them that steals some of their gold (and damages them). killing the pickpocket before it expires after 4 seconds recoups half the gold stolen. gain bonus gold from smiting enemy champions in your jungle. gain bonus gold if the pickpocket or pirate kills the enemy champion or monster. the pickpocket or pirate is invincible in your jungle. Whee gold. This smite is a lot more passive but gives you the ability to choose whether you'll smite early or smite late, and rewards skilled players who learn to properly time it to get the most assistance out of the pirate/pickpocket but still letting it get the last hit in (before it vanishes).

Note that all 4 of these offer some unique thing that helps out in farming the jungle. Sometimes it's a stun, sometimes it's healing, sometimes it's reinforcements, sometimes it's gold. This allows players to choose a smite stick while remaining confident that they aren't shafting themselves by screwing up their early game. It also means that "better" junglers don't have the ability to forego the farming assistance of the farm stick in favor of the combat stick that puts all of its item points into combat utility. It also grants every champion the ability to choose which of the sticks they want for the game, instead of choosing the best match for the champion. against a jungler like amumu, that pickpocket or pirate won't help you out too much, but against nunu it's gold.

See, the way to fix Jungle Diversity issues is to make the early jungle game easier for all junglers. changes to the enchants really only help out junglers after the damage has already been done. You could, alternatively, take some of the smite bonuses and build them into the hunter's machete, since it's the first few camps that cause the most problems for nearly all junglers, and things would be a lot more healthy. You can think of this as a step toward that, if you need to.