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Proposal: Drake Spawn Order should be Visible in Champ Select

NeverConvex··7 votes·986 views

Currently drake spawns throw some statistical noise into champ select. Since we don't see what drakes there'll be until they're the very next drake to spawn in game, there's no way to take them into consideration when choosing your team's comp.

If drake spawn order was still random but visible in champ select, drake spawns could be taken into consideration when drafting a comp:

  • 5 infernals/mountains, you say? Draft more damage / siege / neutral objective control / snowball.
  • ocean, ocean, ocean, eh? Soraka and junglers with dicey clears suddenly seem more attractive!
  • cloud, cloud, cloud? Cloud is stupid. (but seriously, maybe we now give some extra consideration to rotato-potato split-pushing comps, or we draft Mordekaiser because cloud drake's lonely and needs someone who really truly cares about her)

In addition to replacing one more source of 'luck' with strategy, displaying drake spawn order in champ select would also help to increase champ select diversity. Champ selections would now partially reflect randomized but known drake spawns, naturally generating more game-to-game variation.

Riot's professional casters regularly discuss while commenting the advantages and disadvantages of the different drakes for distinct comps and champions. Let us take advantage of that knowledge!

p.s. Cross-posted this at Reddit ( : https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/5xoy5m/proposal_drake_spawn_order_should_be_visible_in/ ), but I don't think it's likely to get much attention there. I think it's a really good idea though so I'm being mildly obnoxious and posting it here as well!

16 Comments

Variks the Loyal3 votes

Disagree.

The random aspect of the dragons is what adds strategy. How you adapt on the fly to what dragon is spawning is crucial, and opens up interesting decisions; do you want to contest the dragon, or will you trade it for something else? Is it a powerful dragon for the enemy, and if so, do you want to bait them overcommitting?

I like the way the dragons work currently.

NeverConvex1 votes

Some of this isn't lost with the change I pitched; you could still note when a powerful dragon is spawning for the enemy and try to bait them into going for it - it'd just be more likely now that your draft would make that dragon also powerful for your team. Whether you trade a drake for another objective's also still an important decision. Actually, I think active strategizing becomes all the more important for both of these kinds of decisions; if you know the drake order ahead of time, you can plan several drakes ahead. For example, you may doubt the other team cares about those two cloud drakes, and you know your team doesn't really turn on until late mid-game, so you plan your team's "moment" to bait them in to strike for when that juicy infernal drake spawns third, after you've lulled the enemy into a false sense of complacency by letting them easily take the first two clouds.

Having to react in-game to unexpected drake spawns would of course be lost. Is that really a desirable feature, though? If so, why don't we have more random events in game to which we have to react? It seems like drakes are the only part of LoL where this design choice - throwing random noise in mid-game and emphasizing how players react to it on-the-fly - has been emphasized.

CancerBasedGod1 votes

Random benefits is not a strategic element. How you adapt on the fly is not strategy. Trying to pull sick plays without thinking is not strategy. Blindly going into a match is not helping strategy.

Variks the Loyal1 votes

How you adapt on the fly is a part of strategy. It effects how you need to alter your overall strategy, and how well you can develop new strategies under a time constraint. It's not about pulling sick plays without thinking, it's about thinking quickly and adapting to the situation at hand.

CancerBasedGod1 votes

No it's not. Getting random boosts is not strategy. It's not like you calculated what random shit you'd get. Having your comps viability be affected by random elements is not strategy.

NeverConvex1 votes

I certainly agree that this is a kind of skill (it is exactly the kind of skill that forms of the heart of a game like Tetris!), but it's a kind of skill that LoL has generally deemphasized. Other RNG-driven events have actively been removed (e.g. random dodge probability used to be a thing) or were never present to begin with. Generally speaking LoL has focused on uncertainty created by playing against another human, not uncertainty created by a random number generator. It seems awfully inconsistent to deviate from that only for drake spawns, particularly when announcing them ahead of time would A) still require adapting to the drake spawn on-the-fly in champ select and B) would add considerably more strategic depth and game variety to gameplay.

CancerBasedGod1 votes

I'm pretty sure everyone wants it this way...

Well there are a few crazies who just hate change, but other than them.

Shuyin1781 votes

The problem though is that until the map starts to load (post champ-select) the 1st dragon isn't even decided yet by RNG.

NeverConvex1 votes

Yeah, but I'd think this should be easy to change. It's hard to imagine code sufficiently spaghetti that moving a pseudo-random number call from post-champ-select to pre-champ-select would be difficult.

Shuyin1781 votes

It's actually a lot harder to do than you think and far from being spaghetti in this case because it applies to every MOBA style game (honestly every PvP game in general). Nothing about any map starts up until after champ select finishes because that's when the match gets finalized. It's not like there are a million empty Summoner's Rifts just waiting for players to show up and start fighting with dragon spawns already set-up, the codes that controls SR will only start doing things after everything on the player's end is decided.

NeverConvex1 votes

I'm not seeing why you're convinced this is a major problem. Do you code much yourself? In well-organized, object-oriented code it's not hard to change a pseudo-random number call from later in the code to earlier in it.

Shuyin1781 votes

You're not understanding the key thing I'm telling you and I don't know how.

Until a match has been locked in, RNG elements are not locked in. With the "pseudo-random number call" you can make it the 1st spawn code that locks in a to-be-spawned creature, but you can't view which RNG dragon is chosen at champ select because the RNG element has not been decided yet.

I don't know how I can make that any easier to word for you to understand.

NeverConvex1 votes

I am aware that currently RNG rolls are not determined until a match begins. That's not a point of confusion or disagreement.

What I am saying is that - speaking as an experienced programmer - it should be very easy to change when RNG rolls are determined. There is no reason that it should be difficult to move certain RNG rolls from mid-match to pre-match, unless the code base is poorly organized.

I am as confused as you as to why we continue to be talking past one another. From my perspective, you seem to keep replying with "But that's not the way it is right now." when I say "Sure, but we can change that easily," and you don't seem to ever raise any reasons that the code base must be constructed to make moving the point of RNG determination a difficult change. That RNG rolls currently are not determined until a match begins has nothing to do with whether it would be easy or hard to change when RNG rolls are determined.

Leo10241 votes

no, the last thing we need is another reason for people to dodge

NeverConvex1 votes

This is an interesting point and I hadn't considered it. It could certainly become another reason people dodge.

Lord Malpercio1 votes

Proceeds to dodge until triple fire drake spawn

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