Ranked Aram. How to favor skill over luck?

Kai Guy··5 votes·6,099 views

Largest issue with Aram ranked que would be the impact bad rolls generate for a team as well as the popularity of Aram only accounts.

Here are ways to address this to enable skill to be a reliable impact on the game mode.

  1. Run it as a draft from a RNG pool. Provide each team an opportunity to grab high value picks and build a comp at game start. The exact # of options should be low enough to make the game Randomized. But high enough that no matter what players can have a pick. I personaly would not have a ban phase or bans allowed as that results in a higher # of minimum champions required to draft from. Probably grab 2 champions from a pool and 2 champion from the Free week rotation per player, so 20 options total.

  2. Require a minimum of unlocked champion, I would say 50 should function as a reasonable number as its about 33% of the games options. Its a large time investment but it would not require Years of grinding for F2P players. I have not sat down and done the math for best and worse case on it.

This should remove enough Luck to make it a viable game mode. Optimization would involve changing either the min required # of unlocked champions or free week champions its pulling from to prevent folks trying to game it with a Aram exclusive account.

Not very complicated to achieve. No idea if there are enough players who desire a competitive ARAM.

If I made any errors in logic please alert me and show what I goofed. Disclaimer the values I used, 20 for available options and 50 for required owned champions are arbitrary value and largely was used for illustration rather then me viewing it as the best value so if your disagreement is on that please keep in mind I am not remotely attached to it as a value and expect there is a better option that could be tracked down, I just did not wish to do the exact math to find the exact value needed to remove ARAM only accounts from becoming an impact.

11 Comments

Absolut Garen5 votes

If Ranked TFT exists, then why does any of this matter?

Kai Guy1 votes

Do you need me to walk you over the differences in gameplay between TFT and ARAM?

Are you unable to consider the context where some Aram Players may enjoy a competitive Que to show off their flexibility and skill?

Absolut Garen3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Kai Guy,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=nxoNYO78,comment-id=00030000,timestamp=2019-07-27T18:02:53.166+0000)

Do you need me to walk you over the differences in gameplay between TFT and ARAM?

Are you unable to consider the context where some Aram Players may enjoy a competitive Que to show off their flexibility and skill?

ARAM is kind of a troll mode. It actually has the word "Random" in the name of the game itself. (It's much more honest than "Teamfight Tactics".)

There is a lot of fundamental RNG built in, which emphasizes the "flexibility and skill" involved. if there was LESS RNG in ARAM, then considerably less "flexibility and skill" would be required.

However, if a game like TFT can have a Ranked system, then certainly ARAM can have one, with no changes.

Personally, I don't think that either game should have a Ranked system. But Ranked ARAM (as ARAM is currently played), would say a lot more about individual ability than Ranked TFT. I would say that ARAM proficiency would tend to indicate the breadth of a player's general expertise, over specialization in a handful of champions. Adaptability and creativity.

Probably a high minimum of unlocked champions should be required. Or, better, ARAM should just be played from an unlocked champion pool. You might find yourself on a champion that you've never played before at all...

PermaJinxed2 votes

Ranked shouldn't include free week champions( unless as said, ALL champions are unlocked).

I feel role based might be an issue... The amount of adcs and control/burst mage queues would far outweigh pretty much everything else.

I play aram pretty exclusively, those two types are rarely left in the reroll pool up top (occasionally Lucian or such is)... It's pretty much non-Sona supports and tanks/fighters... Juggernauts get grabbed pretty fast too.

Eybdoog1 votes

Yes I do. Seems pretty legit

Kai Guy1 votes

I shoulda made a poll to check if folks wanted Aram ranked. Woulda been a easy way to track interest.

Minarde1 votes

Ranked ARAM's divisive. Some people want the competitive opportunity. Others want ARAM to remain limited to a casual environment. Still others think randomness is incompatible with ranked (yet ranked TFT exists now).

Anyway, I don't think "bad rolls" have to be addressed, considering ARAM balance changes are already attempting to address individual champion imbalances. Bad teamcomp rolls are a thing, but TFT has ranked despite bad rolls having significant impact there. Nevertheless, there's a number of potential options that have been suggested over the years for addressing ARAM accounts and/or making RNG feel better. Off the top of my head,

In terms of champ roster,

  1. Minimum number of required champs.
  2. All champs enabled.
  3. Shared roster. (Used in One for All. A champ is in the pool and available if anyone owns it.)
  4. Seasonal roster. (Similar to what TFT's aiming for.)
  5. Personal blacklist/whitelist.

As for champ select,

  1. Shared bench draft. (i.e. OP's RNG pool drafting.)
  2. Current style, with bench and guaranteed rerolls.
  3. Random Arena-style draft. (Same as regular Draft, but each player only has access to three random champs of similar power.)
  4. Role-based draft. (Players draft or get assigned a role and only roll champs within that role.)
  5. Straight-up regular Draft.

Mix and match roster and champ select ideas as appropriate. There's pros and cons for every option, so it comes down to whatever's most agreeable to the most people.

Kai Guy2 votes

Logical responses on the boards? Thank you! [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

The one I put together seems like it would be fairly easy to implement and have good reliability. The core is I want something that players would feel is Fair. Each team has equal opportunity to showcase skill. Hence why I have champions RNG but also drafted by each team. Player perception needs to be accounted for if your looking to have it be a popular que. A pregame lobby I feel is inherently abusable for a ranked ARAM que so there are some extra steps needed to smooth that out.

How Fair the game is viewed impacts participation so that's one of the cores of my though process. Regular Aram def has plenty of opportunities for improvement as well.

If some thing others suggest is more viable I am 100% down to give credit and edit my opening post to reflect it. End of the day, what I hope to do is show that its possible to make a viable Que here.

What do you think the best implementation for Ranked Aram would look like?

Minarde1 votes

Personally, I think enabling a seasonal roster, along with requiring a minimum number of owned champs from that roster, would be the best idea so far. Basically, Riot would announce the available champs for each season of Ranked ARAM, and every player would have access to that roster and only that roster. In addition to the other ranked queue requirements (e.g. level 30), players would also have to own a certain percentage of that season's roster.

Similar to the common "all champs enabled" suggestion, this implementation standardizes the roster to address imbalances in personal champ pools (e.g. ARAM accounts). However, it avoids negatively impacting Riot's champ revenue as much by a) only making some, rather than all, champs free and b) periodically rotating the roster to encourage/require players to continue buying champs. Furthermore, limiting the roster lowers the barrier to entry while rotating the roster provides needed champ variety. As a side-benefit, there's potential monetization opportunities for Riot by offering themed seasons and bundles (e.g. "Look stylish in Ranked ARAM next season by buying this bundle of champ skins!" or "Next Ranked ARAM is ! Show your support with these summoner icons and poros!")

I'm split on champ select though. Shared bench drafting better mitigates randomness, but it heavily favors players with earlier picks. Players lower in pick order could find it unpleasant to comb through the leftovers. Additionally, that form of drafting encourages meta knowledge (i.e. which champs are currently good in ARAM) at the expense of personal expression (e.g. who am I good at?), which could be good or bad. On the other hand, random Arena-style drafting smooths out pick order, yet there's potential frustration when players "roll low." The drafting skill test here is more universal (i.e. how to build a teamcomp), which, again, could be good or bad.

Tailypo1 votes

Ranked ARAM would require constant rebalancing. Changes made for the sake of SR do not translate equally to ARAM. RIOT almost certainly doesn't want to mess with this.

Kai Guy3 votes

Aram already has individual balancing changes thou.

More from Gameplay

More by Kai Guy