What is the gameplay fantasy of support?

Ralanr·Mar 1, 2017·19 votes·1,959 views

Specifically your enchanter type support. The squishy white mage so to speak. What exactly is there gameplay fantasy?

Tanks: Becoming this unkillable and unstoppable force of nature that shakes the very earth with our footsteps.

Fighters: to be this rampant killing machine that can fight an army and come out on top.

Mages: UNLIMITED POWER!!!

Assassins: to slip in and out without anyone noticing your slit throat. To be so silent that not even your primal instincts will notice us as we come from behind.

Marksmen: MORE DAKKA!

Supports: I honestly don't know. Is it to guide their allies through thick and thin? To strategize a plan of attack? To be the glue that holds everything together?

Idk, and I would like to know what the fantasy is and what we and Riot can do to achieve that fantasy for supports like Lulu, Soraka, and other enchanters.

70 Comments

RookPusherMar 1, 201739 votes

It's the King Maker fantasy. It's why you see feared Campaign Managers in the history of politics. Or in GoT, it would be like Tywin Lannister. Maybe the Godfather.

You arrange things in such a capacity that everything works. You prevent people from doing things, you allow people to make plays they couldn't. You save them from plays they shouldnt. You're like an 1800's Ward Boss. The Gatekeeper. Without me, nothing is possible. With me, I can make the smallest rat into a mighty lion.

That's real power.

LostFr0stMar 1, 20172 votes

^This is pretty accurate to my picture of the role.

warpenguin555Mar 1, 20175 votes

This is a great example. Upvoted, permalinked, bookmarked

EvanThomasMar 2, 20172 votes

Zilean Love this guy. This is the one that truly does it for me. How about you guys?

It Hertz When IPMar 2, 20174 votes

Leona About as close to spoon-feeding your ADC kills as you can get without actually needing a spoon.

EvanThomasMar 2, 20172 votes

Do you use a fork? http://i.imgur.com/4GTJf6y.png

It Hertz When IPMar 2, 20172 votes

Sadly I don't have much free RP, so I'm using the PROJECT skin I got from that event a while back.

EvanThomasMar 3, 20171 votes

Project Leona's pretty cool. :3

Ariel the CruelMar 2, 20174 votes

Though I think Teridax68 covered it a bit better, This imagery defiantly gets the point across.

Support fantasy is to manipulate the game at a macro level; the other players are your knights and bishops (minions your pawns).

Instead the game is designed that 1 person isn't allowed to be awesome. So supports just become the team slave and pack mule.

QuannariMar 2, 20171 votes

I like the sound of "King Maker."

Teridax68Mar 1, 201710 votes

I think the fantasy of the support is to hold the power of life and death over everyone else, including your own teammates. At the press of a button, you can save a friend from getting killed, or doom an enemy, and after all that, the damage your team outputs flows from the plays you made to enable it. At the core of the support fantasy is control: ultimately, you get to define the flow of a fight, and use your teammates to fulfill whichever plan you had in mind for victory.

In practice, though, the big issue is that there's a big difference between the fantasy and the current reality: supports are treated as servants rather than commanders, and they're mostly expected to follow up on other people's plays, instead of truly being in control of fights. Many support kits are also implemented in a fairly boring way, such that saving allies often comes down to passive denial and rote ability spam, rather than clutch plays, and setting up kills and providing offensive power just aren't supported well at all by supports' current customization options. The sad thing is that even the most passive supports, like Janna or Soraka, could have the above fantasy, it's just that currently the support class is still in a very unsatisfying state, even if its individual constituents are among the best-designed champions in the game. The class needs another update that aims at significantly increasing their agency and shifting the spotlight a bit more onto them, so even if they're not the ones racking up kills, they should feel valued by everyone and themselves.

MatthewRT2Mar 2, 20172 votes

this is why a few LCS teams use the support as a second shot caller

Erractic EickMar 2, 20175 votes

There's an iPad and iPhone MOBA called Vainglory where each position is described on the champion select page. They renamed the support position "Captain," though, and added that they are the position that calls the shots, and the entire game culture is different because of that. I am AFRAID of the support in that game, because they will either be the reason I lose or the reason I win.

That is my support fantasy for League. To make my fear of the enemy support as great as my fear of any other enemy player.

RookPusherMar 2, 20172 votes

Amen. I've been saying a similar line for a bit now. There's always been some cognitive dissonance between the fact that the support role has been historically responsible for ward, and is still culturally, if not official responsible for warding/vision, and yet not the shot caller. Support players are going to excel at caring about others, and not their KDA better than other players because it's required for the role.

We're also problematic because we really only affect other players, and not the environment. We have little to no interaction with towers, minions, or traps that would allow us to control the fight.

You know there's a great scene in this last season of Game of Thrones where Jon Snow is explaining to Torman that he's dug tranches on their flanks, so Ramsey won't be able to hit them from their flanks as Stannis did. And I think of that scene every time we're defending our second tower in the mid lane from an assault because I'm throwing wards on our flanks to prevent side-attack.

Now, I've never once been given any credit for that, but it prevents a tremendous amount of things from happening. It's why we're valuable. It's just not a job that's been assigned any value in the current state of LoL. If we were allowed wards that also served as traps, you'd not only get a lot more credit for covering your flanks, but you'd be given an assist, and you could easily monazite it in a way you can't with wards (e.g. trapping the enemy champ yields X gold).

If I can be unprofessional for a second, it's hard not to feel like we're not going to get this because Riot doesn't care. These are obvious solutions to an obvious aspect of an obvious role. The support lobby has had to go to the mat season after season just to guarantee our effectiveness. I don't get why Riot doesn't either fix the role, or eliminate it.

Teridax68Mar 3, 20171 votes

{quoted}

Now, I've never once been given any credit for that, but it prevents a tremendous amount of things from happening. It's why we're valuable. It's just not a job that's been assigned any value in the current state of LoL. If we were allowed wards that also served as traps, you'd not only get a lot more credit for covering your flanks, but you'd be given an assist, and you could easily monazite it in a way you can't with wards (e.g. trapping the enemy champ yields X gold).

I don't know if wards themselves should be used as traps, but I completely agree, laying down traps would make perfect sense for support, especially since they spend so much time roaming to ward and counter-ward. To a larger extend, supports need a manner of denying enemies in a manner that feels more interesting, so having a trap-laying item that opened up opportunities for counter-attack, instead of, say, Teemo shrooms, could make supports' defensive capabilities feel more exciting overall for everyone involved.

{quoted}

If I can be unprofessional for a second, it's hard not to feel like we're not going to get this because Riot doesn't care. These are obvious solutions to an obvious aspect of an obvious role. The support lobby has had to go to the mat season after season just to guarantee our effectiveness. I don't get why Riot doesn't either fix the role, or eliminate it.

I think Riot does care, at least now, since they reached out to the playerbase a little while back for our opinions on how to improve support; I think the issue is that the devs themselves have been designing with the wrong fantasy, and still have a lot of bias to sort through before supports can ever be in a good place. Across the vast majority of video games, the support is essentially the gaming equivalent of the help, and has the team's burdens thrust upon them with often very little compensation, which is one of the reasons why the role is so consistently unpopular. Only seven years into the game is Riot finally considering the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the support would want to have as much gold as their teammates, as much freedom as their teammates, and as much recognition as their teammates, to say nothing about having their control fantasy actually enacted, which just goes to show the tremendous bias there is in the perception of supports, even among seasoned video game designers.

While Riot does care about supports, I think a big remaining issue is that Riot doesn't quite care enough, or at least doesn't fully realize how urgent it is for supports to start receiving some love. The main reason we have unpleasant systems like Autofill is directly tied to the extreme unpopularity of the support role relative to every other one in the game: if the distribution of role popularities were around even, or even just less extreme, there would be little to no major queuing issues across the vast majority of elo divisions, and players wouldn't have to be ushered into a role they're uncomfortable with just so that everyone can enjoy queue times under 20 minutes.

Blizzard has had similar issues with LFG in World of Warcraft, where tanks and supports could enter a dungeon near-instantly, while any DPS would sometimes have to wait in the tens of minutes before they could finally group up. The devs' answer was to basically stick a carrot onto the less popular roles, offering a satchel of goodies to anyone who queued in as a tank or support. I don't think giving supports extra out-of-game rewards is the way to go in League, but Riot should definitely be taking steps to make supporting itself feel truly amazing and special, rather than just "okay" or "not all that bad", which are terms I see used far too often to defend the current state of support on these boards.

PennsMar 1, 20178 votes

Supports: to play a troll pick and not even go bot lane, then create a circlejerk xd

Hello I am BirdMar 1, 20172 votes

You know you're opening a can of worms with this one.

RalanrMar 1, 20172 votes

Pretty sure he lives to do that.

PennsMar 1, 20172 votes

Hell yeah kappa

Troy242621Mar 1, 20174 votes

Dicking over enemies and buffing allies, to be honest.

AhristocatsMar 1, 20174 votes

thresh is my fantasy

i wish sona was as satisfying as him, you know, having impact

TyrekGoldenspearMar 1, 201719 votes

i wish sona was as satisfying as him, you know, having impact

Cough. Innuendos.

KnoyleMar 1, 20171 votes

If only she had healing or an ulti with hard cc.

AhristocatsMar 2, 20171 votes

Hahaha yeah, 130 hp healing is sure as good as a hook

OP asked what i wanted, i want something that i can see the impact, i can't see the impact of a low hp healing

the ulti hard cc is garbage since the width nerf it used to hit 4 people, it hit at best 2 now for 1.5 sec stun

KnoyleMar 2, 20171 votes

Sona has impact in a different way than thresh Is all I'm saying

AhristocatsMar 2, 20172 votes

it's the same problem all over again, invisible power, invisbile impact

thresh impact is very visible and satisfying

GorillaBearzMar 2, 20171 votes

then play thresh?

AhristocatsMar 2, 20171 votes

https://i.gyazo.com/d73ede03f7d815c69c95b33ce12c0057.png

GorillaBearzMar 2, 20171 votes

Sooooo what's the problem? xD

Into The AetherMar 1, 20174 votes

Blue deck, old school counterspell.

Enemy does a thing.

Lolnope.

Papa AndreiMar 2, 20171 votes

Reminds me of my Yu-Gi-Oh defense/trap decks.

Wanna play a super powerful monster? nah, Wanna do a strong attack? hit yourself fucker Wanna get rid of my cards? make you draw 10

Ariel the CruelMar 2, 20172 votes

I did the duel-network thing before they got shut down.

Decks included: Stall (final countdown, wave motion cannon, no monsters) Stall/burn (Self explanatory) Necroface mill (remove both decks from play, then play from my removed pile) Some 3-card monster that reflected all damage dealt to it. 1-shot that used an infinite life loop And reverse mill unlimited format (Jackpot 7, wrecked Exodia decks)

Not very strong compared to all the "meta" decks that won by turn 3 at the latest. But lots of fun to play, very off-kilter, and an absolute pain in the ass for opponents. . . . except the necroface. Since apparently every deck with a set group of cards (dragon, magacian, tyrant, etc) treats the banish pile like an extended hand.

zlumpyMar 1, 20173 votes

Old sona nailed it tbh. A little bit of poke if able to impact the lane, a survivability boost to lessen damage, sustain to offset poke heavy enemies, and a speed boof to provide a teamwide boost to teamplay and get around the map if playing well.

Tbh I don't think other people need to interact with the enchanter. Non of this window stuff. I just wanna be the puppet master directing my team via buffs and sustain.

ModAcademy KaynMar 2, 20173 votes

As Soraka and Co, that Guardian Angel feel.

As Braum and Co, an Unmovable Wall!

As Sion, FUCK YOU IM A SUPPORT

RalanrMar 2, 20173 votes

[{quoted}](name=Dr Mercy,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=xRc1rdJY,comment-id=000f,timestamp=2017-03-02T02:44:44.776+0000)

As Soraka and Co, that Guardian Angel feel.

As Braum and Co, an Unmovable Wall!

As Sion, FUCK YOU IM A SUPPORT

Sion : I AM BEST SUPPORT!

robotmasterMar 1, 20172 votes

Supports are the play makers. Are I don't need kills or gold to be the best I can be. The protectors and guards of the team and towers. We are the first to start a fight and first to die. We will stand anywhere for our team. Hope this helps.

EschetonMar 1, 20172 votes

Proper follow up and a gj or ty once in a while, probably.

Ariel the CruelMar 2, 20172 votes

While definitely a support fantasy (both in goal, and in never happening), I think the OP is asking on a larger scale than game-to-game.

RalanrMar 2, 20171 votes

I'm also asking for a possible solution to make supports better fulfill that fantasy. So far no results.

Ariel the CruelMar 2, 20172 votes

The biggest problem is that the game (SR) fundamentally only supports 4 champions, not 5. Before we can even begin to address the support class, we have to address problems with the role. Because as long as optimization means 1 person isn't allowed to be awesome, they will always turn into a pack mule. And if a class (support) is designed such that it can't directly impact the game, it will be either OP or forced into that "+1" slot.

I posted some thoughts a while back in a different topic: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/2JXl9efO-its-late-so-take-this-with-a-grain-of-salt?comment=000d0000

AptestMar 1, 20172 votes

I'll give you a hint:

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ82IV2LGrjEjmpKpFMkjBYRyLGEfAemcwMkHEn9po1xGgsjCOF

OurLestradeMar 1, 20172 votes

Mine has always been making people fear getting close to the ADC when I'm around, but then I like manly and cool warden types rather than pussy footed healing enchanter types that exist to star in porn, spam shield actives and die in mid lane montages.

If I fear the dubstep SAO assassins more than my ADC does because I'm squishy and immobile with a measly 300 health shield at the 40 minute mark, something is wrong.

Titanium70Mar 1, 20172 votes

Enchanter: I move my Team like figures on chessboard - sacrifice one to make another win the game.

That's what an enchanter does. He chooses the 1 or 2 champs he consideres the most valueable for a fight and than grants them additional strength and tries to keep them alive.

An Enchater might be the ONLY class that is allowed to NOT take care of an opponents healthbar. He is allowed to not care for any CS! This is a great fantasy and could be really fun to play...

Sadly League doesnt have any REAL enchanter - they're all busted APC-Hybrids (or Heal/Shield Bots) because Riot seems unable to balance something completely different.

Old Aura-Taric fullfilled this fanatsy quite good - although he basicly won fights by existing and not by good decisions. But I'd really appreciate something with similar powers but more game depths.

NO not Sona! Yes E and W seems like to be exactly what I want... if her Q and R would not consume like 75% of her powerbudget!!! (making her a busted APC-Hybrid!)

GhaelWindsMar 2, 20172 votes

Its the make the enemy as frustrated as possible fantasy.

LexLutheran87Mar 2, 20172 votes

Why I love support?

I make the tanks tankier, the fighters deadlier, I make the space for mages to be all powerful, I hold down targets for assassins and adcs to go ham on. I make good players great, and I make great players gods. Bad players...those I just try to make feed less.

I am the steroid/penicillin to pull my team through the fight, I make everything better, faster, stronger.

Bottom line, I live to set up others for success.

Erractic EickMar 2, 20172 votes

That is my support fantasy for League. To make my fear of the enemy support as great as my fear of any other enemy player.

PermabannedGarenMar 2, 20171 votes

{quoted}

Specifically your enchanter type support. The squishy white mage so to speak. What exactly is there gameplay fantasy?

Tanks: Becoming this unkillable and unstoppable force of nature that shakes the very earth with our footsteps.

Fighters: to be this rampant killing machine that can fight an army and come out on top.

Mages: UNLIMITED POWER!!!

Assassins: to slip in and out without anyone noticing your slit throat. To be so silent that not even your primal instincts will notice us as we come from behind.

Marksmen: MORE DAKKA!

Supports: I honestly don't know. Is it to guide their allies through thick and thin? To strategize a plan of attack? To be the glue that holds everything together?

Idk, and I would like to know what the fantasy is and what we and Riot can do to achieve that fantasy for supports like Lulu, Soraka, and other enchanters.

I'm sick and tired of this board's prejudice against skirmishers. You don't even give them a mention? Fuck you. >:C