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Games are Shorter and It's Not a Good Thing

TheUnrepentant·5/30/2018, 1:49:25 AM·7 votes·2,946 views

I don't object to games being shorter per say, but I think it's really just a symptom of the current state of League. Not the meta, but the state of the community. Between the last two days I've played 12 games, 5 today and 7 yesterday. The longest of these games has been 32:07, the shortest has been 15:12. The average is 21:39 today and 22:12 yesterday.

And none of this sounds terribly bad, until you get into what is making games this short. It feels like snowballs are rolling harder, comebacks are harder to mount, and the community is not just more willing to surrender but quicker to give up. In those 12 matches I've gone 5:7, so I'm not complaining about the overall results of the matchmaker (I have no problem believing that I could go win two in a row). It just feels like games are decided on one play and if you lost that play you're done. You might as well surrender at 12, except you have to wait. This is true of both my wins and losses. Either one team or the other is roflstomping before Baron is even spawned. 

I don't know what the actual cause of this is. Idk if it's changes to scuttle, which changed the jungle meta into an early game must win fight. Maybe it's changes to mana regen that make losing trades hurt more (causing either eventual deaths due to staying to farm closer to oom, or basing and thus losing lane priority). Maybe it's changes to kill gold which has made it easier to start the snowball. I don't know. 

What I do know is that it is sucking the fun out of my wins and my losses. Losses feel inevitable and wins feels too cheap. Fighting once the snowball is established either feels ridiculously easy or entirely unwinnable based on which side of the snowball you've landed on. I think this is having an affecting the community's attitude. Players seem to be recognizing that the stomp has been decided and that the result is inevitable. If you don't surrender they're likely to afk, int, or turn toxic. I'd love to know if the number of reports for player behavior are up, down, or unchanged.

I won't pretend to know the solution, but please someone change something, this is rapidly losing its ability to entertain.

TL;DR Games are short because snowballz and it ain't fun.

3 Comments

PLS GÓD NÓ5/30/2018, 9:03:45 AM2 votes

Most games are now "Snowball or die". It promotes alot of griefing and giving up because people automatically call gg if they die once or twice in the laning phase. You;d think after someone died once or twice during the laning pahse and was down 30 cs, they wouldnt pick a fight with the fed enemy laner, GUESS AGAIN.

Netorare5/30/2018, 9:57:01 AM1 votes

The duration of the games depends on the players... If they feel like winning that's what they are going to do, if they feel that they lost they will ff...

Speeedy5/30/2018, 2:42:36 PM1 votes

well when mid game is coming at like 10-12 minutes into the game, that's the reason games are so short. I was amazed yesterday that it was 13 min into the game I had item 1001 item 3086 item 3031 item 2031 with 1/0/1 and 100-115 cs, I forget how many towers. I should not be spiking that hard that early as a crit ADC. The ADC changes are good but still doesn't address the fundamental flaw of the role. If you want ADC to be late game monsters you need to butcher their early game. Which is fine but you only did it to half the ADC roster of all the crit users, they missed the other half which will become "meta" now.