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Passive gold generation

Ukon3··10 votes·22,509 views

Hi, my name’s Evan, I’m a three season Master’s player on the North American server who enjoys discussing game design as well as analytical writing I try to keep these brief but also provide enough explanation so that the idea can be presented to those of all skill rather than just those who are already acquainted with concepts or problems I will address.

Today’s Topic: **Passive Gold Generation **

a quick note before I start on this post, I want to define/clarify the relationship between gold and stats, as point 3 is based on this relation: Gold is stats, as everything that you purchase other than wards is a champion stat. the terms are almost interchangeable. Higher gold means you buy more items means you have more stats.

Continuing...

**Problem statements: **

  1. High passive gold generation makes earned gold leads comparatively less relevant. (%difference between 1200g and 1500g is less than the %difference of 1800g and 2100g. (22.2% and 15.4% respectively)

  2. Small to moderate CS leads do not feel at all impactful until they hit 50+. Playing a better lane phase than your opponent and leading them by 30~ cs feels as if it is completely inconsequential, similarly as a jungler, farm leads feel of little importance.

  3. Runes Reforged has significantly increased the gold value of inbuilt champion stats, rendering accrued gold leads less valuable. A reduction in passive gold generation would put more relative value into kills and CS advantages.

  4. Very fed players can be hitting full builds at as early as around 30~ minutes (depending on the cost of their itemization). As their lead becomes more and more standardized as they are not able to spend additional income earned by good play. (This is a much less relevant issue than the previous 3, but i feel is still worth mentioning.)

Exposition: If you get a kill and therefore 300 gold, this 300 gold means less as a percentage of total income when income is higher. This reduction to the relative value of kills renders superior play less influential to the game’s outcome, as your opponent is of a higher base efficacy regardless of how far behind they are put. The baseline efficacy of champions I feel is now too high. With damage runes providing so much value that you always have potential to be useful, even when you play lane very poorly, it very often feels like your play to put a player behind was a wasted effort and being the better player was inconsequential.

On the other hand, feeling like you have no money, ever, and one play cost you the next 20 minutes, is an absolutely miserable feeling, and having league be “winner take all” off of one or two plays while offering no comeback potential would not increase enjoyment of the game for anyone. Back in the day (season 5 I believe?) I very much agree with the need to increase passive gold gen, comebacks were scarce, items were expensive, and “win lane win game” because one player stomped lane was far too prevalent. However, I believe that this preseason offers an excellent time for this because of other comeback mechanics already introduced to the game. The new shut down bounty system is a good way to incentivize players not to totally abandon someone who lost lane, while providing a considerable bounty that can put that player back in the game. Additionally, over the past year or two, the price of the big-ticket items is down, with a 400 gold in the case of IE, and 200 gold down for Rabadons.

Intended outcomes:

  1. A higher emphasis on CS advantages, and the ability for general skill expression to be more effectively rewarded.

  2. More of an emphasis on playing around item spikes, as they will come less frequently, resulting in more defined windows of power that you must push your advantage.

  3. Roaming will incur more risk if they are unsuccessful, possibly resulting in an increased value of individual laning and a higher emphasis on the 1v1.

Possible unintended consequences and solutions to them:

  1. Champions that get less income will see a relative drop in power. This will mostly impact supports, (which arguably need a power down anyway, but we can save that for another post :P) and has the potential make more of an impact in competitive play where resources are allotted specifically, usually leaving the jungler low on income as well. If supports see too much of a decrease in power, the solution could be as simple as adding X additional gold generation to their item quest, be it GP10 or through each item’s respective income mechanic.

  2. Camping lanes becomes too strong. This one is another big possibility, where going after one player over and over becomes too effective a strategy, and that should really try to be avoided. Getting camped relentlessly is a very frustrating experience that ruins games for those on the receiving end. There’s a long list of ways to combat this all with upsides and downsides, but I think with the length of this post already I’ll address that another time, if it even turns out to be a problem at all.

  3. Early game and snowballing champions become too powerful: Higher %difference when it comes to advantages means those who thrive on an advantage (Hello Talon) will see their leads grow too effectively. This can be addressed on a case by case basis, be it in champion nerfs or early item spikes like serrated dirk (Hello again, Talon) being reduced in power. There are other possible changes in the vein of increasing minion value in both exp and gold so that those who roam to spread their advantage pay a higher opportunity cost, a reduction in map mobility for certain lanes or champions, and other such changes, but I’ll save those ideas for another time as this post is already quite long. They also might not even be necessary.

Conclusion and Summary

High passive gold generation renders better play less valuable. With the introduction of higher baseline efficacy, new comeback mechanics, and the recent general agreement of the community and developers to see more weight on the play of an individual rather than on team play, I believe this presents a perfect time to decrease passive gold generation.

As i always say on all my posts (if i remember) there's almost always something i forgot to include or just didn't consider while writing these out, or something that doesn't come to mind until later. If there's somewhere that you think needs more explanation, or something you think I've forgotten, please bring it up!

32 Comments

ModKnightsKemplar5 votes

There is a bit of a gap, imo, between "exposition" and "intended outcomes"

We voted to approve anyway, because the analysis here is excellent, but did you intend to propose specific changes? Or are you leaving it as a vague "there should be less gold"?

Ukon33 votes

On one side of the spectrum you have huge passive income where personal skill is unimportant and accrued leads are incidental. On the other side, you have no passive income and a single kill or cs advantage is all but immutably determinate of the outcome. Between those two i think there's an ideal ratio where skill and superior play is consequential without being determinate. I believe the current value of gold gen is significantly higher than this ideal.

It's one of those things i really don't know exactly how to go about finding what's optimal numerically. But I had a thought i thought was of value that would be able to be discussed without a particular figure in mind. If pressed for a figure or a way to approach it. I'd likely start with a minimal reduction in GP10, maybe 5-10%, and work incrementally upwards until it starts to demonstrate some of the potential problems i mentioned.

all and all though I think any small reduction to GP10 would be a good thing, the figure is more than certainly up for debate.

ModKnightsKemplar3 votes

Another thing that comes to mind that you don't cover is how different skill levels affect this balance. I'll be honest, I'm not shocked to see someone claiming to be masters and wanting more income from farming. That makes sense.

But what about Iron 5?

If I'm pushed under tower as the worst player in League, and I am terrible at farming, less passive gold generation really hurts my experience. That's something that's important to consider if Riot is going to make changes to this system.

Ukon33 votes

this is definitely something i consider, in addition to the amount of coaching i do and exposure to lower levels i have, i also didnt start this game as a good player. I started league in preseason 4 and was promptly placed in bronze 5. season 4 i went from b5 to g2 and season 5 g2 to d5.

I feel like people tend to mistakenly think of good and bad players as different, static, beings, when the fact of the matter is its just people who have put more effort or had more time to dedicate to the game. Having something that I sucked at gave me something to improve at. League saw its greatest growth in seasons 3 and 4, and those were times where league was a much more punishing game. I know exactly what it's like to be the literal lowest rank and worst player in the game, and it's really not that too distant a memory. Being a terrible farmer didn't make me want to quit the game on the spot cause it was too hard, the trend of growth league saw during those seasons supports the point that most other people didnt either. Also i really don't think it hurts your experience, cause if you're iron 4, you're playing against other iron 4 players, who are going to be similarly lower skill and have the same problems. I've never once heard the complaint from Gold players who have low income in the mid game because they quite know how to play the map to maximize resources and tend to aram say their experience is hurt. The lack of income isnt perceived because the other players have the same lack of income. Iron players with 40cs @10 will be playing against other guys with 40cs @ 10.

I think what's generally painful to hear for people for some reason is that the intricacies of the game don't matter much at all to the lower ranks because they aren't exploited or even known about. thats why winrate distributions in bronze and silver is so narrow, with no champions getting above 52%, while in platinum and diamond you start seeing 58 and above. I never once thought about passive gold gen when i was a lower level player. things like baron control and map rotations and resources allocation weren't words that crossed my mind and my experience wasnt worsened by it because i didn't know what i didn't know.

ModKnightsKemplar2 votes

I suppose that's true. But having less gold for all of them at every point in the game will make a difference on its own. That will change how powerful the neutral objectives and minions are relative to the champions, for instance.

Linna Excel5 votes

I completely disagree!

Well, if riot were to take gold, items, and leveling out of the game I might agree to that, but this thread isn't about that, is it? IMO the game would be better if more gold was shifted to passive gen.

Reasons!!!

  1. First and foremost, it would make the game less snowbally. If there was less active gold to be had, teams would be closer in terms of power level. That means comebacks are easier, early losses are less painful, and it would feel less painful to the player/team that is behind. Dying once in laning phase costing you the lane and even the game is pretty bad in a team sport where most players have limited impact over the other lanes early on.
  2. Teams that are ahead and snowballing would have less motivation to drag the game out. By keeping the other team closer to them in terms of power, farming kills and dragging the game out both has less of an advantage for you, but it also gives them more time to make a comeback. Because there's more passive gold generated, that means the team that is ahead really wants to make the full use of their advantage ASAP.
  3. People would have to play better, longer. If you get a full item ahead of the other guy, the game starts becoming a lot easier for you. The other team starts losing their ability to respond just because you are up on power level and stats on them. The reason why win percentages start to even out around 50% the later the game goes is because as the other team slowly starts catching up in terms of gold and XP, the team that was ahead starts losing their advantages and has to start actually playing again.
  4. Chasing kills becomes less important. Don't get me wrong, a lot of people play to satisfy their own egos, but the more work and the less reward there is to get from getting another 5 kills, hopefully a lot of people will stop paying attention solely to KDA and more to the map.
  5. Hopefully we'd get less smurfs. Don't get me wrong, bad players are bad across the board but I think that moving gold into passive generation does 2 things to discourage smurfing. The first is one of the reasons why smurfing is so easy for good players is that not only are they better players, but they can translate that into an item advantage to make the game even easier because now they have a stat stick as well. This leads into the second thing: it'd make smurfing just a little bit more work. Without that stat stick, smurfs would have to spend more time in a game with lower level opponents because they don't have a stat stick to speed things up and hopefully that pacing difference might discourage some from doing it so much.
  6. People would be more encouraged to learn about macro play. Sure, micro play would start to suffer but if KDA and "winning lane" are less important than the bigger picture hopefully will start to take over. If there's less rewards in KDA and CS and more rewards in just winning, people will focus on the winning.
  7. It'd help riot to normalize the time and pacing of games. If the gold rate is more fixed, more in passive generation, then you should expect to see a narrow average game time as you don't have these 10K gold lead snowballs pulling the average down.
  8. As a support main, I still am kinda dependent on passive gold. Sure the gold items help, but I'm not CSing that much, I'm not getting so many kills, the only thing I have to look forward to is assists.
  9. A person feeding would be less behind because at least he'd have more gold. As a team game, this means that the weakest link on the team wouldn't be as weak as before.
  10. The best sports generally involve both teams getting an equal number of opportunities to score because past scores don't necessarily make future ones don't give you any advantage in trying to get future scores nor do they directly make it harder for the other team to score. Having your past scores make future points easier flies in the face of fair competition. Imagine if baseball allowed offensive players to get 1 more strike until being out per point ahead... that would mean a team that's up 2 runs now gets an out with 5 strikes, that's a massive advantage. What if football said teams that are ahead only need 5 yards to get a first down? That'd be crazy as it'd make it next to impossible for the other team to get a stop. What if basketball said that the team who is ahead gets 1 more point for each free throw or basket made? Comebacks and lead changes would be difficult.

If anything, gold and XP needs to be put more and more into passive generation in order to normalize the game and focus the players on objectives. Players do what you reward them to, so all rewards need to be tied towards actions that directly contribute to finishing out the game.

DayLight V1 votes

I agree with Linna Excel.

dim2a1 votes

One thing passive gold generation does, is that it encourages one to turn lead into objectives more so than lower gold generation would, thus trading lower tactical skill expression for higher strategic skill expression. And I personally find strategic part more interesting (though I'm not sure everyone would agree). Your item lead might not mean as much as it would with lower gold generation, but that means you want to try to turn that lead into dragon, or towers, or herald, etc., rather than continuing to farm your lane or lane opponent.

[{quoted}](name=DayLight V,realm=OCE,application-id=ELUpwER8,discussion-id=wEpgeLPR,comment-id=00070000,timestamp=2019-01-09T05:13:34.412+0000)

I agree with Linna Excel.

So do I.

glava2222 votes

while i can understand what you are trying to say, i think that you forgot some other points.

  1. Better play is not rewarded solely with a gold difference. If a player is winning their matchup for example in the mid lane and managed to take a tower, he didnt only get the gold for that tower, he also got the ability to ward the enemy jungle, the freedom to move through said jungle, priority when it comes to controlling the waves among other teams. Everybody has that one game where teams are even in gold but one team has a massive tempo advantage, which makes it almost impossible for the other team to do anything.

  2. Only proactive play is considered good play. I would say its as much of a skill to not get murdered in a horrible matchup as it is to win in an even matchup, and some scaling champions' lane basically is:"survive somehow till i accrue some gold from passive sources and whatever cs i can scrounge up". In this case getting the passive gold gen for a longer period of time without losing the game is one of the objectives. Basically your objective is to try to not lose tower for longer so you get more gold. Here you would say that they both get equal gold, and that is true. But that gold isn't worth the same on both champions.

  3. The impact of these changes on supports isnt well tought out. Its actually very hard to make this idea a power neutral thing for supports. You either cut the gold for everyone with no compensation, which would destroy supports since they get almost no gold now, or you would compensate supports with extra g10 on items which basically means you nerfed everyone but supports, which in the relative world of game balance means you severly buffed supports.

I didnt exactly go deep into details with this but these are just some quick toughts on this topic

Ukon31 votes

I'm gonna take these from last to first: 3. This point is wrong because nerfing gp10 disproportionately nerfs supports because gp10 is a higher percentage of their income. adding back the gp10 to the item that they lost disproportionately, not the total amount reduced across the board, makes the change a net neutral, not nerfing everything but support.

both points 1 and 2 are answered by a comment i recently posted and will expand on further in a little bit as an edit to this comment. https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-plus/wEpgeLPR-passive-gold-generation?comment=00030000000000000000000000000001

glava2221 votes

{quoted}

I'm gonna take these from last to first: 3. This point is wrong because nerfing gp10 disproportionately nerfs supports because gp10 is a higher percentage of their income. adding back the gp10 to the item that they lost disproportionately, not the total amount reduced across the board, makes the change a net neutral, not nerfing everything but support.

both points 1 and 2 are answered by a comment i recently posted and will expand on further in a little bit as an edit to this comment. https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-plus/wEpgeLPR-passive-gold-generation?comment=00030000000000000000000000000001

wait, are you talking about gold per 10 items or ambient gold?

Ukon31 votes

ambient gold reduction across the board and adding back some of that to support items to compensate for a change that would disproportionately affect them to a net neutral in terms of their power.

glava2221 votes

{quoted}

ambient gold reduction across the board and adding back some of that to support items to compensate for a change that would disproportionately affect them to a net neutral in terms of their power.

and by net neutral you mean slightly weaker than before, as everyone else?

PandaNator432 votes

enjoys discussing game design

me too!

A good design principle is to make the most fun way to play also the optimal way to play. When weighing different solutions, its good to keep this in mind. What is the most "fun" in LoL is subjective.

I'm not sure what changes you have in mind, but you touch on the idea of laning. The Barricade changes coming in preseason are another way to reward "skill in laning phase" with minimal change to gold income systems (the bulkward changes are brand new gold income source, so there is some change). Just thought it was worth noting :)

Ukon31 votes

This one got quite lengthy, apologies for that. In writing it i felt a necessity to talk at length due to how much a change to such a core mechanic would create. Also i kept thinking of new things as i wrote it, so I'm sure there's some disjointed statements in there that lack explanation or come across as rambling. please discuss and let me know where something needs clarification.

ModKnightsKemplar1 votes

Approved!

ModThe Djinn1 votes

I'll be honest: I feel this would make the highest levels of play even more dramatic (where a few hundred gold IS a really meaningful difference), extend the power of lane bullies, weaken characters with rough early games and, most importantly, harm the experience of supports and players who are not the best at farming. I'm not sure the benefits proposed here are worth the cost, as this would undoubtedly require a huge amount of core-level changes across the cast to compensate for power-wise.

Ukon31 votes

Most of that I'd say is fair, as i agreed and addressed several of those worries in my own post. To address the additional worries:

harm the experience of supports and players who are not the best at farming.

For supports, if they are where they should be at the moment, it's as simple as tacking extra gold generation onto their support item. For players who aren't the best at farming... well... that's kind of the point imo. If you aren't good at farming, you should get better at farming! The crutch of GP10 for players who lack a certain skill is a punishment for those who have put the time in to be good at last hitting. The intended outcome of reducing gp10 is to help differentiate the great from the good.

extend the power of lane bullies, weaken characters with rough early games

I personally think league could benefit from less homogenization in terms of scaling, but that's another topic for another time. With the high diversity in setups you are able to go from Runes reforged in addition to the new options for stat bonuses i don't think the lane bullies will really see that huge an increase in power. If you're in a really heavy poke lane you could run double resistances, second wind, and d shield. I think forcing scaling champs into investing into surviving the early game when faced with an oppressive laner would actually be of benefit. If someone god greedy with their items and setups and got punished early game that's an example of meaningful choices, which is something that the devs have been trying to create for a long time. The relative standardization of income in league makes your setups less important, as you'll hit mid/late game no matter what. I have my doubts it would happen, but if it really does get too out of hand with early game champs, i generally think it's an easy fix, maybe some additional mana or hp regen for struggling late gamers, or a decrease in power/increase in cost of the component item spikes that lane bullies buy.

The degree of polarization this change creates would be proportional to the income reduced. So if things were as polarized as you envision I'd think that it should be increased slightly until it hit that sweet spot between the positives and skill expression it encourages while mitigating the negative aspects to an extent. I think our discrepancy comes from the fact i didnt cite an actual figure. My post was meant to bring up the idea that there are many upsides to this change, and the downsides are things that already have mechanics mitigating them on live. A kind of "lets see if a reduction of X wouldn't bring more positive than negatives and go from there" with a case for why the positives are so desirable now. I think there does exist an ideal reduction of X that creates a much better game, what that ideal number is is something we'd have to find out together.

ModThe Djinn3 votes

Alright! I'm actually home and can dig into this more.

For players who aren't the best at farming... well... that's kind of the point imo. If you aren't good at farming, you should get better at farming! The crutch of GP10 for players who lack a certain skill is a punishment for those who have put the time in to be good at last hitting. The intended outcome of reducing gp10 is to help differentiate the great from the good.

So, from a perspective of raw mastery, this makes sense. There are actually a lot of solid reasons to not inject mastery into every element of a game though. For example -- we could make baseball bases move around, which would add complex prediction analysis into the relatively simple "run from point A to point B" part of the game, or we could introduce a noise generator into chess to really weed out those who are bad at focusing. For more practical (and less silly) examples, we could put reload quicktime events into all FPS games so that reloading becomes a skill test, and you get less ammo in your clip (and a further disadvantage on top of being a comparatively worse player) if you fail to match it, or giving you bonus damage if you shoot in a particular pattern over a target but reducing your damage if you can't. We don't, though, because at some point a game has enough of a skill differential in it, and we're just stacking the deck by adding more punishing mechanics. That player who hasn't mastered the game enough to shoot in the pattern than grants bonus damage is already behind the player who can, and probably shouldn't be penalized more for that failure by also eating another penalty.

League has a TON of these skill tests already, and I feel like all this does is further increase the learning curve, make the game less accessible (and longer at lower levels as players struggle to get items), and accelerate the "win-more" effect by heightening skill differences or poor match-ups.

To me, the gold income in League provides a base level playing field that says "even if behind, I have SOME income without risking my neck, and, if we can hold on long enough, I may be able to equalize this in the late-game." I consider that a good thing, as being ahead already has snowballing advantages in League -- so much so that Riot has been looking to cut methods of snowballing for some time. League is also a game with a ton of areas for skill expression already: just in lane we have resource management, trading, minion management, warding, pushing vs. roaming, taking advantage of back timing, last-hitting, denying through trade threat -- that's a ton of places where a skilled player has an edge, and I'm not sure I see a good argument to also give them a further numerical edge on top of all of these advantages (and the numerical edge they already have).

The balance is also already heavily skewed in favor of minion gold and taking action -- a minion wave is worth 105 gold, with every third wave being worth 165 minimum, for a net value of 375 gold every 90 seconds. In this time you'll have passively generated only 183.6 gold, meaning that objective-based incoming (discounting kills, Scuttle Crab, and objectives, all of which favor skilled play that can reliably secure these) is already worth more than double passive play.

In effect, if you net +1 minion on your opponent each laning phase, you're about 15-20% ahead of them in terms of minion value. With the passive gold figured in, you're about 9 -12% ahead of them. In a stat-based game a 10% advantage is actually pretty big, and should be more than enough for a skilled player to take advantage of.

In short, a lot of this posts feels to me that it effectively says "I feel like my game mastery isn't as useful as I feel it should be," and that's fine -- I simply don't think that the income system is the place to add that, and would instead prefer explorations that could put a team ahead through map control or other methods without furthering the more-difficult-to-pull-back-against stat difference between players. This sort of system -- to me -- would actually demonstrate mastery better, because it would be non-stat-based advantages that a skilled team would have to play around to secure that much-desired stat-based advantage, and the reward would be more tools to do that, rather than just a monetary advantage outright.

Ukon31 votes

I really couldn't possibly disagree more. But I'll always say exactly why i feel that way, point by point, so lets get into it.

The comparisons you give are gimmicks like adding noise to chess or making reloading a mini-game. Farming has been an integral skill in league since the games inception and anecdotally i have never once heard of someone's desire to make it less important. I do quite a lot of coaching, and while most of the people i work with are gold-diamond, I frequently work with people in silver. Last hitting isn't something they struggle with, for silver I mostly see 60-70 at the 10 minute mark, which isnt terrible by any means. It's not like dota where last hitting is tedious, requires serious focus and practice and it feels like a huge chore to get the mechanics of it down.

just in lane we have resource management, trading, minion management, warding, pushing vs. roaming, taking advantage of back timing, last-hitting, denying through trade threat -- that's a ton of places where a skilled player has an edge, and I'm not sure I see a good argument to also give them a further numerical edge on top of all of these advantages

This is where you lose me. Everything you mentioned exists because of it's ability to maximize farm. de-incentivizing farm makes all of those skills, which account for i would say without hyperbole 95% of what skill is in league of legends between bronze 5 and diamond 5. Trading and harassment is something done less with the intention of setting up a kill and more to do with forcing people to trade their health for cs, or their mana for cs. in addition to setting up a gank or slowpush into a dive, wave management exists to freeze out the enemy laner to deny cs, or slowpush into the enemy tower while playing ahead of the wave such that the enemy cant trade into your wave in fear of being chunked and dove and as a result loses 2-3 waves in the process. pushing vs roaming isn't a thing because pushing creates the roam window, it's not an either or, its a chronological ordering. back timings exist mostly such that you don't miss cs, etc, etc, etc.

that's a ton of places where a skilled player has an edge

I don't think you understand that these skills are skills because farm is important to the game, not in addition to it. If this was HotS, these skills don't exist, because farm doesn't matter. you don't care about harassment and forcing your enemy out of lane, you don't care about trading a melee minion for 2 autos onto the enemy laner. Laning prowess does not exist without farm being important, because laning is farming and creating leads from it. Jungling revolves around farming too. I'm a big fan of champions that rely on a single skillshot to make the gank work, I've been an Elise, nidalee, lee, jarvan and vi player (not exclusively those, just some of my favorites) ever since i stopped maining adc in season 6. One of the most imporatnt things you learn in playing these champs is the idea that you throw out those skills when the enemy is going for the cannon minion, cause they always greed for the caddy. Things like that no longer exists with farm being less and less relevant.

the balance is also already heavily skewed in favor of minion gold and taking action -- a minion wave is worth 105 gold, with every third wave being worth 165 minimum, for a net value of 375 gold every 90 seconds. In this time you'll have passively generated only 183.6 gold, meaning that objective-based incoming (discounting kills, Scuttle Crab, and objectives, all of which favor skilled play that can reliably secure these) is already worth more than double passive play.

passive income as a percentage of total income isn't a valid metric of weighing the value of taking action unless you think the game should be played as literally going afk at your tower. What i mean by this is that it doesnt matter what % of your income is passive, you should be actively playing the game and interacting with it to try to gain an advantage... i dont think anyone would argue against that.

In effect, if you net +1 minion on your opponent each laning phase, you're about 15-20% ahead of them in terms of minion value. With the passive gold figured in, you're about 9 -12% ahead of them. In a stat-based game a 10% advantage is actually pretty big, and should be more than enough for a skilled player to take advantage of.

Most of the back and forth here isn't going to be changed by any figure either of us bring up. I'm sure we play very different games and that influences our respective standpoints. I think my response to knightskemplar sums it up well and to add to end of the first paragraph:

On one side of the spectrum you have huge passive income where personal skill is unimportant and accrued leads are incidental. On the other side, you have no passive income and a single kill or cs advantage is all but immutably determinate of the outcome. Between those two i think there's an ideal ratio where skill and superior play is consequential without being determinate. I believe the current value of gold gen is significantly higher than this ideal.

I think this reduction of X would have a % negative yield for the losing players that is a small fraction of the positive % yield for the better players. In other words, the better player gets to have a 50% better experience playing league while the losing player has maybe a 5%. That's what i think is attainable.

ModThe Djinn2 votes

{quoted}This is where you lose me. Everything you mentioned exists because of it's ability to maximize farm.

Precisely. In the current environment farm is already important enough that we have tons of skills that have developed around securing as much of it as possible. These complex games are played for that 10-12% numerical advantage because of how important that edge is. I haven't really seen a good argument that further widening that gap would do anything more than making games decided far sooner.

passive income as a percentage of total income isn't a valid metric of weighing the value of taking action unless you think the game should be played as literally going afk at your tower. What i mean by this is that it doesnt matter what % of your income is passive, you should be actively playing the game and interacting with it to try to gain an advantage... i dont think anyone would argue against that.

Passive income as a percentage of total income is important though, because it shows how much value there already IS in maximizing your action-based income. It also shows that the system is fairly skewed towards favoring the better-skilled player, who can get ahead by a meaningful percentage of total gold simply through even the denial of just one melee minion per wave. I know that we could sharpen this, but I honestly cannot say I've seen an especially good argument for it, especially when it comes at the cost of making players who are already behind simply fall further behind with no real recourse, as players who are ahead can usually leverage that to deny their opponents more income. We're basically exacerbating the effect at this point.

I think this reduction of X would have a % negative yield for the losing players that is a small fraction of the positive % yield for the better players. In other words, the better player gets to have a 50% better experience playing league while the losing player has maybe a 5%. That's what i think is attainable.

These numbers seem fairly arbitrary, frankly. I'm not sure how we can say being further ahead for the same gameplay feels great to the winning player without also saying being further behind for the same gameplay feels pretty shitty for the losing player.

Ukon31 votes

Precisely. In the current environment farm is already important enough that we have tons of skills that have developed around securing as much of it as possible. These complex games are played for that 10-12% numerical advantage because of how important that edge is. I haven't really seen a good argument that further widening that gap would do anything more than making games decided far sooner.

To allow the better player to more easily exert influence onto the game. I don't know what level you personally play at, but in higher levels it very, very often feels as thought the smaller advantages; a 30 cs lead, a level or two on the opponent, taking your tower, etc. feel inconsequential. Frequently does it feel as though being a measurably better player does not precipitate greater influence on the game's outcome. This is a concept that does not exist in lower levels, I would say below diamond 5. I want to make clear i am absolutely not saying that lower levels are irrelevant or don't matter. But as someone with experience in them all and someone who goes over replays with these levels of players several times a week, i see laners that are like 6-0 and end up just losing straight up 1v1s to a 1-5 player. I see that almost every single game in the lower tiers. What im trying to say is that this minutely larger influence that gp10 reduction brings is verifiably irrelevant to lower levels of play because leads that are orders of magnitude larger than what this would create are thrown in droves every single game. This is not something that will affect anyone who plays below mid diamond, but in my view and from my experience, it will significantly increase the quality of gameplay at and above that level.

These numbers seem fairly arbitrary, frankly. I'm not sure how we can say being further ahead for the same gameplay feels great to the winning player without also saying being further behind for the same gameplay feels pretty shitty for the losing player.

Of course they are, they are supposed to demonstrate a concept, not be actual figures.

Think of it this way:

1st scenario, High gp10, but with no comeback mechanics (bounties, catch up exp, etc)

winning player: "it doesnt really matter that i got ahead in lane, fuck" losing player: "it doesnt really matter than i got behind in lane, yay"

2nd scenario: low gp10, no comeback mechanics

winning player: "I stomped this guy, games over" losing player: "I'm stuck in a game thats already over XD"

3rd scenario: medium-low gp10, lots of comeback mechanics

winning player: "I won lane, feels good, now lets go use my lead while this guy catches up" losing player: "my stupid ass jungler fed this guy doubles so i lost but w/e he's worth 800 gold now"

What I'm trying to demonstrate here is that there exists an ideal where both winning feels good and losing doesn't feel that bad. the further you get towards one extreme, the more heavily the positive feedback loop of a bad experience exists. in the first scenario, it still feels generally bad to lose and get killed, but the lack of punishment dulls the pain. Being better and having it not matter is extremely frustrating, as i'm sure we all know.

in scenario 2. It's a rush for the winning player, but too punishing for the losing player,

in s3, It feels quite good for the winning player, and really not that bad for the losing player. That's the ideal i'm talking about. Are you saying that this ideal doesn't exist? or that the current gp10 creates this ideal.

I think i speak more from experience that the differentiation of laning skill isn't translated to mid game as much as it should be, and, again, i am not trying to be dismissive or disparaging, but i think this is something you can come to appreciate only if you have experienced it for yourself. This inconsequentiality (which isn't a word but I'm going to pretend it is) of an incrementally accumulated advantage being maintained is something that simply does not exist at lower levels of play.

I also want to clarify that i don't believe this out of some sense of elitism, but rather have come to this conclusion from excessive exposure to every level of play.

ModThe Djinn2 votes

{quoted}To allow the better player to more easily exert influence onto the game. I don't know what level you personally play at, but in higher levels it very, very often feels as thought the smaller advantages; a 30 cs lead, a level or two on the opponent, taking your tower, etc. feel inconsequential.

This seems puzzling to me, as from pro games I've seen this sort of small advantage is enormous and even down in the MMRs where I play I find myself able to take advantage of a difference of 30 CS (which is at MINIMUM about a 400 gold difference, and at most over 600). I'd argue that if someone can't take advantage of a level spike AND a 400+ gold advantage, they're not actually much better than their opponent or -- and this IS a skill that has value -- their opponent is good at playing from behind.

But as someone with experience in them all and someone who goes over replays with these levels of players several times a week, i see laners that are like 6-0 and end up just losing straight up 1v1s to a 1-5 player. I see that almost every single game in the lower tiers.

I haven't seen this much myself, either in games I've spectated or games I've played. Both of these are anecdotal, of course, but I'd argue that if a 6-0 player is losing to a 1-5 player than the 6-0 player may have just messed up, or picked a fight into a bad match-up when they should be using that power elsewhere on the map.

winning player: "I won lane, feels good, now lets go use my lead while this guy catches up" losing player: "my stupid ass jungler fed this guy doubles so i lost but w/e he's worth 800 gold now"

I've actually never encountered the latter -- in fact, I'd argue this feel pretty damn bad, because there's a ton of value, sure, but you can't really DO anything about it without coordinating to take down that higher player. This is severely punishing for lower MMR teams that lack that coordination, especially since one of your goals seems to be to make a 6-0 player reliably win against a 1-5 player.

Are you saying that this ideal doesn't exist? or that the current gp10 creates this ideal.

I think that the current gp/10 does a pretty good job at this, yes.

This inconsequentiality (which isn't a word but I'm going to pretend it is) of an incrementally accumulated advantage being maintained is something that simply does not exist at lower levels of play.

I really find this hard to believe. A 1k gold lead in, say, pro play can be significant, and that's just 200 gold per person. I may not play at Masters personally, but I really struggle with the idea that the best players in the world can't capitalize on small advantages better than significantly worse players -- unless the reason behind that is that players are better at playing from behind as well, in which case I think it comes down to the fact that numerical power is simply worth less in an environment where everyone knows how to play around it best.

Ukon31 votes

This seems puzzling to me

indeed it is, as you do not have experience or proper exposure to what I'm referring to. With all due respect, everything else you say in here is just "well i think this because..." and nothing substantial and at the very core is just a lack of understanding of the concept at hand.

examples like:

but I'd argue that if a 6-0 player is losing to a 1-5 player than the 6-0 player may have just messed up, or picked a fight into a bad match-up when they should be using that power elsewhere on the map.

Thats literally the exact point I'm making. Incremental leads don't matter when everyone is egregiously misplaying all the time.

I really struggle with the idea that the best players in the world can't capitalize on small advantages better than significantly worse players

It's not that it doesn't ever happen it's that a 100cs champion and a 135 cs champion walking into a skirmish produce almost identical effects on said skirmish due to the high inbuilt power champions in current league.

I could go on and on and on and on about what you aren't getting but it's something that would require hours upon hours of typing for something that if we were to do a survey of high level players, would be nigh unequivocally agreed upon. We can agree to disagree on this one based on differing experiences I think.

ModThe Djinn4 votes

{quoted}With all due respect, everything else you say in here is just "well i think this because..." and nothing substantial and at the very core is just a lack of understanding of the concept at hand.

I could go on and on and on and on about what you aren't getting but it's something that would require hours upon hours of typing

With all due respect -- and as someone with a bit of a background in game design -- this is probably the single most dismissive argument you could possibly make. It comes across very much as "you couldn't possibly understand," instead of attempting to provide any clarity on why a skilled player cannot leverage a small advantage (say, 200 hit points up on an opponent due to a Ruby Crystal, or 15 AD up due to an extra Longsword) to secure a larger one any better than a weaker player. It is at this point where I will respectfully disengage from the discussion, as it appears you do not believe I have the understanding needed to continue it and that is, ultimately, a stance I feel is highly detrimental to any productive discussion we could have.

Ukon31 votes

and you are correct. check out my most recent reply and lets focus on that as a continuing point. I tend to get mislead over text based discussion because of how easy it is to lose track of intentions given the time between each response. A favorite quote of mine is something along the lines of "if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it enough yourself." after the response above this one i thought "why can't i explain this easily when i'm as sure of it" and realized what we'd ended up on was not at all where my points started and as such my explanations were poor. I got caught up in the back and forth and confused myself of what my own argument was, my fault.

ModThe Djinn2 votes

{quoted}I got caught up in the back and forth and confused myself of what my own argument was, my fault.

No worries. It happens. Going forward, it would perhaps be good to lay out my experience here -- while I'm not a high-level player personally, I have a very solid foundational knowledge (including things that I know, but don't care enough to execute in-game because I mostly play for fun), and have a game design background that is solid enough I've interviewed at Riot a few times already. So while I may not agree with you, I do understand most of your points, and those I mention as puzzling me are -- legitimately -- places where my understanding and analyze are at odds with your statements, and so I seek to understand if I'm missing something or if this is something where your experience may not be as objective as you think -- or if the truth is a bit of both.

Ukon31 votes

i thought of a better way to explain what i mean:

Leads mean less because of the fact that champions are able to do their job even with large deficits. example: Kennen is a nasty lane bully, kennen should come out on top of the lane phase. the problem statement is that kennen isnt punished for losing lane because he will always be kennen. things like electrocute and high gp10 make it so his job is done regardless of his lane performance, not as a result of it. leads are less impactful because leads themselves don't open new opportunities. and that those who lose lane dont close many opportunities up for themselves as a result of very high base effectiveness. thats what im getting at here.

with high gp10 a good cs leads makes 5% more plays possible, while with lower gp10 that same lead creates 30% more opportunities.

ModThe Djinn3 votes

{quoted}Leads mean less because of the fact that champions are able to do their job even with large deficits.

To me, this is actually a feature -- invalidating another person's ability to contribute to a game leads to a game that is largely unfun. While I understand that this might be considered ideal at a higher MMR or maybe even at a pro level, about 90% of the playerbase is below Diamond, and League is primarily a game played for fun. An environment where a champion who is behind can fufill their role but not step outside of that influence on the game as much as one who is not behind seems like a decent state for a game to be in -- your tank will always be a half-functional tank, but may not be a damage threat or an invincible front-liner if they're behind.

example: Kennen is a nasty lane bully, kennen should come out on top of the lane phase. the problem statement is that kennen isnt punished for losing lane because he will always be kennen.

I'd argue the issue here is Kennen's design then, rather than a gold value. Amumu is always Amumu, for example, because that ultimate is a game-changer even when 3000 gold behind. Some champions simply have inherent value in their utility or the ease with which they apply powerful non-gold-reliant effects.

with high gp10 a good cs leads makes 5% more plays possible, while with lower gp10 that same lead creates 30% more opportunities.

I understand the principle you are going for -- the argument I have not seen is why this needs to increase, objectively. I haven't seen a good pitch for why current gameplay that gets you 5% ahead (to use these same numbers) should instead put you 30% ahead, which would result in gameplay that puts you 30% ahead now putting you more than 100% ahead, especially when it is a change that is very specifically targeted at high MMR players. If what you say is true and lower MMR players are more able to leverage advantages than higher level players, this seems like it would only worsen situations at lower MMRs -- where the majority of the playerbase is.

This is why I suggest looking for non-gold-based opportunities, which would have a greater effect on skilled players who could properly leverage them to lock in that advantage, but would not skew lower skill games as much. If the issue is that high-level players don't get enough of an advantage from the same micro-victories as a worse player, we need to find a system that rewards high-level players but doesn't exacerbate the situations at lower MMRs.

ThrowsTheBird1 votes

+1

Anything to make this game more competitive!

Nice write-up!

its gg ifaus1 votes

Why not make gold generation higher at lower ranks and less at higher ranks?

Ukon32 votes

because changing fundamentals of a game between skill levels is always a bad idea. you are essentially creating two different games at that point and that sort of disconnect is never a good thing.

It's akin to why nerfing yi in low elo and buffing him in high elo is a bad idea. Everyone should be playing the same game and improving at it rather than having levels of play be literally two different games.

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