Game mode suggestion: Ten Minutes
One thing I feel the game sorely needs is a way to practice the early game without being locked into a full game.
There are several reasons I feel it's necessary: 1)Allow experimentation. Having to potentially play out 30-40 minutes of losing game is a strong disincentive to trying out something new (be it a new champion, position, build, etc.). This is doubly so because it liable to incur all toxicity from teammates if anything goes wrong and you tried anything unorthodox. This is partly understandable, since nobody wants someone to goof off and then have to suffer a slow defeat for thirty minutes as a result (One thing I notice is how god-awful teams are at actually winning the game once they're ahead. They screw around and try to take out every structure, kill baron, etc. and slowly grind down instead of just smashing through to the nexus... and this also leads to many of the comebacks in lower play levels... but that's a topic for another time) 2)Allow practice. If you're trying to practice your early game, having to sit through the rest of the game is detrimental, as you only get to actually practice 1/3 of the time you play the game, and the rest is going through the motions. Currently there's no real way to do this. The inability to iterate repeatedly dramatically hinders the ability to practice (I'd argue that mid/late game suffer from this as well, but it's harder to fix them this way as they are heavily dependent on early game) 3)Allow for squeezing games in. As is, I personally don't want to play a game if I can't set aside the next hour (sure, it probably won't take that long, but if I need to leave in 45 minutes I don't want to have to quit if it becomes a 50-minute slog).
Obviously, normals sort of allow for #1, but I feel I addressed the inadequacy of them in that regard already. Custom games could help as well, but to actually improve requires evenly matched teams, so someone doesn't just stomp all over their opponent. #3 is somewhat helped by ARAM, but of course this is it's own beast and is basically a way to screw around, as opposed to play in a competitive fashion (as you often end up with weird or horribly uneven compositions to where the game is almost over at champ select).
As to the essential structure of the mode, I envision it as follows: 1)The game is played on Summoner's Rift with no modifications besides the 10-minute duration 2)The game is called at 10 minutes. 3)The game is decided by whichever team won the most lanes. 4)Winning a lane is defined as taking more turrets in that lane than the other team. 5)If the teams are even on turrets, the tie can be broken by having killed obtained a 500-gold lead in creep kills (roughly 25 creeps or so? Intent is to reflect that this would generally be considered a distinct lead in lane in an actual game) 6)If the teams are still tied, the lane is a draw. 7)If the teams are tied after tallying lanes, the game is decided by total team gold, with a minimum lead of 1000 gold to win. 8)If the teams are still tied, the game is a draw.
My goal here is to make the rules easy to understand while also cutting off ways of gaming the system to win in a fashion that would not work well in an actual game - winning in this mode should be roughly equivalent to taking a strong lead in an actual game. I want it to encourage ganking, jungling, etc. just like usual. The reason tiebreakers have required margins is that I don't feel a team should be penalized for being one creep behind after ten minutes - I'd call that them being evenly matched for midgame rather than anyone having an edge. I considered having a way to make the game end early, but decided this too-strongly encourages cheese strategies such as 5-man mid that are easily countered, or that would give the enemy team a decisive lead mid-game while technically winning this mode. That defeats the purpose.
To have enough people for matchmaking to work for this, it more or less requires it be an actual queue... which of course means convincing Riot. To this end, feedback and comments are sought. I want this to be an enjoyable game mode that would also serve as a way to practice skills needed for actual play.
