How they should change the competition rule to create a more diverse champion selection environment

Hello everyone,

I must admit that English is my second language and I would be greatful if you could excuse my lackluster and messy writing.

I remember the first time I saw League of legends. It was an IEM katowitch final match and Moscow 5 was dominating the game with crazy three man dives performed by Gosu's roaming alistar and Diamondprox's leesin. I was so captivated by the game that each time I would get out of regiment during vacation, I would spend hours of my precious vacation time (Usually limited to 30~50 days during a 2 year mandatory sentence) sitting in the PC bang playing League.

It has been around three years since I first played League and I have managed to get to Plat on the Korean server as well as the NA server (Tarqunius for KOR, Gepden for NA pre- season if you're curious) My passion for the game has not ended and I enjoy the game very much. However my passion for watching the game has, unfortunately, diminished.

The problem I have is that there is little variety as far as champion selection goes on a competitive level. Although there are more than a hundred champions offered by riot, only a handful of picks are seen at the professional level. This makes each game almost indistinguishable from the other and therefore makes following each individual league game less entertaining. As each season progresses I find myself thinking, "Why bother following a season when all I'm going to see is the same champions picked over and over again?" The result is me watching only the important games like season final play offs, or the world series out of national/regional pride or whatever. Sometimes I don't even bother to do that.

Of course, I'm sure Riot does acknowledge this as a problem. As a solution they make minor changes to the champions, add new ones, tweaks the meta and so on and so forth. This solution does work in the macro sense. Season 2 competition champ selections are very different from season 4 competition. However this does not address the problem of seeing the same limited number of champs being selected every match within a season. The fact is that top-tier champs are top- tier champs and it would be impossible to perfectly balance a game of 100 different champions as to make all picks viable.

I am sure I am not the only person who feels this way about the Esports scene revolving around League and I have recently discussed some solutions with my fellow avid gamers who feel the same way as to make viewing league of legends more entertaining.

Solution

Introduce a rule that disallows the pick of a champion that a team has used in a previous game for 'X' games.

Example. 1. It is the world series final match between SkT and Fnatic. The duration of the rule is set for 2 matches

On the 1st match Faker picked Zed and expeke picked kassadin Therefore on the 2nd match and 3rd match skt cannot pick zed nor can fnatic pick Kassadin for the same duration.

Example 2. It is the qualifying round of 16 for the world series

1st day Alliance picked Xerath against C9. The duration is set for 1 match

Therefore Alliance cannot use Xerath for their match against the next day against LMQ .

Once implemented this would allow for more interesting picks as well as more interesting team compositions. The pro level picks and bans would be more complicated, strategic and therefore provide another depth for analysis so that casters have more to say. (And more interesting ofc)

I strongly urge Riot to take a look at this solution. Roll it out on minor competitions to test how it works out.