[Idea] More spectating features
I feel like there can be significant improvements made to the in-client spectating system. As is stands, the infrastructure is confined to a quarter of the home page screen of battle.net and only offers 5 currently-in-progress games. A recent change that I am grateful for is the inclusion of an exit function for the special event pages (such as the Harrowing). This goes a long way to address the grievance of not being able to access the spectating feature for long periods of time due to advertisements.
Now, some ideas for improvement:
Dynamic Refresh
As it stands, the infrastructure shows 5 higher-elo games (be it Ranked or the occasional ARAM/Custom) but does a poor job at filtering them based on time. For me, the games active right now are between 1 and 5 minutes in -- how I wish it were always this case! -- but the norm has been 10-15 minutes in when the game is on the fever pitch of completion by the time I'm loaded in. To alleviate this, a refresh button somewhere on the field to cycle out older games would do wonders.
Spectator load
While I, myself, enjoy looking at the pretty 100%'s strewn across the 10 players in the game I'm spectating, it typically takes a good deal more time for the game client to initialize and allow me to see the game. This is usually followed by a swarm of pings and world text as the game tries to catch me up -- I think this is the part that slows down the loading. What I would like is to see the players' portraits, but also my own load progress about the origin of the screen (where tips are displayed).
Expansive infrastructure
This is likely the most difficult to implement as well as, what I would assume to be, the most capable of damaging server stability; however, I (and many others) would be keen on a tabular lobby for exclusively spectating games beyond the 5 featured ones. This tab would be replete with filter options by elo, game type, game time, or even by champions used -- I love watching me some Malzahar games! What I propose to allow for this in the Adobe Air client is to replace the Journal of Justice tab (I know, it's blaspheme to suggest such a thing, but with text lore being dead -- more or less -- the active bar being used for it should be invested in something that will actually generate traffic).
In-game Spectator Chat
Allow people spectating to chat with other people spectating the same match. Adding the tag [Spec.] after their summoner name would differentiate it from [all] chat (if the spectators even have that feature active). Were I less aware of abuse cases, I'd suggest being able to issue pings to other spectators. Should a system like this be implemented, there would likely need to be a limit on the number of spectators per match (if such a limit isn't already in place).
While it is true that these changes may infringe upon the Twitch.tv audience, it does still lack the personal connection that many viewers have with streamers thanks to webcam and live chat. Since spectating does not focus on a single player, it is less in the mind of that player and less organized around a single role in the team. While it is wanton, it would be amazing if, in the future, players could spectate a game with shout-casters through the client -- with audio being fed to all spectators. Again, some of this could lead to instability on a rather shaky client, so I am very understanding with the lack of these things as is.
Imagine if, in season 5, you could watch worlds from the League client with Monte Cristo, Phreak, and all the others' voices still be transmitted to your skull!
