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You Can't Spell Reward Without Ward - A Brief Essay

RookPusher·11/22/2015, 6:11:35 PM·3 votes·399 views

For years, I played WoW. And because of my personality, I played the classes and builds that were crap. Or at least were crap at the time. To put a finer point on it – I took the builds and roles that the raids needed but did no damage.

If you played WoW, you are probably aware that they had meters for damage, and who the top 10 were in each fight. There were huge demands to take off trash so you knew who helped most when you wanted the kill against Boss X. You also might be familiar with a popular saying among raid leader – “you do zero DPS when you’re dead.” There were even healing meters. Who’s healing best? Who is doing the most to help me get the kill?

But during a time where we were fighting a particularly difficult boss they asked me (as a warlock) to take the debuff that made the boss do 20% less damage. On our 3rd attempt we ended up downing the boss we hadn’t before. Everyone was pumped. The DKP charts were pulled up, loot was distributed. Before that, our raid leader said “I just want to let everyone know, what because of that debuff, he prevented X damage”

As if we’d planted a person, someone said “I don’t know how you did that, but thanks brother.”

I don’t know how you did that…it’s shocking to me how many players will come out like a pundit on politics or spots and say “you have to do this, if you don’t you’re a newb” and then turn around and proclaim their absolute cluelessness on major issues. If I came out and showed you data on how one player prevented 15 deaths, you’d most likely be psyched. So why the hell isn’t this game doing more for the warding population?

If you’re diamond, you live in a bubble. You’re not out there with the masses encountering all manner of “mad scientist”-level experimentation. But if you’re bronze, you know all too well that 15 deaths one way or another is game changing. You also know that wards are scarce. Riot gave us all free wards. Look how many people use them in the B-leagues.

Many out here have proposed additional benefits; Wards should give you more gold; wards should have some adverse effect on enemies if they run through them, wards should apply a debuff that allows any kill after the fact to give the assist to the ward planter. I don’t know what the right answer is, but I can tell you, this League is creating its own monsters.

Why do people put so much investment into everyone’s KDA? Because most players are only going to skill-check another player on the data being shoved in their face. You have to go looking for the number of wards a player used, or how many towers they helped remove. And let’s be clear – towers and wards account for far more wins than your KDA does. I’ve never had a heart attack, but I have heard someone tell me, after chasing, getting ambushed, and then dying “Yeah but KDA lets you get gear so you can TAKE those towers.”

I get that the population here is young, but that has to be one of the least well thought out statements I’ve seen in game. The weird thing is, if you took 10 seconds to run a systems model on this, you’d realize that kills don’t get you items, gold does. And the ways to get gold are numerous. The ROI on CS is far higher than the ROI on jungle farming and chasing kills. So why don’t more plays watch the mini map, protect towers, and clean up CS? Because those numbers aren’t in your face.

It’s beyond me as to why Riot puts the KDA so far out in front of real data. Anyone looking to stroke their own ego is going to go and find those numbers. Why not provide real data that determines games? Haven’t we seen, in those games with a fed enemy that fails to close how your team eventually catches back up despite the kills-gap? It’s because gold matters, no kills.

The problem here is the history of the video game. From the first time someone was the king of their arcades Mortal Combat, the only thing that mattered was bravado. KDA is the continuation or that early alpha male syndrome, or what we’d probably now call “swag.” As nerdy as the video game communities’ origins may be, and as much as it still claims to be, no one ever thought they were king of the mountain because of the number of wards they planted. It was a real joke on the boards for a while that supports got carried. Anyone who supports without being forced to know that even with a skilled ADC you have to baby them. And skilled ADCs with no god complex are rare.

The tribunal, the LeaveBuster, the ribbons. They’re useless. We’ve seen that. If you want to destroy the monsters you’ve created, and more accurately you’ve inherited, you have to not only provide data, but reward the data put forth. Find real ways to change things: let towers and wards give a third currency used for rune pages and summoner icons. Have a Ctrl+6 version that looks like a Tower or Ward. Hell, let warders get new ward skins. Let tower numbers get your borders on your champ. Do something.

To be clear, I think Riot is the most responsive of all the gaming companies I’ve joined ranks with. Blizzards Customer Service team was an atrocity. I think it’s embarrassing that now, to prevent hemorrhaging subscriptions, they’re throwing player requests into the game from 5 or 6 years ago. It’s actually worse than continuing to ignore the players. I feel like asking them “So you knew this idea was good, you just ignored it?”

Conversely, Riot has made excellent changes since I started playing (Zyra’s debut). TeamBuilder is amazing. The champs/skins release time has gone up a lot and it’s great. Not making old skins so exclusive was brilliant, and currently, what they’ve done with the Gold Income/SightStone combination is absolutely the correct direction. I can’t say enough good things as much as I can be frustrated at times.

But I think the next frontier is the data. And make it count. The only way to get through to some of these people with 40 kills but who don’t group and scream toxicity at the “newbs” is to cut them out of the rewards loop. Ostensibly, they aren’t helping the team, so why are they getting just as much rewards as the others? Make the ribbons count. Make towers and wards count. Start cutting the gold from kills if necessary, just whatever you decide, make it take a chunk out of the population of jerks. It’s the pre-season, there’s no time like the present.

1 Comments

ModKnightsKemplar11/22/2015, 6:24:20 PM2 votes

Okay, firstly, you gotta learn the art of brevity, my friend. This post is quite the ramble.

Secondly, they are moving in that direction. You saw the posts about warding recently? Let's not pretend Riot doesn't analyze the data. They've got people who clearly care a lot about the data.

Thirdly, it makes you look ridiculous to say that the tribunal did nothing. It was revolutionary, and I do believe it helped. As a scientist, I gotta say, we don't necessarily have a good control group here, so it's hard to prove either way. BUT, that's why I'm saying that claim makes you look ridiculous.

Fourthly, KDA does matter. I agree that warding is important, and objectives should be claimed rather than chasing kills. This is all true. But **most **of that is folded into KDA. When you ward well, and you grab objectives, and you get gold, that leads to more kills and fewer deaths for your team. Every time. I say every time because I am not saying it leads to no deaths and tons of kills every time. I'm saying it moves the numbers in your favor.

So yes, there are players that care too much about it, and don't understand how to maximize returns on it. I don't see how Riot can fix that easily. Making gold come from placing wards is super backward. Getting vision should cost you something. Towers already give gold. If they gave more, we'd just see an increase in snowballing. That's not interesting or fun.

In conclusion, "whatever you decide" is not a good strategy to pose. For a post this long, you've said basically nothing. There is not a single good suggestion in your post about how to fix the problem. If there were, I suppose a post like this would make a big splash.