Toxicity would be helped a lot by reducing match length and lowering power disparity from item leads

Strawberrycocoa·May 26, 2018·1 votes·1,500 views

I've come to very strongly feel that toxicity would be helped significantly by Riot just completely reworking their match length and the power disparity that gold leads give. If matches were shorter so you didn't lose such a big chunk of time to a match, there'd be a lot less irritation and tension built up in the player. If gold leads didn't power spike people so high they can just nuke you with barely any effort, if you could have the match just be consistently equivalent and fair so that positioning and teamwork made the difference and not farming items or bloodsport kills, I think we'd see a LOT less frustration and anger in this game's playerbase.

16 Comments

SlythionMay 26, 20185 votes

by reducing match length and lowering power disparity from item leads

those two things actively go against each other.

Also, shorter games and one-sided games go hand-in-hand

StrawberrycocoaMay 26, 20182 votes

I don't see how they contradict each other. I guess my thinking on it is to go for more like what Overwatch does: two teams, objective focused win conditions rather than gladiator arena killfests, 15-ish minutes timeframe.

SlythionMay 26, 20181 votes

Alright well, as you described, Overwatch is a completely different game. Less characters with more maps and completely different objectives and ultimate charge rates.

League is a game centered around 3 things and 3 things alone:

Experience
Items (gold)
Objectives (and buffs)

There are 3 ways, generally speaking, to shorten game length on a macro level (aka, ignoring specific champion balance):

Make experience scale faster what this causes is whichever team get an early lead will accrue experience at an exponentially faster rate than the opposing team. If you look at the recent jungle changes, you'll see that this is quite a touchy means to fidget with and generally ends poorly for game health.
Increase gold income Now there are different ways to do this, but those don't really matter. What this does is a few things. 1, it generally fucks with balancing because it lowers the window of time early game champions can impact the game which means a hypercarry meta will emerge. This usally means 2 hypercarries, think Azir/Kog, followed by an enchanter support and 2 tanks. It's generally not fun, but I'll get back to that later.
Decrease # of Objectives (not possible unless you change the actual map) / Decrease strength of objectives I'll touch upon the 2nd part because the 1st part isn't feasible. Decreasing the strength of objectives (i.e: turret health, baron/dragon damage and health, increasing inhib time respawn, etc) is generally how Riot alters game length on a macro level. There have been a lot of baron/dragon/turret changes in the past couple years, most of which have actually decreased the game length if you ask most people (I could be wrong on that though).

The problem with this method is that objectives are inherently tied to gold. Whichever team gets those towers first gets an income of gold which translates to items which means more objectives. It snowballs which means there will always be an item disparity.

Now there's a secret 4th option that occurred to me while writing this, and this is probably what you're thinking about. Lowering the stats of items and making champions more kit-reliant.

This wouldn't work because now you've effectively robbed the winning team of their lead. The game simply can't end in a short amount of time if the teams are constantly at similar power levels. This also fucks with balancing as a whole, that level 10 toplaner now has a vastly higher power level than that lv.7 adc, despite them having similar items. Changing items like this would require a top to bottom change for every champion in the game.

Also note: I hope this didn't seem brash or rude, it's just 2:30am and I just stayed up a lil longer to explain this. Imma go pass out now :^)

StrawberrycocoaMay 26, 20182 votes

Not rude at all, this is a very well thought-out response. Brings up some good points, especially on point 4. You got a point, it would just make it like Heroes of the Storm, where EXP is the new gold.

Zane ZephyrMay 26, 20182 votes

that's not how this works.

That's not how any of this works.

HayesMay 26, 20182 votes

how about this, make players have at least 5-10 games in NORMAL with a champ before being allowed to play in Ranked. Do you know how many "first time" players who have no idea how their champ works i've had to play with?

StrawberrycocoaMay 26, 20181 votes

I always assume that's a bullshit excuse for just not doing well, to be honest.

PinkajMay 26, 20181 votes

Imo most of the toxicity I see is from players flaming others with less skill. People just need to STOP BEING UNSPORTSMANLIKE. Later they wonder why they got a 14-day ban for flaming someone who's new to ADC or smth.

ı Sona ıMay 26, 20181 votes

I have played many games where the enemy started very strongly ahead and it seemed impossible. They had more kills, more gold, more turrets, and wards everywhere.

What they didn't have, however, was as much confidence in my own ability and in my teammates as they had in theirs and their own.

https://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/2789791569/237648988?tab=overview

In this game I was on blue side. At around 14 minutes the enemy team took the lead for almost 30 minutes. But we remained calm, cool, focused, and collected. In this time we began to make really strategic decisions in order to keep each other from dieing and to help each other farm. This way we were able to stop the gold gap from spreading any further and helped our adc and each other farm up and secure enough kills to mount an aggressive counter attack to win the game!

It isn't just gold that wins the game, it's also encouraging each other not to give up and trying your hardest to the very end. Sometimes when you are behind the only way to get back is to completely altar the strategy you use! But most importantly, you have believe you can win before you can really make it happen, even in the hardest and seemingly hopeless times!

StrawberrycocoaMay 26, 20181 votes

I mean that's all well and good, but it doesn't really mean anything at all unless the enemy team makes a mistake. I've never really felt like I have any options, anything I can proactively DO, when playing from behind. Playing from behind is just a matter of cowering in base and hoping they slip up somewhere. I hate it.

ı Sona ıMay 26, 20181 votes

{quoted}

I mean that's all well and good, but it doesn't really mean anything at all unless the enemy team makes a mistake. I've never really felt like I have any options, anything I can proactively DO, when playing from behind. Playing from behind is just a matter of cowering in base and hoping they slip up somewhere. I hate it.

I understand the feeling of wishing you could start the game super ahead for an easy win! However, at times it is a game of attrition. You dig your heels in and whittle the enemies lead down over the period of the game until you can make a comeback!

It is really hard to keep that feeling, the optimism needed to keep your calm and cool, I get it! But sometimes, even if you don't have the best score, you have to become the real leader of the game, and remind your allies with every fiber of your being that you believe In them, and that if everyone stays calm, cool, and collected, you can BE the comeback!

StrawberrycocoaMay 26, 20181 votes

I understand the feeling of wishing you could start the game super ahead for an easy win!

You're reading something into it that I never intended to say. I'm not asking to effortlessly stomp people, I just wnt to be able to deal with an enemy who is ahead of me without it being an insta-nuke-kill. I want to be able to DO something when attacked. I want to be able to fight back when caught, even if I'm behind in gold. I'm not saying I should crush them, I just want things to be more level in the encounter than the current "explode the minute anyone sees you" system.

Umbral RegentMay 26, 20181 votes

Part of me wants to say that this belongs in Gameplay despite your presenting this as a tie to negative behaviors. I suppose, regardless, I should still discuss as normal.

Like Slythion said, the idea of making matches shorter and reducing the gap from item leads really just...Doesn't work. At all. Lowering the gap between item leads means that players who are behind are not effectually behind and can actually put up a fight, dragging the match out, meaning you can't make matches shorter while also reducing that disparity.

Beyond that, I personally don't think that match length or item leads has much, if any, impact on a player's behavior. Sure, people'll get tilted if they're on the bad end of a stomp - nobody likes to get steamrolled, after all - but I don't see much difference between losing teams or winning teams, in terms of behavior, and I don't see any notable variance in longer or shorter matches, either.

StrawberrycocoaMay 26, 20181 votes

I guess it must just be me then, because the biggest part of my frustrations that lead me to tilt off in this game is having to deal with the raw power imbalance of fighting from behind and getting chain killed by a fed jungler or enemy laner with not much I can do since even hiding under the turret does little to help. I never really feel like there's anything I, specifically, can do except to just hang back and fall even further behind in gold since I can't farm without dying.

I guess I just feel like if I had the options to fight back fairly at all times, I'd get frustrated less. Getting chain killed or not being able to DO anything without immediately dying are my biggest tilt points.

GabresolMay 26, 20181 votes

Unlike Overwatch, LoL is a teambased strategy game. (Overwatch is a team based shooter with reflexes>game knowledge) Strategy games are not designe to be over in 10 minutes, mostly because the straegy part only starts at around minute 6 and before that it's all individual skill. Decreasing the health of objectives (what would be the only way to shorten game lenght) would basicly end the game at the first botlane death. Boltane dies to random gank, turret is down at minute 5, drake is gone, snowball begins.

YerroFeverMay 26, 20181 votes

So by reducing the item advantage from gold... you're keeping the playing field more even, which means you're dragging out the game rather than shortening the game and letting it snowball and win with the gold and item advantage.

I'm not sure how both of your suggestions can coincide with each other.