This game needs a scenario mode to teach people how to play while behind.

Lots of games have this so I'll summarize: -PVP game that loads into a pre-determined situation. Players are given a list of parameters to achieve within a short timeframe (3-5 minutes, maybe), and some time to analyze the situation and come up with a strategy. Possibly allowed to decide who gets what champ before it starts. -Upon starting (whether it's 5 minutes into laning, 10 seconds before a big teamfight, or 55 minutes into the game with an open nexus), the game continues until the victory conditions are met, or time runs out. -At this point either reset (if it's best of 3) or a new situation is chosen and the process repeats.

So basically Nexus Siege if that mode wasn't basically a setpiece.

Considerations: -This would have to be PVP, otherwise it's a game of exploiting bots. -One team gets win conditions, other team wins by denying those conditions until time runs out, or denying them as long as possible if this is implemented like Nexus Siege. This prevents boring situations where both teams don't much care about denying their opponents because of: -Tie missions into this in a big way. -The win conditions should tend to be things that players are bad at, ie playing while behind. I've suggested this mode in the past, but a version that actually improves the solo experience by teaching some fundamentals would do a lot of good. -Team gold has to be on the scoreboard for this, which is useful in itself I think.

Example:

-Game initialized to standard 5v5, 12 minutes in. One team is ahead by several thousand gold. The win condition is "stop them from taking X objectives (towers and epic monsters) and increasing their gold lead to Y in the next Z minutes." Champions/items are seeded to make this interesting.

This would play out one of several ways, depending on the strategies the teams come up with. The team that's ahead can win by getting objectives OR getting the gold lead (or some combination of the two, since tower gold is a thing). Counterjungle, look for picks, splitpush (remember when people knew how to 1 3 1? I miss that), siege, dive, they have to figure out the best option to cement their snowball. The team on the defense has to decide how to protect their win conditions when they can't win a fair fight. The win conditions are chosen so that strategies that would end up throwing a real game aren't feasible, and thus aren't rewarded by the educational tool.

The key here is that the mode pushes people to think. And after the first round, they're going back in that situation again, maybe on the other end, so they get a chance to think more. Optimize strategy through trial and error, not just "try obvious thing, get mad at team if it doesn't work, never think of it again".

Could also have 1v1 or 2v2 situations, where the rest of the map is disabled and it's just "your lane opponent has 2 kills on you, win condition is "last X minutes without dying (unless they also die too) or ending up at an even bigger gold disadvantage". This could be intense in its own way, and I'd say soloq would be a lot more fun if everyone had some practice at this.