Diversifying every game of League of Legends
Every time you launch a game of League of Legends, you expect the same things to occur in each game. You spawn, buy some items, go and farm for 20 minutes, destroy a tower, and team fight. While some will argue that LoL is an objective-based game, objectives often will not yield much more than kills can. So often times, outplaying your opponent by, say, poking and then grabbing a kill is often the better way to secure more gold.
Since April, I've been playing HotS (Heroes of the Storm) over LoL due to a lot of imbalances with champions. I want to play Ashe, she is my favorite champion, but then, she was practically unplayable. Now I just suck and can't do well with any LoL champion. But what I liked about HotS was that every hero had a map that made their strengths shine. For example, I played a lot of Arthas. He's a melee bruiser who does well with small initiations and excels in long fights due to his sustain. He was mediocre (currently he's more top-tier) on most maps, but the map Infernal Shrines is his best by far. Every few minutes, a shrine spawns that can be activated. When you active the shrine, small minions spawn that need to be killed. After killing 40 minions, you are granted a "Punisher", which is like a giant boss that walks down the lane and helps you push and will jump on heroes to kill them. Because Arthas has an AoE spell, he can easily kill all the minions while his team defends. Pretty cool, huh?
Each map from HotS is based off some map in World of Warcraft or Diablo. But what if there were maps from each region in Runeterra that had its own theme, own objective?
For example, a map based off of the howling storm (I don't quite remember the lore that went with Freljord Ashe and why Ashe's hair is white) could be implemented. Have your three lanes, and practically build Summoner's Rift but snowy. In the middle of each lane, there is an altar. To capture an altar, a member of each team needs to "capture" it like in Dominion. If a team successfully captures the altar, they are granted the power of the ice storm, and the enemy team is slowed by, say. 10%. They also gain a small buff in attack power. What would make this map interesting is that the river can be replaced by impassable mountains, and the pits to Baron and dragon could be maze-like. Champions who may do well on this map would be Azir, Zed, or Quinn. The jungle could be wiped with most trees, and would serve as an open battleground that offered lots of gold but at the cost of movement speed. Teams that decide to try to push and not get the altar would lose an advantage, which could cause more comebacks.
Another map could be based in Zaun. This map could be a close-knit laboratory warehouse where lab equipment and junk keeps everyone close for comfort. You kill Zaun experiments that drop something neat, like "B4K Proto-type aether" (built for killin', or something quirky for the Zauns). Only caster minions and the cannon minions drop B4K. In the middle of the map, you can turn in B4K to the scientist. After 30 is turned in, the lane that has the most towers will earn a B4K Proto-type, which could be a disgusting abomination that looks like different body parts came together, but while ugly, the B4K minion is devastating on towers. Champions that would excel on this map would be most ADCs (because that can shoot over the maze walls and be safe), and assassins who can jump over walls to kill the ADCs. Game play would focus on farming for B4K, then intense "goal-tending" to prevent the B4K minion from smashing up a lane, and then a defense period.
Of course, these are ideas, but LoL would be amazing if the lore that is there is utilized. Save Summoner's Rift for champion games, or even for people in promos for us non-pros. It would be cool to see different champions have different strengths on maps, so that the same 10 champions out of ~130 aren't picked every game.
