The reason why the map (camera) should not be rotated

Looking at this forum, I've been surprised by the number of people asking for a 180 degree map rotation on Summoner's Rift. However, I haven't seen many counter arguments for the issue, and I would like to explain why I believe Riot does not implement this feature, so that you might understand that there are real cons to flipping the camera, even (actually, especially) optionally.

A lot of people are saying that the current camera angle puts purple side at a disadvantage because the HUD blocks the lower part of the screen, limiting their ability to land downward skill shots. Interestingly, a lesser amount of people claim that blue side is at a disadvantage for the same reason. Indeed, when you center your camera on your champion, you do put yourself at this disadvantage, but not just when your enemies are below you. First, let us consider how locking the camera limits the way you can play this wonderful game.

One of my favorite champions is Caitlyn, a character with a couple long range abilities. When I started playing Cait, one of my first champs, I did have trouble landing my q's as purple team, because while I have never played with the camera locked, I was positioning my camera inefficiently, so that Cait was nearer the center and I could see my tower when I was in the middle of the lane. As for my ult, I had trouble targeting it on either team, as I was unskilled with moving the camera quickly. Eventually, I got better as I realized something very important about League: your champion is not the thing you want to be focused on, and whether you are purple or blue, you have exactly the same amount and shape of space with which to see the game as your allies and opponents.

Playing League is a bit like driving a car. You don't really concern yourself with your car's position, and you don't keep your eyes focused on the road 1 inch in front of you. You are constantly moving your focus, to the other cars in front, around, and behind you. You do this even though looking straight ahead would be easier and take less energy out of you, because you don't want to die.

Similarly, when playing any champion, your focus has to be on your enemies, your allies, and the minions if you want to not crash and burn. Admittedly, if you play with the camera locked, this is harder as purple team in laning phase for reasons we all understand. However, to be blunt, we don't design cars and roads for people who can't be move their eyes.

If you want to play champions like Caitlyn, or Karthus, or Xerath, or Ashe, or Draven, or pretty much most of them, to their fullest abilities, you have to be able to move the camera really, really fast. Is this hard? Yes. Are other aspects of League hard? Absolutely. LEARNING is what League is about. If you don't want to learn that's OK, but you should expect to be disadvantaged in certain situations, just like if you refused to learn what the items do, or what all the champions' skills are.

Now, once you learn how to move your camera dynamically and quickly, you start to position the camera in such a way as to show you everything you want to see. You may keep your champion at the edge of the screen to leave more room to show the minions, enemies, and gank paths. Whether you are on blue or purple team, you will be able to slide the camera over to land an Ace in the Hole. Once you learn to play with your camera unlocked, the blue side advantage disappears. Please understand that these are the players Riot designs the game for, because this is how they intended the game to be played.

Now, by this point you have either stopped reading or you are furious with me because I have only explained why not flipping the camera is not a problem, and have not yet explained how flipping it would actually hurt the game. So let's get to it.

For one, a 180 degree flip for purple would be downright confusing. Walls would look different. You would have to relearn what the distance between your character and a wall looks like for you to be able to flash over it. In battle, you and your enemies would be seeing a different picture, making to harder to ensure that any skills being fired look correct for both teams for the area that skill is actually affecting. Top lane would now be bot lane. Mid would be mirrored. Purple team would get a clearer view of the bushed in "bot lane" than their opponents. Blue would get a clearer view of the "top lane" bushes. the river bushes in top and bot would be obstructed by the walls they are next to for one of the teams. Most walls would probably have to be redesigned for clarity's sake, making all the terrain shorter and weird looking. The battle ground would literally look different for different players. Doesn't make for a very competitive vibe, does it?

Now, how about a 90 degree rotation? I've seen some people suggesting this, and while it makes a lot of sense for the game map you actually see your character walking on, there is a very obvious issue with this solution. The minimap would also have to rotated 90 degrees, meaning it would be turned into what most people think of as a diamond, or well... a square rotated 90 degrees. This would be great for all of us who play with square monitors tiled on their sides. For the rest of us, it would mean the map would obstruct even more gameplay space, thus amplifying the problem in question.

This leaves us with but one more option. An OPTIONAL 180 degree rotation, that you can change in game or set to automatically happen when you're purple or whatever you want. This sounds great at first, but in fact, it is by far the worst option. Why? Communication. Inevitably not all teammates would play with the same camera, making it much harder to talk to your teammates about what is happening. For example, you might be playing adc bot lane, and you see your mid laner say, "Kat to top." "Good," you think, mid lane won't be ganking me so I can push/stayed pushed up. 7 seconds later, Katarina jumps on your face and you rage at your mid lane because he or she had his or her camera flipped, and their top lane is your bottom lane. So, yeah, I think the problem here is pretty clear.

Finally, I want to talk about one of the best arguments I've seen for a camera flip, and why the argument is completely fallacious. I speak of the fabled statistic: blue has a 57% win rate. A lot of you have been citing this, claiming it is caused by the camera and HUD. However, there have been no studies that show that the camera and HUD are the cause of this discrepancy in win rates. That's just an assumption with no proof. I would imagine that several variables contribute to these percentages. Part of it is probably purple team losing super low level games because of the camera. A much larger part of it is probably because the team with the first ban and highest mmr player on it in ranked gets blue side(edit- apparently this has changed). Science, people. Correlation does not imply causation, etc, etc, etc.

Additionally, I would like to mention that the argument to change the camera ignores the fact that there are much simpler and cleaner ways to fix this issue. One would be to allow players to arrange their HUD however they want, namely putting the map, skill bar, and items on the top of the screen when you're purple. Another solution (and a much better one, imo) would be to change the default camera option for new accounts to be unlocked. Honestly, I don't understand why Riot encourages new players to play their game in a way they did not design it to be played. I believe this is the stem of the complaints about the camera. And lastly, for anyone who didn't know, you can change the speed at which the camera pans in the options, and it's pretty much impossible to play the game without making panning faster, so panning speed should be raised by default.

TL;DR

- The camera disadvantage for purple team stems from poor camera positioning and locked cameras.

- This disadvantage is most prominent at low levels of play, where more players lock the camera. To say it is an imbalance is like saying having multiple champions, items, and skills puts new and less skilled players at a disadvantage and therefore anything that requires skill or learning should not be in the game.

- A mandatory 180 degree rotation for purple would be confusing and I cannot list all the reasons here so read the 9th paragraph.

- A mandatory 90 degree rotation is incompatible with the minimap and square shape of SR.

- An optional 180 degree rotation would negatively impact team communication between teammates using different views.

- The 57%/43% win rates argument ignores the fact that other factors may contribute to that statistic.

- There are other, simpler ways to fix this problem (unlock cam by default, raise default panning speed, option to rearrange HUD).

- Riot is not ignorant. They know flipping the camera is an option and they have made a conscious decision not to do it. They probably have some very good reasons.