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Aram isn't All and it Isn't Random

IForgot2buyBoots·4/16/2015, 5:57:05 PM·13 votes·5,592 views

The concept of ARAM extends back to ye olde dayes of (suppress your hisses) DotA. The idea is that all players received a random champion and went at each other hammer and tongs. Sometimes you got a good random, sometimes you got a terrible one. But that randomness was all part of the fun.

LoL ARAM isn't living up to its name.

This has been said before by others, but I'm throwing my proverbial hat into the ring because if people stop talking about problems just because those who address them are dragging their feet, pretty soon nothing gets fixed and nothing changes. With that in mind, however, I have a responsibility too: to present a reasonable alternative or set of alternatives to possibly fix the issue, such that the burden of creativity and thought isn't forced on Riot.

Problem: Players with small numbers of unlocked champs have an unfair advantage in ARAM. This has manifested itself in the large numbers of smurf accounts that infest the game mode, diluting the "preventative" measure that includes free week champs to increase the randomness a player endures during ARAM selection.

Possible Solution 1: For the purposes of ARAM, unlock ALL (currently) 124 game champs. Pros: Goodbye smurf account steamrolls. Cons: People can try new champs at any time without waiting for the free week rotation to roll around.

_My take: Personally, this isn't a terrible thing. Summoner's Rift is and always has been the primary mode for League play, competitively and recreationally, and this change won't alter the playability of champs on any other map. Even so, I can understand the hesitance behind not doing this. _

Possible Solution 2: Set up separate leagues of ARAM. Leagues for people with 10-20 champs unlocked, 21-40, 41-60, etc all the way to 100+champs unlocked. Pros: MUCH fairer distribution of opposition than people with a 50% chance to get a champ they like (Assuming 10 unlocks + 10 free week) as opposed to a 20% chance (20/100 champs you really like including free week). Additionally, this DOESN'T rob the Smurfs of their account choice, but DOES bracket them against people similarly distributed. There is the potential for competitive gameplay for ARAM here? Cons: Coding. Separating the people into yet ANOTHER league system would be time consuming, and I'm not one to underestimate the labor that the programmers put into LoL. There'd need to be flags for each bracket, people would be shifted brackets when they rollover into 41, 61, etc champs. Also? Queue times would shoot way up as you'd have a smaller potential pool of players in each bracket than you have right now.

_My Take: This would be a nice, middle of the road option allowing for an improvement of the ARAM scene for those of us who haven't played a non ARAM pvp game in months. _

Possible Solution 3: Allow us to opt OUT of champs in ARAM. A possible mechanism for this would be to trade in 2 rerolls (Meaning you have to save them up) to eliminate a champ you've unlocked from ARAM, OR to add one you've eliminated back in. This one could be potentially the most fun option of all in that it allows you to tailor your ARAM experience. You cannot reduce your champ pool below 10 this way, nor does that champ remain locked out if it's free week for them (Thus maintaining a minimum level of randomness available). Pros: The smurfs get to retain their advantage for a while, thus retaining them in the playerbase. (Or is this a con?) Also, this allows those of us who don't mind having worked at unlocking the game to continue having a goal to work towards. This will eventually level the playing field, and provide a gradual shift for ARAM to level itself out. Cons: Oh JESUS the coding. Potential bugs abound. This would be even more stressful for the coders than the second option, and would require oodles of testing. Longest time to implement too, meaning the potential loss of a (Probably statistically insignificant) portion of the playerbase. But then, losing any customers is always a bad thing. Ask me about it; I'm a private business owner.

_My take: This would be a very attractive option. Customizability is a great way to lure people into joining up, and this option is neat enough that I can see a lot of people tolerating the smurfs to do it. However, it's inflicting even more work on the coders. _

Thus ends my list of ideas for how to improve the ARAM experience. Can I get some thoughts about this from devs/community?

17 Comments

goldensilver094/16/2015, 6:45:49 PM4 votes

I vote solution one if Reroll gets vacations for ever.

BLU Medic4/17/2015, 1:53:13 PM3 votes

I like solution 1 the most, but I've always felt a more elegant solution was to do what happened in One For All, your champion is picked from a pool of all the champions everyone on your team owns. That way, ARAM smurf or not, if someone on your team owns Yorick, there's a chance of you getting Yorick.

Waffletimewarp4/16/2015, 9:11:13 PM3 votes

Eh, I'm always in support of all champs being unlocked for ARAM and only ARAM.

DrCyanide4/16/2015, 7:40:07 PM3 votes

I feel like I'm one of the "smurfs" you've mentioned. I just bought my 31st champion last night, despite starting originally around the time Ziggs was released and picking the game back up a little before Jinx was released. I knew from the time I was level 5 that I hated playing melee champions in general, and thus have a high number of ranged, poky champions in my pool. I'm not one of those players that feels like they have to own every champion, and indeed, I only own 2 of the 450 IP champions.

Possible Solution 1 Feedback: I love the idea of having a chance to randomly play a new champion and see if I like them. That said, I also like to not do horribly game after game. Considering my general avoidance of melee's and the fact that I own only a quarter of the champions available, I feel like I'd be screwed over more times than not. While you can argue it's good for me as a player to experience playing more champions, it's also far more likely I'd play less ARAM as a result. Not a good trade off to make in my opinion.

Possible Solution 2 Feedback: This would be pretty good for where I'm at (experienced player with fairly small pool). The thing that I worry about is playing with friends. Lets say my wife and I play with my friend and his wife who's barely getting her feet wet in the game. What tier would it place us?

Possible Solution 3 Feedback: This doesn't sound like something you'd want implemented.

Alternative Solution (but possibly to a different problem): We've all had ARAM games where we get a champion we're super excited to play. We lock in our Runes and Mastery's, wait for the timer to finish, and... someone dodges. We get some champion we're not excited about and just trudge through that game. Part of the reason this happens is because dodging is an artificial re-roll. Someone with a small champion pool (like a smurf) can use the dodge to have a higher chance of getting a champion they want with fairly little penalty. Rather than have the dodger get a new random champion, force them to play an ARAM with that champion. There "random" champion is locked in before assigning a random champion to the other players on their team. If they queue up with another dodger who dodged on the same champion, they get an error message saying they can't queue together until at least one of them fixes it. Not really abuseable, since they would have had to play that champion in one game or another.

Zamaje4/16/2015, 6:42:50 PM3 votes

I like the option of unlocking all champs for ARAM's and doing away with the reroll button.

Takeuchi 174/16/2015, 6:01:34 PM3 votes

eh. i feel like they should just increase the required # of champions owned to play aram

AkabaneKun4/16/2015, 9:24:37 PM3 votes

I just had 7 dodges in a row, aram is serious business, and ppl where surprised URF was full of tryhards, this game is comprised of tryhard pro wannabes lel.

Goujian4/17/2015, 11:05:20 AM2 votes

You get more reroll points if you have more champions, so it kinda balances out a bit?

Zetra134/28/2015, 7:07:49 PM1 votes

I say solution 1 BUT add in having more champs still contribute to Rerolling more, that way you aren't punished for having more champs for normals, but rewarded for having them (without it getting insane on how you are rewarded.)

PandahHeart4/16/2015, 10:50:36 PM1 votes

I've always thought that for ARAM any champion should be possible to get, not just ones you own or are free to play. I think it would be more that way plus you could trade with anyone that way.

NoMonku4/17/2015, 7:51:32 AM1 votes

Solution 1 is okay.

Solution 2 I have trouble with because I own all the champions, so my queue times might jump from the usual 5-8 minutes to even longer, which I don't really want.

Solution 3 I'm fine with too. It makes it so I can "lock out" a champion every 2-3 games, which I'm fine with. It kind of makes the game mode not ARAM anymore though. Then again it really isn't ARAM atm either, so I guess its cool. I prefer this one just because it favors me the most and give me another goal to play towards. The downside, though, is a LOT of inferior champions will never see the light of day, which kind of makes me sad.

Ariaflux4/17/2015, 8:30:56 AM1 votes

Possible Solution 1: For the purposes of ARAM, unlock ALL (currently) 124 game champs. Pros: Goodbye smurf account steamrolls. Cons: People can try new champs at any time without waiting for the free week rotation to roll around.

_My take: Personally, this isn't a terrible thing. Summoner's Rift is and always has been the primary mode for League play, competitively and recreationally, and this change won't alter the playability of champs on any other map. Even so, I can understand the hesitance behind not doing this. _

Another con is that some people might have champions they don't want to play in the game and thus did not purchase. Playing something they have no interest in and do not want to learn means that they will probably not enjoy that game, not to mention that they will also probably get trashed. The counterargument would be that anyone who joins the queue should already be prepared for this, and if you don't like it, don't play. However, it really comes down to a maximization of happiness, is the happiness of players gained from eliminating ARAM smurfs worth the unhappiness of players playing something they do not want/like/know. Keep in the mind that matches can still be one-sided due to RNG alone.

Personally I like this solution the most as it seems the most intuitive and "proper". Games could also be a lot more varied and interesting.

Possible Solution 2: Set up separate leagues of ARAM. Leagues for people with 10-20 champs unlocked, 21-40, 41-60, etc all the way to 100+champs unlocked. Pros: MUCH fairer distribution of opposition than people with a 50% chance to get a champ they like (Assuming 10 unlocks + 10 free week) as opposed to a 20% chance (20/100 champs you really like including free week). Additionally, this DOESN'T rob the Smurfs of their account choice, but DOES bracket them against people similarly distributed. There is the potential for competitive gameplay for ARAM here? Cons: Coding. Separating the people into yet ANOTHER league system would be time consuming, and I'm not one to underestimate the labor that the programmers put into LoL. There'd need to be flags for each bracket, people would be shifted brackets when they rollover into 41, 61, etc champs. Also? Queue times would shoot way up as you'd have a smaller potential pool of players in each bracket than you have right now.

_My Take: This would be a nice, middle of the road option allowing for an improvement of the ARAM scene for those of us who haven't played a non ARAM pvp game in months. _

Actually I think this is horrible. Low champion pool could be both from ARAM smurfs or just new players. This effectively punishes new players by matching them up with ARAM smurfs more (since players with bigger champion pools will never play with ARAM smurfs).

Possible Solution 3: Allow us to opt OUT of champs in ARAM. A possible mechanism for this would be to trade in 2 rerolls (Meaning you have to save them up) to eliminate a champ you've unlocked from ARAM, OR to add one you've eliminated back in. This one could be potentially the most fun option of all in that it allows you to tailor your ARAM experience. You cannot reduce your champ pool below 10 this way, nor does that champ remain locked out if it's free week for them (Thus maintaining a minimum level of randomness available). Pros: The smurfs get to retain their advantage for a while, thus retaining them in the playerbase. (Or is this a con?) Also, this allows those of us who don't mind having worked at unlocking the game to continue having a goal to work towards. This will eventually level the playing field, and provide a gradual shift for ARAM to level itself out. Cons: Oh JESUS the coding. Potential bugs abound. This would be even more stressful for the coders than the second option, and would require oodles of testing. Longest time to implement too, meaning the potential loss of a (Probably statistically insignificant) portion of the playerbase. But then, losing any customers is always a bad thing. Ask me about it; I'm a private business owner.

_My take: This would be a very attractive option. Customizability is a great way to lure people into joining up, and this option is neat enough that I can see a lot of people tolerating the smurfs to do it. However, it's inflicting even more work on the coders. _

I think this idea is not bad, although there are a lot of good ARAM champions and 2 rerolls to ban one seems like you can still get frustrated playing against ARAM smurfs who can just use another good ARAM champion.

Another Possible Solution: Balance. I believe this solution has the least repercussions and potential issues. Many others are only workarounds that do not address the core problem. Riot has shown that this is the approach that they want to take by reducing heal values and recently adding in the new Summoner Spell to increase tank viability.

warpenguin5554/17/2015, 2:09:53 PM1 votes

The 1st all i think refers to the players not champions

Kholdstare134/17/2015, 2:43:35 PM1 votes

1 is a good start, but we also need to punish dodging as a full game's MMR loss for the dodger, and force them to wait out the penalty while logged in. ARAM smurfs keep multiple accounts and scum lobbies for good RNG, dodging bad ones and account hopping. If we forced big lockouts on dodging accounts to prevent hopping, and counted dodge as loss to give zero reason not to at least TRY with a bad roll, MMR would properly balance for skill over a large number of games.

AkabaneKun4/17/2015, 5:32:21 PM1 votes

Disgusting mode, completely unbalanced, whoever gets the best poke wins, constant dodging, obvious smurf accounts that make games have constantly at least one champion of the top tier pokers or a stupid healer like soraka or sona, weird random that gives me the same champs constantly even though i have almost 100 champs in the game, i got rengar twice in 3 games i have 93 champions, after 30 games I'm more than done with this mode it's like handicapping yourself on purpose so others can talk shit while constantly abusing ziggs and xeraths, lel.

I hate the advocacy of taking a mode for another but seriously if this is the state A"RAM" is going to stay just take it away and give us URF or OFA for it, not even URF was this unbalanced.