Dominion needs some revamps as well

yobhguod·7/15/2014, 8:23:15 PM·9 votes·853 views

With the upcoming SR visual changes, I think we need to address dominion. It's far less popular than it was, queue times get upwards of 2 minutes at times, the imbalance between champions is very high, the overall map needs updates.

Thoughts?

My honest opinion is put up a major poll, asking to update dominion or remove it for a month and replace with with a recent game mode that was only available for a few short weeks. I would love to see URF make a permanent return.

7 Comments

JedditeFTW7/15/2014, 9:37:02 PM8 votes

What Dominion needs is a ranked queue, something Riot originally "promised" to look into when the mode launched, but nothing ever came of it. Support for Dominion tanked for the same reason Riot provides no support for Twisted Tree or Howling Abyss: eSports. The name of the eSports game is Summoner's Rift, and any resources allocated to Twisted Treeline, Crystal Scar, or Howling Abyss are resources that aren't being allocated to Summoner's Rift.

Before the Dominion playerbase crashed, there was a bot -- called Jabebot -- that could access and display the normal mode match-making ELO for Dominion. Send a tell to Jabebot, and it would reply back with the ELO of the members on your team. This created a de facto ladder that provided an incentive for "serious" players to keep playing. Draft mode allowed players to ban the most obnoxious/broken/ZOMGOP champions (overwhelmingly Kassadin) and the playerbase was mostly satisfied while it waited for Riot to create an official ranked mode.

But that didn't happen. Instead, Riot destroyed Jabebot and the playerbase slowly crumbled. I don't have the official numbers, but Riot does, and I'd bet my ass the drop in players queuing up for Dominion (specifically draft mode) perfectly correlates with Jabebot being dismantled. And this is one case where correlation DOES equal causation.

So here we are ... some 2 years later, and still nothing.

The solution is the same as it ever was: give Dominion an official ranked mode. Give players -- the Dominion fans in particular -- an alternative to Summoner's Rift (and to a lesser extend, Twisted Treeline) for unlocking ranked/seasonal achievements, and the playerbase will return (and I'm one of them). Not everybody wants to grind Summoner's Rift just for the victorious ward/skin or border. Ranked Dominion can easily support the same divisions Bronze V through Diamond I. Challenger isn't necessary for Dominion, because all the professional tournaments will be Summoner's Rift. Hell, Riot could just "cap" the Dominion bracket at Platinum I and assign the same rewards as Summoner's Rift.

Alas, this is unlikely to ever happen. Because lolesportslol. Riot -- or perhaps, more sinisterly, Tencent -- has put all its eggs in the Summoner's Rift esports basket. So the other modes will suffer because if you're playing Twisted Treeline, Crystal Scar, or Howling Abyss, you're not playing Summoner's Rift. And Summoner's Rift is where all the money is.

"Follow the money" -- it's as true in video games as any other business.

wolferer7/15/2014, 8:58:15 PM6 votes

Dominion has a very dedicated fan base, and removing it would not be a very smart choice. I think a visual update at some point would be nice. Gameplay balance should be done iteratively with alternative map balancing they are currently doing between patches. The core gameplay of Dominion is pretty good currently.

Gungho Gun Lion7/15/2014, 9:57:57 PM2 votes

Riot wouldn't even think of removing dominion, They spent so much money on it in the beggining to create it and make cinematics etc. Why would they replace that with a game that didn't cost any money

Pyro7/15/2014, 11:34:33 PM2 votes

Dominion is simply too different from the Classic game mode. ARAM is a mutation of Classic, to be fair.

The problem is that by playing Dominion, you don't necessarily increase your experience and decision making in SR, which is pretty much all that matters for the ranked rewards. There is not much that a player gains by spending time playing Dominion over playing SR or even TT/ARAM.

The solution would be introducing unique rewards (something like the First Win of the Day), or designing new gameplay.

My personal idea would be faction wars - Dominion queue in which you fight for a chosen faction and are limited to a faction-specific champion pool. The reward could be faction summoners icons or even skins at the end of the season. Also we could have the winning faction name the next item, just like we had with Ionian Boots of Luicidity.

Takeyo Efthulc7/16/2014, 7:57:02 PM1 votes

Now I won't be one to say "Dominion - here's what RiotGames did wrong, and here's what they need to do to fix it." I just want to chip in and mention that I love the mode, and I think that if anything could be done to revive its popularity it would be great. I've been playing a lot more Dominion recently, and having a lot of fun.

Here is what makes this a really good mode, and one that needs to be given resources:

When I play chess, I always try to get the battle started as soon as possible. I hate dragging out book openings and spending half a year building my position, and although it is easier for me to beat book-based chess simulators, I hate playing against them. I choose a simulator that plays aggressively and eschews book openings. Likewise, Dominion brings the action right from the beginning. There is no extended laning phase. There is no specific team-fighting stage. The whole game is objectives and map control from "The battle begins!" It's not that I hate SR like I hate book-chess. It's merely that Dominion has that same edge and excitement of the anti-book style.

It has, thankfully, become clear in recent updates that Dominion is not being treated as a "dead" game mode, not by a long shot. Therefore, I'm very hopeful for its future. We just have to bear in mind that the most popular modes will get the vast majority of the resources and attention. It simply requires a modicum of patience, something it probably will not hurt us at all to practice :)

Rachael Passive7/16/2014, 2:46:07 AM1 votes

I think a visual rework and a reintroduction to the map would be wonderful, I personally love dominion and I think more people would enjoy it aswell if there was a bigger player base for it.

Mirkwoodia7/15/2014, 9:05:17 PM1 votes

Yea, just some more guys working on it, I don't see anything big like a rework being good, but gradual attention increase sounds healthy