UI in the Twisted Treeline. (Riot, plz to look)

This may be a bit long winded, but bare with me.

I've been playing TT with lowbie friends on an alt account because they want to hexakill. Now... Seeing low level players (mostly around 20-ish, but as low as 10 is really common) play TT is really, really revealing.

They're confused as heck. And this is people who've played it far more then a few times.

The central problem here is first, no one seems to understand altars. They know they do good things and are needed to be capped. Thats never a problem. They also know when they're locked.

But for instance, I kept hearing things like. "WHAT DOES THE HEXAGON ALTAR MEAN? HOW DO I TELL IF ITS OURS. HOW DO I TELL IF ITS CAPTURABLE?"

I didn't even realize there WAS a hexagon shape. And low and behold. If its an enemy altar, its a hexagon. Why? Why is a altar on your side green circle, and their's a red hexagon? I kept hearing people say "GREENLIGHT ALTAR CAP!" and they'd...rush our own altar. And then ask why it wasn't capturing. To make it worse, nothing really shows you if an altar is on your side or their side without looking at the map--and TT altars on the map is easily obscured by character portraits. I'd often see people rush an altar for an altercation to attack their own altar because one person was near it and they'd yell "CAP!"

Basically, what I see as the problem is this:

1: Players were unclear at the meaning of the minimap symbols.

• The Hexagon for Enemy, Circle for ally implied to people they were different states completely. Most notably, people saw red Hexagon as a "STOP" sign. Not as, "enemy altar". (I know Stop signs are octagons, but apparently the fact that its sided and red and not circle confuses people)

• The fact it was 'green' and 'red' wasn't intuitive. Yes normally 'green' and 'red' are ally/enemy in normal game shorthand. But the flaw was League is Purple and Blue. (Or Blue and Red if in colorblind) Green doesn't show up designating something as "an ally" (not even your health bar is green.) I also realize player portraits are outlined in green and red. But this just confused people more, because the altars were obviously not players. (Actually, one guy I saw kept thinking that a red circle on an altar meant it was being captured. And a guy in my voice call kept thinking the same thing. Specifically because red outline meant it was an 'enemy unit')

• Players trying to determine the status of an altar were confused because champion portraits completely obscured the altar on the minimap.

2: Players were unclear about the information presented in the main window.

• The Big point here was it wasn't immediately clear who owned an altar by looking at it when it was capturable in the main window. So often you saw people think that the moment the chains left the altar, it was 'neutral'.

• They were unclear when altars would unlock. One guy in my call was wondering how to see how long an altar had left till it was capturable, and was asking about 'the chains'.

I know these seem like tiny things, and it seems obvious that these things mean these things. But the small details that I glazed over completely as a more experienced player utterly perplexed newer players. They were completely confused, and I constantly watched games get screwed to heck and back as low level players tried desperately to figure out what they were doing.

I also think that perhaps showing the chains 'break away' as the altar becomes unlocked would, well. Look nice, and show a estimation of how long is left for the altar.

tl;dr: The Altars utterly baffle new players due to the way they're presented in the UI and in game. It makes them do silly things like think the "red Hex" is a stop sign, and the Green Circle is a 'go cap' sign.