The whole Xerath thing where you get Ascended and lose mana costs and become powerful and big was a really fun game. Also where anyone can comeback at any moment due to gold gains and the various strats that popped up (rush top and bot relics, etc)
I don' t paricolary like Dominion but i loved Ascension, both gameplay wise and graphical wise since Dominion shows off really cool models but a somewhat lacking texture, and the sand compromised for that.
However i would not be so quick to delete Dominion, since is an old time favourite for a little niche of players ( unless many dominion players love ascension too, but as i see is not the case ) and would be awful and inconsiderate to thrash it.
And they won't add it as a permanent game mode because it would take effort to keep it at least a bit balanced/bugless.
Why did you enjoy Ascension better than Dominion? Pretty much everyone I've talked to preferred Dominion, so I'm curious to hear why. I personally preferred Dominion as well, Ascension had a lot of issues.
"better decision making" was in comparison with Ascension, yes. SR does have a lot of decision making at the higher level (as you can see in LCS and Worlds), and so does TT. Dominion offers quite a bit of decision making too, which I felt Ascension didn't really do. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ascension basically boiled down to "Do I contest a Relic, or contest Xerath", and the second decision is hard to do on your own.
Dominion has a lot of comeback potential, it doesn't tend to be very snowbally. Of course, if your team goes 0/10 in the first 10 minutes, you'll probably lose. Anyway, I'd still like to know why you don't like Dominion that much, you haven't really answered that.
Ascension just honestly felt shallow. Basically, endless face-smashing, and that was that. High-level dominion is VERY different from any other mode, but unfortunately, nobody's around to actually play it, so finding games is very difficult.
I loved getting a group of 5 friends together for Ascension. We had a lot of fun experimenting with different comps and strategies. We had previously tried to do that with dominion but we just felt like we were running around all over the place (and always losing). Maybe we should've researched dominion more. I think the simplicity of ascension combined with its unique objectives and sort of "team deathmatch" vibe made it really fun. It was easy to pick up and play and enjoy.
The big difference between Dominion and Ascension was, as has been pointed out, a difference of complexity.
Ascension basically boiled down to 'capture ALL the things!'.
Dominion has minion wave management, the question of who should grab the storm shield and when, bottom lane to control/gank, points to defend and take, zones of the jungle to control, and so on and so forth.
I suspect part of the reason why some people liked Ascension more was because it was simpler. It was really clear what you were supposed to do and the optimal strategies were obvious for the most part. Dominion has a lot of anti-intuitive aspects that sabotage new player experience. Probably the best thing Riot could do for the map on the low-effort side of things would be to either make pushing a minion wave a slightly more rewarding choice (or at least less of a trap option) and/or add some more objectives to the Jungle that would encourage proper control.
