A New ARAM Pick Type
Wait, what? How can there be other pick types for ARAM? "All Random" is in the name.
Well, my friend, this idea still does give all players a random champion, fitting the definition perfectly.
As things stand currently, ARAM is random, but it's uneven. Different unlocked champions for each player lead to weighted RNG and various advantages and disadvantages. The obvious solution is unlocking the full pool for everyone, but despite never explicitly saying they are against it, Riot's refusal to acknowledge the many requests for this feature suggest that they are.
So, we need a system that still relies on players unlocking champions, but allows for a more balanced random nature than the current system. Well, let's think of the featured modes in the past where players could get champions they didn't own. All For One, and Nemesis Draft. These could potentially give you a champion you don't own, as long as one of your allies or opponents did. Each player contributed from their pool into the selection options for the game. That concept lead me to my idea.
Introducing, ARAM decks.
A deck is simply a set of 10 cards, pre-selected from your profile page similar to custom builds or mastery pages. There are 3 kinds of cards that can be in a deck.
Champion cards: Represent a specific champion you own. Free cards: Represent a random free week champion Wild cards: Represent a fully random champion.
Free week champions can be inserted into a deck as champion cards, but will revert to a generic free card within that deck once their free week ends.
And of course, every player has one deck always available to them by default: the All Random deck. 10 wild cards.
So, now you have your decks all nicely made and titled, and you queue for ARAM: Luck of the Draw.
The lobby starts by asking everyone to select a deck. Once you lock your deck in, wild cards and free cards within it populate with champions from your pool.
After everyone locks in, the 100 selected champion cards are collected, duplicates removed, shuffled, and dealt randomly to both teams. You might end up with one of your own cards, an ally's, or an enemy's. Both teams are drawing from the same deck that all 10 players helped to create.
After everyone has their champion, the lobby proceeds as normal. Trades, skin, summoners, rune, and mastery selection. Trades are not restricted by ownership.
ARAM decks create a balanced type of random as opposed to the weighted random of differing availability pools. They give the potential to try out unowned champions, while still encouraging unlocks so you can contribute a better variety to your games, even if you consider ARAM in isolation from the rest of LoL. Wild cards and free cards keep the system from feeling too restrictive, and allow that "out of the blue" chance at unexpected champions some players love. Overall, the system has the potential to make ARAM a lot more fun.
Possible Bonus Options
Here is a list of potential extra features to be added to this system to flesh it out a bit more.
Champion Blacklisting: Owned champions can be blacklisted, preventing them from being picked by wild cards. This can be done as long as at least 10 owned champions are not blacklisted.
This feature is not only for the "Nobody wants to roll Eve" mentality, but also for the "Sona is so unfun to play against." You can prevent yourself from putting in champions you simply don't want in your games. Of course, you may still end up with or against one of them if another player puts them in, but you do reduce the odds a bit. With this system, you can tailor your own wild card picks to fit your preferences, while still being random.
Redraws and the Discard Area: Similar to rerolls, it might be nice to enable redraws. Earnings per game would have to be a fixed point value, since a large pool is no longer a factor. Max stockpile would also probably be only 1, due to the power of the discard area.
When a card is discarded, it is not put back into the pool as it is in current ARAM. Instead, is enters a discard section next to your team. Any player can trade their champion for one in the discard section. This also means that if you redraw and prefer your original champion, you can go back to the original and leave the new one for your allies to potentially take.
For convenience when redrawing, the player may be given the option of which champion to discard, instead of automatically discarding their original pick and leaving the potential for an ally to steal it before they can reconsider.
In the rare case where the deck is fully drawn and a player tries to redraw (such as if all 10 players used identical decks or decks of all "free" cards) duplicates from the opposing team can be given.
Lending Tokens Potentially a more popular option than skin boosts. Players are hesitant to plop down RP on a skin boost due to its temporary nature. Lending tokens would be permanent on a player's account, and give them a much better way to show their generosity.
Lending tokens can be purchased for RP to a maximum of 10. Each token allows a single card in each deck to have a skin you own attached to it. When a player ends up drawing your card, that skin will be highlighted and temporarily unlocked for them, complements of [your name].
Attached skins are consolidated when removing duplicates in forming the deck, so you can be sure if anyone ends up with your champion, regardless of how many other players put the same champion in, your skin will still be with it. This does mean there is a potential for multiple names on a single skin, or multiple skins on a single champion. In the event that the recipient already owns that skin, they are still made aware that it is attached, in case they trade the champion to someone who does not have it.
