Why nemesis draft failed and why it's our fault

I feel like Nemesis Draft didn't bring much fun content to the game. After champion select it felt just like a regular game. All other game modes brought some interesting element to the game (URF-super buffs, Doom Bots- challenging bots, Poro King- Poro Summoners + Poro King in howling abyss). I think most people wanting to try playing new champions would rather go play Bots/Customs. I only played the game mode in hopes of getting the summoner icon.

If you don't get any fun out of LoL when you lose, you're not having fun about 50% of the time due to how matchmaking works. Why the hell are you still playing the game, then?

I enjoy the concept of Nemesis draft -- a lot.

I don't enjoy the players that only care about winning in it. I -really- enjoyed giving the enemy team nothing but ADCs with low mobility and rushing Thornmail on everybody. I enjoyed running from scary Poppy's. I didn't enjoy getting rage because the enemy team got x champ that wasn't bottom tier.

I enjoyed Nemesis draft quite a bit. I think the main downfall of it was the community's lack of willingness to try new things. They would get a champion that's typically in a specific role, and they wouldn't stray from that role.

In one of my games we gave the enemy team Zac, Nautilus, Evelynn, Elise and Poppy. Nautilus and Evelynn both took Smite and jungled, when we asked why they were both jungling, Nautilus said "cause you gave us these champions morons", and refused to believe that he could have gone in any of the three lanes, as a tank, AP or Support.

Another downfall is people believing that there are "bad" champions. Sure, some fill roles and do certain things better than others, but when the Urgot on my team went 17/5, it's hard to think of him as a "trash tier" champion. Someone on the enemy team gave me Viktor (who I had never played), and I went 14/4. At the end game screen one of their team mates said "gave Viktor and says Viktor is garbage..."

Also, people didn't seem to grasp the concept of team composition. Pretty much every game I saw people say "give supports lol" and then they would give Janna or Lulu (who often went ADC). The best way to do well on Nemesis Draft is to give champions that don't work well together, not giving a bunch of random champions that aren't the best carries in the game and hope for the best.

I tried to be more fair, give them champs that are not antisynergistic or considered WEAK. but I did focus on giving them champions not currently favored by the meta and with a higher skill-cap. Champs that I know how to use well, but many people who focus on meta picks will not be playing.

I gave the enemy a Shyvana and had to lane against her and a Janna as Evelyn. I'd never used Eve, and it was clear those two were equally unfamiliar with their assigned champs. Laning alone against both of them, I went 5-0-0 in the first few minutes of the game. It wound up being a long game, and my team lost, but it was one of the most fun matches I can remember playing. My team was really good-spirited and did their best in spite of one AFK.

I really enjoyed Nemesis Draft.

Honestly tho, if the Galio was good, the lane should have gone even.

If Yas tried to all in, Galio just pops w and sits on him. Even worse for yas if he has ult.

I do agree though.

HOWEVER, alot of people did seem to realize that "Bad" champs arent actually bad.

I honestly believe people's respect for Urgod has grown.

I agree. There's honestly nothing really wrong with Nemesis, I'm having fun with it. The problem is people can't live without trying to create a meta for everything in the game instead of just trying to have a good time. I've had some weird comps and gotten to play some different builds and lanes. It's a lot of fun to play if you let it be fun. People in this game seem to seek out any reason they can to attack and blame someone if they don't agree with something.

I really liked Nemesis. It was fun. I got to play new champions. I didn't care if we lost.

The purpose of nemesis draft is not to see how 'non meta champions stack up'. We know how non-meta champions stack up in the current meta, we can just look at their win rates.

The purpose of nemesis draft is to show people that pick ban phase matters and team comp matters. I have only played one nemesis draft but it really drives in the result. Our team picked for the enemy team 100% melee, with almost zero hard initiation. Volibear, Alistar, Trundle, Taric, and Zac. Alistar was a mistake since he has istant engage/hard CC. (Zac's charge is easy to see coming). The enemy team picked us something nearly meta. Shyvanna, Ashe, Twitch, Soraka, and AAtrox.

And of course we trounced them, because we had a team comp that worked well together. (AAtrox/Shyvanna/Ashe burst/engage plus twitch/soraka follow up). The enemy team should have seen our "no wave clear no ranged" comp pick coming and made sure that we had weak, squishy, engagable champions and didn't have ways to save those types of champions. Similarly they could have given us all burst champions so that their tanks could come through when assassins had no one to burst. But they did not, they gave us a team composition that synergized and so we wrecked them.

So the question is "did the community fail nemesis". Of course it did. The community does not understand the importance of team composition matchups and synergy. Which we can see from the OP saying the picked a champion without respect to whether or not it helped their team or hurt his team.

I gotta agree with this.

My problems with Nemesis is that my teammates would do things like give the other team Malphite and Sion. And then blame me when they teamed up to rule top.

The people playing it are the problem with this game mode, not the mode itself.

I enjoyed nemesis draft more than most featured game modes, and although I guess I'm not sure exactly what the intention with it was I don't think it "failed" by any measure.

I enjoy playing with odd lane combos and teamcomps (Braum/Janna turned out to be a surprisingly effective lane combo). I also enjoyed thinking of terrible team comps to give the enemy, although when this actually worked (most of the time one or two people on my team would ruin it and end up giving the enemy a balanced comp) it tended to be a complete stomp (we beat the "full ad with zero cc" team in less than 15 minutes).

At the end of the day I enjoyed it mostly just because I like trying to figure out how to make a team with four supports work. I guess you could argue that we could have had a similar "random champs in lanes you don't always see them" experience by literally just picking our champs randomly, but at the end of the day it was still tons of fun.

In response to the op, it sounds like your lack of enjoyment had nothing to do with the mode itself, and everything to do with worrying too much about what other people say. The people who complain that you drafted yasuo for the enemy team are the same people complaining in your ranked games that you didn't ban the champ they wanted, and you should feel free to ignore them in any case.

In my (short, painful) experience with the gamemode, I found that my teammates would rather pick people they think won't do a lot of damage over something that actually makes sense.

Specifically, the other team picked us into burstmages/supports, and we picked them into tanks. Under the rationale that "tanks do no damage". No one seemed to understand what a tank or a burst mage's purpose on a team was, apperently so reliant on metas to do their champion picking for them.

Most of the alternate game mode are just fun for the novelty, when that has gone not much is left. And that is fine, it is why they are temporary. A distraction from the every day league for a couple weeks for people to have something different for a bit then go back to regular summoner's rift. Nemesis didn't fail. Just like hexakill and ascension they did what they were designed to do.

I've been trying to get this across to people since before it even came out. People are just jumping into it with the wrong mentality. I wish Riot had the foresight to explain in a small description that the spirit of the gametype isn't to pick the worst champs for your enemy, but to force strange comps and meta break.

I dont think there are op and bad champs its just how u use em you can have a person who dosent know how to use yas and a expert at galio so the galio would win

What are you smoking? Nemesis mode was a blast! And it was also one of the oldest most asked for ideas for a game mode out there (the idea has been on the forums for YEARS), so good on Riot for listening to the community.

Additionally, this tells Riot very specifically who really needs buffs/reworks/updates and who is just plain unpopular, and that should help them with figuring out who to prioritize in the production pipeline.

Players want power, and a lot of them went into Nemesis only thinking of the power they had over their opponents in Champion Select. They completely missed the point that their opponents had the same power over them or that their new individual power over the enemy only directly affected one opponent. Then when they got into a game, reality stepped in and they realized they weren't guaranteed an advantage because the other team had the same opportunities. It's kind of like ARAM players who get upset when they go 5 non-tank melee vs. 3 long range poke + tank + sustain, but talk big when the opposite is true.

Currently it seems the request trend (other than URF) is leaning toward either Free-for-All or Friendly Fire game modes. At first glance, it sounds interesting and potentially hilarious, but you just know people are going to rage harder than ever when they realize how hard it's going to be to win in those modes. Disregarding the win conditions (timer instead of Nexus?) for an FFA, people who are confident that they're the most dominant in their games are going to find themselves much less effective without a team backing them up (and potentially with 9 people focusing them). For a Friendly Fire setup, the whole point is that you can kill your teammates, so how many people will play that mode who don't want to kill their team? Additionally, how many people are going to miscalculate and screw up a teamfight with an AoE while not trying to throw it? Have fun trying to win while having to fight your own team as well.

The people on my contact lists for the most part had no interest in Nemesis. A few of us played a game and were satisfied that we tried it (with no urge to replay), and others just ignored it completely. It had a lot of bad word-of-mouth publicity for multiple reasons, one of the most glaring of which was players who didn't understand the mode clashing with players who did (e.g., using all bans on "overpowered" champs). Another issue people worried about was the disconnection penalties, both the timer and the icon reward ineligibility.

But mainly, people want more power, not less. URF remains the most requested featured mode because everyone had Real Ultimate Power without needing to be a flippin' ninja (yay for 10+ year old references). Doom Bots of Doom worked for a while, but people grew tired of it. People didn't mind being abused by those cheaters because they were bots and the cheats were so ridiculously over the top. If it had been PvP with one standard team vs. one Doom team, the disconnect rate probably would've been through the roof. One for All worked because people liked chaining skills together that typically only happen once per cooldown cycle. Ascension worked because it was fast paced and gave everyone a chance to take that massive buff, which could still be earned by the opposing team if they killed the Ascended player and then the Ascended Ancient. Poro King seemed popular enough, because adding a gapcloser to everyone was an automatic buff and the King himself swapped sides frequently enough.

TL;DR What it seems like a lot of players' thought processes were: "Oooh, new game mode! I can mess with my enemy? SWEET!" *starts a game* "WTF they're messing me up more! My team sucks! THIS MODE SUCKS!"

People who have played Nemesis Draft have known the true power beneath the meta....

Often in Nemesis draft, players would simply pick the "worst" champions rather than deciding on how to pick the worst team. This often leads to relatively balanced enemy teams (eg. Urgot adc, Taric support, Mordekaiser top, Zac jungle, and Azir mid), which of course had a tendency to steamroll our own team of "overpowered" but utterly synergy lacking champions.

I think it was a good mode. But just not by itself. The best thing about it was that you didn't have to see the same high end champions. But if you played enough of it, you got used to seeing lots of low end champions.

But, I think the novelty of it will shine when mixed with other modes. Nemesis URF would be very fun. Only champion I could see needing to be disabled is Yasou as he benefits almost nothing from the mode compared to other champions. I think he had the lowest win rate.

As someone who constantly plays a very limited pool of champions, I like(d) Nemesis Draft. It forces you out of your comfort zone.

Yasuo can be demolished easily by a sturdy fighter like Trundle or Darius. Like most assassins, his whole thing is to kill the enemy before they can react, and get out of Dodge before their allies can respond. If they survive long enough to react, he only has his speed and wind wall to protect him, and like any other assassin, he has no answer for a barrage of crowd control.

That tends to be the mentality in League right now. No one ever thinks about the utility of skills or items to keep enemies at bay that doesn't start with Sightstone. It's an overly aggressive/offensive mentality, and when everyone is thinking in this mentality, the game turns into a self-destructive arms race over who can wield and swing the biggest stick the fastest. That's why Yasuo and Zed are seen as overpowered. They're being compared in an arms race between other assassins, and used properly, they are dangerous forces of nature, more so than Master Yi, Shaco, or even Vayne. The punchline is any champion can become a murder machine in the right hands. I've gone on a big killing spree as Nautilus, a champion meta-focused players see as so trash tier, they'll go into a blind rage and throw the entire game just to spite you. I've gone against a team of assassins (including Zed and Yasuo!) as Support Taric and won. I've shut down an egregiously fed Zed as Nami in a solo fight at full health (though to be fair, he got cocky).

I like the idea that Nemesis is supposed to force you to play other champions in a non-ARAM setting, but people think about the game and its various elements in too binary a definition. If you value champions only by their ability to deal damage, you need to step outside or get your head checked.

[{quoted}](name=Lord Knife Cat,realm=NA,application-id=LFfTlAky,discussion-id=yvF9pqjG,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-02-19T18:39:10.758+0000)

Ok so it's a pretty big consensus that nemesis draft failed as a game mode (omg not urf) but i wouldn't say it's riots fault. From what i saw of the game mode it was meant to be a place to try new things and expand your champion pool, but that isn't what happened. What i saw was players actively picking the worst champions they could think of and raging/flaming their teammates for picking anything else. For example one game i picked the enemy team yasuo (rage insued) because i wanted to see how people would play against one of these so called ''OP'' champs. As i partially expected the top laner that was facing him (galio) lost lane to him. Personally i didn't mind, i never expected people to do well with champions they don't play but what got to me was when my team blamed me for our loss. Now top hadn't been the only lane that lost, bot lane lost as well and I in mid lost lane. I was dissapointed really to find our community crying "yasuo is op therefore we couldn't have won anyway" instead of trying to deal with him. I guess what i'm saying is maybe these game modes wouldn't fail so much if our community approached things from a positive light instead of acting like narcissistic tryhards in them. Everyone wants to win but you don't have to get so anal about it.

edit: Summing up the comments section so far :D -people feel nemesis draft didn't bring much to the table (like urf did) -(one comment i liked) nemesis didn't "fail" it did exactly what it was meant to do -yasuo is easy op? (though others think he's easy countered too) -A number of people ENJOYED nemesis draft, perhaps it wasn't as disliked as i believed~

I actually enjoyed nemesis draft even if we lost and I feel that it forces people to use champions people think is weak, but in a good way. For example, I was surprised at how well I played against anivia as mordekaiser and was winning lane. Needless to say we lost the game because my team were composed of tanks and junglers so we lacked damage. (I was also surprised at the burst anivia had combined with her stun and made me think about getting her.) I think Riot was trying to make people break the meta and try new things.

I quite enjoyed Nemesis. I do agree that it got old seeing the same champs every game, but not old as fast as seeing a different set of same champs every game in regular play.

I'd honestly love to see an all-random SR mode, but given how non-random they made ARAM I'm not holding out hope for that any time soon.

tbh i would have changed exactly two things.

one: i would have moved the pick arrows and countdown to a large plae grey upscaled and placed behind the chat history box from the tiny arrows on the corners above the champ list.

two: bans would come after picks and force repicks.

there have been plenty of first timers not getting the mode in the draft phase, and i myself fell to a very active chat on selections and mistakenly running out of time due to misreading timer while focused on team chat during picks, though these things get learned from and grown beyond rapidly.

from there it is more about having people who understand that simply because your champion is a mage doesn't mean you cannot build fulltank or adc instead if given your teams options the champ you have can best fill that type of role through itemization.

about having people who understand what many champions actually do(no ashe is not JUST ad, she can build full ap and cause pain ruining that strategy), or perhaps giving the enemy large amounts of spammable cc and mobility on the basis of "just support" is a failure of your imagination and knowledge.

about having people who don't think that "well, this champ is hard for me" extends to everyone else. or because they don't know a champ noone does. or that "vayne is high skillcap so she will definitely feed" is rational when any one of the enemy 5 could main the champ.

about knowing how to present some key communication about your experience with different champions you have available to your team among other things and not hiding inexperience with what you were initially picked until you are deep in and losing hard.

about agreeing on a plan during picking instead of everyone does whatever, and asking for suggestions to fit the plan if in doubt. cooperating in forming a composition, especially if your team starts picking second and you have a known champ on your side to work from in counterpicking a comp.

about being aware, flexible, knowledgeable, and versatile instead of a "riven only lel" and/or "my lane is an island forever" type.

or even simply about(in particular when the other team picks first) knowing how to counterpick.

the general level of thought present most of the time is proving pretty low overall. also apparently most players have no idea what poppy, skarner, urgot actually do as a kit. they also seem to think playing yorick passably is too hard to be done.

i've had some atrocious games (invaded repeatedly with no team response behind elise is ..really hard. think that is definitively my worst game since i started this account http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1735704238/42797991?tab=overview ), i've had some amazing games, i've had at least one that went over an hour(on skarner jungle who i may have used almost 5 times in three years and i don't own ended with ~6k gold i couldn't spend and carried through after more surrender votes than i could count to win it.http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1732970686/42797991?tab=overview ). i've had a 4v5 a couple times with at least one becoming a win (with the afk coming back for the final push underlevel because they were "surprised and impressed" how hard i was working poppy to keep us in the game. http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1731431343/42797991?tab=overview ).[and yes those enemy comps were according to whatever strategy the team wanted by majority, the skarner game it was "just ap junglers" with rammus a trollpick, the poppy game was "ap" with eve a bit trollpick due to them admitting not knowing for sure, and the elise game they wanted "just tanks". it still works better than not asking what they want to go for at all and getting pell mell messes and dodges]

heck there was one we agreed to try to give em all physical damage only adcs and just rush thornmail first whatever we got, and we got mostly ap mages and won(though someone gave em ashe who went full ap .. oi.). enemy team seemed to enjoy that one in spite the loss as it was closer than if we'd been all tanks.

it is, in short, all over the place.

the only truly deciding factors overall have been team honesty and effective communication coupled with flexibility versus rigidity. and those begin as the bans are starting not the loadscreen, but cannot stop when the game starts either. lol gods bless the players who get giddy over adc nami top and the like when it happens to be the seemingly best way to handle assignation in a match, or fulltank initiator janna, or ad hydra bork splitpush braum. that can do might fail but going to try, and ensuring that where possible noone is first timing or totally blindsided goes leagues in chances of success, not to mention having a pleasant game.

which takes me back to the op: you were working your desires over a good faith choice for the team in a draft situation by your own admission and presentation of the details. bottom line one players individual imagined fantasy they want to see doesn't trump the team, and putting that fantasies actual occurrence first was assisting the enemy. the same would have been true if the target lineup was all melee and you gave em nami or janna, or all imobile apc and you give them leona. maybe you are right and they only cried over yasuo because op perception, but perhaps its more a matter of crying over yasuo because you just counterpicked your own team for the enemy op.

you even fail to present it as fitting a team composition goal or a choice as a counterpick to what you had that should be shut down by one of your teams options. you state quite clearly you just wanted to see it.

but i cannot harp on you really: we don't know if galio v yas was because people just presumed a lane and never called for a swap or anything else to deal with the issues or not. we don't know how the rest of the team communication went, if any(aside from complaint). we don't even know if the interpreted complaint was actually an ineffective way to communicate a need for a swap or help. we don't know the rest of the picks for either side, we don't know the order of picks.

we don't know quite a lot, especially given nemesis doesn't show up in match history outside the clients last few matches played list.

so aside from what you have presented which reads a very specific way, the compounding of the pick could have been almost any number of other issues, most likely drawing from that list of common failures i started with.

but don't let that stuff get you down: if you run it enough either you'll start shaking uncontrollably and have a nervous breakdown, or some suprising games in weird directions. that poppy and elise game had me do the former, but i've also had a few of the latter. still waiting through multiple attempts to get through draft without a dodger to see how it goes after it all.

nemesis draft failed because people took the mode too seriously and played only to win and the best way to win was to avoid giving opposing teams any carries. nearly all my games were 5 supports vs 5 supports and they were all really stale.

My favorite thing about this mode is that people just give supports like Nami and Sona because "well they do no damage". Just because a champion can function without gold doesn't mean they can't function as an APC if they get a lane to farm. Full AP sona/nami were actually terrifying (funny how the supports always seem to be strong in the featured modes).

I found the best strategy is to just give them 5 adcs that can't build AP. They've got basically no recourse against 5 dorans shields/thornmails

Nemesis tip: Don't just pick champs that suck. Pick champs that build a comp that you counter. If your top is galio, a magic resist based champion with many skillshots, don't pick yasuo or even . If you just pull out a random champ I don't see much of, you will probably screw over your team.

I only got to play one game of Nemesis on a smurf. We gave them lots of fast, squishy champions. The enemy retaliated by giving us lots of slow, immobile, squishy champions.

Then they made two mistakes. They gave one of my teammates Malzahar, and they gave me Veigar.

We sent them back to their next queue with a raging case of space herpes and nightmares about fighting the Final Boss.

So.... Riot puts out a game mode where your enemies pick your team for you and it's the communities fault it was trolly and failed?

Oh please, it's up to Riot to release fun and healthy game modes. This one bombed because it was not thought out well.