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The actual time lenght of TFT games is an issue.

ShadWooo·7/5/2019, 8:05:12 PM·9 votes·5,047 views

Despite a lot of unneeded rng, bugs, issues and very bad GUI I like the mode. Possibly because this is first "card" game I ever played and it seems I am good at it.

Anyway. Games are too long. You forced this snowball and oneshot meta upon us in SR because you thought that 30+ minutes games are unhealthy and players seek more fast paced games. Fine but then why do we have TFT which lasts for 40+ minutes if you get to the top three? Out of 6 recent games I played where I ended in first or second place it lasted 39minutes or more. That is actually quite a lot and that doesn't even count time spent on loading screen. It looked as fun, no stress and fast gamemode but in the end it turns into almost hour battles lol.

I think this could be severely reduced if:

1) We remove carousel.

Unpopular opinion because it seems those who know the genre thinks it is key feature and what makes this mode auto-chess. But seriously, there are so many issues with it. Players bumping each other (results in taking what you didn't want), player models/names hiding champions/items (so it is harder to choose what you want to take), position of the champs in regards to your starting position (6 times out of 7 games when it was my turn the champ I wanted was on opposite side and next player in order snapped him first, once I was able to do that to the enemy as well), no space between champions (so you need to go in circle), very little time to choose if you are last in order or in the initial carousel rounds and players spamming annoying sounds/animations/emotes because they have nothing better to do when they picked already and must wait for others to choose.

There must be some better way to do that. I don't exactly what would it be (again this is my first time playing this genre), but current implementation is stupid.

2) We remove minion rounds.

Another unpopular opinion because again it seems DOTA has it so it is a standard. But seriously what is a point of this? You will waste around 5 minutes to get to the first player match and unless you want to lose it or you afk, you cannot lose the first 3 minion rounds. Yes I understand - you get XP, gold, some items if you are lucky, and new champions selection after each rounds so there is a point but seriously cannot this be achieved in a different way?

I propose to just grant level 3 instantly, two free rerolls, gold you would get normally in the last minion round if you didnt bought anything and make it to be just single minion round, the last one and tweak item RNG (5 minions = chance for up to 5 items right? - whether items should be RNG or not is anothr topic I won't deal with here).

Also I am not sure what is a point of the next minion rounds. I mean, again you get +2 XP, chance for item(s), new store roll, and more gold, but there are few issues I see here.

First, it is easy to lose those minion rounds. If you went for eco strat, reroll strat where you don't get levels (and both are bad strats now with last changes) you will lose. Also all subsequent minion rounds after the first three usually requires to completely reposition your team and sometiimes even swap champions for others to win. While that is in theory good as it requires attention and some player skill in reality what happens is that it just shortens the time you have to prepare for next player rounds as you need to reposition your units back.

Second, when it comes to epic monster fights some team comps simply cannot win. Yordles especially are prone to losing to dragon. Funny enough, Herald is weaker than dragon despite it is after him. Glacial and sorcery comp is also prone to losing it but depends to items. For example last game I was first for almost whole game and one player made comeback, made a glacial comp (I had combination of yordles+gunslinger+shapeshifter) and started beating me. But I had 40 HP and he had 5. Then dragon came we both lost to it and he got killed and I won it. I don't mind that win but I am not sure if this is healthy design. Maybe I just don't understand the point of this. Is this to force players to create comp that will be able to beat it? But if so, it is not reducing that much hitpoints to have a value. It seems to me as an extra item for the few specific team comps and disadvantage to others. And that is wrong.

3) We reduce unneccessary animations and delay.

There is huge and needless pause between "prepare timer" runs out and battle starts. A portal appears, you and your champions jumps into it, camera moves and portal appears on different island, champions appears, 1 more second delay and only then battle starts. But the worst offenders are minion rounds when it takes 3+ seconds after timer runs out to get started. Is this truly needed?

4) We allow players acts immediately after they win/lose.

This is probably unrealistic with shared champ pool as it would give advantage/disadvantage, but there is nothing more annoying than to wait 15 more seconds before battle of glacial comps with no damage but perma stuns, Elise comps or when two players battling each other has full lifesteal Vaynes and nobody can win. It would be nice if I would just get teleported to my island, got new champion selection and gold. We would still have to wait for those players to finish, but this time could be spent managing your troops (and funnily enough despite how long the whole game is there is never enough time to manage your troops).

5) Possibly re-design the units/comps that cannot win yet are dragging the fight to 1 minute+.

Elise I am looking at you.

Thanks for reading and if you disagree with me please before downvoting, explain me why do we need those mechanics I am against.

6 Comments

Ratpie7/5/2019, 8:30:18 PM1 votes

I am going to start backwards.

  1. Agree mostly, but not complete removal I think a simple answer there is if she dies, so should her spiders.

  2. Agree but I see the same problem you do. I wouldn't mind this if maybe they just reset your board so you could reposition earlier and then open champ store once everyone is ready.

  3. Agree. There are a lot of weird time sinks in this game, that seem to make things take longer than they should.

  4. Disagree. I actually like the change of pace the minion rounds give and moving your champs really isnt that hard, I usually only move maybe 2? for dragon and rarely lose to it (almost never with yordles unless you havn't gotten full stacks yet, but then you are probably dead at that point in the game if you are not at 6 anyway). Krugs are probably the most dangerous as the way their health resets it really does cause some problems for some comps. I usually am still banking at that point and so I am still usually at the base 4 champs. Some comps can handle it and some can't. On my weaker comps it does slow me down a hair as I have to put in an extra level that I woudlnt normally spend to beat the krugs, because the item drops are just too valuable to miss out on, but then it just becomes part of the strat. I would have no problem though if they just removed the krug health recovery, it would make it so some builds arent punished early, and that would speed up krugs.

  5. Agree and Disagree. The carousel has a lot of bugs, and there has to be a more efficient way to do it that doesn't cause so many problems. Maybe just put up the options and people click on what they want instead of the circle crap. But in the end I don't think that is why it takes so long to play a round. You might shave of a minute or two with these suggestions, but its still really long.

The main solution I see to shortening game length is to just have health go down faster, and build faster. This means upping damage and giving more gold per round so that people can still get full comps, maybe make resets cost less so that it isn't so punishing and people can build teams faster and play over less rotations? You could even keep all the minion waves, just less overall VS rounds.

GravenFear7/5/2019, 9:15:16 PM1 votes

  1. A fix for the carousel could just be: Remove all this unlocking crap and just have each player click on the unit they want after a 5-10 second delay at the beginning of the round. Then the players are given their picks in the same order they would get them now, with every "pair of players" (meaning the pairs they would be in if they unlocked as they do now) getting their picks in the order of whomever clicked first.

  2. I think the minion rounds are mainly for getting your first set of units and choosing what champions you're going to build around. That being said... yeah, the whole 'kill the minions' part of it is a completely pointless time-waster. Just give the players their gold, the items they get from winning a minion round, and reroll the shop. That being said, the stronger monster rounds are 100% needed. These are used for very useful reasons 1. They give the player some much needed rest from fighting other players teams that are 'designed' to defeat them (because the players are trying to win every round) 2. They even out how far apart the players are from each other by cutting of win/lose streaks and killing specific compositions that the devs expect to be doing better than others 3. gives you some time to think about how you want to design your team going forward (while the rounds your fighting the player you're just mostly thinking about how can I make my current team as strong as possible for the next fight)

  3. I'd assumed the delays were mostly for player clarity are to keep performance smooth (like how in Dota Auto Chess there is always a lag spike before the battle because all the units are being moved at once). But yeah, the "I'm getting hit with damage" and other small delays are just annoying.

  4. I think it would be unfair to all the players that are still fighting if the other players got more free time to do things. The shared champion pool isn't a problem because they could just re-roll all the shops after the first player wins but only show the new shop to players once they finish the round.

  5. I don't think they should change the champions to speed up game time. The longer the round lasts, even if you're not going to win, it still gives your remaining unit(s) a chance to get at least 1 more kill.

And to address RATPIE's comment

The main solution I see to shortening game length is to just have health go down faster, and build faster. This means upping damage and giving more gold per round so that people can still get full comps, maybe make resets cost less so that it isn't so punishing and people can build teams faster and play over less rotations? You could even keep all the minion waves, just less overall VS rounds.

I think this is a very bad idea. It already feels bad enough taking 30 damage late game when you just run into a team that completely counters your team. Increasing damage is NOT a good way to speed up game time, only make the game less fun.

Also, getting to those late round with Elder Dragon and Rift Herald always feels great. You're thinking to yourself "even if I don't win this, if I can kill these super minions I'm happy with this game". It's like getting to the final boss on a dungeon in an MMO. All the player battles are just the defenses and the big minions are the final bosses.

PenthouseMack7/5/2019, 9:47:37 PM1 votes

I posted this same exact idea two days ago and it didn't get a single comment. Yes, games are going entirely too long and I think it is due mostly to:

-Players becoming better at the game as mechanics are figured out.

-A highly limited number of champions. Most people in my games are hate-drafting to deny other players which makes compositions worse. Players are now winning by 1-2 champions and health loss is low. Many of my games are going past elder with 3-5 people remaining (40-50% or so). The other half or so are most certainly going bast infernal. Even if you are getting stomped and incredibly unlucky, the priority that you get in carousel is easily enough to keep you in the game until infernal if you can stall appropriately.

Ratpie7/5/2019, 11:14:50 PM1 votes

What if for the carousel round it just shows the row of champs, and you just put them in the order you want. Then everyone has the same time to decide what they want, and then they are just given by priority. It would shave some time off and it would stop some of the dumb things like blocking, and being stuck on the wrong side of the circle when your turn starts.