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All the problems with this game from a design standpoint

fr0st2k·9/25/2019, 5:32:03 PM·3 votes·1,066 views

Here are the main points - Read more about them further down in the post.

  1. Playing strategically hurts you and benefits others
  2. Doing well offers far too little incentive.
  3. Inability to pair random items with random champions
  4. Pathing and freezing issues of champions

1. Playing strategically hurts you and benefits others

Part of this game requires the player to adapt. The entire point of having a limited pool and being able to view your opponents pieces is proof of that. However, a huge problem is that if you notice another player picking the same pieces as you, you are left with 2 choices. Change your strategy, or hope that the other player changes their strategy.

If you choose the former, you are specifically hurting yourself. This shouldn't be the case in strategic games. Pivoting and adapting should be rewarded. However, as it is now, it's the other way around. The oblivious player who just continues about his strategy unaware of anything else in the game, benefits.

Bad Design

2. Doing well offers far too little incentive.

In most games - the goal is to do well, and continue doing well. In this game, when you win a fight, you receive 1 gold. Thats it. The drawbacks however are much more substantial. You get last pick in item round. Your streak gets much more easily ruined if you don't continue upkeeping your stronger units, and in turn, you lose more gold than you win.

Based on the damage taken early game, it makes little sense to win rounds. The items make far too much difference end game to give up not getting your choice.

3. Inability to pair random items with random champions

Items have no real point in this game other than the add to the randomness.

You receive items randomly. If you are doing decent and are higher ranked in the early game, as stated above, you receive items at random and get no choices. What this means is that you can not strategically plan your items around your champions, or in reverse, you can't plan your champions around your items. So again, what is the point of items? To extrapolate - if you receive, at random, the ingredients for a guinsoo - lucky you! However, now you need to "hope" to get a decent ADC to hold it. And vice versa, if you get a T3 ADC, but no BF sword or Recurve Bow, then they are dead weight.

One of these needs to be fixed. The game seems to be based around random selected champions, so therefore, items need to be significantly less random.

4. Pathing and freezing issues of champions

Less game design, and more poor design. Champion pathing in this game is awful. As a strategy game based on the name, "chess" placement of units needs to be more important. You can't have this unless you know how each unit will behave. This means, specific units need to target other specific units and have priorities that are clearly laid out.

Right now, people just clump their champions with glass cannons in the back and tanks in the front. Assassins used to help with this, but now assassins are pointless since when they jump to the back, they just get focused down. If only I could get an item to help them, maybe I could build them to counter specific opponents. But...I can't.

I think Riot noticed there is something here. This game format is fun and interesting, or they wouldn't have copied it so quickly. But the problem is, the people they have in charge of designing it aren't really talented enough to evolve it into something really good.

1 Comments

CloudedLogic9/25/2019, 6:14:16 PM1 votes

My thoughts:

  1. This isn't AS linear as you make it out to be, but yes those elements make it so you can suffer in varying degrees if someone else goes after your comp.

This also has a lot to do with the meta, and denial options. My specific strategy going in will almost certainly change this patch, but last patch my plan involved a few specific actions regardless of my intended comp.

I would grab specific carries for comps others are building. This means if I see an ashe, kha/kass, draven, or shyvana I grab it and hold onto it to deny someone. By the end of the patch the top comps were well known by most all levels of players so all I really needed to do was glance at them for a second to be able to say, "ah they are going glacial rangers, or void assassins, or whatever." Then I'd focus on grabbing units I felt have a decent synergy, and capability to place, even if this meant giving up a 'better' comp.

Anyway this makes the denial options pretty strong. You also do not have to pivot out if you are lucky enough to get your pieces first, but again that is very luck dependent in a game where you permanently expend a resource to see more champion cards.

  1. I don't specifically disagree with this, but sacrificing/losing your win streak isn't the end of the world, I will get unlucky mid game and lose a 6 or 7 streak I build up, but by then I have usually already hit 50 gold which is what is most important as interest is always much more than a streak (obviously both is better, but this is less pressure to do well in the short term). The problem lies in when you sacrifice gold interest to protect the lower win streak gold, which I see as a mistake. Proper economy is always going to worth more, and losing early doesn't hurt as bad, but also doesn't guarantee a turn around. Most of my ranked losses are because I turned down what I saw as "sub par silvers" and then not being able to recover from the loss streak.

Not saying that the silvers would have kept me in the game, but short term they would have helped me survive a little longer.

That being said, I also see people complain about the opposite, so not sure what is better. I'll stick to what I think is good.

  1. I think this is somewhat right, but some units are just better than others and can use items better in general, as well as a lot of comps not having varying "classes." The cases where this is very much the case would be the classes based comps for the most part. Going 6 assassin means you are almost exclusively limited to melee squishy burst champs and a couple melee to draw out their front line usually, where as going sorcerer means you have a bunch of ranged champs with powerful spells that often don't do a lot of damage in autos. Things like noble have both front liners, and back liners built in, same for shapeshifter, though they are kind of weird about it.

Obviously spatula can alleviate this slightly, but can also lead to some weird cases as well (like why would you want a non kaisa ranged assassin who is just going to leap in to the fight if you don't give them rfc or make them a front liner). Not to mention spatula due to the power of force of nature has to be a rarer item in the first place.

  1. While I'll be the first to admit I've seem some things >.> it has been less of an issue of late. Granted some problems still arise, I will randomly see a melee stop attack every handful of games and such. So, yeah.