Grand Old Thread: League of Legends!

[Frolossus]

finally shunpo gets fixed
i like the black cleaver change
so now tyrnd can't fountain dive?

 

[Vyke]

Pretty sure Trynd got a buff if anything this patch, seeing as instead of doing no damage while exhasuted... he'll do small amounts of it still.

Unless I missed something.

 

[Vex Kasrani]

Does anybody know the numbers of Garen's judgement before it got nerfed?

 

[jpak]

Mogwai, critting wards or having madred's proc on wards ruins some of the strategies with ward pplacement.

Dekar, who do you play 3s and 5s with? And do you go tanky after gunblade for cho?

 

[Mogwai]

Does anybody know the numbers of Garen's judgement before it got nerfed?

30/70/110/150/190 per second with 70% total AD scaling.

current iteration is

60/100/140/180/220 per second with 100% bonus AD scaling

so he's about -40 damage/second with no AD items now from pre-nerf.

Mogwai, critting wards or having madred's proc on wards ruins some of the strategies with ward pplacement.

Dekar, who do you play 3s and 5s with? And do you go tanky after gunblade for cho?

so what? did anyone really care about it?

 

[M3D]

I'm sorry but you really seem to offer up conflicting opinions on what encourages aggressive play. When convenient to whatever argument you're making, you'll state that increasing risk (i.e. increasing ward times to increase jungling risk) will promote aggressive gameplay, yet you refute my point about flash saying that by making flash less of a get out of jail free card, it promotes safer and more boring play. This seems entirely contradictory to me, you don't seem to have any sort of consistent criteria for what drives gameplay in the direction you're aiming for unless I'm missing something.

Either your reading comprehension is really bad or you just don't understand this design principle. Let me simplify: If you want to increase a behavior in players, you should generally increase the reward for it, decrease the risk for it or both. If you understand that, all my other arguments make perfect sense.

- If you increase the duration of wards, it decreases the risk of extending your lane and fighting the enemy team when you have an advantage that you can press. Since the rewards for kills are sufficiently high enough that you will want to engage when it is safe, players will be more aggressive with longer ward duration. So lower risk, same rewards = more of the desired behavior.

- Likewise, Riot wants to make jungling an OPTION, not a necessary choice. So how do you do that? They tried to do it by slightly decreasing some of the rewards (by making it take longer and reducing the global EXP of dragon) but at the same time they made it SAFER to jungle by lowering the risk. Removing the ability to watch their CS, nerfing wards that might catch them coming for ganks/dragon kills, etc, made jungling safer (apart from very specific counter-junglers like Eve, which is a whole other problem to deal with later). So they effectively LOWERED the RISK but probably had no net reduction of the rewards in response. In fact, while they made staying in the jungle forever slightly less rewarding, they made ganking lanes (one of the primary problems with active play) MORE rewarding. So jungling stayed about the same and they increased the risk you pose to laning champions. Lower risk and equal or higher rewards (hi Eve!) = more of the behavior or at least the same amount of it.

- So for jungling, I was proposing that you make it a high risk, high reward scenario. Generally, that kind of coupling of risk and reward makes something a choice, rather than a necessity, or it at least consistently rewards the most skillful/coordinated players instead of rewarding anyone who tries it. Increasing ward duration would make jungling higher risk and buffing rewards for neutral monsters would make it higher reward. I'm not saying that is THE answer, but from a traditional game design perspective, HR/HR scenarios are generally how you accomplish the goal Riot set out for changes to jungling. They are probably resisting it at the moment because people LIKE jungling safely and ganks are currently one of the few sources of active gameplay for them.

- I also think that the Summoner's Rift map in general promotes passive play. The towers are just too close to the center of the early creep waves, so you experience almost no risk for very high rewards sitting in the middle of the lane and farming. Likewise, the extensive brush allows you to farm and harass in relative safety, especially to the "left side" of each base where there is not a backdoor of sorts to your tower location.

- So... on to the flashdodge thing. Yes, removing flash dodge does allow for successful gank attempts that otherwise would have failed. But succeeding in a gank is not "active" play. It's a single event where one side was successful over the other. These are different things. Active play means both sides are encouraged to be aggressive over a long duration. SO... when you remove one of the safety nets a solo laner has with the dodge associated with flash, you increase the risk of pushing a lane and you've done nothing to increase the rewards as well. So the natural inclination of players is going to stay MORE SAFE and take FEWER RISKS because the same reward for higher risk is not an optimal choice.

Now, you might argue that it increases the reward for attempted ganks and thus encourages players to attempt them, but gankers haven't really become much more aggressive (apart from Eve, again, a special case) rather than just more successful in their attempts. They still have to be in the jungle for the same or even more time to keep up in levels and the in-lane fights are generally only successful in that way when someone overextends or the enemies are packing multiple stuns and would have been aggressive in the first place. Sion/Singed are going to have their stun/flip combo up a lot more often than your flash is up anyways and thus are going to be an aggressive duo whether flash can dodge or not.

Perhaps it had a small net value of increasing the success of gank attempts, but I'd wager carries solo'ing a lane are just going to slide further and further back towards "hide in the brush and come out to last hit" rather than the overall play slide towards "I should push and be aggressive in lane even though I'm less safe."

I believe those arguments are perfectly consistent, but I'd be happy if you could show me where my logic might have faltered. I think you are just mistaking being more successful in the same situations for actually active play on all sides.

re: ward critsso what? did anyone really care about it?

Apparently they did enough for the Riot design team to look into it. In particular, they noted ward baiting to an interesting enough emergent game principle that they wanted to preserve it.

10 times out of 10 I use flash offensively, because it's the best initiate skill hands down.

Agreed. Flash --> OMNOMNOM with Cho is amazing.

I've been thoroughly enjoying my arranged games with friends

Agreed again. This game is so much more fun with five competent friends on a team... or at least four competent players and Zac.

 

[jpak]

Yes it is a big enough problem when do you arranged 5s esepcially when the teams have strategies. if someone gets an early oracle it significantly limits your team's vision of the map since they destroy the wards and you become relient on clairvoyance. So by placing a common ward we can bait the oracle user to come. This does not work well when the oracle user or someone near him has to hit the ward once.

 

[Solidusspriggan]

I personally used flashdodge as a precisely planned offensive tactic rather than a defensive panic button. With akali I was able to turret dive an opponent when a caster was present and time my flashcancel to cancel their killer ability, especially an autotargeted stun like Scion or Taric. Those abilities take no skill in precision, they just automatically stun you, they don't even have to aim a skill shot, nor dodge obstacles like minions with the shot. Flash was the counter to cheap moves like that. I feel that flash cancel was the skilled precision counter to easy moves that make killing an opponent effortless. (IE autotargeted stuns).

In the meantime, Scion can still just walk his fat *** under your turret with a shield, stun you, and kill you with nothing but 2 button presses seconds apart and perhaps a little assist, even early game. The flash nerf made the game easier for anti-flash QQs, and destroyed the time, effort, and technical skill of flash players. Imagine nintendo patched air-dodge because people were dodging too many projectiles!

Also, getting Nurse Akali, and hopefully I can have more fun with Irelia. She was so UP.

 

[ArcNatural]

I can finally jungle okish with Rammus.

I'm not sure if I should be able to do the standard route with just defensive mastery (no runes) at level 12. I have been trying it with 2 points in harden and 2 points in defensive mastery for now.

I usually can't do the side golems if I try the standard route:
blue golem, wolves, wraiths, red (no xp bonus so I'm still level 2), then I can sometimes kill one of the side golems but not the second.

I can do the 2nd route wraiths -> stay in mid til level 2, blue, wolves, wraiths again, red, then golems and usually make it out anywhere between 10-25% ish hp.

Figured I would throw in some noob stuff while you guys are all talking crazy high tier stuff XD.

 

[Mogwai]

Either your reading comprehension is really bad or you just don't understand this design principle. Let me simplify: If you want to increase a behavior in players, you should generally increase the reward for it, decrease the risk for it or both. If you understand that, all my other arguments make perfect sense.

I understand risk vs. reward but I basically think you're targeting your proposed modifications to risks and rewards at the wrong aspects of the game.

- If you increase the duration of wards, it decreases the risk of extending your lane and fighting the enemy team when you have an advantage that you can press. Since the rewards for kills are sufficiently high enough that you will want to engage when it is safe, players will be more aggressive with longer ward duration. So lower risk, same rewards = more of the desired behavior.

ok, here's your fundamental problem, you seem to define aggression as pushing the lane... or something. I dunno I'm not really clear because I honestly feel like your definition of aggression changes depending on whatever you're actually trying to argue (i.e. you seem to promote ganking junglers in the jungle while advocating for making ganking lanes much more difficult). long ward duration makes it cheap and easy to prevent getting ganked, which yes, allows you to push. when you push, they're on their tower and they have trouble last hitting and you have an easy time last hitting. The way this translates in real high level games is just a farmfest where the pusher is at an advantage unless we're talking about someone who is good at both poking and towerdiving (pantheon, sion, malphite, vlad all come to mind) so that they can actually create a kill situation on an opposing tower. I dunno why you seem to think that being gank-proof promotes active gameplay because in most cases I find that pushing a lane without getting ganked merely creates a slight disparity in the reward of sitting there farming.

- Likewise, Riot wants to make jungling an OPTION, not a necessary choice. So how do you do that? They tried to do it by slightly decreasing some of the rewards (by making it take longer and reducing the global EXP of dragon) but at the same time they made it SAFER to jungle by lowering the risk. Removing the ability to watch their CS, nerfing wards that might catch them coming for ganks/dragon kills, etc, made jungling safer (apart from very specific counter-junglers like Eve, which is a whole other problem to deal with later). So they effectively LOWERED the RISK but probably had no net reduction of the rewards in response. In fact, while they made staying in the jungle forever slightly less rewarding, they made ganking lanes (one of the primary problems with active play) MORE rewarding. So jungling stayed about the same and they increased the risk you pose to laning champions. Lower risk and equal or higher rewards (hi Eve!) = more of the behavior or at least the same amount of it.

Ignoring the fact that I think it's remarkably stupid to arbitrarily decide that jungling needs to not be a necessity (I think it's stupid that we have to put someone at mid lane, but Riot won't cater to my ******** beliefs, so it's horribly unfair that they try to cater to others ******** beliefs)...

They strictly buffed jungling. I thought the exp on dragon would hurt more, but ultimately making dragon give 240 gold was a gigantic buff. The only thing they did that hurt jungling IMO was reducing solo lane exp and you barely feel that, so yea we perceive these changes the same.

- So for jungling, I was proposing that you make it a high risk, high reward scenario. Generally, that kind of coupling of risk and reward makes something a choice, rather than a necessity, or it at least consistently rewards the most skillful/coordinated players instead of rewarding anyone who tries it. Increasing ward duration would make jungling higher risk and buffing rewards for neutral monsters would make it higher reward. I'm not saying that is THE answer, but from a traditional game design perspective, HR/HR scenarios are generally how you accomplish the goal Riot set out for changes to jungling. They are probably resisting it at the moment because people LIKE jungling safely and ganks are currently one of the few sources of active gameplay for them.

It's a double sided coin making wards last longer though. It doesn't just make jungling higher risk, it also makes jungling lower reward (can't gank) and it makes farming a lane lower risk. Again, this is why attacking jungling is stupid, doing so promotes the more passive play in the game and discourages the source of most pre-15 minute action.

- I also think that the Summoner's Rift map in general promotes passive play. The towers are just too close to the center of the early creep waves, so you experience almost no risk for very high rewards sitting in the middle of the lane and farming. Likewise, the extensive brush allows you to farm and harass in relative safety, especially to the "left side" of each base where there is not a backdoor of sorts to your tower location.

LoL is a very lethal game early on, much more so than DotA was. Having a comparable distance between towers would accentuation already horrible lane matchups where Pantheon/Malphite/Sion would just be 100% zoning their opponent off of creep waves with the opponent having no way to crawl back into the game. I understand what you're saying from a risk vs. reward standpoint here but I don't think you can realistically extend the distance between lanes without drastically reducing the number of viable champions on solo lanes.

- So... on to the flashdodge thing. Yes, removing flash dodge does allow for successful gank attempts that otherwise would have failed. But succeeding in a gank is not "active" play. It's a single event where one side was successful over the other. These are different things. Active play means both sides are encouraged to be aggressive over a long duration. SO... when you remove one of the safety nets a solo laner has with the dodge associated with flash, you increase the risk of pushing a lane and you've done nothing to increase the rewards as well. So the natural inclination of players is going to stay MORE SAFE and take FEWER RISKS because the same reward for higher risk is not an optimal choice.

Again, I just completely disagree with your definition of active play because it doesn't make sense. Pushing up to their tower and free farming with your 4.5 minute sight ward watching for jungle ganks is active but having manbearpig pop out in conjunction with a sion stun and kill the top lane is not? I mean, as I see it, you're just setting the wrong goals. Making laning lower risk promotes farming which is the very epitome of passive gameplay. I just feel like you don't actually have an idea of what pushing at a low level accomplishes... Towers are very intimidating at low levels and thus sitting under a tower is safe. If pushing out is also safe, then we're talking about 2 people being in low risk situations. Who cares if the pusher is getting slightly higher rewards from easier last hits, we're still just talking about passive gameplay because neither player is in any actual danger. If you really want to make pushing a good idea you nerf towers so that towerdiving is more prevalent and thus pushing becomes high risk, high reward vs. towerhugging being medium risk, medium reward. Rebuffing flash so that it's pretty low risk, pretty high reward vs. low risk, slightly lower reward doesn't really get you anywhere.

Now, you might argue that it increases the reward for attempted ganks and thus encourages players to attempt them, but gankers haven't really become much more aggressive (apart from Eve, again, a special case) rather than just more successful in their attempts. They still have to be in the jungle for the same or even more time to keep up in levels and the in-lane fights are generally only successful in that way when someone overextends or the enemies are packing multiple stuns and would have been aggressive in the first place. Sion/Singed are going to have their stun/flip combo up a lot more often than your flash is up anyways and thus are going to be an aggressive duo whether flash can dodge or not.

Sure... they're still aggressive. The only difference is that their aggression becomes lower reward and your passiveness becomes lower risk. How is this a good thing again? I thought you wanted to promote aggressive play...

Also, look at the 3 current auto-bans: Evelynn, Rammus, Pantheon. 3 of the most aggressive gankers in the game. Keep talking about how the game hasn't become more aggressive...

Perhaps it had a small net value of increasing the success of gank attempts, but I'd wager carries solo'ing a lane are just going to slide further and further back towards "hide in the brush and come out to last hit" rather than the overall play slide towards "I should push and be aggressive in lane even though I'm less safe."

Hiding in the brush and being concerned for their safety is a step up from farming with impunity anywhere in the lane if you ask me. Again, I just feel like you have this warped perception that if we somehow eliminate ganking, suddenly the 1 on 1 in the lane will become a lot more dynamic and the game will be better for it. While it's true that with literally no worry of ganking, 1v1s are a little more interesting, this is ultimately a team game and I don't think there's a realistic model of how the game could be played that would allow for both 1v1s safe of ganks and the actual interesting part of the game (mid-late game teamfights). I'll welcome any proposals from you on the matter, but I just don't think there's realistically a way to keep it interesting as a team game without making solo lanes concerned for their safety from unseen opposing teammates.

I believe those arguments are perfectly consistent, but I'd be happy if you could show me where my logic might have faltered. I think you are just mistaking being more successful in the same situations for actually active play on all sides.

I've already said it a million times but I just don't think you're actually building aggressive/active gameplay with the changes you're putting forth.

Apparently they did enough for the Riot design team to look into it. In particular, they noted ward baiting to an interesting enough emergent game principle that they wanted to preserve it.

Riot design/balance team also just decided to buff Pantheon when he's probably banned in 95% of games over 1400 elo. Frankly I think their priorities are all sorts of ****ed up and am still really pissed at them about how ****ing random, unnecessary and stupid much of the last patch's changes were. To be clear, I was ok with the ward duration debuff, but I think the ward hp debuff was ******** (don't want people to think I'm arguing against the duration debuff here).

 

[M3D]

I'm not saying that players will automatically become more active through these single changes. I think there are a number of problems that need to be addressed. I just think its faulty to assume that increasing the risk will somehow make the game more active.

Also, I don't think you use the word "arbitrary" correctly, but I'll get to that in a minute.

In any case, I think Riot needs to make pushing a higher reward than farming if they want the first 15 minutes to be more than a farm-fest. Increasing the effectiveness of ganking does not do that. Just because jungle ganks are currently the #1 source of activity before level 15 doesn't mean they SHOULD BE or that the game would be better if it was improved. What Riot wants (not arbitrarily, mind you) is that the game is more engaging and interesting in those first 15 minutes. Right now its just not. What they are after is that the laning players engage each other more often in meaningful ways and that play isn't so often restricted to harassment and small engagements for so long. What I've been saying is that debuffs to wards do the opposite of that, even if it makes junglers and ganking stronger.

They are not accomplishing their goals with these changes and they are not incentivizing players to be more active. Instead they are making junglers more successful and making players more passive. That is not the same thing as encouraging activity in lanes. I'm not trying to eliminate ganking. I'm trying to point out that ganking =! active play.

Obviously any major changes need to be tested pretty thoroughly, but I think they could make some major changes that would help inject more activity but at the cost of having passive style champions become weaker and aggressive champions become that much stronger. For instance, they could have the gold/exp given by a tower scale from high to low over time, so that you are rewarded for "winning" your lane more than you are for farming it. They could also make towers deal less damage, so that they aren't just a big barrier at early levels, but instead more of a helper. If you do this, then engaging and fighting in lanes is often a better choice than just waiting for a gank and farming at your tower.

Also, talk about arbitrary. Who frickin' cares if they reduce the number of viable solo laners?

Ok, so let's talk about arbitrary here: That word suggests that the decision is made or the action is taken without extensive thought or regards to the consequences, or that its made based on the opinion of one or a very small number of people. Based on a lot of years of game design and development experience, Riot has set some pretty clear goals for their game, including attracting a wide audience of players. That means that the game has to be fun for the whole time and balanced across all levels of play as best as they can accomplish.

So the design choices that Riot makes are based on clear cut goals, managed by a large team of designers and testers and tempered by thousands and thousands of games worth of data per patch. I'm not saying they don't make mistakes. They have certainly made a lot of them. But they certainly consider and I'm sure argue heavily over most of their changes, especially major ones like changing Flash, nerf wards or adjusting a popular character. Just because YOU don't prefer the choices they've made doesn't mean they are just opinions and arbitrary. They are clearly carefully considered.

In fact, barring Shurelia, who is the maybe the worst game designer I've ever seen involved with a successful game, their whole team is very intelligent, well-educated and able to clearly explain the rationale behind their decisions. They have a solid business and design driven process (I know because I interviewed with them and inquired about their philosophies) that is far from arbitrary.

 

[SamuraiPanda]

AAS + DC = OP. I had like 440 AP with 3 dorans rings, AAS, and a deathcap. Btw, AP Sion is OP now.

Also, 14 minutes into my latest game with Pirate, I got max CDR with the new boots + shurelya.


EDIT: On that topic M3D, I was recently talking to one of my friends about that exact problem (that pushing early game is nothing but a disadvantage, and passively farming creeps under the tower is the best strategy) and he came up with a very interesting solution. Actually, instead of restating it, I'll just copy/paste my post from the @Morello thread (that he hasn't responded to).

So Morello, I was talking to a friend of mine about the problem of the advantage to passively farming minions at the tower that you had mentioned in another thread. He came up with a really interesting solution: Make the first towers splash on minions. That way pushing your lane to the tower actually has an advantage in that it is literally impossible to last hit every minion under the tower now. You WILL miss out on some gold if there is a splash effect, so you are effectively denying gold to your enemy if you push the lane in all the way. And that means there is also a reason for your enemy to want to push the lane BACK at least far enough that the tower wont hit it. I believe this could lead to a very interesting change to early game playstyles and would make the game overall more active.

Also, the reason that we thought only having the first tower splash would be good is to not adversely affect pushing late game.

 

[jpak]

mogwai, i think ganking the jungle is incredibly safe and a great option. especially when your support player has great cv placements regularly. it also depends on the jungler too, if its warwick or rammus then not so much as they maintain high health throughout.
splash damage is a great idea for the first turrets. but then they will have to rework fortify

 

[Dekar173]

I've always found WW to be the absolute easiest character to gank in the jungle, pre-6 anyway.

Best ranked in 3s against a WW was when we kept him from EVER hitting 6, and this was against a group of 1700s lol.

 

[M3D]

Might also be interesting to have towers give ticks of global XP either per hit on them or at certain thresholds rather than all at once when you kill it.

Of course, that just encourages the team with the better pushers to be active. It actually means the naturally passive players will just turtle harder and farm under their tower. But if that's the case, it will make ganks more important so hopefully we would see more activity from teams moving from lane-to-lane and ganking earlier. I guess it depends from there on the relative power of towers, difficulty of farming the champion designs. Of course making the game pure pushing won't be fun either, but the tipping point from farm to push is just way too late at this point.

 

[jpak]

doublepost

 

[UTDZac]

Agreed again. This game is so much more fun with five competent friends on a team... or at least four competent players and Zac.

Love playing with you guys too xD

I only pretend to play bad.

 

[SamuraiPanda]

Might also be interesting to have towers give ticks of global XP either per hit on them or at certain thresholds rather than all at once when you kill it.

Of course, that just encourages the team with the better pushers to be active. It actually means the naturally passive players will just turtle harder and farm under their tower. But if that's the case, it will make ganks more important so hopefully we would see more activity from teams moving from lane-to-lane and ganking earlier. I guess it depends from there on the relative power of towers, difficulty of farming the champion designs. Of course making the game pure pushing won't be fun either, but the tipping point from farm to push is just way too late at this point.

The game punishes you for being aggressive early game by making you wide open for ganks while allowing the other player to easily farm under their tower with no worries, and THAT is what is causing early game passive play. The idea behind making the first tower splash on minions would be to deny the enemy gold by pushing to the tower. Of course, that also makes pushing down the tower early a harder task, but that could also help prevent the snowbally nature of the game as well. Losing early towers just causes the whole game to start snowballing, which isn't very fun to deal with. But on the same token, making it so only the first towers splash doesn't change how effective late game pushing can be.

It was an interesting idea that I merits at least thinking about. Especially considering they have no idea how to tackle this problem at the moment. Here is a quote that Morello posted recently:

Good post. We agree the ward change had a backfiring effect and are changing it next patch, but part of the problem, I believe, is that the risk of dying is worse than the reward of killing in LoL, even when those numbers are equal.

This is in-part due to minion farm being reasonably safe and easy to do (and something players can do from their tower), and being usually superior to the rewards for player kills. The conundrum here is twofold;

* Increasing player kill rewards probably increases risk factors more than reward factors. This is because not dying is more beneficial to your team than killing enemy champions is.

* Decreasing minion rewards, without other initiatives, leads to longer game times, and our game already has to deal with this.

This doesn't mean it's unsolvable, but it's certainly a pretty big design challenge. If you look at games where action is constant, it's because risk and reward factors are both reasonably low, so dying can be somewhat meaningful without deterring action. Conversely, games with high risk and reward factors (like, say Counter-Strike) trend towards passivity because dying is extremely detrimental to your team and chances of victory.

Since MOBA is built on mechanics like this, it causes some difficulties without losing some things that are core to the genre. Again, solvable, but not easy

So perhaps its time to think outside the box.

 

[M3D]

ROFL. That's from my thread Panda. Morello posted that in response to me.

 

[SamuraiPanda]

ROFL. That's from my thread Panda. Morello posted that in response to me.

Well I'll be damned. I didn't even notice

 

[Frolossus]

cat looks fun :D
will play her this weekend

 

[SamuraiPanda]

Too many "ka" sound names now. Kass, Cass, Caith, Kayle, Kat, Karth.

Its starting to bug me :X

 

[Mogwai]

We're not getting anywhere, so this is my last post on the subject...

I'm not saying that players will automatically become more active through these single changes. I think there are a number of problems that need to be addressed. I just think its faulty to assume that increasing the risk will somehow make the game more active.

From this line of reasoning (increasing risk merely results in more cautious play), there is literally no way to make the game more active, as players will always play as cautiously as they need to in order to be safe. The only way to disrupt this dynamic is to have the reward outweigh the risk, but this is extremely difficult to implement in a symetrical game, because if it's something such as bonus gold for a kill, how do we know if this kill was achieved by being aggressive and rewarding you for your aggression or if this kill was the result of your risky maneuver failing and resulting in a death that just rewarded your opponent for playing conservatively? Essentially, simple risk vs. reward analysis won't result in a solution because as the game is currently defined, the rewards for risky behavior are nearly always tied to the punishment for failing at such a risk (failing a tower dive and getting killed, getting ambushed at baron and having them get a free baron, etc)

Also, I don't think you use the word "arbitrary" correctly, but I'll get to that in a minute.

In any case, I think Riot needs to make pushing a higher reward than farming if they want the first 15 minutes to be more than a farm-fest. Increasing the effectiveness of ganking does not do that. Just because jungle ganks are currently the #1 source of activity before level 15 doesn't mean they SHOULD BE or that the game would be better if it was improved. What Riot wants (not arbitrarily, mind you) is that the game is more engaging and interesting in those first 15 minutes. Right now its just not. What they are after is that the laning players engage each other more often in meaningful ways and that play isn't so often restricted to harassment and small engagements for so long. What I've been saying is that debuffs to wards do the opposite of that, even if it makes junglers and ganking stronger.

I just really strongly disagree because I lived through the poke, heal, push metagame. Early pushing being viable sounds fun but it was the most boring FotM metagame ever just having all group mid with your aegis and barrel all the way down mid. Early pushing doesn't inherently make the interactions fun, it just makes games end at 15-20 minutes with 10 kills total. And I mean, at the moment, there are still characters who are meant to push early, yet I'd say they are considered the most boring characters in the game because they ultimately just ignore the interaction with the opposing champion and instead focus on the tower objectives (Mordekaiser, Sivir, Heimer).

They are not accomplishing their goals with these changes and they are not incentivizing players to be more active. Instead they are making junglers more successful and making players more passive. That is not the same thing as encouraging activity in lanes. I'm not trying to eliminate ganking. I'm trying to point out that ganking =! active play.

Players play exactly as passive as before IMO (except that eve's around more, but in eve banned games, people play with the same level of caution). And ganks tend to be more successful, which results in more gank -> dragon, gank -> push tower actions that progress the game.

Obviously any major changes need to be tested pretty thoroughly, but I think they could make some major changes that would help inject more activity but at the cost of having passive style champions become weaker and aggressive champions become that much stronger. For instance, they could have the gold/exp given by a tower scale from high to low over time, so that you are rewarded for "winning" your lane more than you are for farming it. They could also make towers deal less damage, so that they aren't just a big barrier at early levels, but instead more of a helper. If you do this, then engaging and fighting in lanes is often a better choice than just waiting for a gank and farming at your tower.

Again, double edged sword. You extend going for the tower, you expose yourself for a gank, you get ganked, opposing lane now pushes back with jungler and takes your tower while you're dead. The reward you're incentivizing the aggressive player with is also part of the risk he takes going for it. And frankly I would say pushing isn't even the aggression I care about since Sivir and Heimer are 2 of the most passive characters in the game and are both going to take your tower first whether you like it or not.

Also I'd love to point out that Riot essentially just let us playtest their considerable Garen changes for them. That or they need new playtesters because he got butt****ed unbelievably hard and that reflects an absurd lack of professionalism from them at this point in their development imo.

Also, talk about arbitrary. Who frickin' cares if they reduce the number of viable solo laners?

Ok, so let's talk about arbitrary here: That word suggests that the decision is made or the action is taken without extensive thought or regards to the consequences, or that its made based on the opinion of one or a very small number of people. Based on a lot of years of game design and development experience, Riot has set some pretty clear goals for their game, including attracting a wide audience of players. That means that the game has to be fun for the whole time and balanced across all levels of play as best as they can accomplish.

So the design choices that Riot makes are based on clear cut goals, managed by a large team of designers and testers and tempered by thousands and thousands of games worth of data per patch. I'm not saying they don't make mistakes. They have certainly made a lot of them. But they certainly consider and I'm sure argue heavily over most of their changes, especially major ones like changing Flash, nerf wards or adjusting a popular character. Just because YOU don't prefer the choices they've made doesn't mean they are just opinions and arbitrary. They are clearly carefully considered.

How is deciding that everyone should kill wards equally well not an arbitrary decision? What's the thought process and why hasn't it also led to all characters hitting towers equally hard? I won't pretend like I pay even half as much attention to their design team as you do, but I just don't see how such a decision can be anything other than arbitrary. Feel free to educate me on their master plan for that one.

Solo lane diversity is important because we don't want solo lane to devolve into just Malphite, Cho, Morde, Sion, Sivir, Vlad and Morgana because pretty much any matchup out of those champions is an invincible freefarmfest where you shield/regen + 1-shot creep waves.

In fact, barring Shurelia, who is the maybe the worst game designer I've ever seen involved with a successful game, their whole team is very intelligent, well-educated and able to clearly explain the rationale behind their decisions. They have a solid business and design driven process (I know because I interviewed with them and inquired about their philosophies) that is far from arbitrary.

we'll just agree to disagree. I have a lot of respect for Zileas and find most of their team to be at least articulate and well intentioned, but they make some really asinine changes on a regular bases.

 

[ruin`]

ur not getting anywhere

 

[Mogwai]

no **** sherlock

 

[SamuraiPanda]

Then dig deeper, Holmes.

 

[Dekar173]

You're all bad I'm the best.

 

[jpak]

anyone here signed up for the CEVO tourney? if so, team name?

 

[UTDZac]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZNu7a-G8Fk

Too much. Too much.

 

[M3D]

Mogwai, you are right. We're going nowhere so this can be my last post on this as well and we'll move on. Final points:

- Risk/Reward does not have to be symmetrical. Objectives like dragon, baron or some other kind of "power up" can break the symmetry of rewards and punishments. But you are right to say that there is LARGELY a symmetric relationship with the risks and rewards in league, which is why I think they need to find ways to make it advantageous to engage, push and take risks at all levels of the game. I'm not saying any one of my current suggestions is THE answer, I'm just trying to think outside of the box instead of just accepting that the first 15 minutes are going to be largely boring until a fight breaks out over dragon or the jungler comes calling. This is a living game, so they can make updates to fix these problems, even if it means drastically altering the status quo, which seems to be something that you are not comfortable with.

- I get what you are saying about not liking the "push" meta, but I'm identifying specific problems with the state of the game vs Riot's stated goals. Maybe immediately push-focused play would be really boring. I don't know because I can't go in and test it to figure it out. But game development is about a process. Fun has to be teased out sometimes and getting things just right sometimes means discovering an unconventional solution or even one that at first glance might make people uncomfortable. It's fine if you don't like that, but don't assume that Riot is arbitrarily making random changes just for giggles or because Zileas got ganked and is mad about it. They are trying to find a way to reconcile their goals with reality. Unfortunately, that will be a trial and error process.

- Riot wants to make jungling less important and more of a choice, rather than an must-have, so maybe reducing the number of effective solo laners would be a good thing. It would mean you'd have to take a greater risk by having a jungler out there if you didn't have people to fit the top lane role. Or, it might suggest that teams will have a greater reward by keeping two up in top lane and zoning out the less-viable solo'er. So its perfectly acceptable, given Riot's stated goals, to make this kind of change. If its still optimal to just play one of those six champs and solo and players do only that, then Riot needs to go back to the drawing board.

- Riot would like the ward experience to be more consistent across the board. They don't want you to be punished for playing a mage by making you stand there and auto-attack a ward five times. By making the wards have a fixed number of hits to die, the equalize the experience. Why wards and not towers too? I'm not sure, but probably because the ward experience is meant to be a very minor engagement and pushing towers a more important one. Perhaps they feel as though players are rewarded for that kind of texture in their character choices and that it adds something, but the ward experience does not. That's not necessarily arbitrary. They formulated a goal that they felt would make the overall game experience better for a larger portion of the players. Then they found a target method of executing that goal.


- Yes. Riot makes some bad choices. They have a small problem with arrogance at the design level. They also make some other really good choices. Hopefully they will improve in time. *shrug*

You're all bad I'm the best.

It's easy to look awesome when your Yi takes all the buffs, has perma-Blood Boil on him and all his targets are snared with Iceball.

 

[_kSo_]

It's easy to look awesome when your Yi takes all the buffs, has perma-Blood Boil on him and all his targets are snared with Iceball.

good support is always taken for granted =( it makes me a sad panda

 

[Turazrok]

Lol I've been rolling face in 5 man queues with ap yi.

 

[SamuraiPanda]

good support is always taken for granted =( it makes me a sad panda

People saying sad panda makes me a sad panda.

In other news, AP characters in general are going to need some looking at. I played a game with an Anivia that got 1000 AP in 30 minutes. She was squishy as hell still, but that still means we should be watching closely how the new deathcap will be affecting AP.

 

[Frolossus]

People saying sad panda makes me a sad panda.

In other news, AP characters in general are going to need some looking at. I played a game with an Anivia that got 1000 AP in 30 minutes. She was squishy as hell still, but that still means we should be watching closely how the new deathcap will be affecting AP.

imma assume AA stacking plus deathcap sooo thats what? 10k plus gold in 30 minutes?
and ive also heard that the deathcap is bugged and doesn't give as much AP as it should for some items

 

[DMG]

Death Cap is gold efficient right from the beginning. Starting at 0 AP, buying it gives you a bit more than a blasting wand in additional AP. Z ring gave you 30, this gives you 46.5.

If you looking for more AP over the Z ring active, this item is amazing. Someone like Sion rushing this and having an easy 200+ AP that fast is gonna be nasty.

 

[Frolossus]

Death Cap is gold efficient right from the beginning. Starting at 0 AP, buying it gives you a bit more than a blasting wand in additional AP. Z ring gave you 30, this gives you 46.5.

If you looking for more AP over the Z ring active, this item is amazing. Someone like Sion rushing this and having an easy 200+ AP that fast is gonna be nasty.

would consider it but it would delay my everything else by a lot

 

[SamuraiPanda]

Death Cap is gold efficient right from the beginning. Starting at 0 AP, buying it gives you a bit more than a blasting wand in additional AP. Z ring gave you 30, this gives you 46.5.

If you looking for more AP over the Z ring active, this item is amazing. Someone like Sion rushing this and having an easy 200+ AP that fast is gonna be nasty.

DMG nailed it. Basically, AP characters always had to struggle to get enough AP to scale well enough along in a game (assuming they don't get fed). DC gives you GUARANTEED quite a bit of AP.

Think of it like this: Casters used to rely on Mejais stacks if they wanted to carry. Now they can rush DC and other high AP items instead of NEEDING that stack item. Thats a big difference.

 

[Juno McGrath]

Soooo Caitlyn sure is fun fun fun :D

 

[Frolossus]

DMG nailed it. Basically, AP characters always had to struggle to get enough AP to scale well enough along in a game (assuming they don't get fed). DC gives you GUARANTEED quite a bit of AP.

Think of it like this: Casters used to rely on Mejais stacks if they wanted to carry. Now they can rush DC and other high AP items instead of NEEDING that stack item. Thats a big difference.

while i understand how amazing it can be to have that much AP early in to the game you sacrifice the survivability or mana regen given by a tear or catalyst early game
and by the time you actually finish the deathcap it will probably be to late to build a RoA in time for it to get fully charged.

 

[Limeee]

is stacking bloodthirsters a bad idea on ashe/MF now?