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Since this discussion seems to be going through different threads. I don't think bitching about it (no matter how good a set of ideas we might come up with) will change anything but might as well consolidate a thread similar to the Balance Bitching for Bozos thread in SC2. Also as a precursor I'd like to point out that I like both (counting HoN and DotA the same, even if some people might get angry over that generalization) a lot, I simply prefer LoL because I favor the non-single-hardcarry gameplay. My bias there is because I loved VS and CM and NA and I absolutely hated how I'd simply turn into a fucking CC bot even if I start like 5-0-5. My thoughts:
Fundamentally I think there is one key thing that Riot needs to take a look at, which is reducing margin of error. The reality is that better people will consistently make good judgments and reduce the number of stupid mistakes. This is why tower diving is actually done relatively often at low levels of play, while it becomes extremely rare in high-level organized play - people don't fuck around at their tower if they know the other player can pull off a successful dive. This means that generally the only way you die is if you either incorrectly commit to a fight that you can't win, make a play error, or have an extended chain of mistakes ranging upward to 30 seconds that grinds you down to your death. To no surprise this doesn't really happen when people aren't stupid. This is also why spells like Ashe's ECA is amazing - people have difficulty factoring in that stun, and it forces the chain of unfortunate errors. Otherwise people have to grossly misplay (think Soaz in GC) for someone to actually die.
The map
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/IBJN0.png)
This is obviously just my biased opinion but that is the total number of wards necessary to shut down both rivers. Yes, that's a whole whopping four on both sides. This is why I mention that a starting build of 6 wards can shut down HALF THE MAP for ganks for 9 minutes! And the only way you can prevent this is to invest in a high-risk medium-return item (Oracle) that is incredibly expensive.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/eTMCz.png)
Look at the number of exits people actually have in getting to the playing field. 10 being nice and making the cross two exits (as they can leave two different directions), but primarily 9 exit points. and that's being nice and including the two funnels on the side of mid lane both exiting right next to your own tower. Again, this goes back to the ward placement - aside from sneaking through the outer edges of the side lanes to hide in the bush when the creep is just out of side range, there are only 4 logistic ways of crossing from one side to the other side without going through lanes. Yes, people might say "well DotA/HoN have big walls too!" but it's a difference in surface area.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1YMfj.png)
This is an extremely overly simplistic representation of like 2/3 the HoN/DotA map but the yellows are rough spots of solid wall (yes I know there're other walls that I ignored) and the pink are spots that are pseudo walls, similar more to like the brush in LoL. They're walls, but anyone can come barging through them, making them dangerous.
Furthermore, while this actually has a worse river outlet design that SR, you can't ward the place to hell because they have a team-wide cap on # of wards bought. This makes it more difficult to ward EVERYthing, allows for some sneaky jungle to river to jungle paths (push mid -> sneak out mid -> into jungle -> through -> gank), and makes it devastatingly costly when one of your wards gets sniped down. In LoL though, wards have taken more of a disposal clairvoyance role, and even if the other team has an Oracle people just plop wards left and right, if nothing else to force the oracle to go to clear the ward (positioning wins games).
You can also notice that the river/side are staggered, such that at top lane in order to remain at "neutral space" (ie. if the creep are dead center of the lane) you're "past the river" automatically and are thus exposing yourself to the danger of the enemy jungle. In LoL... there's a giant fucking wall. Also the river is the neutral ground, so you're not even in enemy territory. Hence, one map forces natural aggressive placement (and thus strategic hero selection due to the circumstances), while the other kinda lets you get away with whatever you want. I understand, of course, that a lot of SR's design is caused by Dragon... but this is, IMO, a bad trade-off.
To touch on towers, which some people feel are too strong (lol), the real issue IMO is this:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZPsxk.png)
Yellow has ONE direction to dive (or two if you wanna come in through river, but that's extremely difficult due to the time required to actually position there, and also because wards make it blatantly obvious), and really three ways to extract from the tower dive, none of which are desirable because two sends you toward the rest of their team and also takes a while, while going "back" without creep means you take like 3-4 tower hits which is also undesirable. It's simply nearly impossible to get out. Furthermore for the man baiting the tower dive (assuming they're not just too stupid to back), you can dance around at the back of the tower which causes extra hits and does not provide an extraction route for the diver, or if you run all the way down you have a helpful little bush to fuck people up with, too (both red marks). This diving is particularly brutal when you consider that if you don't know where the opposing jungler is the likelihood of the guy baiting you increases exponentially.
By contrast in DotA, if you've played it, you've probably encountered at least one instance where you dive the guy and simply walk into the forest right next to the tower as a safe haven. You can then (given vision) extract whenever you wish and/or continue diving the guy after you've shed aggro via shaking vision in the forest. That's not to say this is a no-risk maneuver but it's a crucial "extra option" that gives the tower 360 degrees of dead zone, as opposed to the current "if they lock themselves between the tower and the wall they're a real bitch to kill."
Hopefully that clears up why I'd gradually become disillusioned with SR the map.
The heroes
I actually don't have big issues with this for the most part. Riot has generally done a relatively admirable job in balancing (aside from various random hiccups), and understand the suckiness of sustain heroes. There are still heroes with great innate sustain but I usually have no problems with them because they have trade-offs. The real problem I have is with...
The items
Let's talk about margin of error. As much as people would like to say they play flawless the reality is that they don't. Not even the top dota players from China play flawless. This is because of the course of laning people make very subtle positioning mistakes as they attempt to maintain/exert superiority. How often have you seen an Ashe slide juuuuuuuuuuust a hair too close to the creep and eat 3-4 Cait shots from stutter-step micro?
The problem as I see it is that there're too many items that improve sustain and increase margin of error. And for all intents and purposes, the only margin of error we care about is (e)HP. As long as they have more than 0 hp they had just enough margin of error to escape problems.
I laughed a month ago when I first picked up an AD hero and compared DBlade and Longsword, for instance. Really, Riot? Why would you ever buy a LS when one gives you sustain (however slight), margin of error (100 hp!), and the SAME DAMAGE, for a slightly higher cost (for starting purposes, one heal potion), especially when, get this...
Longsword doesn't even build into anything useful early for a ranged AD hero.
Why are they getting an extra 100 hp anyways (that's like a 25% boost at level 1 wtf). Remove the Doran items and everyone would be dicking around with like 400 hp at level 1. Two quick missteps against Annie and you DIE. This is how things used to be in ranged AD vs AP for instance before people realized you can just stack DBlades and be invincible. Three DBlades (relatively standard) and you get a whopping 300 HP, which is again like a 40% increase in max HP at that point in the game. That is beyond absurd.
Then you have shit like Catalyst, which not only gives you like a 20% increase in HP and mana (both of which are bottlenecks for AP in attrition lanes), but it gives you a nice sustain boost. What if you remove Cata? You'd see a hell of a lot more people dying, that's for sure. Or at least a hell of a lot more people being forced to back or invest in health potions, both of which are pretty damn good rewards for having a superior matchup.
Beating a dead horse but stuff like Wriggles is retarded too because it gives such cheap life steal. Lifesteal and HP Regen are terrible mechanics (PStone) because they come in early, are relatively cheap, and provide absolutely insane sustainability. It's one thing if the hero relies on it (Mord) but if the hero relies on it, give the damn hero better base regen stats. Don't make them have to itemize for it, because the moment you create an item that's required to counteract a hero's weakness you allow other heroes who SPECIALIZE in that area to get even stronger. This contrast is most blatant when you look at the synergy of items between support and tanks, and ranged AD vs tanky DPS. Always, one item designed for one and simply augments and OP's the other. It's silly.
Summoner spells
I don't have an issue with Flash, as I feel many heroes having it as an escape card become embolded to play more aggressive. Otherwise if the other team has Shaco and you're Brand you're not going past a few inches in your lane. You'd be stupid to.
It boggles my mind why they don't remove or nerf Clairvoyance, though, because as we've established, wards are pretty stupid, and so is a free map-wide scan with relatively low cooldown and giant-ass range.
My conclusion
There's no magic way to increase the number of kills, especially in a game like LoL where blue pill is free and accessible. To that end I've always taken the stance that if you force them to back you've accomplished the equivalent of a kill. Which is fine. But nowadays it takes so long to do that (if not the task just being impossible altogether) that people can just play passive, make a few mistakes here and there but still maintain position, and keep farming.
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Repost this on na lol forums please? I would LOVE if it baited a red response. Great op.
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Yeah, fantastic OP. We'll see what they do with changing bot lane sustain and changing the jungle, I think that'll have a huge effect on the balancing act between passive/aggressive styles.
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Would a reduction in the cost of Oracles (to, say, 275) and perhaps a buff to the other potions help the situation? I feel like the non ward/healthpot consumables would help aggressive play, but there may be unpleasant side effects.
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I'm not even sure if lowering cost of Oracles would fix it, because you'll always have the cost vs reward, as well as the money and TIME investment to deal with. For a jungler (who already lags behind in money... and if jungle changes go through apparently will struggle even moreso with the money) the cost of an Oracle is big - the cost of a single green ward is big too as it's essentially a whole creep camp. Then you have to think about the time it takes for a hero to actually go sweeping, and it takes 3 hits and you have to be weary of bait wards (I've been shafted by a Malz teleport onto a ward I was trying to sweep once) and such, and again you have to be so proactive with the sweeps because if you sweep a ward en route to a gank you're still letting them know where you are, which invites counterjungles and stuff. It's why I can't really offer much solutions other than the sustain items, because it's such a deep-rooted and multi-faceted issue 
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You should also note one of the main differences between LoL and other games: No denying and no gold loss on death. At first blush, these things seem to encourage passive play and in certain situations they do. However, if a player is getting outdenied and outfarmed, one of the main solutions to that problem is to just go fucking kill the offending party and make him lose his money. Even if you don't kill that person he has to spend 30 seconds out of lane and the cost of a tp scroll (unlike LoL where teleporting back to base is free).
These things won't be added into LoL but they are still important to note.
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I think it's an interesting concept but I'm not as sold as many people that they change too much. I'm not a firm believer that rewarding kills will increase aggression, especially when it's a penalty-based incentive, because it simply means that everyone will just as equally (or sometimes moreso) have incentive to play even SAFER to prevent the gold loss on death. It's something I can't say either way and end up believing that it really just cancels out. You either have it in a game or you don't, and it doesn't really change much.
Denying on the other hand definitely has a major issue in laning. My problem with deny though is that it really, hmm, it makes certain heroes really weak, and certain heroes really strong. It rewards lane superiority (ie. hero selection) far too much, and with all the other issues with difficulty in punishing someone who's not playing stupid, feels like it'd tilt the scales TOO much in favor of the sustain heroes. It's why for a long while DotA had very limited hero selection because certain heroes were so much stronger in lane, that they could rack up denies and completely axe the lane just at champ select. ... if you get what I'm trying to say, because I feel like I worded that really poorly.
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Another thing to take note of is that most junglers rely on Red to gank, this means a CV on red can tell you to drop a ward making warding even more trivial. Cutting of retreat paths is so hard in LoL, currently you need CV to do it decently which is a result of 1. Ganks have limited range. 2. Brush is very strong defensively and a huge risk(time wise) offensively.
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Sigh. Maybe at work tomorrow ill pull all my responses from the other thread and post them here.
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Personally I wish that green wards were not invisible. Lower the cost but make it so that you don't need an oracle to clear green wards. And by keeping the invis on pink wards, you have to make a decision on whether I try to spend money on green wards which would only be able to protect me for a single gank at most, or do i spend alot more gold just to be safe for that 3 mins of time.
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Decrease in tower damage to champions (but increase in health) is one minor thing that could be easily implemented.
I think the overhaul to sustainability and support characters will help a lot, so the upcoming patch might help things a decent amount. I think the ward problem is also a big one, as you talk about. I almost feel like decreasing the cost on wards but making them despawn much faster would help. That way, you can still be rewarded by warding properly and on time. However, now having to ward so much more often could leave you open to getting ganked or something along those lines.
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On August 22 2011 08:45 Southlight wrote:
I think it's an interesting concept but I'm not as sold as many people that they change too much. I'm not a firm believer that rewarding kills will increase aggression, especially when it's a penalty-based incentive, because it simply means that everyone will just as equally (or sometimes moreso) have incentive to play even SAFER to prevent the gold loss on death. It's something I can't say either way and end up believing that it really just cancels out. You either have it in a game or you don't, and it doesn't really change much.
Denying on the other hand definitely has a major issue in laning. My problem with deny though is that it really, hmm, it makes certain heroes really weak, and certain heroes really strong. It rewards lane superiority (ie. hero selection) far too much, and with all the other issues with difficulty in punishing someone who's not playing stupid, feels like it'd tilt the scales TOO much in favor of the sustain heroes. It's why for a long while DotA had very limited hero selection because certain heroes were so much stronger in lane, that they could rack up denies and completely axe the lane just at champ select. ... if you get what I'm trying to say, because I feel like I worded that really poorly.
I sorta get what you are saying and like I said, none of these things will be added to LoL but I think looking at other games in the genre (which you are doing in OP) will give you a better grip on why LoL is extremely passive.
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What is really funny about the ward problem is that Riot nerfed duration and QQ began and they then nerfed cost.
I thought it was a terrible Idea to nerf cost, it made wards more versatile while still basically being just as effective.
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On August 22 2011 09:06 Eppa! wrote:
What is really funny about the ward problem is that Riot nerfed duration and QQ began and they then nerfed cost.
Yeeeah... it's tricky. I dunno, there're so many causes and effects, I honestly dunno what to do. Hence why all I did was outline the glaring problems from my perspective. A game designer I am not :>
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On August 22 2011 08:57 I_Love_Bacon wrote:
Decrease in tower damage to champions (but increase in health) is one minor thing that could be easily implemented.
I think the overhaul to sustainability and support characters will help a lot, so the upcoming patch might help things a decent amount. I think the ward problem is also a big one, as you talk about. I almost feel like decreasing the cost on wards but making them despawn much faster would help. That way, you can still be rewarded by warding properly and on time. However, now having to ward so much more often could leave you open to getting ganked or something along those lines.
im a noob so take this comment with a large grain of salt. but wouldnt a better fix be to make the turrets scale with the average level of the team. in the early game they give you 100% protection as they 4-5 shot any hero, and yet late game they are almost a none factor.
sure they can not scale quite as well, causing them to become less important but if people want to feel less punished for attacking then (especially ranged) people shouldnt be able to so easily sit under a turret
if people were really set on anti-passive play they could change up the reward system to cause you to only get gold / more gold or whatever, based on how close you are to the river, forcing you to need to fight away from your turret.
but just from my perspective surely it must be a fine line to walk if you want to punish passive play? any changes that force people into attacking or dangerous play really favour mobility for increased ganking, as people will be likely to be too far from a turret to ever get back.
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United States47024 Posts
The question that I have to ask, because, just like Riot you do not clarify:
What do you consider "the problem of passive gameplay?" Is it
A) Lane play is too focused on farming, and not enough on aggression/harassment
OR
B) Mapwide play in early levels tends to be passive--there are comparatively few ganks overall, almost no lane-to-lane ganks, and even when they happen, ganks rarely turn into kills
Both have been referred to by Riot as a "passive gameplay problem", but Riot has unsuccessfully tried to tackle both issues, in part, IMO, because these are two opposed problems--attempting to "fix" one problem tends to exacerbate the other.
Flash is one example of this. Flash allows for aggressive lane play because if the jungler ganks you during an aggressive play, you have an escape, such that it does not turn into a kill--it reduces the risk of in-lane aggression and harassment. However, this also makes it much harder to achieve a kill or even a forced bluepill from a gank, disincentivizing ganking.
One might bring up that DotA accomplishes a good balance between lane aggression and map-wide gank pressure, but that is because of how the risk-reward is skewed by gold loss and the drastically higher importance of farm on carries than on non-carries. The gankers generally have an extremely different risk-reward to look at than the "gank-ees". LoL, however, has removed gold loss and almost completely evened out farm-dependence (at least to the point that between the 3 lanes, it's roughly of similar importance).
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I see one potentially big issue when it comes to nerfing sustain. Karthus. Karthus is the main champion that can wreck because a lot of people build him suicide mode as is. I do not put much survival on him because he can do more dead than alive. Nerfing survivability is going to lead to a ton of Karthus Q_Q. Karthus will go from minion farming early/ suiciding teamfighting late to kill farming as soon as he hits level 6.
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I think they should do things slowly. In my humble opinion, I think the first big change they should make is to put a timer/cap on number of wards a team can buy, similar to DotA/HoN. No other immediate change should be made.
I believe this for several reasons. By lowering the number of wards, it allows junglers and other laners to increase the possibility of successful ganks. The old roamer meta really only died out because people got smarter and starting warding better. With less wards, roaming and ganking will become much more profitable/less risky and we might be able to see a change in meta to something more aggressive. Maybe we'll even be able to see dedicated counter-junglers.
Additionally, I really like the point Uta touched on regarding items. I think an across-the-board dorans nerf would really help. I'm not sure a straight up removal would be best, but perhaps remove or lower the hp bonus of Dblade and Dring to like 50? 100 hp is quite ridiculous. The catalyst passive could have some nerfing too. Also, I'm never really quite understood why Wriggle's even gave lifesteal in the first place. It was my understanding that Madreds pink razor and Wriggles were originally intended to help champs clear jungle. So, imo, just make the Wriggle's proc % increase, and reduce or even straight up remove the lifesteal component.
The biggest reason why I think death/kill gold will never be changed (ie. loss of gold on death will never be implemented), denying will never be implemented, along with increase/decrease tower damage not happening, is because Riot needs to cater to casuals. Riot has a history of wishing to cater to casuals (hello random xin zhao nerfs!) which while I somewhat dislike, I can fully understand.
EDIT: Also, Riot's also had a history of buffing turrets if I remember correctly. I think they should just remove the armor pen/damage change they gave to turrets.
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Before I throw in my 2 cents I'd like to just state that I'm only lvl 13 but I have watched a lot of HoN and the new DotA streams, and am much more of a cerebral player than most my level.
I think nerfing tower damage and buffing tower health would be a great change. Getting a clear 1v1 kill before level 8ish is incredibly hard. Even when I am fully confident in my ability to kill someone, more often than not they can escape because it only takes a few tower hits to kill an AD carry. For example playing ashe i like to buy boots then rush Infinity Edge... I am glass cannon status at this point, and a tower would make short work of me. I understand that they are there to favor someone escaping but at this point it is just ridiculous. Dota 2 is a great example of how it should be done. I watched 3 people at level 6 stand under an enemy tower and kill a hero. How often does this happen in LoL? Not often is the answer.
Apparently I am not in riots target demographic because while I consider myself a casual, I am starting to get very irritated by the fact that most low level kills are via towers
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EPT
