f13.net

Hey everyone,

FeralPony here to run through some high level changes coming this preseason that fall under a topic we're calling “Game Flow.” Game Flow is effectively how the core game functions and plays independently of specific roles, champions, items, etc. It's how the minions move, gold enters and leaves the map, objectives are created, and how strategic battles are won and lost. It's the systems in place that aren’t under direct player control.

So what does it include? Here's a look at some of the changes we'll be implementing this preseason:

Kill/assist gold
Game and objective timings (when things spawn etc)
Objective values/rewards (Turrets, Baron, Dragon, etc)
Experience
Inhibitor mechanics
Death timers
Map layout & brush changes
Jungle (this is a large enough system it'll be included in another post)

Tons of Changes!
You might be saying, “By the factions of Runeterra, Pony, that's a lot of changes!” You'd be absolutely correct, but the bulk of these are small changes meant to enhance other aspects of the game. Each of these changes have unique goals that I’d like to provide additional insight into.

Objectives
We’re making some adjustments to global objectives in Summoner’s Rift.

Dragon: The gold and experience rewards for slaying Dragon will now increase over time.

In the preseason, securing dragon will remain a worthwhile objective even into late game. In addition, dragon will provide more experience rewards for teams down in levels, making it a valuable objective for those who are losing heavily. Winning teams will want to keep dragon secured to retain their lead.

Baron: Baron buff is being shifted away from a team fighting bonus and towards more of a sieging bonus (think bonus movement speed or bonus damage to turrets)

We wanted to shift Baron buff away from an overpowering team-wide buff that gives the buffed team an advantage in any situation. Instead, we want to clarify Baron buff as a window of opportunity to end the game.

Turrets: The team-wide gold for destroying turrets is going down, but the gold given to the players directly responsible for destroying turrets is going up. (Misaya mentioned he thought turret rewards were based off of damage contribution / assists, but it just grants local gold for anyone in the general area)

This change rewards players directly for taking positive action instead of diffusing the reward by splitting it up among their teammates.

Super Minions & Inhibitors: Downed inhibitors will no longer make all minions stronger. Instead, minions in lanes with downed inhibitors will now push harder than before, while minions in other lanes will be unaffected.

Clarity was the core goal here. Currently when a single inhibitor goes down it causes all minions on the winning side of the map to become stronger, thereby pushing down their lanes as well. This applies pressure to the defending team, but also allows players on that team to farm the pushed lanes in relative safety and possibly pick up a game-changing item or two. That said, it’s still very difficult to come back from a downed inhibitor because even after a great comeback play, the resurging team must still push out ALL of their lanes before the enemy team respawns. We’d like to give teams that make these epic plays a real shot at making a comeback.

Other underlying systems:
In addition to the changes we’re making to global objectives, we have some smaller changes to other underlying game systems:

Bounty Calculations: We mentioned this earlier in our support post, but we’re adding “assist streaks,” where players who have far more assists than kills will get bonus gold per additional assist. Additionally, we’re changing the way death streaks are reset. Previously, they were based only on kills and assists, but we’re looking into ways to tie in other forms of contribution. Finally, we’re also looking at bounty rewards in general and how much of an impact they have in the early game versus the mid to late game.

Minion and Jungle Spawn Timers: All minions and jungle camps will spawn earlier in the game.

We’re experimenting with shaving a little time off of when minions and jungle camps spawn to get the game off to an earlier start. There was just too much idle time in between loading the match and the first moments of action. Our changes here allow almost every opening strategy to remain viable without being too generous for map-wide team shuffles.

Brush Changes: We’re cleaning up a lot of the L- and C-shaped brush formations so that players can gain vision of the entire brush with one ward.

In the jungle, this means more accessible sight lines for both ward vision and anyone attempting to move through the jungle.

We’ve also dialed back on some brush that we felt created odd combat situations. We saw situations before where one ward in one brush would leave fights stacked enormously in the favor of the team with the ward. We’ve trimmed back the brush in these regions to still allow for sight lines to be blocked and for melee champions to have a tactical zone to hide in, but brush no longer denies vision to entire battlefields when unwarded.

That’s about it for Game Flow! Some of these changes may be small, but we think that when taken together they’ll play a big role in making for a more dynamic and exciting preseason.

FeralPony

Actually its a change to try and get people to stop chasing and instead go after objectives. By increasing the personal reward for taking a tower it makes it easier, individually, to stop chasing that enemy who is worth 1 kill and get the tower which is worth 1 kill as well.

http://www.reignofgaming.net/news/26226-unofficial-pbe-patch-notes-for-10-31-2013-nasus-vu

Preseason Patch notes on PBE.  A crap-ton of changes.  Very exciting!

Is it me or did most support get nerfed?  I'm guessing that they are trying to make scaling on support more item based?

HELP me understand this stuff...

Is it me or did most support get nerfed?  I'm guessing that they are trying to make scaling on support more item based?

HELP me understand this stuff...

EDIT: Red the reddit post on the changes and it makes more sense now.

I was more interested in the scaling changes.  Looks like shields are becoming more effective and heals less effective (Sona, taric, and soraka heals scales worse post patch for example).  Not sure why that decision was made.  Lulu got hit hard and Janna's passive got hit as well. 

Giving support more gold == more wards!

Giving support more gold == more wards!

Not really.  Everyone's getting a 7th item slot that can hold one of three types of vision items.  The burden of vision will no longer be on support alone.

I don't think you guys get it. Spamming vision wards is premium job of support. Reduce the cost of getting a vision ward? Spam pink wards. It's about map control not being able to be useful beyond your crowd control or getting all your items.

Also, I've resolved myself to not playing ranked until the new matchmaker comes out that lets me pre-choose my champ and role.  I don't care if it takes longer to get a match; at least I'll be doing what I'm good at.

Where did they say that? Because that is so desperately needed, it's not even funny. The matchmaker should let you pick your role without that idiotic chat shuffle.

I don't think you guys get it. Spamming vision wards is premium job of support. Reduce the cost of getting a vision ward? Spam pink wards. It's about map control not being able to be useful beyond your crowd control or getting all your items.

I don't think you guys get it. Spamming vision wards is premium job of support. Reduce the cost of getting a vision ward? Spam pink wards. It's about map control not being able to be useful beyond your crowd control or getting all your items.

Pro games are all about spamming vision. That appears to be the optimal strategy.

You do something different and it works for you, but Plat is not Challenger or organized play, and DCap Janna is not something that shows up in pro games for a reason.

The champ/role queue finder thing is only going to work in normals or now by the way.

That's fine.  When the Ranked queues die off after matchmaking goes in,we won't have to wait too long for them to get it implemented.  I think the champ/role finder may be the one thing that can save the good players from Bronze/elohell.

There are no good players in Bronze

If by "good" you mean "pro," then yeah, probably not many good players outside challenger.  But there are plenty of people in bronze who probably could survive in silver or even gold, if their placement matches had swing differently.

I'm not quite as optimistic that the new queue will fix that, personally, but it will remove one of my personal major disincentives to playing if I don't have to have the same "who wants to support" fight at the beginning of every game.

In bronze there are shitty players and players who are in the process of leaving bronze.

Ugh, this again.  You're talking about some distant point in the future, after everyone has played a statistically large number of games.  I'm talking about right now.  People who are "in the process of leaving bronze" are still in bronze today.  

But mostly what I'm objecting to is vague, non-quantifiable value terms like "bad" and "shitty players" which are often used more as prosthetic e-penises ("What's a bad player?  Well, someone who's one level lower than me, of course!  Because I'm sure it's obvious to everyone that I'M not bad, even though there's hundreds of players ranked higher than me, too!") than as useful terms for discussion.  "Everyone in bronze has lost more than 60% of their games" or "everyone in bronze is lower than 1200 Elo" are fine, we can discuss why that is or what can change it or whatever, but flat out declaring "everyone in bronze is bad" is just masturbation.  It kills discussion.  We can have a discussion about matchmaking if you want, but generally insulting people isn't helpful.

1) They don't ward: or don't ward in the right spots: or expect their support to carry the ward burden for them: or don't buy oracles : or don't buy oracles
2) They don't buy pots: or don't buy pots when they go back: or don't use the pots they buy.
3) They purchase inefficient items: they build AP before Pen, they build Hurricane on an ADC, they build GP10: they build snowball items ; they build BotRK on everyone
4) They don't purchase items to stop what the enemy team is doing
5) They Chase
6) They do not focus on objectives; and/or they don't focus on the right objectives; they focus on objectives at the wrong time
7) They do not understand what it takes for their team composition to win; They don't understand the types of fights their team composition wins; they don't focus on getting those fights and avoiding the other ones
8) They do not pick champions to counteract the enemy teams composition; they don't pick champions to synergize with their allies composition
9) They do not have map awareness; they are not ever where they need to be after the laning phase; They do not realize when their allies are not with them
10) They farm poorly: Both in lane and outside of lane; They don't understand when they should be farming and when they should not be
11) They do not know what they should be doing in a team fight and do not know how this changes even for the same champions depending on the situation; within team fights their positioning is poor
12) Their mechanics are poor: The don't understand ability weaving, attack moving, bush mechanics, line of sight mechanics, ability ranges, creep mechanics and damage, lane XP etc etc
13) They don't understand wave manipulation and why pushing is advantageous
14) Their decision making is poor, not understanding which skirmishes they can win and what they can't where enemies are likely to be.
15) They're toxic/defeatist; They blame their teammates for their failings in the first 14 departments

That's fine.  When the Ranked queues die off after matchmaking goes in,we won't have to wait too long for them to get it implemented.  I think the champ/role finder may be the one thing that can save the good players from Bronze/elohell.

What's going to cause a problem with the matchmaker is when it fails to find 2 someones willing to play support because almost nobody likes to play support.

That's bronze <---> gold. Where as plat players are merely below average at not being an utter retard. Diamond, average level not retard, challenger above average not retard. If you're in the north american server your already in a backwater, we're just fighting for the title of smartest redneck.

I'm starting to see why nobody likes to play support.  The game is full of crappy ADC's that overextend and teams that refuse to help ward then proceed to blame everything on support when they fail.  The LoL community is literally the toilet bowl of the internet.

Overextend with your ADC. Murder the enemy team. You're probably the strongest 2v2 champion on your team at level 1 make use of it.

That may work great with the people you play with, but in under 30 randoms... not so much.  Couple to this the fact that I'm nowhere near your level of ability.

One of the things that will help you get better as a support is realizing that it is not the ADC's job to carry the lane. For the most part its the supports job to carry the lane. You won't be able to do it every time (because the enemy support will be doing the same thing) but if you don't go into the lane with the understanding that zoning, harassing, and engaging on the enemy duo is your job then you will lose lane to the support who does that.

 (for the most part, I can't solo carry lanes very often if my ADC isn't competent

I figured that it was my job to create space for my ADC so he can get more cs.  In essence, it's my job to sustain them in lane to maximize their farming potential.  Did I get that part right?

Most ADC's in < 30 randoms seem more interested in ganking than they do in winning the war of attrition.  In doing that, they constantly put themselves into situations that make it tough to bail them out of.  Perhaps it's an issue of communication. 

I'm starting to see why nobody likes to play support.  The game is full of crappy ADC's that overextend and teams that refuse to help ward then proceed to blame everything on support when they fail.  The LoL community is literally the toilet bowl of the internet.

One of the things that will help you get better as a support is realizing that it is not the ADC's job to carry the lane. For the most part its the supports job to carry the lane. You won't be able to do it every time (because the enemy support will be doing the same thing) but if you don't go into the lane with the understanding that zoning, harassing, and engaging on the enemy duo is your job then you will lose lane to the support who does that.

 (for the most part, I can't solo carry lanes very often if my ADC isn't competent

I'm starting to see why nobody likes to play support.  The game is full of crappy ADC's that overextend and teams that refuse to help ward then proceed to blame everything on support when they fail.  The LoL community is literally the toilet bowl of the internet.

Well its a pain in the ass to support now with the ward limits and as I predicted. Less of a issue with the higher leagues, but low level players just won't ward as much or as all as they don't feel a need to get new wards with access to the trinket.