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Hello everyone, and welcome to the very first "What if: ...?"In this weekly feature series, we'll have a look at various theoretical situations that could occur in League of Legends. The articles will aim to be either humorous or deliver opinionated (social) critique. I hope this one is a little bit of both.About five months ago, I read a message on the official LoL forums, saying that Riot Games was recruiting a few high Elo gaming veterans. I followed the link to the application form, copy pasted the questions into a blank email, and started writing. I never got around to pressing the send button on that lengthy email. However, one of those questions stuck with me, because it showed to me that Riot was indeed thinking about ways of making the game less stale. The exact question was: "What would you think of adding global experience gain every second to Summoner’s Rift for all champions that are currently alive? Do you think it’s a good idea? Please explain your answer." My answer then is essentially the same as my answer now, yet the reasons and the wording are very different.First of all we must understand where this idea came from. In the current game version - and the "last few" versions for that matter - leaving the lane is extremely punishing. Riot thought about implementing global experience gain for summoners that are alive, so that leaving the lane wouldn't be as hurtful to a champion's power gain. The basic idea of this concept is to promote a more aggressive playstyle. It seems sound at first, roaming around while still getting experience. However, a few things are easily overlooked.Firstly, the people who don't leave their lanesreceive global experience. Makes the entire thing kind of pointless. Unless you make the amount of experience gained substantial. In which case champions that scale well into the lategame become completely overpowered. If you think bruisers are bad now, imagine having a ten minute window each game where you can kill them, and after that they become meatgrinding juggernauts of death. On crack. I could go on with this, but I think the point is obvious, it's extremely difficult to balance global experience gain.However, that's not even the worst part. See, the experience gain would only be for champions that are alive. Which pretty much makes dying even more detrimental. If you leave your lane to roam or gank you're losing minion gold and experience. Then if you die while roaming, you're losing global experience on top of that. A single death could put someone behind to such an extent that they would be unable of ever achieving a status quo in their lane again. Never mind winning it. Obviously, most people will not want to risk dying with such mechanics in place. This results in even more dominance of champions with a built-in escape abiltiy, Flash+Heal/Cleanse on every champion, even more HP stacking, and all the other bad stuff that makes aggressive play unrewarding.Plus some bonuses, like seeing Zilean banned or picked in every game, because his passive would be overpowered to a level that would make release Xin Zhao bow down in respect.So global experience gain for champions currently alive would do the complete opposite of making League of Legends see more action. Conversely, how would one go about making aggressive play more rewarding? Slow the game down ofcourse! Reduce gold and experience gain from minions, and increase the amount of gold earned from kills. When a game is focused on getting a few people so farmed out that they don't have to think about wether or not it's safe to fight anymore because the answer is always yes, that game has a problem. Professional players complain left and right about pushing being the cancer of League of Legends.I think they are correct. Do you remember that awesome game with loads of action and fighting going on, that game you loved almost right away and got you really hooked? That game is gone now, instead of experiencing the thrill of fighting enemy champions for your life, you sit in the lane, and try to push minionwaves into the enemy towers.Imagine a world where you're not setting yourself up for a loss simply because you missed two minionwaves. Simpler still, imagine a world where minions don't have a freaking stranglehold on the biggest part of each League of Legends match. It's perfectly possible, we'd just have to adjust a little. Reduce the amount of minions that spawn, and/or reduce the amount of gold and experience they give. If twenty minutes of farming will never be enough for champions to get their first big item, but picking up a kill or two will do the trick, imagine how much more tempting and valueable kills would be. You would actually have to risk something in order to get to the late game or even the mid game.Maybe we'd get to see professional players master high difficulty champions and pull off amazing ganks and plays all game long. Right now, everyone is pushing minions into towers for forty minutes straight, with champions that are good at doing it. Who wants to watch that for more than one match on a stream? I sure as hell do not. How about you?Any feedback, suggestions, thoughts, ...? Let us know in the comment section!