One more point of clarification that I would like to make - I love this mode, and I think it's awesome. The fact is though these alternate modes do not hold our attention and riot has shown us that they're willing to balance it and give arena a fair shot. We, as a community, have to communicate what it is that we want in order to make sure it sticks around. If you like Arena, tell me in the comments WHAT you like about it. If you don't like Arena, tell me what you DON'T like. With proper communication and time, everyone wins here. Hopefully we can figure out what the mode needs so that we can keep playing it for years and years just like ARAM.
Doesn't this just prove that maybe the community doesn't actually want to play these modes long term if at all? These modes are interesting and fun when they're new, but just as a break from the main game.
I think Riot already alienated the community that would've enjoyed a mode like this and left themselves with their beloved ranked scene. Marketing this mode to the current audience won't do much imo. Gotta give those who haven't played in years an incentive to return.
It was always doomed too fail... launched at the same time as fresh new ranked promos that are easier to climb, essentially "bumping" everyone up some ranks make them feel better. No full commitment to the game other then a battle pass to make a buck for them. No normal queue, no queuing up with a full lobby for fun. No solo only queue, no duo only queue. Your only option is try hard ranked and hope your partner doesn't troll you, and also discourages playing because you can't warmup/practice its just ranked. I honestly don't think they gave it much chance at success, I was super hyped for it but I didn't bother to play a game solo cause I wanted to climb to gladiator so I didn't play nearly enough and was also doing ranked climb, But damn it would be so fun if we could play it with the homies like tft... like so fun lol.
most of the way through now, that was one of the first things I thought about... making it random champions like in aram maybe giving you a pool of like 10 champs to pick from each or something
The reason they didn't is something was wrong and they couldn't make it without breaking the game, it will take several months before a custom gamemode is out
The main problem with Arena for me is just that there are too many champions that don't have all that much value in a straight-up 2v2 brawl. A lot of the champions I enjoy playing in the main game are kind of miserable in this game mode
They definitely need to do some heavy rebalancing in order to keep this game mode alive, otherwise we are going to see nothing but skirmishers/bruisers and cancer comps like Teemo/Shaco. People will lose interest due to a stale and restrictive meta.
@@AlryFireBlade try sona seraphine with both building archangel first, then sona building staff of flowing water into other sup items, and seraphine with mage items. The amount of shield and cdr you get is insane
And ofc pure luck, if they don't change rols like be in tft that be pure luck game mode. every 10 games I have 2 games, where my "Trait cards" are just pure thrash for my champion, or even better they force you to be Support as assasin champ. Addionaly, some traits even prismatic are just unplayable against, for example earth quake trait what after a dash deal a tone of dmg, this trait deal (on tank) 2k+ dmg where other traits deal like 1k
One of the designers of the Civilization saga, Soren Johnson once mentioned a famous phrase: “Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”; therefore, “One of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves.” I personally think what Soren mentions is exactly what keeps Arena from resonating so much with me. The design of most champions is not made for an Arena therefore even if we wish we cannot create a scenario balanced enough so that players who are used and indoctrinated in looking for the best way to win do not end up screwing themselves in their personal fun and that of others.
I don't like that phrase. It is not tottaly wrong, but it ignores the fact that, for gamers, optimizing itself is fun. Understand the mechanics of a game to the point of optimizing it to absurdity is really fun and rewarding. The problem is when it affects the enjoyment of other players.
@@romerus6087 The phrase does not consider optimization a bad thing, it refers to how designers have to take into account that their players are going to optimize and are responsible for protecting the integrity of the experience. It consider optimization as something that will happen and you must design accordingly
@@romerus6087 But how is it fun for these dogs to spam the same champ every match in a supposed fun mode? When i played this game mode i switch champs every single game to a new one. This mode should have been random champs only at the beginning so that no one can spam the most broken champs in this mode.
I find it's a fun way to play by myself or with a friend without committing to a full normals match. I'm going to keep playing it as long as it's around.
this is what i've been waiting for. I don't care about GR, just let me queue with 7 of my friends. Ik they're working on it, but it's kinda annoying to stick to aram or norms bc we have too many people for arena
@@alexandercontos7424 Yeah, they said in a blog post or dev log that they wanted to let you queue with multiple squads, but they couldn't finish the feature in time for the release, and that they still plan to do it for next time the mode drops/just generally later idr
That’s basically the reason why my clique stopped with arena too. We love the mode, but it sucks to exclude people or just play in three pairs screaming over each other so we just end up queuing for aram again. If we could just fill a lobby to however many we are and get the rest filled with randoms we‘d be all over the mode again.
instead of one player getting a random champ, It could be that both players get a pool of like 10-20 random champs they can pick from. That way both players get to choose and still building around what you were given!
Ik some players who take aram more seriously will have accounts with only a few specific champs so the random pool is smaller. I feel like this would form the same issue, especially since theirs an mmr tied to it
i also would like to see somekind of a Shared pool of champions, Maybe 30 random champions and in ranked players would take those champions in somekind of draft? maybe? edit: also in terms of "unowned champions".. lets enable them for everyone, or rather.. like.. if only 1 player has a specific champion unlocked, everyone would be able to take it
I think 20 weekly bans would be an amazing change for a separate ranked Mode. Limiting the Pool of broken Champs that are all S+ Tier forces more creativity, just like Rotation did in LOR
Something that I think would be fun would be a random gametype encounter in a arena that's 4v4. You get randomly paired up with another team, where you have to fight against the other 4 players. This could be some type of random encounter that pops up maybe every 3-5 games on average.
I think it wouldn't solve the problem at all, you would still see champions such as teemo, heimer etc. Just look at aram, every second game you'll see nidalee just bc she is op and there's no chance that someone will leave her on picking slot
could be a random event, that buffs one team, and make a 2x6 (no lifes or anything is lost, just a fun event, that server a propuse of making the game a little longer, maybe a minute or 2)
Selective randomness is always better than pure randomness. You mentioned aram rerolls which yeah, they are important, but failed to mention the rerolled pool. You can always swap to a rerolled champion. A sort of drafting format would be cool to see. Maybe when entering the lobby you are allowed to pick a champion but it will get mixed with one or two other non selected champions. Once everyone chose, the pool gets shuffled and each team receives their set of choices.
Not to mention also that ARAM pulls from only a select pool of champions. The ones you own and the latest two rotations of free champions (which also have a higher weight than the other champions).
One thing that my friend who I recently introduced to league said is that Arena is a great new player experience. Being able to learn what all the champions do without the chaos of ARAM or the snowballing of Summoners Rift has been the best thing for him. Having said that, I actually wish there was a little bit more randomness. I liked your idea about champ select a lot, here are some other ideas I have had for casual fun: - A Twisted Fate Arena where all the augments the players have previously selected (cards) get thrown into a pool and randomly distributed. - A Bard arena that one time near the halfway point of the round puts one random teammate from each side in stasis - Having several variations on plant spawn locations for each map that are randomly selected - Making the zone collapse in a random spot instead of always the center - More random augments like Feeling Lucky, Flicker, Omni Soul, and especially Mad Scientist. One that makes you randomly slow or fast for example. Or one of my own design called something like "Bad Comms" where every round all of both teams ping locations get randomized, one random champion of the 4 gets Evelynn stealth and one other of the 3 gets TF ult true sight. Just some ideas. Great video!
League really needs to get their random gamemodes in order. For the longest time I've thought about making the random gamemodes change every month, alternating between a more for fun gamemode and a more tryhard gamemode. For instance, ranked queues in arena, 3v3 and nexus blitz and more casual in urf, PvE and maybe something else. Give players a good reward for reaching a high rank, make it run for 1 month, then have a for fun gamemode for 1 month. But Riot will always be afraid that it will take from SR player base, but I really think that a lot of players will play a lot more if there is a lot more variety in the game.
Im pretty sure riot has stated the main reason they do not upkeep gamemodes is because of the amount of testing they need to do every patch for every additional map/gamemode. Riot is generally all about player engagement, so if they could rotate the gamemodes more often they would've done it.
@@Lkabss League was released in 2011. If they havent come up witha streamline process of testing a gamemode by this point I really give up my hope that Riot Games will ever be able to accomplish anything else in league.
@@Hannwes You've gotta know that this testing issue is not a small one. Being able to streamline testing is a massive time saver that would save the company a lot of money. If the solution was anything less than a fundamental overhaul to the way champions are coded, I would be surprised. Remember this system is 2009 code - which is more than likely 2006/2007/2008 code. In my personal experience, it's difficult to design a new system, test it, replace it, all while upkeeping the original system, teaching that staff the new system, and making a profit at the same time. The stars literally need to align for it to be a good business decision. Do I know exactly why there are so many issues? No. I have no clue why there isn't a class of champion and maps with an interface in between so you can tune champions to maps individually. What I'm saying is that this is an issue that riot (despite popular opinion) is capable enough to understand is costing them money, and if they haven't fixed it they probably have a good reason. There are completely plausible explantions. Of course, Riot could just be messing with us and it's management with an incompetent dev team, but I'd say probably not.
There are two reasons why they don't keep fun modes all around: 1. Low player base Taking people away from SF is not even a question, if anything the inverse is problem. Fun modes get a big spike in their first week and then the player base falls dramatically. It's harder to notice because the matchmaking is more lax, but they released this info a few times and it's true in all regions. People who play league just like playing league, if you break all of their fundamentals, they get frustrated and go back to regular league. The lack of progression and a ranking that "matters" also puts away the more competitive players (and tryhards aren't always competitive, mind you). 2. Metagaming Every game has a meta strategy. If your game isn't solved (like tic tac toe) and there is really only one strategy, or pure random, like just throwing a die or a flipping a coin, in which there is no strategy at all, there will be meta strategies that give you a higher chance of winning. A game like league attracts people that like winning and can otimize well. As such, every time Riot makes a new game, or bring an old one back, it's a matter of days before meta strats pop up and often with ridiculous win rates. The OG URF was notorious for the HECACOPTER who still gives PTSD to anyone who saw that terror. So much so it was permabanned in the mode the second time it cam around, although Riot did allow it back in the following years when the game changed enough that it turned from a 1v9 monster into just a really strong pick. So they release the game mode, people break it, some get frustrated and stop playing, others start asking for fixes. To fix it, they would need to put a full time team working JUST on that, and not simply balancing a game or game mode, but taking everything, all patches, all balancing, new champs, made for SF and adapting an re-balancing everything into the new game mode. Even worse, the game can't even support having two sets of stats or skills for the same champ, so nerfing hecaring ONLY in URF is a pain in the ass. Thus, if they cannot maintain it, and basically no one is playing after 1 week anyway, why bother maintaining a dead game mode? It's better to just dose how much we get of it through the year so it always feels fun and fresh when it shows up.
I stopped playing it after 2 days. It is fun but only a handful of champs are viable and since it has a ranking system people will only pick the same viable 20ish champs and they will try hard. Its not a "fun" mode at all. Yea you can pick your fav champ as long as you dont mind losing.
I'm kinda baffled that this game mode didn't launch with achievements. I have been playing mostly aram since achievements dropped cause i want the aram god title. I think another way to reward players for diverse combos would be through achievements tracking wins with diverse comps. I also just enjoy numbers going up when i end a game. It makes losses feel more fun.
About the picking up the champion, i would maybe try to do something similar to the augment selection. You get to choose from 3 champions that are shown and you get 2 rerolls. That way you get to choose from up to 9 champions. That way it is very hard to get unplayable champion and you have much more variety.
true but i think a lot of people que with a champ in mind. When i play i often play naafiri with my duo playing warwick. i will not play boring champs . Chances of more people like me dodging and going to another accaunt will increase
My biggest problem with it is, what do you do if you have a group of more than 2 people and want to play together? We tried doing changing duos every game (with 3 people) but obviously it doesn't always feel nice. Would be nice if we were able to have more than one team in a lobby together, at least for a potential unranked mode.
These are interesting points but I feel like my main problem with ARena kind of went unaddressed, in that the map elements can be really intrusive. The biggest example is the plants and just how big of an advantage you get if you're able to secure all three hits of them. Healing shielding, mana restoration, and cooldown lowering all in one? Seems pretty ridiculous. Then you have things like Pyke and Naafiri which can just autolose you a match if you don't walk around the map on eggshells or Samira where you just autolose if your comp doesn't have CC (Something like Illaoi/Teemo is kind of common with this).
The thing about the plants is that, without _some_ element of strategic positioning, it becomes a race to the center of the map. They act like Dragon/Baron in SR--they're something that players _need_ to fight over, and _know_ they need to fight over, and therefore they shape the strategy of the game. That said, imagine playing any comp that doesn't have CC lmao, good luck dealing with assassins
Get the plants, then. The plants, as well as the handful of soul fighter gimmicks, are the only thing keeping the mode from being a brain dead fight simulator. No point in that mode
Hi Exil, is there a chance for you making a video about all the champion release easter eggs? Like when Jinx was about to be released and the LoL site was „hacked” or when Bard was about to be released there was his mask on the Summoner’s Rift or the mysterious artistic videos when Jhin was about to be released, etc. I think that would be very fun to watch and would unlock a lot of memories.
I love the fast paced brawling of arena, I’ve been trying out new champs, new builds, learned itemization as well as it’s made my spacing and team fighting much better, especially the chaotic low elo random jungle fights. I also love how quick the games are, as I don’t need to commit myself to 45 minutes of tilt.
I would say one problem with arena is that the bots are swarming it. I played 6 rounds yesterday while unranked and out of the 8 players, there was only me and another team most of the time, the rest were all bots like you see (/saw till a few months back) in coop in your team. Running against walls, playing just autoattack champs and not using skills and overall just standart bot behaviour. Had to play about 5 games of bot anihilation just so i could face a lobby with (i think) all real players, some of them were even writing in chat and i was happy i could see my mother being cussed out (never thought that might happen). 10/10 experience for me so far
I remember the fun of short matches in a different mode with Dominion. Then Riot killed Dominion & it was hard to have the same fun-even with how broken Kassadin was. I bet some long-term friends & played in a number of tournament games, but eventually I quit because I didn’t have the time or the same amount of fun.
I have always missed dominion since they removed it. That was a super fast paced mode that allowed you to go nuts with the skirmishes but also strategic with the nexuses. Apparently it was a nightmare to balance and there were no bans so it was always 1 or 2 champs just decimating. But Arena definitely requires more balancing than dominion ever did. So maybe there's hope it can come back!
12:10 so one player is a first class player that gets to play whatever champion and the other is a third class citizen that has to adapt? i get what you mean, seeing the same thing is boring but being able to pick your champion is one of the appeal of the mode over aram
Without question there are S tier champs, you are absolutely right, but I've won many many games with below average comps against Shaco Heimer players etc. Bronze players don't beat high elos even if they play taric kayle.
@@Exil22 Thats mostly true. Then again I think league is a bit hard to discuss when it comes down to champion gap because there are so many variables/champions. For example a bronze team on Malphite Mundo in this mode would most likely win vs a high elo yasuo soraka combo.
Playing a weak late game hard outscaled champ like Pyke is giga hard to win. Maybe you end 2nd or 3rd if you have a good duo synergy or got broken augments.
1) add custom game mode so you can fight your friends 2) have everyone pick 1 champ they wanna play. These champs go into a pool that will split the champions randomly (kinda like nemesis draft + aram champ select) depending on the champ you get you can either reroll or swap with your duo. So you get to ban a champ, pick a champ you want in the pool (or to troll the lobby), then have a few seconds to reroll if you want to play something else. Idk my opinion lol
Something I had thought of for champs would be for each player to get a champ pool to choose for ever game. Maybe 5 or 10 champs to chose from with a balance of each role.
The only, BIG problem with this mode is the absence of progression. No eternal, no champ mastery, no challenges, nothing. Just a random minigane if you're into it and xp, that's it. (I don't consider ranked a progression. For some it might be, but for me for sure it's not something "you obtain by just keep playing even if you lose"). Why would I play this g mode more than once or twice a day, losing out on everything else I could progress in on aram, normal and ranked games? Even some easy challenges, like win x games, win with x champs, win x games in a row, etc would have been super easy to add and balance but it wasn't done...
great video, love the content! i like both ideas from yourself and the rioter (their idea of a rotating banlist) i was originally also thinking about having it similar to TFT, where its restricted to a pool of character that are somewhat themed together. anyway, looking forward to what they do with this mode!
The random champ select idea kinda sounds fun. I liked AR URF sometimes as it forced you to try new champs except with massively reduced CDs. I'd imagine combining a champ you don't play with often with augments would be pretty fun and a maybe a good way of finding new favorites.
It kinda reminds me of the fact that the best mode we've had that is similar to this is Dominion. What it has over this mode is the fact that there are many champs that work in that mode, whereas in this new one there are only a few champs that actually work, and of those, they are only effective with a good synergy champion. I really miss Dominion now that I've played this.
I wonder how much of it is due to power creep. At the time we still had dominion, Kassadin was still the most broken champ in existence. Now there are so many broken champs... I think that's really the issue with these new game modes. League has simply hyper focused on SR, and it still has balance issues. You try to export those champions to a new arena and the issues become even more apparent. Broken champs are even more broke, on both sides of the spectrum
The main issue with the gamemode for me is there’s two types of picks. 1) cheesy instant win (your illaoi teemo shaco heimer ect) 2) augment insta win (champions who get one augment and instantly win a match like Yasuo) A decent portion of the time the winner is determined purely by who they drafted. A Rengar Ivern vs a bunch of ADCs just insta wins
I would argue for a totally random champ select process with 2-4 champs to choose from for each player, or 4-8 champs for each team. This should be more fun and it should encourage different champion combos. However, one problem with making the champion select random is that many players don't have all champions on their accounts. It's then possible to abuse the system by only purchasing meta champs or specific classes with a new account. There are 16 weekly rotation champs so this problem is alleviated a bit. Despite this problem, I still think it would be a good idea to implement a random champ select process. The same problem already happened in ARAM high elo.
@@magical571 the problem is if people only buy broken champs and not buy garbage champs. Half of the rosters aren't even viable in Arena, if you just don't buy them for your account, you would have a huge advantage over other players. It's also possible if one player only buys enchanter/support, and the other player buys adc/carries like Jax and Yi. It might be possible to force a specific kind of comp. Yes, there are enough champs to cycle through, but those problems need to be addressed.
The ladder aspect of it killed it instantly for me. After having a few early wins you only get matched against duo people abusing S tier comps. I want to play and play against fun comps and try stuff out and that is, in my eyes, no possible with a forced ranked system. Sad.
I have 4 different Gladiator accounts that were all off meta Champs while solo que. Its hard to admit that maybe your just not good. I know a guy who hit top 100 while soloQ playing off meta. Rank 1 pants is drsgons plays weird Champs and comps. The problem is you.
@@BartSimpsonKB Clearly you are not as good as you think you are. Denial is hard to overcome. One of the lowest winrate Champs, Janna, was played quite often in top 10. Pretty much any champ is viable to Solo Q to Gladiator. You just have a bad attitude and excuses. You are delusional.
The reason for swapping the kindred player out is that, with lower average rank across your team you gain more elo. I noticed this after playing tons of games with a friend who is also gladiator. We were gaining around 60 ish points from a first place finish and losing up to 120 for last place. Where as when playing with another friend who was lower ranked, we were gaining 120+ elo per first place and losing around 40 for last place. Thats probably not the whole reason but in my mind holding the rank 1 position would probably require this kind if elo gain manipulation.
I've noticed at gladiator rank 5000 I lose or win more depending on how "hard" fought it was If I absolutely dominate with 20 lives left I get like +80 or something However if the game lasts super long and it comes down to a final fight and we have like 4 lives left and then win I've gotten +~130-160ish
didn't matter if im with my duo or running it solo, i had fun with this game mode, even if im faced against op combos, i didn't tilt. but what i enjoyed the most is finding a champ that is not used often in either/both SR and arena, then rolling good augments to make it absolutely stomp everyone else
Arena is virtual crack, I adore the adrenaline that I get as a returning player (season 1 player that quit around 2019) and it makes me feel even more excited than when I first started, challenging round wins that are close and filled with outplays give me a bigger rush than any pentakill could give me and I feel like it genuinely pushes my skill and knowledge of the game to the limit. I have played both the OP picks and some that I haven't really seen in any games and I had about the same fun because the augments can make everything interesting. What is slightly annoying is that people gravitate towards the same exact champions, but not because they are OP, but because it gets stale and I know what to do against the abusers. I purposefully leave picks like Mundo/Yi open and take a dump on them with great pleasure. Every single role can be fun and broken if played correctly, but most players think that it's only fun if you get the "broken" picks. The items really leave room for experimenting as well. Also, the people whining about ranks are probably too young or have nothing better to worry about anyway, who cares about the number as long as you get players on the same skill level. The wins give tons of points and defeats barely take any away because it's a symbolic system designed to be a funny little thing that makes you feel nice after a win or 2nd place. Placing in wood division was hilarious and I think Riot did a great job at that, because that about shows how serious the ranks are.
Omg what is your riot id ❤ ! That was the most relatable and based comment of all the comments under this video. You depicted how I'm feeling about the gamemode perfectly. Special thanks for talking about the ranking and the picks because I get way too much teammates being like "bro what are you doing, this is ranked I don't wanna lose !". My brother in christ I got Gladiator playing randomesque (spamming the random button until something inspired me) 💀
Same here. when im with friends we just yolo random champs or try something we have never seen before. if you have enough game knowledge about items and augments you can make many things work. I end up beating many "meta" comps easier than the others cause Im used to them at this point + most of the ppl who pick the OP champ dont have experience on it. (until you meet an actual main fiora but thats still fair game good on him haha) the people cooking on those low pickrate champs are the scary ones xd
Quit league for 4 months but this gamemode made me reinstall. Only thing I'll play because it's actually fun but certain metas and augment combos are too busted on some champs. Has potential but needs a lot of balancing.
What I love about aram is the ease of scaling compared to SR. Not having to think of cs, ganks, objectives* makes it fun, the randomness keeps it fresh instead of a tier list dictating peoples choices
I don't understand why riot doesn't allow for 8 friends to play together, or 4, just disable the ranked points like in tft. For me this is the game killer
I've been having fun, and it probably comes down to me typing "random champ with me?" every champ select. The second you have 2 people who dont care about the number playing together, the pop-offs go crazier, the loses sting less, and I can happily hover around gold for the rest of my life
The worst thing about the mode imo is there is a STRICT barrier to entry, which is the ability to kill tanks/bruisers Mages, enchanters etc just feel like dogshit because you can just lose a fight against a 10% hp zac because you can’t out dps their healing
worse, a singed/yuumi that's full health from like 3rd round onwards because you can't focus the healer on top of singed being a mega-tank w/ insane regen lol. it's crazy if you've seen it
I think it's a necessary evil. If you want to have a good chance at winning you need to be versatile and you can't just pick 2 mages that blow people up from range. Bruisers and ADCs are probably the 2 best classes because they are so flexible but this seems fine to me
@@111Maleficonly with a carry that can kill tanks though. Like enchanter tank can never kill tanks so sucks. Enchanter mage can never kill tanks so sucks. Etc
I believe why ARAM has existed for so long, is simply put ...because it's simple. You hit the nail on the head saying people have been hyped for Arena because you get to pick your favorite champion, and get that League experience WITHOUT going through the slough of Summoner's Rift. Let's think of it this way - If Summoner's Rift is the baseline game, that is the standard. Aram is a simple deviation from that in that it is : Midlane only, and you randomly pick a champion. Ultimately nothing else changes, no crazy rules or effects. So you get the "League Experience" just in a new flavor. I too was excited for Arena, unbelievably so to experience just picking your favorite champion and enjoying them. But honestly....the balancing and other players ruined it for me. Without joke, I am being serious here, the first 5 days of Arena's release on LIVE that I played was the same few meta champions on repeat: Poppy, Alistar, Taric, Kayle, Heimerdiner, Teemo, Shaco, Kai'sa, Mundo, Singed, etc. ban one, another gets through. Any fight devolved into pushing you out of the fire ring, guarding plants to heal to victory. And that's it! I felt like a fool playing my "favorite" champions, I felt dumb for trying to have fun and having to face the same. Boring. Cheap. Toxic strategy over, and over, and over. To me Arena wasn't "a cool fighting game" it was "Get flipped out and die and protect plants" game. After that dawned on me, that its the same experience, my favorite champions are NOT those, its not for me, and I sadly went back to Summoner's Rift. I don't know if Random will fix Arena. I think then that would lose half the fun of picking your favorite, but then also allow for players to play the same shit. I can't suggest a fix for that. But, I think simplicity is needed, just like ARAM. Maybe less augments, maybe less "new things" like the environmental hazards, and plants that heal you to full. Same thing with Nexus Blitz, which looked like an amazing "tiny Summoner's Rift" but it was BRIMMING with buggy, unfair mini-games that made it feel like a completely random slosh of outcomes that again was out of your control. After the 2v2 Minigame in Nexus Blitz that put one-too-many AFK allies on my round so I was forced into 1v2, and the enemy wins an Elder Dragon execute? I washed my hands of that. These new game modes that come and go quickly? I think it is a double-edged sword. Because Riot takes them away quickly, people play them a lot and get burned out. They get burned out, Riot thinks we won't play a lot, so they take them away. They're taken away, so we get excited to taste ANYTHING new for that League Experience, and get burned out. The cycle continues. Riot would have to be brave and simply...leave a new game mode up for a very long time, to observe the arc of excitement, high activity, burn out, low activity, and eventual standard return to really see the potential livelihood of a third game mode.
Yea kind of the problem that i have with this game mode is that u ban like the same 20 ish champs. For example you ban heimerdinger, because he can be really infuriating to play against. Then get absolutely railed by a Fiora so you ban her the next game and you are against a Heimer. It kind of keeps repeating. People just go the URF route where they just pick the most busted champs and to combat this people will go other busted champs. It feels like people are trying to innovate even lesser in Arena then in URF. Might be because there is a ranking system for some reason. I am happy that the riot team responds pretty quickly to the community. They nerfed champs like Annie and Poppy pretty quick. It really is a fun game mode, but it definitely has it's flaws. Edit: Forgot to mention that some of the arena specials are also pretty hit or miss. Evelynn can be an instant round ender if you don't benefit that much from stealth. Jhin feels like he's always shooting at you. Naafiri dealing damage to you even though the enemy triggered it. Constantly having to think about Pyke his dash and now Lux tries to predict your movement so you can't bait as well.
@@TheMikeTrumpet That will always be one of the issues. Almost no one plays this to have fun, they play it to abuse whatever is busted, dominate and pretend they're good.
@@AzureRoxe I just got stuck between ultimate revolution, windspeakers blessing and spirit link on Twisted Fate. I picked spirit link and basically went a full support amp build. We somehow managed to get 2nd and the people in first deadass said ez game using annie and ivern with almost perfect augments. Gotta love this community am i right.
@@AzureRoxeI played arena and just played gwen and vex all the way to gladiator. I just enjoy playing my mains and also really liked playing the mode, then I proceeded to run into several degen comps and that was it for me until they get banned
not really a fan of the idea of one person getting a random champ and the other adapts, feels terrible for the person being forced into a random champ. The idea of weekly banned champs seems pretty cool tho. Arena has a ton of potential, riot just needs to invest more time/resources to let the game mode flourish more
It's sad, but as an alternate game mode in League, it was on borrowed time from the start. They have basically already stated that other game modes are slated to have short runs
Yes but Arena IS different. They explicitly said that Arena might be a gamemode that sticks around, just like tft, if it gets enough attention. Understand that it means that if we, as a community, play, share, make content for, talk about this mode, Riot will consider bringing it back regularly or even permanently.
@@cryodelta I mean, I agree with you, but they did this with Nexus Blitz and the metrics they used put Nexus Blitz at a massive disadvantage. Ultimately, I think they should keep it around because I really like it, but Riot are fickle on their word
well if no one played it like nexus blitz it will probably be made into a rotating, its not if they listen or not its rather if people play it when it comes to balance they have been listening in arena@@NezMog
Can we just stop and think for a second though. This is the FIRST project that has been released by RIOTs new gamemodes team. If this is what they're capable of! I'm looking forward to more!!
In my opinion , the randomness in arena should based on what you said, but... Every player gets list of 5 random champs, and then picks one of them. (Of course bans remain untouched) I think that would solve the problem of unfair random champ and the second player dilemma that ''should i unpleasently adjust to the random champ or completely ignore their champ and play by myself " And i think 5 champs could introduce some communication between players , even just the Simple typing in chat 5 champs that we both have and maybe comsidering "let's go with good comp" or " i got good champ, ill Play him "
Genuinely some of the most fun to ever come out of Riot, not just League. I hope this mode stays, even if it's rotating, with balance patches, different maps, different items, keeping the experience new and exciting (And having it not succumb to the meta curse)
This is an easy fix. However, the monkeys they got from the nearest zoo might not be able to figure it out. Just give everybody 2 bans (literally what everyone asks in summoners rift) and give random champions and rerolls like in ARAM, just don't limit the uses between games so people don't leave the lobby for more rerolls. Just take out the rerolls if someone dodges.
What should not be underrated: The fact that you can just log in with your best friend and play it, however you like it. My best man and me were looking for a mode like that for like 10 years: Just us two ignoring all guides and experiment with different comps, see what will and won't work, with no one flaming us for breaking the meta. And eventually our MMR will be so low, that we play against other "casuals", so who cares about the broken things... And if our experiments fail, we just "wasted" 10 minutes or so, so who cares... And it is a lot easier to find one friend, who is on the same page as you, then 4.
Imo visible rank definitely contributes to a problem of abusing meta, if you cant see your rank then some people lose motivation to abuse the same comp over and over just because its op, obviously some people are still going to do that but I'd guess it's far less than when you can see the rank and you can climb the ladder, so either separating ranked and unranked or just removing visible rank would be a significant improvement in my opinion
my personal opinion of champ select would be to either have a randomly selected 50 champ roster or ban list each game, that way you will "force" variety but also let people opt into those combos if they are there. this might trigger people to dodge a lot but honestly i think this would be good for the mode
Personally I think that random champs outside of ARAM is just bad. For me, as soon as URF became ARURF I lost any intention to play it cause imagine wanting to try smth goofy and fun and get Trynd to just play unduying ap helicopter which is OP AND boring af at same time. In aram at least there are normal champs and items with little to no adjustments just on diff map.
lol im the complete opposite, regular urf is always just the same 10 or so absolutely broken and unfun champs arurf (mostly) has a variety of different champs and just like aram it makes you play champs you wouldn't normally play
After about 50 games winning on stuff like shaco, teemo, kayle, taric ect me and my friend started selp imposing random rules to ourselves. We gave ourselves 2 rolls and we could decide between the 3 picks and it made the game fun again. Eventually we started consistently losing in gladiator as the random picks were gimping us so we just started picking more middle of the pack champs. Overall great fun but makes me crave nexus blitz for some reason.
I don't like this mode for a few reasons. As others have said the game mode makes a lot of champions (that I like to play) obsolete, but also I just don't like the zany random arenas constantly alternating every single match. It negates any strategy and instead relies on you learning some arbitrary bullshot game mode within the game mode to play around against your opponent. Its unfun. I'd rather a static map, or one that barely changes (like how SR can change) but it isn't a last minute flip to some completely different thing entirely. Or even if its random but it stays the same throughout the brackets. Its just too random for me to want to invest time into.
ADCs getting a 10% increase to movement speed makes Caitlyn, Vayne, Samira, and most ADCs Un-fun to play against. Yes, you will win in a late game but having to sit there waiting to get slow items or a keystone that lets you run them down makes the game feel like I must try. And if I must try, I am just going to play Summoners rift. Continuing movement speed issue, why is there a keystone that gives 300% increase to movement speed if you damage an enemy champion? That one keystone makes any comp that is not a stall comp (goal is to kick the enemy into the fire ring) lose the round. And oh boy the keystones are great guys I love getting, ramping Attack speed runs and AD on a singed. In hearthstone there is a concept called "on curve" where you want to get cards when you need them or when you have the resources to play them. Arena has an "on curve" and it sucks massive, "on curve" is the reason people say they enjoy watching hearthstone players but hate playing the game. If you are on curve, it does not matter what the enemy throws at you, you just win because you get exactly what you needed when you needed it. Heart of The Cards and ALL! The problem is Arena does not track between games so if you have not been on curve for x number of games, too bad you still get the draw trash. Last thing it massively doesn't Help that they forced people to play specific champs in the game mode due to the battle pass. I just want to play goofy off meta stuff not 3 games of Sett and eat dirt the whole time.
short answer: yes, it's doomed. It would honestly need a bigger initial circle, to give long range mages a chance to shine at some point in the game, rather than being instantly dragged to the bruiser-circle of doom basically. it doesn't have to be huge, something like 15% bigger radius would already be noticeable. Plus, it's nice that it's fast, but it gets to insta-delete way too early, too fast; and specially if your duo is in fourth place, at that point you are just being smashed in 10 seconds by the tryhard/sowballing teams, and just hoping for the rounds to end even quicker lol. So yeah, a bit TOO fast and a bit TOO small.It's honestly only fun when you get to have really tight matches as the top two teams (so maybe even give us a 2v2 mose??? just saying, the last team just gets a shitty waste of time and 5 loses). And as much as i want modes like this to stick, i'm being honest here, season 1 veteran: this mode gets shitty super fast. Maybe give us an all random version of it, so then you truly have to make certain duos work, instead of having the same pairings again and again even repeated within the same match. Balance is a whole other demon, but i think riot are aware of it already
I was hoping this arena would be similar to Smite's arena, one of the most fun I had in that game. It's 5v5 and more teamwork-based but less stressful than the actual conquest mode.
I havent played SR since Arena came out, and i dont play more because there isnt an actual ranked system for it, what it has is basically an MMR that it shows you. I would love for a ranked mode and would gladly replace SR completely with Arena if possible, and im sure alot of others would too, and same with ARAM, really.
Ahhh yes that's why they removed promos and added emerald as a rank. Not to make the climb significantly easier and more satisfying, drawing people back to ranked because it dying. No no it's because people love playing ranked, that's it!
The thing that sucks is that riot is going to use this mode as the example that there isn’t enough “engagement” in their RGMs and will therefore only focus on competitive ranked league :(
Bro all of the league community is interacting with this mode... Look at the queue times bro, 15sec and you're in! People are talking about the game mode. Streamers and RUclipsrs make content for the game mode. Don't be pessimistic, go play some arena and with our efforts combined, arena will become permanent!
Nah, that’s what makes it fun. Getting giga synergistic augments that lean into power fantasies is what MAKES this game mode worth so many plays. Eventually rolling into absolutely OP augments.
After seeing the idea at 11:50, this was actually what my friends have been running for 20+ games now but just a bit more on the extreme side, with both of us actually clicking the 'Random' button on the champ select screen for 6 times and only choosing between those champions. We've decided on this due to the sheer amount of meta picks as discussed in the video, but also since we also stuck to the meta champs in the first 2 weeks of the mode being live and it kinda got boring after a while. With that said, I was thinking if giving a limited and randomized pool of champions would also work, maybe the same as we're doing with 6 champs? or maybe 10? Additionally, I think there're just too many champion combos or individual champs that are unbeatable that only having a total of 8 champion bans(out of 164...) per game will never be enough. I hope they make it at least 2-3 bans per team to encourage other players to try out other champs rather than spamming just the same ones over and over, this has been going on as well with Summ's Rift that 10 champion bans are way too less.
Persnoally, i love this game mode and want it to be permanant. I think if they made minor balance changes like they already have, like once every month or two. Plus made Cameos for 30-40 champs and rotated those on a 2-4 week basis that the gamemode would never get stale. Im gladiator on 3 accounts and still think about playing the game every day after work since release on PBE
One thing I've been doing playing Arena just to get myself playing more picks I otherwise wouldn't is letting my ally pick first and just using Lolalytics to tell me what champ has the most synergy with them in normal League. Takes the choice out of my hands, and I've found a lot of picks are way more viable than I would have assumed because of it. It basically feels like there's champs you can blind pick (in this case meaning lock without knowledge of your ally) and champs that you can't. The blind pick ones take over the meta, so everyone assumes that all the other ones are bad when they're just not. As for an idea? Take a concept from Genshin's book with Domains and have a random list of effects the whole lobby is under that everyone knows about before they lock their character. Try to make the random effects all cater to wide groups of characters without too much overlap, and now you have a big incentive for players to choose different characters depending on the lobby. Imagine "Gold generation is increased by 50%." "DOTs last 25% longer." "Armor and Magic Resist are 25% less effective." Idk, just spitballing here.
I also have thought about the way of making or encouraging other champions to select. My idea is, at the start of the lobby, a *"Participation Rule"* is announced. It would name a requirement for the champions pool. As example: - Champions can only be melee/ranged - You can only play the champions affiliated in one of two roles: Mid and Jungle/ Top and Jungle/ Bottom and Support / so on - Champions must deal primarily magic / physical damage - Champions must be from one of the two regions - Champions are considered to have good early game/late game - Champion difficulty is easy/medium/hard - Champions are the race of Human/Vastaya/Yordle/ etc And more. *Maybe* we can certain rules that do not reduce champions pools, but can change champion on how they play (or add it through a voting system when the game starts, the way realm portals are in TFT), like: - ALL CHAMPIONS have a maximum of 300 range. Excess is turned into attack speed - Everyone has 100 ability haste (URF) - No more plants in the arena - All champions start at level 6 instead - Champions start with additional gold The potential is limitless if the game mode would ever return. If you read, like and reply if you like it! Thanks for reading
Fun fact, the arena api (sites get the data from) is not allowed to be used to show winrates of champs, comps or augments. Sites can (and imo should) get into serious trouble for this stuff. Best case they’re not allowed to use the api anymore.
I just think they should have weekly champion bans based off of which are the most top picked champs of that period or make it so you only have a pool of champs to select from in that week just to lower the amount of people minmaxing it
One idea I had about the meta comps: Maybe if there where turns to pick and ban, for example: player one of each duo bans one champion, then picks his own, then after that the second player of each duo also bans one champion, and then pick his champ That would make things interesting since the second players would be "oh, that guy picked janna, lets ban kindred/some carry that works nice with her", more... counter baning, and even counter picking since you would know whats one of the two champions you'll be up agaisnt at some time It isnt perfect, since no one would want to be the first pick obviously, but well.. ranked/normal game already works like that where nobody (besides the onetricks or when a new champ releases) want to first pick anyway
This mode just took away all the things I hated most about league. The 30 minute queue times for normal games and constant sweat drafting with no interaction. Arena doesn't let you optimize the game consistently and forces you to rely on your ability to understand and adapt to the game which makes it so much more appealing than SR.
I think a good fix for the future would be making the circle of death not always ending in the center, but other areas of the map. This would force trap/zoning champions (Teemo, Shaco, Heimer) to not just sit in the center with all their resources. I'm not sure about randomness in champ select. While I enjoy the challenge of ARAM in making whatever I've got work, I know my partner can get frustrated after so many games of getting champs he doesn't like to play. Problem is we don't have the time/energy to really play SR together, both being working adults. Arena seems like that middle ground where you get the chance to play your preferred champ, but there's an amount of random chaos with the augments and the map.
I feel like picking champs like you pick augments would be great. Like you get to reroll each champ once, so you can keep safe options in like with tft
Honestly I think they made 2 major mistakes. In 2v2 matchups specifically, not too many champions are all that useful Secondly, the fact they made it ranked gives a lot of people an excuse to play one of the few meta team comps just for ez wins. Its annoying to see the same 10 champions spammed.
Great video, just a note: the fact that winrates are so skewed is not entirely Riot's fault. In SR you are dealing with teams of 5, so WR are way more flat. Add on top of that the fact that on SR you have an inherent macro value: CSing and pushing wave doesn't require a particular champion, and even AP Zed would have some value. Arena just goes to show how deep the gap is when it comes to pure fighting balance in League (in a 2v2 context).
Haven't finished the vid yet but just gotta shoutout that one game i randomly queued and played with exil where he was kassadin and i was a dumbass and went chauffeur volibear lmao. We won, he hard carried me, was a lot of fun lol edit: LOL, you can see me at ~@4:15 :D
This is just another limited time mode they wont bother to balance and theyll take it away after another month or so. No point in suggesting how riot can improve it when theyre just gonna leave it in their fun game modes box to rot anyway
Another draft option that might work is if every game (or maybe per week) there are 30 random champs playable, or 40, numbers need to be tested ofc. No bans, but you're forced to, again, adapt to what's available. And yes we will get the Taric Kayle games in there where especially in high elo that would probably be 3/4th the lobby, but also games were maybe Annie Pantheon is the 'optimal' duo and that should be fun.
With my friend, we actually hit random champ and play with that (1 "reroll" each). We tried thinking about combinations that would be cool, but most often than not, they were hard to pull off. But playing both random champions, we force ourself to get out of our comfort zone and actually have fun instead of tryharding it. We might get lucky and get a champ we like... Or we might get shit. But even with shit champs we've managed to end 3rd place most of the time, only rarely ending 4th place (which we got a lot when we tryharded with strategic compos).
HOW DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING >don’t watch X youtuber in a while >”oh, shit, i wonder what Exil’s been doing!” >sees a couple vids to catch up on >see’s the couple month gap >”wonder when he’ll be back?” >LITERALLY THE NEXT DAY:
My girlfriend and I have been really enjoying league again when this came out, we loved playing Xayah Rakan bot but it was so hard to have fun when we would play well and our midlaner would be 0/15 and our top laner would be 0/12 and we’d have to face raid bosses of enemies. We’ve enjoyed this game mode a lot more because we don’t have to rely on anyone playing well but ourselves
If I'm being honest, I preferred Nexus Blitz. I think people are being overly positive about Arena just because of the lack of alternative and interesting modes we had lately. It's a natural reaction to the recent backlashes: people complain about something, as soon as the company TRIES to address that issue people respond with overwhelming positivity regardless of the solution being affective or not. I think Arena has still many issues to solve, Nexus Blitz worked far better as it was bot a better casual mode and was more healthy if played competitively.
The core concept is fun but it’s such a meta snore fest. Me and my friend mess around trying fun combos but always get rolled by the metaslave champs. Just make it random, can’t complain about getting stomped by a comp if it’s not even intentional. Would encourage people to actually roll with the champ they’ve been handed.
I think a good solution is to make augments more impactful. And I don't mean increase the polarity of good vs bad augments so the outcome of games is more RNG based. I mean make the augments weirder where they change your kit more. Instead of blade waltz replace your summoner maybe it replaces a random basic ability. Instead of back to basics just giving you flat stats maybe it specifically augments your abilities for example your Q gets 100 ability haste, Casting W gives you a shield and casting E gives you a dash/increases the range if you already have a dash. Change warmup routine so that you have to press QWER like its a rhythm game to increase your damage. Change the zhonyas augment so that it puts a random champion in stasis when you press it. Have an augment that lets you buy multiple boots or an augment that gives you an extra item slot (you could do it like cassiopeia's passive)
arena just got introduced in wild rift and it's really different, there's no bans and you and your teammate get a list of 9 random champions to pick from, so far it's working well
Aram's map aids in the random champ select, not being allowed to back especially helps to not feel like you're always walking into a wall. A randomized factor in other game modes have often felt worse in other modes like urf because people often felt they lost in champ select. Half a randomized mode would also be frustrating for the random player since it could feel unfair to not have the same freedom as the pick player. I can even see players potentially growing more toxic over a system like that if they really want to play a certain champ and would try to force a trade with the pick player. Itd also bring the question of how to balance who gets to pick as leaving it to a coin toss could cause straggle causes of people repeatedly not being able to play what they want which would add to frustration while random queue protection would instead add onto the queue timer as the game would have to suddenly take into account more factors
Four points of contention for me when it comes to this game mode. One: So many champions are dead useless. As a mid/top lane player, seeing champions I usually love like Kled being dead useless because of the way their champion functions is disappointing to say the least. Two: Damage is way too high in this mode. Going into this I thought 2v2 would be a boxing match but it's more like an encounter in a dark alley where you just die when someone pulls a gun on you. The fact your survival can be thwarted by the one-shot Udyr rolling scoped weapons is incredibly frustrating. Three: This kind of bleeds from point 1 but ADC and fighter champions like Jax, Vayne or Kai'sa thrive way too much especially when paired with a champion that is dedicated to keeping them alive and/or CCing opponents like a Lulu or Alistar. Going into this as a tank that isn't a dedicated support can feel miserable, especially if you are low-rolling on augments. The fact ranged champions have an innate 1000 gold advantage from the start of the game compared to melee champions is absurd and makes no sense. Four, and this is the big one IMO: Augment balance and re-rolling. I know it's supposed to be a "skill" to run with what you have, but the fact of the matter is that high rolling certain augments compared to others in the lobby is a miserable experience when you have to take something that has little to no synergy with your champion (why am I rolling AP augments on Aatrox, a champion with no AP ratios) but I really think they need to adopt the current system TFT has, one roll per augment individually per round. I think a few lessons can be learned from TFT in this aspect in the fact that yes variance is fun, but too much variance leads to unfun experiences and being able to have some control over your fate leads to more rewarding gameplay. I really think this game mode has potential to be permanent and I think the devs behind it have good intentions and the right direction but ultimately it will be up to Riot if they're willing to continue to invest and maintain this game mode and give increased resources and tools to the people developing it.
There is an alternative to your semi random approach - each player selects a pool of champions they play, and are randomly assigned one of them. That way, you still guarenteur proficiency on your champion, but you cannot select an hyper optimized champion combo with your duo
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
One more point of clarification that I would like to make - I love this mode, and I think it's awesome. The fact is though these alternate modes do not hold our attention and riot has shown us that they're willing to balance it and give arena a fair shot. We, as a community, have to communicate what it is that we want in order to make sure it sticks around. If you like Arena, tell me in the comments WHAT you like about it. If you don't like Arena, tell me what you DON'T like. With proper communication and time, everyone wins here.
Hopefully we can figure out what the mode needs so that we can keep playing it for years and years just like ARAM.
Doesn't this just prove that maybe the community doesn't actually want to play these modes long term if at all? These modes are interesting and fun when they're new, but just as a break from the main game.
I think Riot already alienated the community that would've enjoyed a mode like this and left themselves with their beloved ranked scene. Marketing this mode to the current audience won't do much imo. Gotta give those who haven't played in years an incentive to return.
It was always doomed too fail... launched at the same time as fresh new ranked promos that are easier to climb, essentially "bumping" everyone up some ranks make them feel better. No full commitment to the game other then a battle pass to make a buck for them. No normal queue, no queuing up with a full lobby for fun. No solo only queue, no duo only queue. Your only option is try hard ranked and hope your partner doesn't troll you, and also discourages playing because you can't warmup/practice its just ranked. I honestly don't think they gave it much chance at success, I was super hyped for it but I didn't bother to play a game solo cause I wanted to climb to gladiator so I didn't play nearly enough and was also doing ranked climb, But damn it would be so fun if we could play it with the homies like tft... like so fun lol.
it would be good if you select 3 champs and then it randomly picks 1 of the 3.
most of the way through now, that was one of the first things I thought about... making it random champions like in aram maybe giving you a pool of like 10 champs to pick from each or something
I think the biggest downfall of this mode is no custom game option. Would be so fun to hop in a lobby of all friends and do specific matchups
Custom lobbies are one of the first things they mentioned they would look into if the mode becomes permanent
@@KuroiShiAnimu not even if it's permanent. they just said next time it's around
exactly. besides nexus blitz, literally no other game mode had a custom game option
The reason they didn't is something was wrong and they couldn't make it without breaking the game, it will take several months before a custom gamemode is out
totally. with my friends we are always like 8, so we could do random
The main problem with Arena for me is just that there are too many champions that don't have all that much value in a straight-up 2v2 brawl. A lot of the champions I enjoy playing in the main game are kind of miserable in this game mode
As a Sona Main I feel you.
I mean yeah she is not useless, but she is designed for Teamfights, giving her Aura to 4 allys.
They definitely need to do some heavy rebalancing in order to keep this game mode alive, otherwise we are going to see nothing but skirmishers/bruisers and cancer comps like Teemo/Shaco. People will lose interest due to a stale and restrictive meta.
i would love to make eve work in arena but she just doesn't feel good to play
@@AlryFireBlade try sona seraphine with both building archangel first, then sona building staff of flowing water into other sup items, and seraphine with mage items. The amount of shield and cdr you get is insane
And ofc pure luck, if they don't change rols like be in tft that be pure luck game mode.
every 10 games I have 2 games, where my "Trait cards" are just pure thrash for my champion, or even better they force you to be Support as assasin champ.
Addionaly, some traits even prismatic are just unplayable against, for example earth quake trait what after a dash deal a tone of dmg, this trait deal (on tank) 2k+ dmg where other traits deal like 1k
One of the designers of the Civilization saga, Soren Johnson once mentioned a famous phrase:
“Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”; therefore, “One of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves.”
I personally think what Soren mentions is exactly what keeps Arena from resonating so much with me.
The design of most champions is not made for an Arena therefore even if we wish we cannot create a scenario balanced enough so that players who are used and indoctrinated in looking for the best way to win do not end up screwing themselves in their personal fun and that of others.
Yup. I did say that. Truly wise words from me, right? 😂
I don't like that phrase. It is not tottaly wrong, but it ignores the fact that, for gamers, optimizing itself is fun. Understand the mechanics of a game to the point of optimizing it to absurdity is really fun and rewarding. The problem is when it affects the enjoyment of other players.
@@romerus6087 The phrase does not consider optimization a bad thing, it refers to how designers have to take into account that their players are going to optimize and are responsible for protecting the integrity of the experience. It consider optimization as something that will happen and you must design accordingly
@@romerus6087 But how is it fun for these dogs to spam the same champ every match in a supposed fun mode? When i played this game mode i switch champs every single game to a new one. This mode should have been random champs only at the beginning so that no one can spam the most broken champs in this mode.
@@Yumuichi fiding broken champions and learning ways to abuse them can be fun to the player abusing the system, not so for the others.
I find it's a fun way to play by myself or with a friend without committing to a full normals match. I'm going to keep playing it as long as it's around.
It's really nice how quick it is
That’s what twisted treeline was for me and my friends
This, I miss TT so much p-p @@NinjaKiller117
Same
what I would like to see is unranked arena game mode where you can invite all 8 slots so you can duel your friends
this is what i've been waiting for. I don't care about GR, just let me queue with 7 of my friends. Ik they're working on it, but it's kinda annoying to stick to aram or norms bc we have too many people for arena
@@maxomega3 are they? if so I am looking forward to that. Didn't hear anything about them working on it tho
@@alexandercontos7424 Yeah, they said in a blog post or dev log that they wanted to let you queue with multiple squads, but they couldn't finish the feature in time for the release, and that they still plan to do it for next time the mode drops/just generally later idr
That’s basically the reason why my clique stopped with arena too. We love the mode, but it sucks to exclude people or just play in three pairs screaming over each other so we just end up queuing for aram again. If we could just fill a lobby to however many we are and get the rest filled with randoms we‘d be all over the mode again.
look at this dude with friends. smh
This gamemode just makes me miss 3v3 even more. The golden midpoint between fast games of ARAM and still a bit of strategy from SR.
100%
Same I loved 3v3, and riot removed it cuz off low player base but they hadn't updated it in over 10 years ...
wont lie, I was an avid twisted treeline player, I absolutely loved it and still miss it to this day
srsly tho, as much as I love 2s, TT was better
TT with augment or aram with augment just give everything augment plsss
instead of one player getting a random champ,
It could be that both players get a pool of like 10-20 random champs they can pick from.
That way both players get to choose and still building around what you were given!
Ik some players who take aram more seriously will have accounts with only a few specific champs so the random pool is smaller. I feel like this would form the same issue, especially since theirs an mmr tied to it
i also would like to see somekind of a Shared pool of champions, Maybe 30 random champions and in ranked players would take those champions in somekind of draft? maybe?
edit: also in terms of "unowned champions".. lets enable them for everyone, or rather.. like.. if only 1 player has a specific champion unlocked, everyone would be able to take it
@@KINGTACO31 the 10-20 champion pool he refers are from all the champions in the game, not just the champions you have in your account
as a aatrox one trick this is devastating.
@alanganon672 that would def make more sense, I only say as such bc that is currently how it works with aram
I think 20 weekly bans would be an amazing change for a separate ranked Mode. Limiting the Pool of broken Champs that are all S+ Tier forces more creativity, just like Rotation did in LOR
a Rotation pool that you can choose from can be interesting
Something that I think would be fun would be a random gametype encounter in a arena that's 4v4. You get randomly paired up with another team, where you have to fight against the other 4 players. This could be some type of random encounter that pops up maybe every 3-5 games on average.
that would be awesome actually,pick one high hp and low hp team and pair them together. love that idea
I think it wouldn't solve the problem at all, you would still see champions such as teemo, heimer etc. Just look at aram, every second game you'll see nidalee just bc she is op and there's no chance that someone will leave her on picking slot
could be a random event, that buffs one team, and make a 2x6 (no lifes or anything is lost, just a fun event, that server a propuse of making the game a little longer, maybe a minute or 2)
Selective randomness is always better than pure randomness. You mentioned aram rerolls which yeah, they are important, but failed to mention the rerolled pool. You can always swap to a rerolled champion.
A sort of drafting format would be cool to see. Maybe when entering the lobby you are allowed to pick a champion but it will get mixed with one or two other non selected champions. Once everyone chose, the pool gets shuffled and each team receives their set of choices.
Not to mention also that ARAM pulls from only a select pool of champions. The ones you own and the latest two rotations of free champions (which also have a higher weight than the other champions).
Exil's upload schedule is improving: from 3 months of no uploads to just 2, nice character development
holy shit
One thing that my friend who I recently introduced to league said is that Arena is a great new player experience. Being able to learn what all the champions do without the chaos of ARAM or the snowballing of Summoners Rift has been the best thing for him.
Having said that, I actually wish there was a little bit more randomness. I liked your idea about champ select a lot, here are some other ideas I have had for casual fun:
- A Twisted Fate Arena where all the augments the players have previously selected (cards) get thrown into a pool and randomly distributed.
- A Bard arena that one time near the halfway point of the round puts one random teammate from each side in stasis
- Having several variations on plant spawn locations for each map that are randomly selected
- Making the zone collapse in a random spot instead of always the center
- More random augments like Feeling Lucky, Flicker, Omni Soul, and especially Mad Scientist. One that makes you randomly slow or fast for example. Or one of my own design called something like "Bad Comms" where every round all of both teams ping locations get randomized, one random champion of the 4 gets Evelynn stealth and one other of the 3 gets TF ult true sight.
Just some ideas. Great video!
honestly these are some great ideas! I especially like the TF and Bard hazards
You have some great ideas my guy, i loved them
League really needs to get their random gamemodes in order. For the longest time I've thought about making the random gamemodes change every month, alternating between a more for fun gamemode and a more tryhard gamemode.
For instance, ranked queues in arena, 3v3 and nexus blitz and more casual in urf, PvE and maybe something else.
Give players a good reward for reaching a high rank, make it run for 1 month, then have a for fun gamemode for 1 month.
But Riot will always be afraid that it will take from SR player base, but I really think that a lot of players will play a lot more if there is a lot more variety in the game.
Im pretty sure riot has stated the main reason they do not upkeep gamemodes is because of the amount of testing they need to do every patch for every additional map/gamemode.
Riot is generally all about player engagement, so if they could rotate the gamemodes more often they would've done it.
@@Lkabss League was released in 2011. If they havent come up witha streamline process of testing a gamemode by this point I really give up my hope that Riot Games will ever be able to accomplish anything else in league.
@@Hannwes You've gotta know that this testing issue is not a small one. Being able to streamline testing is a massive time saver that would save the company a lot of money.
If the solution was anything less than a fundamental overhaul to the way champions are coded, I would be surprised.
Remember this system is 2009 code - which is more than likely 2006/2007/2008 code.
In my personal experience, it's difficult to design a new system, test it, replace it, all while upkeeping the original system, teaching that staff the new system, and making a profit at the same time. The stars literally need to align for it to be a good business decision.
Do I know exactly why there are so many issues? No. I have no clue why there isn't a class of champion and maps with an interface in between so you can tune champions to maps individually.
What I'm saying is that this is an issue that riot (despite popular opinion) is capable enough to understand is costing them money, and if they haven't fixed it they probably have a good reason. There are completely plausible explantions. Of course, Riot could just be messing with us and it's management with an incompetent dev team, but I'd say probably not.
There are two reasons why they don't keep fun modes all around:
1. Low player base
Taking people away from SF is not even a question, if anything the inverse is problem. Fun modes get a big spike in their first week and then the player base falls dramatically. It's harder to notice because the matchmaking is more lax, but they released this info a few times and it's true in all regions. People who play league just like playing league, if you break all of their fundamentals, they get frustrated and go back to regular league. The lack of progression and a ranking that "matters" also puts away the more competitive players (and tryhards aren't always competitive, mind you).
2. Metagaming
Every game has a meta strategy. If your game isn't solved (like tic tac toe) and there is really only one strategy, or pure random, like just throwing a die or a flipping a coin, in which there is no strategy at all, there will be meta strategies that give you a higher chance of winning. A game like league attracts people that like winning and can otimize well. As such, every time Riot makes a new game, or bring an old one back, it's a matter of days before meta strats pop up and often with ridiculous win rates. The OG URF was notorious for the HECACOPTER who still gives PTSD to anyone who saw that terror. So much so it was permabanned in the mode the second time it cam around, although Riot did allow it back in the following years when the game changed enough that it turned from a 1v9 monster into just a really strong pick.
So they release the game mode, people break it, some get frustrated and stop playing, others start asking for fixes. To fix it, they would need to put a full time team working JUST on that, and not simply balancing a game or game mode, but taking everything, all patches, all balancing, new champs, made for SF and adapting an re-balancing everything into the new game mode. Even worse, the game can't even support having two sets of stats or skills for the same champ, so nerfing hecaring ONLY in URF is a pain in the ass.
Thus, if they cannot maintain it, and basically no one is playing after 1 week anyway, why bother maintaining a dead game mode? It's better to just dose how much we get of it through the year so it always feels fun and fresh when it shows up.
I stopped playing it after 2 days. It is fun but only a handful of champs are viable and since it has a ranking system people will only pick the same viable 20ish champs and they will try hard. Its not a "fun" mode at all. Yea you can pick your fav champ as long as you dont mind losing.
The other part is that the augments make some teams op way too quickly
Yeah I can't understand why it is Ranked only, I thought it was supposed to be a Fun Mode.
a """Ranking""" system. Such a cookie cutter disneyland ranking system. Fake af but yeah still brings out the sweats.
@@AlryFireBlade This is a fun rank its cookie cutter af
I'm kinda baffled that this game mode didn't launch with achievements. I have been playing mostly aram since achievements dropped cause i want the aram god title. I think another way to reward players for diverse combos would be through achievements tracking wins with diverse comps. I also just enjoy numbers going up when i end a game. It makes losses feel more fun.
Even more wild it launched without even getting champion mastery after a game.
@@agspec76 i believe no funmode ggives mastery progress right?
@@uwootmviii8695 I think urf for example gives mastery points but you definitely can't get the tokens after mastery 5 on it
Facts the aram progression was a big part of why I played it so much as well (that and it’s way less cancer than SR)
About the picking up the champion, i would maybe try to do something similar to the augment selection. You get to choose from 3 champions that are shown and you get 2 rerolls. That way you get to choose from up to 9 champions. That way it is very hard to get unplayable champion and you have much more variety.
true but i think a lot of people que with a champ in mind. When i play i often play naafiri with my duo playing warwick. i will not play boring champs . Chances of more people like me dodging and going to another accaunt will increase
My biggest problem with it is, what do you do if you have a group of more than 2 people and want to play together? We tried doing changing duos every game (with 3 people) but obviously it doesn't always feel nice. Would be nice if we were able to have more than one team in a lobby together, at least for a potential unranked mode.
you should be able to queue as 2,4,6 or 8, they allow it in tft, and it's not like you can really grief since there is no snowballing.
These are interesting points but I feel like my main problem with ARena kind of went unaddressed, in that the map elements can be really intrusive. The biggest example is the plants and just how big of an advantage you get if you're able to secure all three hits of them. Healing shielding, mana restoration, and cooldown lowering all in one? Seems pretty ridiculous. Then you have things like Pyke and Naafiri which can just autolose you a match if you don't walk around the map on eggshells or Samira where you just autolose if your comp doesn't have CC (Something like Illaoi/Teemo is kind of common with this).
The thing about the plants is that, without _some_ element of strategic positioning, it becomes a race to the center of the map. They act like Dragon/Baron in SR--they're something that players _need_ to fight over, and _know_ they need to fight over, and therefore they shape the strategy of the game.
That said, imagine playing any comp that doesn't have CC lmao, good luck dealing with assassins
Get the plants, then. The plants, as well as the handful of soul fighter gimmicks, are the only thing keeping the mode from being a brain dead fight simulator. No point in that mode
I thought samira doesn't show up if you don't have some cc? At least I never got her unless at least one champ in each team has hard cc
@@cpugamer1012 The point sn't "The plants shouldn't exist". The point is "I sohuldn't auto-lose cause the opponents got to the plants first."
Hi Exil, is there a chance for you making a video about all the champion release easter eggs? Like when Jinx was about to be released and the LoL site was „hacked” or when Bard was about to be released there was his mask on the Summoner’s Rift or the mysterious artistic videos when Jhin was about to be released, etc. I think that would be very fun to watch and would unlock a lot of memories.
I love the fast paced brawling of arena, I’ve been trying out new champs, new builds, learned itemization as well as it’s made my spacing and team fighting much better, especially the chaotic low elo random jungle fights. I also love how quick the games are, as I don’t need to commit myself to 45 minutes of tilt.
I would say one problem with arena is that the bots are swarming it. I played 6 rounds yesterday while unranked and out of the 8 players, there was only me and another team most of the time, the rest were all bots like you see (/saw till a few months back) in coop in your team. Running against walls, playing just autoattack champs and not using skills and overall just standart bot behaviour. Had to play about 5 games of bot anihilation just so i could face a lobby with (i think) all real players, some of them were even writing in chat and i was happy i could see my mother being cussed out (never thought that might happen). 10/10 experience for me so far
I remember the fun of short matches in a different mode with Dominion. Then Riot killed Dominion & it was hard to have the same fun-even with how broken Kassadin was. I bet some long-term friends & played in a number of tournament games, but eventually I quit because I didn’t have the time or the same amount of fun.
I have always missed dominion since they removed it. That was a super fast paced mode that allowed you to go nuts with the skirmishes but also strategic with the nexuses. Apparently it was a nightmare to balance and there were no bans so it was always 1 or 2 champs just decimating. But Arena definitely requires more balancing than dominion ever did. So maybe there's hope it can come back!
12:10 so one player is a first class player that gets to play whatever champion and the other is a third class citizen that has to adapt? i get what you mean, seeing the same thing is boring but being able to pick your champion is one of the appeal of the mode over aram
I personally dont think mechanics are the most important. Its what champion you pick. Champion diff and then mechanics.
Without question there are S tier champs, you are absolutely right, but I've won many many games with below average comps against Shaco Heimer players etc. Bronze players don't beat high elos even if they play taric kayle.
@@Exil22 Thats mostly true. Then again I think league is a bit hard to discuss when it comes down to champion gap because there are so many variables/champions. For example a bronze team on Malphite Mundo in this mode would most likely win vs a high elo yasuo soraka combo.
Playing a weak late game hard outscaled champ like Pyke is giga hard to win. Maybe you end 2nd or 3rd if you have a good duo synergy or got broken augments.
1) add custom game mode so you can fight your friends
2) have everyone pick 1 champ they wanna play. These champs go into a pool that will split the champions randomly (kinda like nemesis draft + aram champ select) depending on the champ you get you can either reroll or swap with your duo. So you get to ban a champ, pick a champ you want in the pool (or to troll the lobby), then have a few seconds to reroll if you want to play something else. Idk my opinion lol
Something I had thought of for champs would be for each player to get a champ pool to choose for ever game. Maybe 5 or 10 champs to chose from with a balance of each role.
The only, BIG problem with this mode is the absence of progression. No eternal, no champ mastery, no challenges, nothing. Just a random minigane if you're into it and xp, that's it. (I don't consider ranked a progression. For some it might be, but for me for sure it's not something "you obtain by just keep playing even if you lose").
Why would I play this g mode more than once or twice a day, losing out on everything else I could progress in on aram, normal and ranked games?
Even some easy challenges, like win x games, win with x champs, win x games in a row, etc would have been super easy to add and balance but it wasn't done...
great video, love the content! i like both ideas from yourself and the rioter (their idea of a rotating banlist) i was originally also thinking about having it similar to TFT, where its restricted to a pool of character that are somewhat themed together. anyway, looking forward to what they do with this mode!
I am a Heimer, Shco, Teemo abuser in ARENA. Best fun I ever had. The joy of blinding an enemy and taking their plant is too good.
The random champ select idea kinda sounds fun. I liked AR URF sometimes as it forced you to try new champs except with massively reduced CDs. I'd imagine combining a champ you don't play with often with augments would be pretty fun and a maybe a good way of finding new favorites.
i fking hate it
They should do that every player choose a champ and then each player randomly gets one of the chosen champs
It kinda reminds me of the fact that the best mode we've had that is similar to this is Dominion. What it has over this mode is the fact that there are many champs that work in that mode, whereas in this new one there are only a few champs that actually work, and of those, they are only effective with a good synergy champion. I really miss Dominion now that I've played this.
Best mode was twisted treeline😢. So sad they took it away...
I wonder how much of it is due to power creep. At the time we still had dominion, Kassadin was still the most broken champ in existence. Now there are so many broken champs... I think that's really the issue with these new game modes. League has simply hyper focused on SR, and it still has balance issues.
You try to export those champions to a new arena and the issues become even more apparent. Broken champs are even more broke, on both sides of the spectrum
It's also where many of the side game modes like aram were created. . .
The main issue with the gamemode for me is there’s two types of picks.
1) cheesy instant win (your illaoi teemo shaco heimer ect)
2) augment insta win (champions who get one augment and instantly win a match like Yasuo)
A decent portion of the time the winner is determined purely by who they drafted. A Rengar Ivern vs a bunch of ADCs just insta wins
shit, yasuo deserves to win if he gets that augment cuz he is awful otherwise
@@oniuserjh what is the yasuo augment ??
ngl the "one guy has a random champ" idea would probably kill the mode for me.
I would argue for a totally random champ select process with 2-4 champs to choose from for each player, or 4-8 champs for each team. This should be more fun and it should encourage different champion combos.
However, one problem with making the champion select random is that many players don't have all champions on their accounts. It's then possible to abuse the system by only purchasing meta champs or specific classes with a new account. There are 16 weekly rotation champs so this problem is alleviated a bit.
Despite this problem, I still think it would be a good idea to implement a random champ select process. The same problem already happened in ARAM high elo.
there's always the free champ rotation, which is pretty generous. that plus the ones you bought are more than anough to cycle through
@@magical571 the problem is if people only buy broken champs and not buy garbage champs. Half of the rosters aren't even viable in Arena, if you just don't buy them for your account, you would have a huge advantage over other players.
It's also possible if one player only buys enchanter/support, and the other player buys adc/carries like Jax and Yi. It might be possible to force a specific kind of comp.
Yes, there are enough champs to cycle through, but those problems need to be addressed.
The ladder aspect of it killed it instantly for me. After having a few early wins you only get matched against duo people abusing S tier comps. I want to play and play against fun comps and try stuff out and that is, in my eyes, no possible with a forced ranked system. Sad.
I have 4 different Gladiator accounts that were all off meta Champs while solo que. Its hard to admit that maybe your just not good. I know a guy who hit top 100 while soloQ playing off meta. Rank 1 pants is drsgons plays weird Champs and comps. The problem is you.
I'm insanely good at this game the problem is its just not fun playing against this unbalanced shit all the time. @@Blainne1
@@BartSimpsonKB Clearly you are not as good as you think you are. Denial is hard to overcome. One of the lowest winrate Champs, Janna, was played quite often in top 10. Pretty much any champ is viable to Solo Q to Gladiator. You just have a bad attitude and excuses. You are delusional.
@@Blainne1 yes, you can, that doesn't mean that is fun...
The reason for swapping the kindred player out is that, with lower average rank across your team you gain more elo. I noticed this after playing tons of games with a friend who is also gladiator. We were gaining around 60 ish points from a first place finish and losing up to 120 for last place. Where as when playing with another friend who was lower ranked, we were gaining 120+ elo per first place and losing around 40 for last place.
Thats probably not the whole reason but in my mind holding the rank 1 position would probably require this kind if elo gain manipulation.
I've noticed at gladiator rank 5000 I lose or win more depending on how "hard" fought it was
If I absolutely dominate with 20 lives left I get like +80 or something
However if the game lasts super long and it comes down to a final fight and we have like 4 lives left and then win I've gotten +~130-160ish
didn't matter if im with my duo or running it solo, i had fun with this game mode, even if im faced against op combos, i didn't tilt. but what i enjoyed the most is finding a champ that is not used often in either/both SR and arena, then rolling good augments to make it absolutely stomp everyone else
Arena is virtual crack, I adore the adrenaline that I get as a returning player (season 1 player that quit around 2019) and it makes me feel even more excited than when I first started, challenging round wins that are close and filled with outplays give me a bigger rush than any pentakill could give me and I feel like it genuinely pushes my skill and knowledge of the game to the limit. I have played both the OP picks and some that I haven't really seen in any games and I had about the same fun because the augments can make everything interesting.
What is slightly annoying is that people gravitate towards the same exact champions, but not because they are OP, but because it gets stale and I know what to do against the abusers. I purposefully leave picks like Mundo/Yi open and take a dump on them with great pleasure. Every single role can be fun and broken if played correctly, but most players think that it's only fun if you get the "broken" picks. The items really leave room for experimenting as well.
Also, the people whining about ranks are probably too young or have nothing better to worry about anyway, who cares about the number as long as you get players on the same skill level. The wins give tons of points and defeats barely take any away because it's a symbolic system designed to be a funny little thing that makes you feel nice after a win or 2nd place. Placing in wood division was hilarious and I think Riot did a great job at that, because that about shows how serious the ranks are.
Omg what is your riot id ❤ !
That was the most relatable and based comment of all the comments under this video. You depicted how I'm feeling about the gamemode perfectly.
Special thanks for talking about the ranking and the picks because I get way too much teammates being like "bro what are you doing, this is ranked I don't wanna lose !". My brother in christ I got Gladiator playing randomesque (spamming the random button until something inspired me) 💀
Same here. when im with friends we just yolo random champs or try something we have never seen before. if you have enough game knowledge about items and augments you can make many things work. I end up beating many "meta" comps easier than the others cause Im used to them at this point + most of the ppl who pick the OP champ dont have experience on it. (until you meet an actual main fiora but thats still fair game good on him haha)
the people cooking on those low pickrate champs are the scary ones xd
Quit league for 4 months but this gamemode made me reinstall. Only thing I'll play because it's actually fun but certain metas and augment combos are too busted on some champs. Has potential but needs a lot of balancing.
What I love about aram is the ease of scaling compared to SR. Not having to think of cs, ganks, objectives* makes it fun, the randomness keeps it fresh instead of a tier list dictating peoples choices
I don't understand why riot doesn't allow for 8 friends to play together, or 4, just disable the ranked points like in tft.
For me this is the game killer
Next time we get arena, customs will get added they said it was their priority
I've been having fun, and it probably comes down to me typing "random champ with me?" every champ select. The second you have 2 people who dont care about the number playing together, the pop-offs go crazier, the loses sting less, and I can happily hover around gold for the rest of my life
The worst thing about the mode imo is there is a STRICT barrier to entry, which is the ability to kill tanks/bruisers
Mages, enchanters etc just feel like dogshit because you can just lose a fight against a 10% hp zac because you can’t out dps their healing
Enchanters are op tho
worse, a singed/yuumi that's full health from like 3rd round onwards because you can't focus the healer on top of singed being a mega-tank w/ insane regen lol. it's crazy if you've seen it
I think it's a necessary evil. If you want to have a good chance at winning you need to be versatile and you can't just pick 2 mages that blow people up from range.
Bruisers and ADCs are probably the 2 best classes because they are so flexible but this seems fine to me
@@111Maleficonly with a carry that can kill tanks though. Like enchanter tank can never kill tanks so sucks. Enchanter mage can never kill tanks so sucks. Etc
@@ecclesiaandune687 Enchanter + tank is supposed to suck yes, mages will get buffs (the next batch of augments should be tailored for them)
I believe why ARAM has existed for so long, is simply put ...because it's simple.
You hit the nail on the head saying people have been hyped for Arena because you get to pick your favorite champion, and get that League experience WITHOUT going through the slough of Summoner's Rift. Let's think of it this way - If Summoner's Rift is the baseline game, that is the standard. Aram is a simple deviation from that in that it is : Midlane only, and you randomly pick a champion. Ultimately nothing else changes, no crazy rules or effects. So you get the "League Experience" just in a new flavor.
I too was excited for Arena, unbelievably so to experience just picking your favorite champion and enjoying them. But honestly....the balancing and other players ruined it for me. Without joke, I am being serious here, the first 5 days of Arena's release on LIVE that I played was the same few meta champions on repeat: Poppy, Alistar, Taric, Kayle, Heimerdiner, Teemo, Shaco, Kai'sa, Mundo, Singed, etc. ban one, another gets through. Any fight devolved into pushing you out of the fire ring, guarding plants to heal to victory. And that's it! I felt like a fool playing my "favorite" champions, I felt dumb for trying to have fun and having to face the same. Boring. Cheap. Toxic strategy over, and over, and over. To me Arena wasn't "a cool fighting game" it was "Get flipped out and die and protect plants" game. After that dawned on me, that its the same experience, my favorite champions are NOT those, its not for me, and I sadly went back to Summoner's Rift.
I don't know if Random will fix Arena. I think then that would lose half the fun of picking your favorite, but then also allow for players to play the same shit. I can't suggest a fix for that. But, I think simplicity is needed, just like ARAM. Maybe less augments, maybe less "new things" like the environmental hazards, and plants that heal you to full. Same thing with Nexus Blitz, which looked like an amazing "tiny Summoner's Rift" but it was BRIMMING with buggy, unfair mini-games that made it feel like a completely random slosh of outcomes that again was out of your control. After the 2v2 Minigame in Nexus Blitz that put one-too-many AFK allies on my round so I was forced into 1v2, and the enemy wins an Elder Dragon execute? I washed my hands of that.
These new game modes that come and go quickly? I think it is a double-edged sword. Because Riot takes them away quickly, people play them a lot and get burned out. They get burned out, Riot thinks we won't play a lot, so they take them away. They're taken away, so we get excited to taste ANYTHING new for that League Experience, and get burned out. The cycle continues. Riot would have to be brave and simply...leave a new game mode up for a very long time, to observe the arc of excitement, high activity, burn out, low activity, and eventual standard return to really see the potential livelihood of a third game mode.
Seems like if you play Taric and any champ with invincibility you win
Also the legend Exil is back with quality content
Yea kind of the problem that i have with this game mode is that u ban like the same 20 ish champs. For example you ban heimerdinger, because he can be really infuriating to play against. Then get absolutely railed by a Fiora so you ban her the next game and you are against a Heimer. It kind of keeps repeating. People just go the URF route where they just pick the most busted champs and to combat this people will go other busted champs. It feels like people are trying to innovate even lesser in Arena then in URF. Might be because there is a ranking system for some reason. I am happy that the riot team responds pretty quickly to the community. They nerfed champs like Annie and Poppy pretty quick. It really is a fun game mode, but it definitely has it's flaws.
Edit: Forgot to mention that some of the arena specials are also pretty hit or miss. Evelynn can be an instant round ender if you don't benefit that much from stealth. Jhin feels like he's always shooting at you. Naafiri dealing damage to you even though the enemy triggered it. Constantly having to think about Pyke his dash and now Lux tries to predict your movement so you can't bait as well.
@@TheMikeTrumpet That will always be one of the issues. Almost no one plays this to have fun, they play it to abuse whatever is busted, dominate and pretend they're good.
@@AzureRoxe I just got stuck between ultimate revolution, windspeakers blessing and spirit link on Twisted Fate. I picked spirit link and basically went a full support amp build. We somehow managed to get 2nd and the people in first deadass said ez game using annie and ivern with almost perfect augments. Gotta love this community am i right.
@@AzureRoxeI played arena and just played gwen and vex all the way to gladiator. I just enjoy playing my mains and also really liked playing the mode, then I proceeded to run into several degen comps and that was it for me until they get banned
@@AzureRoxeevery competitive online game like this, it's sad.
not really a fan of the idea of one person getting a random champ and the other adapts, feels terrible for the person being forced into a random champ. The idea of weekly banned champs seems pretty cool tho. Arena has a ton of potential, riot just needs to invest more time/resources to let the game mode flourish more
It's sad, but as an alternate game mode in League, it was on borrowed time from the start. They have basically already stated that other game modes are slated to have short runs
Yes but Arena IS different. They explicitly said that Arena might be a gamemode that sticks around, just like tft, if it gets enough attention.
Understand that it means that if we, as a community, play, share, make content for, talk about this mode, Riot will consider bringing it back regularly or even permanently.
@@cryodelta I mean, I agree with you, but they did this with Nexus Blitz and the metrics they used put Nexus Blitz at a massive disadvantage. Ultimately, I think they should keep it around because I really like it, but Riot are fickle on their word
@@NezMog We can only pray the'll listen 😩
well if no one played it like nexus blitz it will probably be made into a rotating, its not if they listen or not its rather if people play it when it comes to balance they have been listening in arena@@NezMog
Can we just stop and think for a second though. This is the FIRST project that has been released by RIOTs new gamemodes team. If this is what they're capable of! I'm looking forward to more!!
The fact you can get first place in like 15min is amazing
Random champion selection is quite interesting and I like it. It would definity spice the arena up.
In my opinion , the randomness in arena should based on what you said, but...
Every player gets list of 5 random champs, and then picks one of them. (Of course bans remain untouched)
I think that would solve the problem of unfair random champ and the second player dilemma that ''should i unpleasently adjust to the random champ or completely ignore their champ and play by myself "
And i think 5 champs could introduce some communication between players , even just the Simple typing in chat 5 champs that we both have and maybe comsidering "let's go with good comp" or " i got good champ, ill Play him "
Genuinely some of the most fun to ever come out of Riot, not just League. I hope this mode stays, even if it's rotating, with balance patches, different maps, different items, keeping the experience new and exciting (And having it not succumb to the meta curse)
This is an easy fix. However, the monkeys they got from the nearest zoo might not be able to figure it out. Just give everybody 2 bans (literally what everyone asks in summoners rift) and give random champions and rerolls like in ARAM, just don't limit the uses between games so people don't leave the lobby for more rerolls. Just take out the rerolls if someone dodges.
game mode is awful if you dont have a duo since there isnt a non ranked mode for it everyone flames me for picking a bad champ in the mode
Community sucks, I agree.
@@Exil22 because they dont wanna lose in a ranked mode? I dont care about the rank in this mode but obviously this is a mistake on riots behalf
@@ILoveFunAndTheWorld they are like this in normal drafts as well so i m kinda used to it but less in normal drafts more in this mode
Ahh I made it to gladiator mostly solo and I only have been flamed once not to discount your experience but I just rarely see it.
@@timercolen1586 you are probably a good player than, people only flame you for bad picks if you do poorly! lmfao
What's funny is that the Zeri clip you showed is in a normal game XD . Regular Zeri was CRAZY back in the day man.
just do the hots system where each person is offered a choice between 3 champs
that would be a great variation, not the same as aram different enough, and it would offer variety on the matchups
Nah that should be a thing for ARURF.
What should not be underrated: The fact that you can just log in with your best friend and play it, however you like it. My best man and me were looking for a mode like that for like 10 years: Just us two ignoring all guides and experiment with different comps, see what will and won't work, with no one flaming us for breaking the meta. And eventually our MMR will be so low, that we play against other "casuals", so who cares about the broken things... And if our experiments fail, we just "wasted" 10 minutes or so, so who cares...
And it is a lot easier to find one friend, who is on the same page as you, then 4.
Imo visible rank definitely contributes to a problem of abusing meta, if you cant see your rank then some people lose motivation to abuse the same comp over and over just because its op, obviously some people are still going to do that but I'd guess it's far less than when you can see the rank and you can climb the ladder, so either separating ranked and unranked or just removing visible rank would be a significant improvement in my opinion
I'd like something like a random ban-list aswell, there's 10 champions (give or take) that get banned randomly even before the player-chosen bans-
This, add a random element to the picking process, or else it's the same duos again and again.
For me, the main problem is not gaining champions mastery after a match.
my personal opinion of champ select would be to either have a randomly selected 50 champ roster or ban list each game, that way you will "force" variety but also let people opt into those combos if they are there.
this might trigger people to dodge a lot
but honestly i think this would be good for the mode
Personally I think that random champs outside of ARAM is just bad. For me, as soon as URF became ARURF I lost any intention to play it cause imagine wanting to try smth goofy and fun and get Trynd to just play unduying ap helicopter which is OP AND boring af at same time. In aram at least there are normal champs and items with little to no adjustments just on diff map.
lol im the complete opposite, regular urf is always just the same 10 or so absolutely broken and unfun champs
arurf (mostly) has a variety of different champs and just like aram it makes you play champs you wouldn't normally play
Love arenas, feels like I’m a kid again coming back to league after a long day is boring nowadays. Keep arena
After about 50 games winning on stuff like shaco, teemo, kayle, taric ect me and my friend started selp imposing random rules to ourselves. We gave ourselves 2 rolls and we could decide between the 3 picks and it made the game fun again. Eventually we started consistently losing in gladiator as the random picks were gimping us so we just started picking more middle of the pack champs. Overall great fun but makes me crave nexus blitz for some reason.
I don't like this mode for a few reasons. As others have said the game mode makes a lot of champions (that I like to play) obsolete, but also I just don't like the zany random arenas constantly alternating every single match. It negates any strategy and instead relies on you learning some arbitrary bullshot game mode within the game mode to play around against your opponent.
Its unfun. I'd rather a static map, or one that barely changes (like how SR can change) but it isn't a last minute flip to some completely different thing entirely. Or even if its random but it stays the same throughout the brackets. Its just too random for me to want to invest time into.
ADCs getting a 10% increase to movement speed makes Caitlyn, Vayne, Samira, and most ADCs Un-fun to play against. Yes, you will win in a late game but having to sit there waiting to get slow items or a keystone that lets you run them down makes the game feel like I must try. And if I must try, I am just going to play Summoners rift. Continuing movement speed issue, why is there a keystone that gives 300% increase to movement speed if you damage an enemy champion? That one keystone makes any comp that is not a stall comp (goal is to kick the enemy into the fire ring) lose the round.
And oh boy the keystones are great guys I love getting, ramping Attack speed runs and AD on a singed. In hearthstone there is a concept called "on curve" where you want to get cards when you need them or when you have the resources to play them. Arena has an "on curve" and it sucks massive, "on curve" is the reason people say they enjoy watching hearthstone players but hate playing the game. If you are on curve, it does not matter what the enemy throws at you, you just win because you get exactly what you needed when you needed it. Heart of The Cards and ALL! The problem is Arena does not track between games so if you have not been on curve for x number of games, too bad you still get the draw trash.
Last thing it massively doesn't Help that they forced people to play specific champs in the game mode due to the battle pass. I just want to play goofy off meta stuff not 3 games of Sett and eat dirt the whole time.
Just an idea: make players draft their champ from randomized selection of about 10
short answer: yes, it's doomed.
It would honestly need a bigger initial circle, to give long range mages a chance to shine at some point in the game, rather than being instantly dragged to the bruiser-circle of doom basically. it doesn't have to be huge, something like 15% bigger radius would already be noticeable. Plus, it's nice that it's fast, but it gets to insta-delete way too early, too fast; and specially if your duo is in fourth place, at that point you are just being smashed in 10 seconds by the tryhard/sowballing teams, and just hoping for the rounds to end even quicker lol. So yeah, a bit TOO fast and a bit TOO small.It's honestly only fun when you get to have really tight matches as the top two teams (so maybe even give us a 2v2 mose??? just saying, the last team just gets a shitty waste of time and 5 loses).
And as much as i want modes like this to stick, i'm being honest here, season 1 veteran: this mode gets shitty super fast. Maybe give us an all random version of it, so then you truly have to make certain duos work, instead of having the same pairings again and again even repeated within the same match.
Balance is a whole other demon, but i think riot are aware of it already
I was hoping this arena would be similar to Smite's arena, one of the most fun I had in that game. It's 5v5 and more teamwork-based but less stressful than the actual conquest mode.
Isn't that just aram?
the thing is, ranked is just ranked and nothing will ever beat that.
I havent played SR since Arena came out, and i dont play more because there isnt an actual ranked system for it, what it has is basically an MMR that it shows you. I would love for a ranked mode and would gladly replace SR completely with Arena if possible, and im sure alot of others would too, and same with ARAM, really.
Ahhh yes that's why they removed promos and added emerald as a rank. Not to make the climb significantly easier and more satisfying, drawing people back to ranked because it dying. No no it's because people love playing ranked, that's it!
The thing that sucks is that riot is going to use this mode as the example that there isn’t enough “engagement” in their RGMs and will therefore only focus on competitive ranked league :(
Bro all of the league community is interacting with this mode...
Look at the queue times bro, 15sec and you're in! People are talking about the game mode. Streamers and RUclipsrs make content for the game mode.
Don't be pessimistic, go play some arena and with our efforts combined, arena will become permanent!
Some augments need to be removed from certain champs. Mystic Punch makes it so Master Yi can permanently be in his Q, there's no counterplay for it.
Nah, that’s what makes it fun. Getting giga synergistic augments that lean into power fantasies is what MAKES this game mode worth so many plays.
Eventually rolling into absolutely OP augments.
After seeing the idea at 11:50, this was actually what my friends have been running for 20+ games now but just a bit more on the extreme side, with both of us actually clicking the 'Random' button on the champ select screen for 6 times and only choosing between those champions. We've decided on this due to the sheer amount of meta picks as discussed in the video, but also since we also stuck to the meta champs in the first 2 weeks of the mode being live and it kinda got boring after a while.
With that said, I was thinking if giving a limited and randomized pool of champions would also work, maybe the same as we're doing with 6 champs? or maybe 10? Additionally, I think there're just too many champion combos or individual champs that are unbeatable that only having a total of 8 champion bans(out of 164...) per game will never be enough. I hope they make it at least 2-3 bans per team to encourage other players to try out other champs rather than spamming just the same ones over and over, this has been going on as well with Summ's Rift that 10 champion bans are way too less.
Persnoally, i love this game mode and want it to be permanant. I think if they made minor balance changes like they already have, like once every month or two. Plus made Cameos for 30-40 champs and rotated those on a 2-4 week basis that the gamemode would never get stale.
Im gladiator on 3 accounts and still think about playing the game every day after work since release on PBE
One thing I've been doing playing Arena just to get myself playing more picks I otherwise wouldn't is letting my ally pick first and just using Lolalytics to tell me what champ has the most synergy with them in normal League. Takes the choice out of my hands, and I've found a lot of picks are way more viable than I would have assumed because of it.
It basically feels like there's champs you can blind pick (in this case meaning lock without knowledge of your ally) and champs that you can't. The blind pick ones take over the meta, so everyone assumes that all the other ones are bad when they're just not.
As for an idea? Take a concept from Genshin's book with Domains and have a random list of effects the whole lobby is under that everyone knows about before they lock their character. Try to make the random effects all cater to wide groups of characters without too much overlap, and now you have a big incentive for players to choose different characters depending on the lobby. Imagine "Gold generation is increased by 50%." "DOTs last 25% longer." "Armor and Magic Resist are 25% less effective." Idk, just spitballing here.
I also have thought about the way of making or encouraging other champions to select.
My idea is, at the start of the lobby, a *"Participation Rule"* is announced. It would name a requirement for the champions pool. As example:
- Champions can only be melee/ranged
- You can only play the champions affiliated in one of two roles: Mid and Jungle/ Top and Jungle/ Bottom and Support / so on
- Champions must deal primarily magic / physical damage
- Champions must be from one of the two regions
- Champions are considered to have good early game/late game
- Champion difficulty is easy/medium/hard
- Champions are the race of Human/Vastaya/Yordle/ etc
And more.
*Maybe* we can certain rules that do not reduce champions pools, but can change champion on how they play (or add it through a voting system when the game starts, the way realm portals are in TFT), like:
- ALL CHAMPIONS have a maximum of 300 range. Excess is turned into attack speed
- Everyone has 100 ability haste (URF)
- No more plants in the arena
- All champions start at level 6 instead
- Champions start with additional gold
The potential is limitless if the game mode would ever return.
If you read, like and reply if you like it! Thanks for reading
Fun fact, the arena api (sites get the data from) is not allowed to be used to show winrates of champs, comps or augments. Sites can (and imo should) get into serious trouble for this stuff. Best case they’re not allowed to use the api anymore.
Plants are the only win condition. If you are ranged there is no counter play.
ranged champions have more attack speed by default with means they can get the majority of plants, especially in the early game
I just think they should have weekly champion bans based off of which are the most top picked champs of that period or make it so you only have a pool of champs to select from in that week just to lower the amount of people minmaxing it
One idea I had about the meta comps: Maybe if there where turns to pick and ban, for example: player one of each duo bans one champion, then picks his own, then after that the second player of each duo also bans one champion, and then pick his champ
That would make things interesting since the second players would be "oh, that guy picked janna, lets ban kindred/some carry that works nice with her", more... counter baning, and even counter picking since you would know whats one of the two champions you'll be up agaisnt at some time
It isnt perfect, since no one would want to be the first pick obviously, but well.. ranked/normal game already works like that where nobody (besides the onetricks or when a new champ releases) want to first pick anyway
This mode just took away all the things I hated most about league. The 30 minute queue times for normal games and constant sweat drafting with no interaction. Arena doesn't let you optimize the game consistently and forces you to rely on your ability to understand and adapt to the game which makes it so much more appealing than SR.
I think a good fix for the future would be making the circle of death not always ending in the center, but other areas of the map. This would force trap/zoning champions (Teemo, Shaco, Heimer) to not just sit in the center with all their resources.
I'm not sure about randomness in champ select. While I enjoy the challenge of ARAM in making whatever I've got work, I know my partner can get frustrated after so many games of getting champs he doesn't like to play. Problem is we don't have the time/energy to really play SR together, both being working adults. Arena seems like that middle ground where you get the chance to play your preferred champ, but there's an amount of random chaos with the augments and the map.
I feel like picking champs like you pick augments would be great. Like you get to reroll each champ once, so you can keep safe options in like with tft
Honestly I think they made 2 major mistakes. In 2v2 matchups specifically, not too many champions are all that useful
Secondly, the fact they made it ranked gives a lot of people an excuse to play one of the few meta team comps just for ez wins. Its annoying to see the same 10 champions spammed.
Great video, just a note: the fact that winrates are so skewed is not entirely Riot's fault. In SR you are dealing with teams of 5, so WR are way more flat. Add on top of that the fact that on SR you have an inherent macro value: CSing and pushing wave doesn't require a particular champion, and even AP Zed would have some value.
Arena just goes to show how deep the gap is when it comes to pure fighting balance in League (in a 2v2 context).
Haven't finished the vid yet but just gotta shoutout that one game i randomly queued and played with exil where he was kassadin and i was a dumbass and went chauffeur volibear lmao. We won, he hard carried me, was a lot of fun lol
edit: LOL, you can see me at ~@4:15 :D
hahaha hell yeah nice W :) Had fun friend
This is just another limited time mode they wont bother to balance and theyll take it away after another month or so. No point in suggesting how riot can improve it when theyre just gonna leave it in their fun game modes box to rot anyway
Another draft option that might work is if every game (or maybe per week) there are 30 random champs playable, or 40, numbers need to be tested ofc. No bans, but you're forced to, again, adapt to what's available. And yes we will get the Taric Kayle games in there where especially in high elo that would probably be 3/4th the lobby, but also games were maybe Annie Pantheon is the 'optimal' duo and that should be fun.
With my friend, we actually hit random champ and play with that (1 "reroll" each). We tried thinking about combinations that would be cool, but most often than not, they were hard to pull off. But playing both random champions, we force ourself to get out of our comfort zone and actually have fun instead of tryharding it.
We might get lucky and get a champ we like... Or we might get shit. But even with shit champs we've managed to end 3rd place most of the time, only rarely ending 4th place (which we got a lot when we tryharded with strategic compos).
HOW DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING
>don’t watch X youtuber in a while
>”oh, shit, i wonder what Exil’s been doing!”
>sees a couple vids to catch up on
>see’s the couple month gap
>”wonder when he’ll be back?”
>LITERALLY THE NEXT DAY:
My girlfriend and I have been really enjoying league again when this came out, we loved playing Xayah Rakan bot but it was so hard to have fun when we would play well and our midlaner would be 0/15 and our top laner would be 0/12 and we’d have to face raid bosses of enemies. We’ve enjoyed this game mode a lot more because we don’t have to rely on anyone playing well but ourselves
If I'm being honest, I preferred Nexus Blitz.
I think people are being overly positive about Arena just because of the lack of alternative and interesting modes we had lately. It's a natural reaction to the recent backlashes: people complain about something, as soon as the company TRIES to address that issue people respond with overwhelming positivity regardless of the solution being affective or not.
I think Arena has still many issues to solve, Nexus Blitz worked far better as it was bot a better casual mode and was more healthy if played competitively.
The core concept is fun but it’s such a meta snore fest. Me and my friend mess around trying fun combos but always get rolled by the metaslave champs.
Just make it random, can’t complain about getting stomped by a comp if it’s not even intentional. Would encourage people to actually roll with the champ they’ve been handed.
I think a good solution is to make augments more impactful. And I don't mean increase the polarity of good vs bad augments so the outcome of games is more RNG based. I mean make the augments weirder where they change your kit more. Instead of blade waltz replace your summoner maybe it replaces a random basic ability. Instead of back to basics just giving you flat stats maybe it specifically augments your abilities for example your Q gets 100 ability haste, Casting W gives you a shield and casting E gives you a dash/increases the range if you already have a dash.
Change warmup routine so that you have to press QWER like its a rhythm game to increase your damage. Change the zhonyas augment so that it puts a random champion in stasis when you press it. Have an augment that lets you buy multiple boots or an augment that gives you an extra item slot (you could do it like cassiopeia's passive)
arena just got introduced in wild rift and it's really different, there's no bans and you and your teammate get a list of 9 random champions to pick from, so far it's working well
I miss your videos about the history of old league but still love the content and support the channel. ❤
Aram's map aids in the random champ select, not being allowed to back especially helps to not feel like you're always walking into a wall.
A randomized factor in other game modes have often felt worse in other modes like urf because people often felt they lost in champ select.
Half a randomized mode would also be frustrating for the random player since it could feel unfair to not have the same freedom as the pick player. I can even see players potentially growing more toxic over a system like that if they really want to play a certain champ and would try to force a trade with the pick player. Itd also bring the question of how to balance who gets to pick as leaving it to a coin toss could cause straggle causes of people repeatedly not being able to play what they want which would add to frustration while random queue protection would instead add onto the queue timer as the game would have to suddenly take into account more factors
Four points of contention for me when it comes to this game mode.
One: So many champions are dead useless. As a mid/top lane player, seeing champions I usually love like Kled being dead useless because of the way their champion functions is disappointing to say the least.
Two: Damage is way too high in this mode. Going into this I thought 2v2 would be a boxing match but it's more like an encounter in a dark alley where you just die when someone pulls a gun on you. The fact your survival can be thwarted by the one-shot Udyr rolling scoped weapons is incredibly frustrating.
Three: This kind of bleeds from point 1 but ADC and fighter champions like Jax, Vayne or Kai'sa thrive way too much especially when paired with a champion that is dedicated to keeping them alive and/or CCing opponents like a Lulu or Alistar. Going into this as a tank that isn't a dedicated support can feel miserable, especially if you are low-rolling on augments. The fact ranged champions have an innate 1000 gold advantage from the start of the game compared to melee champions is absurd and makes no sense.
Four, and this is the big one IMO: Augment balance and re-rolling. I know it's supposed to be a "skill" to run with what you have, but the fact of the matter is that high rolling certain augments compared to others in the lobby is a miserable experience when you have to take something that has little to no synergy with your champion (why am I rolling AP augments on Aatrox, a champion with no AP ratios) but I really think they need to adopt the current system TFT has, one roll per augment individually per round. I think a few lessons can be learned from TFT in this aspect in the fact that yes variance is fun, but too much variance leads to unfun experiences and being able to have some control over your fate leads to more rewarding gameplay.
I really think this game mode has potential to be permanent and I think the devs behind it have good intentions and the right direction but ultimately it will be up to Riot if they're willing to continue to invest and maintain this game mode and give increased resources and tools to the people developing it.
There is an alternative to your semi random approach - each player selects a pool of champions they play, and are randomly assigned one of them. That way, you still guarenteur proficiency on your champion, but you cannot select an hyper optimized champion combo with your duo
That's just enchanter + inv with extra steps. You might not get 90% win rate, but you can probably get 70-80%