Riot’s Mid-Season Update: Promoting Early Teamfighting and Debating Randomness
Riot recently released their Mid-Season Magic update, aiming to rework and enhance League of Legends’ outdated Mages and encourage more early teamfighting through the addition of Elemental Dragons. The update introduces four different types of dragons that offer various team buffs to the killers, which stack with dragons of the same type that have been killed. The goal is to increase the pace of the game by compelling teams to fight over neutral objectives earlier. However, the random selection of dragon spawns has sparked a debate on the role of randomness in League of Legends and Esports as a whole. Last Shadow, in a video, discussed how this randomness could potentially turn the tide of a game on a coin-flip, highlighting concerns about the upcoming changes. While the Elemental Dragon update promotes early game interaction, it also reflects poor balancing philosophy on Riot’s part.
Controllable RNG is not the issue
I don’t have a problem with the RNG (random number generator) aspect of Elemental Dragons in League of Legends. Some randomness in a game can add flavor as long as it is manageable. For instance, when a marksman in League purchases a crit-chance item or uses crit-chance runes, they are voluntarily taking a risk for potentially higher damage. The outcome is determined by RNG, and it rewards or penalizes the player accordingly. Critical strikes, often blamed for game-changing moments, are rarely the sole reason for a team’s victory or defeat. Additionally, relying solely on crit-chance is not a winning strategy, as it must work in conjunction with other stats. Similarly, a team should not base their composition on the hope of favorable dragon spawns.
Elemental Dragons and the inconsistency in balancing
The inclusion of Elemental Dragons deviates from Riot’s trend of minimizing randomness in League of Legends. They removed Dodge because it added unnecessary randomness to a single stat and inadvertently buffed an already overpowered champion, Jax. Madred’s Razor was reworked due to the randomness hindering junglers trying to donate buffs and causing unpredictable game swings in counter-jungling wars. They even changed the Fear ability to ensure that the target always runs away from the caster, rather than in random directions. Abilities with randomness, such as Kindred’s passive or Blitzcrank’s ult lightning, still have some predictability and consistency. However, the randomness associated with Elemental Dragons can potentially turn the game in a team’s favor solely based on chance.
The ‘Mario Party’ Effect
The core issue with the randomness of Elemental Dragons lies not in the randomness itself but in the possibility of it being a deciding factor in winning a game. Randomness is essential in Esports, but it rarely has a significant impact on game outcomes. However, if winning depends on favorable RNG rolls, it undermines the skill and strategy of the players. If the randomness of the dragon spawns does not have a substantial game-changing effect, teams may revert to the current state of low team interaction around dragon. In such a scenario, the game simply decides winners and losers randomly, which is not ideal for healthy game design.
Riot, Mid-Season Update, League of Legends, Mages, Elemental Dragons, early teamfighting, randomness, RNG, Esports, balancing, skill, strategy, game design