I wanted to address the issue of our beloved game mode, Dominion, and its "hemorrhaging" playerbase. I keep seeing people on the forums talking about how they're quitting Dominion forever, or they're "gone," or other various words to describe their potential (though probably not real) permanent hiatus of Dominion.
What do you all think of this? Do you think Dominion is actually hemorrhaging players? Have you yourself felt as though you just don't want to play anymore? What are YOUR thoughts on how to keep people in this game mode? We know Riot's opinion on Ranked Dominion - it's not ready yet. There are even some people here that agree with the decision to not yet implement it (sad as it is, I'm one of them). For the sake of conversation, let's not mention Ranked Dominion as a current option to attract or keep players.
I had a theory that Blackfire Torch is actually bringing people to Dominion.
Think about it.
Nome said that the Dominion community is bleeding players. These are not the forum-going, semi-high-to-high-elo players. These are the low elo and/or "casual" people that are leaving.
So, in comes a few strong things:
Blackfire Torch - a strong, strong mage item.
Teemo - A super fun, very strong champ that is widely known
Mage Viability - Mages are fun champs to play. Always have been, always will be. They make things go BOOM.
Now, you're a casual player. You like winning (though losing is okay in moderation). Dominion is the place to be right now. You have one of the most well known champs in league being insanely strong, and there is an item that makes the most fun character archetype even more fun. I think BFT may actually be attracting more players than it's forcing out.
I think we need more ways to make this mode FUN. Even though we on the forums are the most vocal (and probably among the higher of elos for the most part), we're actually the minority. We need ways to make the fun champions more fun, make items more accessible and diverse, and generally improve the balance of this mode through any means possible. While it may suck now for the semi-high-to-high-elo players, this stuff is really what we need. And you can bet we probably won't get Ranked until that happens.
IMO.
Anyways - your thoughts? How do you propose we keep people playing this game mode, or add more to replace the hemorrhage?
EDIT: Okay guys, there are 100x10^n threads complaining about BFT. If you want to post just to complain about it, go to those threads. This one is about keeping people in Dominion and attracting new players. If you want to talk about BFT, at least relate it to the topic.
EDIT2: Someone bumped this thread, which is awesome. Some of this is a tad outdated, but the core concept is still there. So, if you're wondering about why BFT was mentioned so much, look at the time-stamp.
Normal Elo was supposed to be hidden; its previous visibility was a vulnerability/bug in the system. Even if it had some positive benefits, for the good of the overall quality level of the game, it had to be patched out.
Bugs can lead to interesting emergent things, and sometimes they're eventually incorporated into the design (to use a genre example, see Tiny's Toss/Avalanche double-damage interaction in Dota), but in this case, having visible Elo is basically cribbing the functionality of a ranked queue, and that's an entirely different can of worms.
[Discussion] Dominion and its Bleeding Playerbase
Hello,
I wanted to address the issue of our beloved game mode, Dominion, and its "hemorrhaging" playerbase. I keep seeing people on the forums talking about how they're quitting Dominion forever, or they're "gone," or other various words to describe their potential (though probably not real) permanent hiatus of Dominion.
What do you all think of this? Do you think Dominion is actually hemorrhaging players? Have you yourself felt as though you just don't want to play anymore? What are YOUR thoughts on how to keep people in this game mode? We know Riot's opinion on Ranked Dominion - it's not ready yet. There are even some people here that agree with the decision to not yet implement it (sad as it is, I'm one of them). For the sake of conversation, let's not mention Ranked Dominion as a current option to attract or keep players.
I had a theory that Blackfire Torch is actually bringing people to Dominion.
Think about it.
Nome said that the Dominion community is bleeding players. These are not the forum-going, semi-high-to-high-elo players. These are the low elo and/or "casual" people that are leaving.
So, in comes a few strong things:
Blackfire Torch - a strong, strong mage item.
Teemo - A super fun, very strong champ that is widely known
Mage Viability - Mages are fun champs to play. Always have been, always will be. They make things go BOOM.
Now, you're a casual player. You like winning (though losing is okay in moderation). Dominion is the place to be right now. You have one of the most well known champs in league being insanely strong, and there is an item that makes the most fun character archetype even more fun. I think BFT may actually be attracting more players than it's forcing out.
I think we need more ways to make this mode FUN. Even though we on the forums are the most vocal (and probably among the higher of elos for the most part), we're actually the minority. We need ways to make the fun champions more fun, make items more accessible and diverse, and generally improve the balance of this mode through any means possible. While it may suck now for the semi-high-to-high-elo players, this stuff is really what we need. And you can bet we probably won't get Ranked until that happens.
IMO.
Anyways - your thoughts? How do you propose we keep people playing this game mode, or add more to replace the hemorrhage?
EDIT: Okay guys, there are 100x10^n threads complaining about BFT. If you want to post just to complain about it, go to those threads. This one is about keeping people in Dominion and attracting new players. If you want to talk about BFT, at least relate it to the topic.
EDIT2: Someone bumped this thread, which is awesome. Some of this is a tad outdated, but the core concept is still there. So, if you're wondering about why BFT was mentioned so much, look at the time-stamp.
Bugs can lead to interesting emergent things, and sometimes they're eventually incorporated into the design (to use a genre example, see Tiny's Toss/Avalanche double-damage interaction in Dota), but in this case, having visible Elo is basically cribbing the functionality of a ranked queue, and that's an entirely different can of worms.