season4

FeralPony has posted up an overview of the game flow changes coming in the preseason, including changes to Dragon rewards, Baron’s buff, turret kill rewards, bounties, jungle timers, and more!

Hey everyone,

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

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

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

Tons of Changes!

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

Objectives

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

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

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

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

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

Turrets: The team-wide gold for destroying turrets is going down, but the gold given to the players directly responsible for destroying turrets is going up.

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

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

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

Other underlying systems:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’ll also be posting this on reddit where we may pass through to clarify some questions. Later this week we’ll be doing a global recap to follow up with the most up-to-date information from questions around the world!

-FeralPony