League of Legends' largely neglected territory control game mode is being buried for good on February 22nd, and the kickback from the community has been immense. Will this ultimately be a good move for Riot, or will it disenfranchise their customers?
Goodbye, Dominion.
On February 10th, L4T3NCY reached out to the League community in a post announcing the disabling of Dominion and the Crystal Scar in all queues, both PvP and custom, citing that less than 0.5% of active players used the game mode, and even then, bots make up a chunk of that population.
Riot's Case
Riot claims there is not a significant enough population engaged in the use of Crystal Scar to justify finding balance between the metagame on Summoner's Rift and keeping Dominion functional. For every change on Summoner's Rift, clearly Riot's main focus, similar adjustments and bugfixes have to be made on each map, including the Scar.
Queue times and skill levels vary wildly due to the miniscule queue population. In essence, since it's difficult to find a full game's worth of players in a similar skill bracket, the queue will expedite the process by widening the skill bracket, placing some lower skilled players with those of a much greater ability. The user experience, as a result, was wildly inconsistent, rarely fun, and impossible to balance.
Riot's primary area of interest undoubtedly is Summoner's Rift, and the strengthening of their grip on the eSports market. L4T3NCY, in his own words, rebuffed the possibility of leaving the Crystal Scar map in custom queues, claiming, "We could better spend that time/resources doing something awesome on SR instead." This comment, as of the time of publication, has been downvoted to a score of over -500.
As somewhat of a "parting gift," Riot offered anyone with over 100 matchmade Dominion wins this exclusive Summoner Icon – a sorry excuse of a novelty prize at best. This only served to frustrate the population even more, Dominion players and otherwise. Such a listless attempt to placate dedicated customers clearly rubbed the community the wrong way.
The Community's Case
The response of the community was perhaps best captured by a comment from user "Flore."
"(Expletive) you."
Countless voices came out of the woodwork, decrying the promises made by Riot in years past to rework Dominion into a more appealing version. Though Dominion's population was small, it was dedicated, and had been waiting patiently for reworks season after season. Among the most popular and most obvious reasons why participation in the Scar was so minimal was the complete lack of an incentive or reward system to participate in the mode. One user wrote that the only reward for improving in the game mode was longer queue times. User Minarde writes that there is "No ranked, no accolades, no Champ Mastery, nothing."
No wonder the mode is deserted.
The announcement brought other frustrations with Riot to the surface, chiefly the developmental overemphasis on Summoner's Rift. The player base is becoming frustrated with the way that Riot is moving all their resources to one segment of the game, and the focus of an originally user-based experience is becoming a tunnel-visioned, one dimensional product focused on the upper echelon of hardcore players, and completely forsaking those who wish only to play casually.
To me, this all invokes a video released by Dunkey in September of 2015, wherein he laments the way the game has changed since its humble beginnings, and the unfortunate shift in direction and focus it has taken...
"In any great competitive video game, there are so many techniques and opportunities for a great player to just whoop some ass. In League, you don't really have those options, and because this game wants to cater to the biggest audience possible to make the most money like Call of Duty, it's just going to stay that way forever."
My Take
There is a level of truth to each side of this contentious story. To reluctantly play devil's advocate, Riot is working with a deeply technical game with a level of coding, balance, and statistical research that is massively difficult to maintain even on Summoner's Rift alone. To repeat this process for Twisted Treeline, Howling Abyss, AND Crystal Scar is a massive undertaking, considering each change has to interact properly with each map, and making changes to accomodate one map may throw another one off kilter.
That said...
Riot has every resource to do so. Some of the most brilliant minds in video game content creation and coding are employed by Riot. Though it would be a significant undertaking, this is what Riot stands for. Since its first iteration, League of Legends has been about the user, their personal growth, and their experience finding their niche within the game.
While the removal of Crystal Scar does not completely destroy this experience, it is representative of an overall shift in attitude at Riot Games that is clearly tunneling themselves into one corridor of their overall product.
The success of League of Legends pro scenes across the globe is nothing to gawk at, but Riot would do well to remember that their ravenously dedicated following was built off of a game that brought friends together over casual gameplay with the occasional competitive kick.
The death of Dominion isnt the death of Riot, but it sure does highlight a potential fatal flaw in the company's vision that could bring about a large scale migration of their player base.
Thanks for reading, please discuss in the comments, or contact me on Twitter at (GG_Jankeroo).
