League of Legends Maps: Are More than Two Needed?
Two map types, 2 game modes, and many Summoners. What would be the benefits and problems of more maps and game modes being available to play?
(Written by Lorna "LornaRAWR" Hassell)
League of Legends is commonly known as a tower defense game where you use a champion chosen by yourself, the Summoner, to either play in a PvP game in teams of three or five ir in a custon game of your team size choice. I am focusing on the PvP aspect of the game mainly for this due to the limitations imposed on the players just because of the lack of maps.
There are two maps currently in League of Legends: Twisted Treeline for the 3v3 matches and Summoner's Rift for the 5v5 matches. Twisted Treeline is a map of two lanes, the top normally being the solo lane. Summoner's Rift is a map of three lanes, the middle normally being the solo lane and, with junglers in the team, the top lane commonly used as the 2v1 lane.
Shown above are the current map layouts with the lanes labelled: Summoner's Rift (Left) and Twisted Treeline (Right).
With only two maps the game can get quite boring sometimes if you play for an extended period of time. Many people argue that we should have more maps released rather than a new champion every other week or so. Personally, I agree with them. I would prefer more maps to add some diversity into the games that I play. Some different team size maps would be nice to have, such as a 4v4 map or even a giant 8v8 or 10v10 map could appeal to some.
So with many people wanting more maps then why don't we have any more? Well, there has always been talk about a large 5v5 map in production known as Magma Chamber but no release date has been hinted about this, despite many calls to hurry up and release this map to be playable. Some speculation is that it will be released on the start of season two in a couple of months time.
Above is the released concept art of the coming map, Magma Chamber, and it's layout below.
Many Summoners have countered the lack of maps to play by using the custom games option. In here, people can set up games to their own specifications for others to join. With these, people can play in different games that people have created to vary the normal gameplay. A popular one within this category is "All Mid". This game is where every Champion has to stay in the middle lane of Summoner's Rift and are only allowed to shop or heal when they are killed.
Even though custom games can be utilised to make these games possible, Riot would be clever to possibly take these ideas and add them into the actual game. For example, a single lane map could be added for games such as "All Mid" but could also be useful for custom 1v1 games between two players to avoid cheating by one participant. Also, a full jungle map could be added for games such as "Protect the Queen" where the majority of gameplay is played in one half of the Summoner's Rift jungle. These alternate games could be added under the PvP tab when creating games.
Now, with every idea there are possible downsides. The main downside with this idea is that it would create longer game queues as the players would be more spread out amongst the multiple different types of games running at the same time. On a bad day a queue could be up to five minutes long but this could increase significantly if more game modes were available for play.
Another issue could be the redundancy of the custom game option if alternate games were put into the actual game system. The matching with team mates for PvP games would pretty much mean that custom games would no longer be needed to set up these games between friends. They would only be used then for playing less popular or newer game modes, 1v1 games, and testing champions and builds - although Co-Op Vs AI can now be used for this.
The final main issue with this would be that many Champions could be calling for recognition and payment for the game mode being added into the actual game. This would not be as much of as issue if it was clear who the original creator was but when multiple people start accusing others of stealing their original idea things would get difficult and would have to be dropped entirely.
In conclusion, more maps and more game modes would be very nice to have but, for now, we will have to make do with the custom games and the current maps, and put out trust in Riot to create some new maps for us to play soon.
Lorna "LornaRAWR" Hassell
League of Legends (LornaRAWR;EUW) player. Twitterer of random, mostly LoL-related, rubbish @LornaRAWR. Feel free to follow. Find my original articles at http://q-to-r.blogspot.com
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22.05.2012
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3 comments so far...
PandemX, last year
Well,Riot has released Dominion some time ago,and it's new map "The Crystal Scar",which has appealed to the most of the community.However,the meta has already evolved and focused around the 5v5 enviroment of Summoners Rift,which somehow pulls back Riot's efforts to make a new map,which could/would only be played by the less serious or less competitive part of the community.
Magma Chamber has been greatly expected by the LoL community ever since the first sketches were made,however we've been told that it's probably going to be halted until further notice,which sort of boggles me.
What Riot does rather often is make champions.We can already count over 50 champions,with more coming every couple of weeks.Diversity is good,however Riot should tune it down a bit,because if they keep releasing champions every so often,LoL will not have that much to offer,other then an army of champions,from which every takes time and skill to master.
With the recent release of Dominion we've witnessed that Riot can indeed bring more into the MOBA genre and still keep it's old school elements.In other words,we need more maps.
Thanks for reading
LornaRAWR, last year
^^^ for the tl;dr community - They've released Dominion, the current focus is Summoners Rift for everything, Magma Chamber won't be here for a long time, Riot needs to stop releasing as many champions as it does so regularly because it will become stale.
I very much agree. I'm all for keeping the competitive side on Summoners Rift (though I do beleive there will be Dominion competitions starting up in the near future, also). The new champion every 2 weeks mallarchy is getting silly now, and I feel like they may begin to run out of ideas if they don't slow down.
I will be doing something on Dominion at some point because I feel it's a game mode only suited to certain types of players. With me being an AP/Support player, I feel left out of this game mode.
FreaKl, 4 months ago
Old school modes own the community at this time... if you want to change that you should get first a review from the community.
New stuffs can or not be enjoyable, you first need know all off your community wishes, perhaps you just change de "model" of 5v5 maps, and make some Online small contests or tournaments.
I think, the community needs some to get they atettion, not all the time a new champ or something like that... take that PvP feeling to a new level.
That is it, just my opinion, and sorry about my english...
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