Riot admits that minion bounties are screwed up

A few weeks ago, we wrote about minion bounties in League of Legends. Specifically, we wrote that they should be removed from the game. The bounties changed how players approached fundamentals of the lane phase, giving rise to no farm lanes and creating a whole host of problems.

And now we know why. In a post on Riot’s forums, lead gameplay designer Andrei “Meddler” van Roon announced that the whole minion bounty system is bugged. And while he noted that Riot is working on a fix, there is currently no timeline for when the fix will ship.

That simply isn’t good enough. These effects have done some damage in solo queue, but where they are being felt the most is on the pro stage. Just take a look at this insanity:

Want more evidence? Take a look at this next image and try to figure out why OpTic mid laner Lee “Crown” Min-ho has a bounty when he’s down in CS. Sure, he got some turret plate gold, but what’s the point of giving him that gold if you’re just going to put a bounty on his head?

Instead of removing minion bounties from the game until they’re fixed, Riot is going to keep them in place as the worked on them. In his post Meddler indicated that minion bounties were “quite helpful” in preventing snowballs. But he also noted that the bounties “aren’t always functioning as they’re meant to.”

Part of the problem is, unlike kill bounties which were easy to calculate, the minion bounty system relies on a lot of math the game is doing in the background. Because the whole system is less clear, it’s actually harder for Riot to fix. According to Meddler, it’s “hard to identify bugs from intended behavior.”

So if you are watching or playing League and see a seemingly random minion bounty, take heart. Riot doesn’t know who should or shouldn’t have bounties either.