Riot’s featured game modes versus Valve’s custom games

VERSUS

[WARNING WARNING, OPINION PIECE ALERT]

Oh Riot, but what will you do? After having the League of Legends community crying in despair as the different featured game modes went away, Valve is now allowing DOTA 2 players to play new and unorthodox game modes for ever? And they can even create them themselves?

For those who don’t know what i’m talking about, check following link : https://www.dota2.com/reborn/part1/ . At part 2 of the DOTA 2 reborn project of Valve, it implements custom games, there is the description.

“Custom Games are new experiences that are created by the community, and playable within Dota 2. These games can be anything from a grand brawl between ten Invokers, to a story-driven dungeon adventure, to something creative that no one has seen before. For us, Custom Games represent a continuation of the tradition that gave birth to Dota, Team Fortress and Counter-Strike.”

We can’t compare the featured game modes of League of Legends on even footing, since Riot insisted on the fact that those were there for a short amount of time and were developed with that idea in mind. The featured game modes are available for about 10 days on average.

The most popular of those game modes is U.R.F., or Ultra Rapid Fire, and is the only one who came back twice, or at least twice on the same map (Hexakill came back but on Twisted Treeline). Even Ultra Rapid Fire, that seemingly everyone that i talked to/heard of want back again after this second iteration, isn’t popular enough for Riot to make it into something permanent. “[…] we still saw the same declining engagement and burnout that we see with other modes” said L4T3NCY, the Lead Designer for featured game modes.

I can’t say that i’m scared to see the League of Legends community flee the game towards the possibilities of DOTA 2 : Reborn, but i do believe it’s gonna give more weight to the demands of the fans.

Does anyone remembers the hype surrounding Dominion when it first came out? You know, before Riot started deleting Lore parts left and right? That game mode is deserted when compared to the more recent mode ARAM, and is deserted enough that Riot doesn’t even want to try to implement ranked matches of Dominion because it would increase the queue time to get into a game, and the mmr of the players would often be mismatched due to the lack of options. Here’s the statement by Riot employee ManWolfAxeBoss about Ranked matches in dominion :

“We’ve actually done quite a bit of research on how many players are needed for a healthy queue,” he explained. “When it’s not met, we see stuff like increased toxicity, higher turnover, decrease in queue size and a generally degraded play experience. Splitting the already small [Dominion] community into two queues would create a poor experience for both sides. Waiting 30 minutes to play with people with a 500 [skill rating] disparity is no fun for anyone.”

Riot wants to concentrate on Summoner’s Rift, and they are doing a great job with the work they put into it. That may be the sole reason while League of Legends will never see another big gamemode to come out like Dominion did back in the day. I mean, it’s been 4 years since then.

I don’t know if Riot will change their stance on new game modes after that big announcement from Valve, but i certainly hope so. The beta for DOTA 2 : Reborn is coming out today and it includes almost everything the fans of the game have been reclaiming from the game, in one big update. I’m sure the DOTA 2 players will have a great deal of fun with this “upgrade”, and i hope it creates a ripple that affects Riot Games.

To be aware of my new content coming out every two day, follow me on twitter at @getthenexus !

Thanks for reading,

HayTea