Among the many and constant questions Riot receives, one of the top among Dominion players is why there is no ranked mode for Dominion. As it turns out, Riot has all the backend implementation for ranked mode complete, they just aren’t ready to throw the switch. Why not? According to Brackhar back in September, Riot “want[ed] the map to have a chance to mature enough before we flip the switch.”
To be honest, this issue isn’t exactly close to my heart. I stopped playing Dominion quite a while back. It just wasn’t as gripping as I thought it would be. And ranked? Well, ranked doesn’t matter. It doesn’t really mean anything. Riot doesn’t compensate highly ranked players in any way for attaining their rank. The games are typically just as troll-saturated as any other ELO. It does give people something to shoot for, but since that’s directly related to winning or losing, and I think most people are trying to win, it has little effect on anything in the game other than player attitude, and that it affects negatively.
So really, I couldn’t care less if Riot waits to implement Ranked Dominion, although I have to admit, I’m confused why they would wait any longer. From my perspective, Dominion is already a dying gamemode. The Dominion forums have no-response posts (the best way to judge new post count that I could come up with) from yesterday morning on the front page. In general discussion I couldn’t find a no-response post older than 10 minutes. In the top 40 red posts on CL Gaming’s Redtracker, just 1 is about Dominion. My friend list never has more than 5 people playing Dominion, and when it reaches 5, most of them are playing with one another.
Waiting for Dominion to mature much further seems to me like waiting for a major league pitcher in his late thirties to mature: you’re running out of time before you just scrap the guy altogether. I’m not saying Riot should scrap Dominion – I know there are those among you that enjoy the game mode – rather that there is no reason to wait any longer on releasing ranked play for Dominion. If anything, it might get people who are sick of the ranked grind on Summoner’s Rift interested in the capture-and-hold playstyle.
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This may seem like a foolish question to ask, but there’s a reason I ask. When Dominion first launched to beta I was playing the hell out of it. Part of my fascination was obviously the fact that we finally had something new in front of our faces to play with. The other part, which actually took a couple play sessions to recognize, was that I always had a full group of people to play with. It was never hard to find four other people who would get on voice chat and try a little capture and hold.
Just three days since the new mode launched, though, I’m already having trouble putting together a Dominion group and frankly, Dominion just isn’t that fun without a premade group. It can often be particularly unfun, even more so than Summoner’s Rift. So I’m bouncing back and forth a bit. I’m playing ranked games here and there with some friends in duo queue. I’m hitting Dominion when I have three or more friends ready to play.
What about you? Are you still playing Summoner’s Rift? Are you totally wrapped up in Dominion? Are you boycotting Dominion for some reason? Do you play Dominion with less than three people? Let me know in the comments.
There’s a lot to get excited about with the upcoming Dominion game mode, but I’m excited for one major feature above all else – the lack of a lane phase. It’s not just that I think the lane phase has gotten stale, which it has, or that I don’t really like trying to last hit, which I don’t. I’m excited about Dominion’s lack of a lane phase because it means teams will be playing with one another more. Honestly, I think the change could be the one thing with a shot at injecting some positivity into the LoL community.
I’ve thought a lot about why the LoL community tends be a negative environment, and I think it pretty much boils down to this – for the first 15-20 minutes of a game, it isn’t a team game. It’s 3-4 solo experiences (3 lanes and a jungle) that have the potential to ruin the team part of the game that comes much later. In some cases, your teammates actually become your enemies. If bot lane feeds 5 kills in the first 10 minutes, it’s going to be a very tough game. Because games are fairly long, it can often feel like that feeding lane has just wasted whatever amount of time you spend in the game.
Dominion should remove or at least reduce that initial intra-team tension. From the very beginning of the game, players have to work together to succeed. The way that the map is designed, teams will still split up, and there will still be moments that it feels like your teammates have screwed you. I think the key difference is that you’ll be playing as a team from the beginning, instead of playing as 3 solos and one team lane.
To that end, I’m really pumped about Dominion. What are you looking forward to?
One of Riot’s PR managers was kind enough to put together a content roundup from the various sources that got a sneak peek at Dominion earlier this week. There’s some good stuff out there, including the video Berseking put in the comments of a post here (which is now at the top of the post). I figured I’d put up the links so you guys can grab the information that’s out there and get a closer look at the map.
Joystiq “Dominion certainly turns the genre on its head, in a way that retains the elements that are now standard, and tweaks the gameplay in brand new ways. Riot promised players that it would do something “surprising,” and it wanted to bring something new to the genre, so Dominion seems destined to enable both goals.”
IGN “Dominion, an entirely new game type for League of Legends, is more exciting than a rollercoaster built on top of a giant rollercoaster car that is actively moving on another rollercoaster. On fire.”
“Dominion is playable at the upcoming Gamescom and Penny Arcade Expo consumer trade shows, and — according to Riot — it goes live shortly thereafter. It’s also freely available to all players from the moment it comes out. Ohhhhhh yeeeeaaaah!”
Eurogamer “This represents an enormous addition to a game that has been traditional, almost conservative in adhering to its DotA-influenced style of play, and where the focus has almost always been on the development of new characters or new tactics. This Riot has started a revolution, and one that has arrived at just the right time.”
PC Gamer “From start to finish, each Dominion match felt like it was filled with back-to-back battles, and with the hectic back-and-forth nature of the map, it’s never over til it’s over.”
Kotaku “Riot Games describe Dominion as an “accelerated version of the classic League of Legends” with matches lasting about 20 minutes. Gamers will have their first chance to check out the game later this month at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, and later at PAX Prime in Seattle.”
Destructoid “Riot Games has addressed this issue by introducing something entirely unheard of in the genre. Enter Dominion, the newest gameplay mode that overhauls the classic system to accommodate a more fast-paced, action-packed gaming experience.”
GamesRadar “There are tons of great mechanics and features that encourage lots of back-and-forth as both teams battle over control of the map.”
G4 TV “For League of Legends veterans who’ve been waiting a long time for a new mode, you definitely won’t be disappointed with League of Legends Dominion.”
ZAM “In a nutshell, Dominion is League of Legends distilled into pure adrenaline.”
The Escapist “The result is a League of Legends experience that has quick and furious combat right at the get go and sustained throughout the average 20 minutes of play. After my first hands-on I couldn’t help but scrawl 23 minutes of awesome in my notepad.”
With all the hype from Rioters over the course of the week, it looked like we might finally see an actual release announcement for Magma Chamber. Well, that didn’t happen, but I think Riot did us one (maybe two) better. Today Riot announced Dominion, a new game mode for League of Legends that’s also played on an entirely new map, the Crystal Scar.
The game mode seems to play a lot like Arathi Basin in World of Warcraft. Two teams fight for control of certain waypoints around the map and accrue points based on how many waypoints they control. Riot says games last roughly twenty minutes, a time frame in which most Summoner’s Rift matches are just getting started.
For my dollar, Dominion is a brilliant release, provided we can play it before the end of the year. There are a lot of people who still enjoy Summoner’s Rift, who are still learning the playstyle for the map or, in some cases, still learning how to play a MOBA. For the veterans, though, Summoner’s Rift can be stale at times. I love the idea of jumping into a 20-minute slugfest on a map that forces players to be in combat at all times. Riot mentioned to several media outlets that they’re trying to make sure the game doesn’t snowball into victory, a goal that makes a lot of sense considering the similarities to other capture-and-defend gametypes in various games.
For all of my excitement about Dominion, I’m also being a bit cautious. Sorry, Riot, but you’ve burned me before. I think it’s a great sign that Dominion will be playable at both Gamescom (August 17-21) and PAX Prime (August 26-28). That could mean the new map/mode are ready for a late September/Early October release. If the past has taught us anything, it’s to be wary of feature releases coming out of Riot offices. Dominion looks to be so fleshed out, though, that I can’t imagine it going live any later than October 15th.
What do you think? Is Dominion going to rock face or stagger toward release?
