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[SalmonGod]

I second not liking my face melted.  That's the kind of thing that drove me away from Summoner's Rift.  The way everything became oriented around gap closer/cc/burst characters roaming around for insta-kill ganks the first 15 minutes of the game, and the rest of the game being mostly decided by that.  Zero fun.

[Cthulhu]

I think it's shifted away from that quite a bit.  All the 100-0 assassins but talon (who probably survived because he has no real escapes) got nerfed hard, Ahri got nerfed, Zed got nerfed, Kassadin and LeBonk got fucking hella nerfed, etc. etc. and the changes to itemization have changed things a lot.  Mid is back to being mostly long-ranged poke squishies.  Ziggs is everywhere, Lux is everywhere, Xerath is coming around, etc.  And bot lane also favors late game, Tristana and Kog'maw are both really strong right now. 

[SalmonGod]

Yeah... I've tried playing it again a bit recently after several months away.  Some of the assassins were toned down, but it seems like they still have plenty of burst.  It's just not quite as risk-free for them to apply.  Kassadin and Leblanc will still nuke you into oblivion, but they just can't walk away casually anymore if you don't explode from one combo.  And there's still plenty of characters with tons of burst who are just the same as ever.  Like Fiora.  Or Yi, who in my opinion is worse than before.  The game still feels like it heavily favors damage over defense in general, and the mobility / CC creep have continued on.  So in the end, it doesn't feel too much different.  It still all revolves around positioning for those "gotcha" moments.  Most encounters are still over with in 1.5 seconds and determined by who got the drop on who.  And it still feels like if one team pulls off two or three more gotchas than the other in the early game that it's 80% likely to be determined at that point, so long as the winning side doesn't do anything too horribly stupid.

And my favorite character, Mundo, still isn't any fun to play with the current state of the game.  Half the games I tried, I went up against Renekton, who sustains his health better right from the start even when I have max health regen runes and two regrowth amulets, practically gets to deal free damage through multiple dashes and a stun, and does more damage in general.  And healing debuff, which is plentiful, still seems to stop healing almost completely instead of the percentage that it's supposed to.

[frostshotgg]

Keep in mind that damage has to be favored over defense. As it is right now, there's little difference between the two, which results in the 80 minute snooze fest lcs game someone linked a few days ago.

[Arcvasti]

Dr. Mundo WAS a dominant pick for a while before they made him less ridiculous. And Renekton is stupid. Like, REALLY stupid. He can rot in hell with Ziggs and Cait forever. And really, defense focus is usually boring for both sides. The defender, because he has fewer damage items, whittles away at the attacker. The attacker, because the defender is absurdly tanky, whittles away at the defender. Its super annoying realizing you're not actually hurting the person you're attacking. Gragas, for example, is really stupid now because his "takes % less damage from everything" is mostly impossible to bypass and stacks with health and resistances.

[SalmonGod]

Keep in mind that damage has to be favored over defense. As it is right now, there's little difference between the two, which results in the 80 minute snooze fest lcs game someone linked a few days ago.

I don't relate to this at all.  I've always found long games with lots of back-and-forth to be the most exciting.  I much prefer gauging long-term strategy, experimenting, and adjusting my behavior gradually over the course of a game, rather than a handful of tactical plays each lasting a matter of seconds most often determining the course of a half-hour game.  But I understand that I'm in the minority with that opinion, and Riot actively designs against my style of play.

[frostshotgg]

It's less back-and-forth and more one team obviously has the advantage but they can't do shit to actually press it because nobody fucking dies. If that were the way things went then it wouldn't be balanced against that so heavily, but back-and-forth games do not come from nobody dying, they come from everybody having the ability to kill eachother, so the team that's behind has a chance to actually do something if they play their cards right.

[DemonOfWrath]

The difference now compared to before is that a lot of the high burst champs that still remain (Fiora, as you used as an example) have much more pronounced weaknesses compared to how stuff like Ahri and Zed were before. Most either have few to no safety nets to their engage (if a Fiora goes in on you, she isn't going the other way without a lot of pain), and are much more reliant on snowballing, because they can't do anything else besides raw damage. If that Fiora, or Yi, or Talon, say, falls behind they're going to become utterly useless for like 20 minutes until they farm their arses off to get back into the game or pick up several kills in a teamfight, because their targets will have more damage to the point where they can fight back, or simply be too tanky for them to touch.

You also don't see as many super long games in competitive play compared to previous years because the teams in general simply have gotten better at taking a lead in early game and building upon it.

[Cthulhu]

Damage is gonna be favored over defense in general in most things.  A wise man once said, "imagine two men meet on a road. One has a bag of punches, while the other has a bag of dodges. The first man is going to look stupid for a little while, but the second man is going to look stupid forever."

But really if the idea of burst damage absolutely turns you off, League might not be the game for you. 

[SalmonGod]

It's less back-and-forth and more one team obviously has the advantage but they can't do shit to actually press it because nobody fucking dies. If that were the way things went then it wouldn't be balanced against that so heavily, but back-and-forth games do not come from nobody dying, they come from everybody having the ability to kill eachother, so the team that's behind has a chance to actually do something if they play their cards right.

This wasn't my experience with the game before they started hyping up the pro-competitive aspect with Season 1.

Back then, I would quite often suffer weak starts in my games and lose some ground.  But as long as that didn't go too far, I would usually get a feel for the enemy's style, learn how to work through their movement and attack patterns, and come back with a very strong late game on that basis.  Long games ending with epic comebacks were a major thing with me, and they were my favorite.  But Riot has systematically eliminated every aspect of the game which made it possible to play that way.

But really if the idea of burst damage absolutely turns you off, League might not be the game for you. 

Yeah, I'm aware.  I still enjoy ARAMs now and then, but I quit Summoner's Rift for almost a year.  It's just coincidence that I played a dozen games or so on it again this past week, and then I happened to glance in this thread (because it will show up on my unread replies list for all eternity) and see mention of facemelting.

I really want to see a MOBA (such a stupid label) that takes the core formula in a completely different direction.  It seems like the genre took off and there's a bunch of knock-offs and variants now, but they're all mostly the same thing.  I would love to see one that pushes for slower pacing, more methodical/strategic play, and a control style that's less point-and-click and more Alien Swarm.  But the MOBA fanbase seems rabidly conservative about the general formula, and gets truly upset when anyone suggests something less ultra-high-octane-competitive or that doesn't instantly nuke you from orbit as punishment for the tiniest mistakes.

[frostshotgg]

I feel like you're deluding yourself, season 1 was probably the time when the game was most heavily balanced in favor of offense.

Think of it this way. Everybody is godmode. Then which team wins? Whichever one can siege harder. Nobody will die except in a minute long full on engage, and even then the most eventful thing likely to happen is Banshee's gets popped a bunch. The game turns into a grindfest where everybody knows who has won already, it's just an hour long formality as your inhibitor turrets lose 100 every wave, and 25 fucking creep waves later you maybe finally get a fight, but nobody dies and it is a sound defeat for your team and they take an inhib. The next 5 minutes are the enemy team cautiously approaching your nexus turrets, getting 1 or 2 potshots off at the turrets, maybe destroying 1 turret before having to kill the inhibitor again, eventually after far too long finally managing to kill your nexus. It doesn't matter if you get the jump on them and start a fight heavily in your favor because they can just disengage and go heal and continue sieging, and even if you kill them, what are you going to do? You maybe take an inhib and baron before they respawn, they stall out the game a bit then resume their previous dominance because it's purely a matter of teamcomp and who can waveclear better at that point.

Now think of the flip side. Everybody dies in 1 hit. Suddenly the game gets a lot more interesting. Now there's actual strategy in starting a fight, because whoever can land the first attack gets a huge advantage in killing someone, and the opposing team has the option of either running away and trying to stall until they have a 5th person and lose an objective or two, or they can try to fight down a man and short of something really, really strong like Fiddles+Kennen probably get destroyed. And it doesn't matter that they lost whatever objective, because the team that's down can still kill the enemy team and do something. That's the important part. If you can't kill the stronger team then the game is already lost and the rest is a formality, full stop. Swingy games come from everybody being able to kill eachother, not from nobody dying.

[IronyOwl]

Back then, I would quite often suffer weak starts in my games and lose some ground.  But as long as that didn't go too far, I would usually get a feel for the enemy's style, learn how to work through their movement and attack patterns, and come back with a very strong late game on that basis.  Long games ending with epic comebacks were a major thing with me, and they were my favorite.  But Riot has systematically eliminated every aspect of the game which made it possible to play that way.

Like what? They explicitly fiddled with a bunch of comeback mechanics in the jungle and such, to the point where they had to roll some of them back because they became to wonky. They removed Green Elixirs because their primary use was to make the winning adc more winninger, and I'm pretty sure some of their other item/champ changes have been for similarly stated purposes.

I can't really tell how successful they've been, but their stated intentions definitely include comebacks.

I really want to see a MOBA (such a stupid label) that takes the core formula in a completely different direction.  It seems like the genre took off and there's a bunch of knock-offs and variants now, but they're all mostly the same thing.  I would love to see one that pushes for slower pacing, more methodical/strategic play, and a control style that's less point-and-click and more Alien Swarm.  But the MOBA fanbase seems rabidly conservative about the general formula, and gets truly upset when anyone suggests something less ultra-high-octane-competitive or that doesn't instantly nuke you from orbit as punishment for the tiniest mistakes.

Well they had to call it something.

Personally, I'd love to see a more minion-focused MOBA. Every MOBA I'm aware of has kept the basic premise that minions/creeps/whatever are resources first and tools second; I'd like to see one where you're more support staff or general than lone hero, running around trying to beef up your friendlies to win the game for you as opposed to ganking an enemy hero and then one-shotting their goons.

Of course, at some point that stops being a MOBA, and it's hard to argue that RPGs aren't more popular than strategy games. Still, one can dream...

[Putnam]

Personally, I'd love to see a more minion-focused MOBA. Every MOBA I'm aware of has kept the basic premise that minions/creeps/whatever are resources first and tools second; I'd like to see one where you're more support staff or general than lone hero, running around trying to beef up your friendlies to win the game for you as opposed to ganking an enemy hero and then one-shotting their goons.

Of course, at some point that stops being a MOBA, and it's hard to argue that RPGs aren't more popular than strategy games. Still, one can dream...

IIRC there was a game like that, but I forgot what it was called... oy. It's probably dead now. Hero Line Wars for Warcraft 3 and Dota 2 is something sorta like that, where you play as a hero (an original set in the WC3 mod and the Dota set in the Dota 2 mod) and try to fend off creeps sent by the enemy team as you send creeps yourself; sending creeps increases your income which allows you to send better creeps (and buy items, of course) and so on. I'm not sure about the status of WC3 Hero Line Wars, but Dota 2 Hero Line Wars is alive and kickin'.

[Frumple]

Also still functionally a WC3 custom map and sucking on the teat of a decade+ old engine's limitations. Just like DotA2, for what that's worth, and frankly the majority of other AoS knockoffs. As Salmon noted, the AoS knockoff field hasn't so much stagnated as freaking fossilized, to the vicious detriment of the general concept's potential.

... though yeah, as with SG, I still hold out the vague hope someone, some day, will pull their head from file miles inside DotA's cloaca and actually do the play style justice. S'not today, but perhaps one day.

[Putnam]

Also still functionally a WC3 custom map and sucking on the teat of a decade+ old engine's limitations. Just like DotA2, for what that's worth, and frankly the majority of other AoS knockoffs. As Salmon noted, the AoS knockoff field hasn't so much stagnated as freaking fossilized, to the vicious detriment of the general concept's potential.

... though yeah, as with SG, I still hold out the vague hope someone, some day, will pull their head from file miles inside DotA's cloaca and actually do the play style justice. S'not today, but perhaps one day.

...Yes, that's the entire point. It's a remake of a WC3 map. Made to be functionally a WC3 map. Dota 2 is still a remake of Dota, which is a WC3 map.