I like OP's input. Especially not being able to see the enemy team's champions until the game has started.

I also feel as though reporting on custom games is useless since I don't see any on tribunals and some people seem to think it's bad.

Had years of fun with -arom(even -wtf) and want to keep having fun on LoL with this game mode.

Hey man, so hopefully I can address some of the concerns you're having. First of all, you're correct in that Proving Grounds as-is is not a faithful representation of classic ARAM gameplay. We took elements of what we enjoyed from both ARAM and ARAB and adapted them to an existing map; the result is that it's something that's similar, but still quite different, but what we hope is an improvement from ARAM and ARAB.

To address your concerns piecemeal, I'm going to refer to Proving Grounds as PG, classic ARAM as ARAM, and ARAB on Dominion as ARAB. Some of the justifications have already been covered by the other posters, so I'll focus on what's not been mentioned.

Health Relics
Health relics, along with brush, are both elements intended to give the otherwise straightforward terrain of Proving Grounds some deeper gameplay. On ARAM, there's the notion of two distinct fronts. You've got purple team in a line parallel to blue, and this is the default configuration until someone initiates or gets caught. While there's certainly merit to this gameplay, it does marginalize the usefulness of melee champs and amplifies the effectiveness of ranged pokers and AoE champs (say, Xerath and Ashe respectively). What we did on PG is break these fronts; you've got champs vying for brush control and scrambling for health relics. It's an ongoing process that keeps the state of both teams quite volatile and provides a lot of openings to capitalize on mistakes.

Increased Starting Gold
This was a decision made very early in the project, and it directly relates to the melee/ranged disparity and the general feeling players have when they're "stuck" in battle. To clarify on this, it's when you're low health with no sustain; too low to properly fight, but you don't want to feed your opponents a free kill. Increased starting gold gives players the ability purchase enough sustain or survivability to mitigate this issue, though not enough to solve it. In addition, it allows for a much higher variety in starting builds.

I actually have to go do something right now, but I'll be back to answer the rest of the points. Please note that we do plan to support Proving Grounds; both Brackhar and I will be providing short term support, and I'll actually be jumping onto the live team for the conceivable future to provide long-term support for not just Proving Grounds, but other non-SR maps as well. It's also possible that we add a "classic" mode to the map in the future that removes the health relics, ambient gold and experience, and sets you back to level 1. But for now, I (and the PG team) implore you to play the map as-is and give us your feedback.

Hi Nome (nom-nom) ^^

I tried the proving grounds yesterday and I have to say it's amazingly fun! although there are a couple issues I couldn't ignore..

1.- I think the perspective on the map is... odd, at least for purple team which was the one I was in... it seems to be steeper than summoner's... although this might be because of it being only one lane

2.- Brushes are too close to each others and it feels weird to have it only on one side of the lane, I don't think that adding brushes on both sides would be good but if there were a patch on each side it might feel better to hide on them occasionally. Also it would flatten out the experience for both teams, meaning that the bushes would remain on the left side no matter what color team you're on.

3.- The base is so big O.o it looks like the one on summoner's rift but with just one turret it feels like a waste of space...

4.- the total lenght of the map is very short.. I think it could be compared with bottom lane on TT but instead of just 1 turret there's three...

there, my 2 cents :P

Alright, continuing on.

Starting at LVL 3 and Passive Experience
Starting at level 3 was specifically added to address the issue of--you guessed it--melee/range disparity. Starting at level 3 address the problem two-fold. First, on ARAM, melee are hindered for the first few levels due their core design; oftentimes their primary damage ability or crowd control is on a separate ability from their mobility skill. This means that unlike ranged AD or casters, they're effectively unable to participate in battle until they gain both their mobility and primary damage. Second, fighter (and many other melee) design involves the use of three abilities to create a combat loop. Renekton, Riven, Tryndamere, and Pantheon are great archetypes here; compare this to a Xerath who can effectively operate with one or two spells, or Ashe whose biggest impact comes from repeated use of one ability. Passive experience is there to address the snowball factor; unlike Summoner's Rift, Dominion, or even Twisted Treeline, the majority of battles on ARAM/B/PG involve and impact all champions on a team, which means that if an opposing player is taken down, the entire team snowballs, not just the individual. The passive experience gain is there to offset this snowballing, and also to push the pace and try to keep overall game time down.

Narrow Lane
Wide-open lanes are advantageous for AD carries and long-ranged champions. Narrow lanes are advantageous for melee. PG is more narrow than Summoner's Rift, but it's not quite claustrophobic. We experimented with more open layouts but they were very punishing to melee. As you've gathered by now, the ranged/melee disparity was a big factor in why we made the changes we did. I made another (shorter) post on the subject here: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...84043#25184043

Item Selection
Items are a mix between Classic and Dominion. Bloodthirster was replaced with Sanguine Blade because the stacking nature of BT led it to generally snowball too hard. Wriggle's Lantern was disabled because the attached Ward removed Brush gameplay. We're open to replacing it with a similar item though. Madred's Bloodrazor was replaced with Kitae's Bloodrazor because Madred's was inadequate as a counter item given its price point.

Thanks for all the thoughtful responses!

To be clear, I really don't like ARAB, but I understand why people do. It's constant fighting with not much strategy needed really. This is actually the attraction for ARAB players who play that mode because they don't want to waste time and think, peck and poke, etc. Do you think ARAB players want to deal with towers? Then they can't charge each other like berserkers. PG will not take away ARAB because ARAB does it better!

PG will not take away ARAM either, because when people don't cheat, ARAM does it better. ARAM is a sanctuary against the tanky derp bruisers that we constantly see charging in like wrecking balls and facerolling the ranged champ with a simple right click. Part of the satisfaction of ARAM is that those champs can't get to get to that point until halfway into the game. Remember, in a normal game, ranged champs can hide in bushes, over walls, run this way and that. In a normal game, ranged champs don't need to engage that often, having perhaps a flash ready if they get charged by Jax. In a single lane map, melee champs have to be a little weak or they would just zone out the enemy team.

I know you (riot) want more than anything for PG to really rock in all ways and be a superior map for players of both game modes to enjoy, but both game modes are like opposites, really, and since PG is a hybrid, it actually is going to be an inferior version of both game modes, replacing neither. It will simply be a third option.

Why make a third option? It would just pull some players away from both modes, fragmenting the community more. Better to make PG into a superior map for ARAB OR a superior map for ARAM.

Honestly, you guys should just make this hands down a better map for ARAM, and then make something different for the ARAB crowd. The ARAB crowd would probably like some kind of arena map much more than PG.

Thanks again for reading!

====================

P.S. just saw your post. thanks for posting!

Passive Experience:
I actually do agree with you that the experience disparity from kills/assists is too snowbally on the SR map, and agree with the choice to reduce the xp and gold from kills/assists while simultaneously increasing the passive xp/gold gain, but overall I hope the game isn't sped up too much.

The pace needs to stay a little slow to keep the "late game" champs from carrying the game every time. As it is now, the pace of the match could be a little faster than it is on SR, as "late game" champs should at some point take over, and this happens a bit late right now. If champs are handed free levels and gold, naturally the "late game" champs will dominate, and where can you run to? You have one narrow path of escape and some weak towers to protect you.

Melee champs do need to be better, but I don't know if making melee champs as good as ranged would make the mode funner. Part of the fun is poke/kite/positioning, etc, and a farmed melee champ can just plow through this danger to start beating people down. It changes the whole dynamic.

Narrow Lane:
I think melee champs have enough help by getting free gold/xp/levels. If a narrow lane is meant to help them, think of what this will do to skill shots. Either the skill shot will cover half the lane (like janna's tornado, Lux's singularity, etc) or it will constantly hit the creep wave. As it is, Anivia can almost block the lane already with her wall.

Items:
Given the other changes, I agree with the items. I'm not really that bothered about the items, anyway.

Bushes:
I didn't even remember the bushes, but on first thought, I think it is snowball. The winning team gets a bush to hide in and harass from on top of everything else.

imo if murderbridge stays in custom games, adding the ability to customize the game would be ideal, for instance in arab u get 3 gold in increments in aram it's 1, a quick toggle button that works and people can have what they like same with starting lvl and exp. as for bushes, i kinda dig that and i like aram and arab. but if it was just possible to change the create a game screen like u pick random and these extra options pop up, when you go to join the room an are you sure like thing pops up and states the rules of engagement so there is no confusion. just a thought since it says "custom"