i think its a little too anti-snowball, plenty of times I've lost a game when the other team didn't deserve to win, or won a game when we didn't deserve it solely due to the anti-snowballing deathtimers

some anti-snowballing is needed good, so that games are more interesting and you dont have to play super careful, or the first team to make a mistake would lose, however its far too much, though notably the death timers were improved in the patch, not by enough though

frankly, no, tell yourself that if you need the mechanic to win, but a team down 200 points gets a MASSIVE advantage due to death timers, and passive gold means getting fed doesnt matter that much, so they WILL catch up if they arent trash, and once they have caught up, they still have the advantage since they start off with the 3rd point once they've caught up
the game actually favors teams that lose early and catch up later on even when they dont deserve it, which is really unfun and bad competitively

Actually the game doesn't favor teams that lose early and catch up later. It allows the possibility, but it does not favor.

I love that the game modifies variables to give the losing team a chance! What is wrong with close game? I wish every game was a close game, getting stomped and stomping aren't exciting from either perspective. Please keep dominion how it is!

Strongly agreed death timers should be based solely on game time, nothing more. Like the OP, most games of Dominion tend to be very close, yet the rarely START close. It's usually 400-200 or something when the other team starts making a comeback somehow; that somehow being a 1 for 1 trade means the losing player can revive 5-10 seconds sooner than the winning player. Times 5 players, and there's no way to the losing team won't eventually take back a point.

I see now why there's no Dominion ranked mode; the mode was not intended for competitive play.

I think you're giving too much credit to anti-snowballing.

If you're winning and play smart ie not over pushing, not walking around at low hp, not going into solo fights, you will continue to win and there will be no comeback.

@above poster: five seconds doesn't even capture a point.

When every game is a comeback, and the real game doesn't start until one team dips below 125 points, there's definitely some improvement to be made. Even though the changes they made last patch feel better, they still aren't perfect.

(I also have an issue with the % penetration aura, but that's another thread).

Having seen the growth pains this games' matchmaking system has gone through since Beta, I would probably think there just simply isn't enough data to judge whether or not the system is successful yet.

The reason being that peoples' Elo is not well established yet. As imperfect and flawed a system as the Elo is for LoL, it's what the matchmaker uses.

As people settle down into their proper ratings, I would imagine the variance in games in general will decrease quite a bit from this. You should be seeing a lot less early win teams in general, unless the metagame develops to the point where picking early/lategame teams is an active strategy as one of the earlier posters suggested. You should also see less of those crazy comebacks as well.

A good analogy for that effect is the play of new champions at release. You will probably see the very best play and the very worst play during the same time period that you will ever see on that champ. Once they settle down, put him through his first patch or two, it normalizes. Same deal.

Since that is the case, I would imagine that the data you want to collect should come from those games; not the more 'wet n wild' style ones that are being created now as the turbulence in the system is gradually reduced. The type of games you need to look at to make a judgement of your point simply aren't being created or played...yet.

So, while your point may or may not be valid, I think the only responsible position is to wait and see, until the matchmaking team collects enough data from good games.

You know there are a lot of things to factor in. If you're ahead by 200 points, you could just have a better early game team comp, and get those kills. Another is some people don't know how to deal with certain team comps then learn after some deaths.

I could make some more examples, but I shouldn't have to. Kills don't mean everything; once you get down to 125 points that's where the actual game starts. It proves who had the better team, not who has the better "lolikillyou" champs.

Except that's not the case at ALL. I don't think you understand what people are saying and how this system works. Their death timers lower and your death timers increase. If someone can respawn 3x in the time it takes you to respawn once, then there are going to be major issues with just zerging a point until you get it.

You keep using the word 'Anti-Snowball'.
I don't think it means what you think it means.

Please use 'Comeback' from now on.

Snowball means one team gets exponentially more powerful, which is minor issue in Dominion thanks to the way gold and xp is distributed.
Also, reducing the respawn time of a team won't stop a team that's snowballing from snowballing.
What the spawn timer manipulation does is punish the winning team a bit more for dying and punish the losing team a bit less for dying, thus helping the losing team siege the winning team's points.

The main problem, at the moment, with the spawn timer manipulation is that the losing team still seems to get the spawn time advantage even if they control more/all points.
This means a team can both control less points AND respawn more slowly at the same time.