Let's face facts, people like Hotshotgg make jokes and won't touch dominion for one reason. It isn't competitive, there is no outlet for competition, the queue times tend to be very long, and there is no ranked or way to measure skill.

If Riot wants Dominion to ever be something beyond "Fast and Fun" it needs ranked now, not later, not when it's balanced better, just release it. Why can't it wait? Well let's look at TT, for the first couple of months people putzed around with it and even the higher level players cared and wanted to learn it and take part in the tournaments. Over time, however, Riot stopped balancing the map, stopped holding tournaments for it, and overall it got left in the dust as a failed experiment.

While Riot has done a good job at publicizing and keeping interest in Dominion high, their key failure is the obsession with balance the map before giving a ranked version to play. For without a ranked mode, there can be 0 hope that it will ever be taken seriously by anyone but the casual gamers because hardcore gamers need rewards in forms of tournaments and a ladder system to separate them from the rest.

It would greatly be in Riot's best interest to forgo further balance and simply push ranked out as soon as possible. Why? Because the map won't ever become balanced if the only ones that play it are the lower skill ceiling players, for while a good chunk of dominion fans are not "Bad" streamers, LoL celebrities and the like cannot keep their audiences entertained without prospect of seeing Elo/Ladder gains and tournaments.

TLDR: If Ranked is released now it won't be too late for the competitive scene to pick it up and people will give it a shot. If they delay it will be cataloged in the back of the game options with TT. Plus the map needs all skill levels playing it to expose balance issues and ways to fix it.

Totally agree. Although Riot needs to do more than just release ranked. They need to put more support behind competitive Dominion if they ever really want it to take off. And honestly what do the pro players respect more than anything? Money.

Throw money into the competitive scene and they will come.

Dominion is not even unbalanced at all, hell, SR got more issues than dominion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taenshi Let's face facts, people like Hotshotgg make jokes and won't touch dominion for one reason.

You're not going to see much disagreement from the regulars here; unfortunately the people who actually make decisions ignore these forums, and any attempt to talk about Dominion in GD will be downvoted and banished back here.

It's gotten to the point where my friends and I are going back to other game modes, because it really doesn't look like there's any reason to stick with Dominion. I mean they STILL don't even have a link to the Dominion site anywhere from the main site. Come on.

Personally I find dominion to be pretty balanced now. Sure there are powerhouse chars in it, but there are ones in SR too. I think ranked play would show most other arguments are wrong. A good example of this is everyone's argument that Tanky chars are the way to go in it. My belief is that they work because of the lack of coordination innately found in dominion right now. If I have the HP to screw around fighting in the jungle long enough for my team to show up, sure ill win the fight. But when we all put headsets on and teams respond faster to situations, I guarantee characters like kogmaw will see much more play (especially because kogmaw is so good at attacking turrets and kicking the snot out of the tanky characters that everyone plays thinking they are so good lol).

Anyway ranked play IMO will expose these holes everyone is afraid of simply don't exist. The big problem is people compare dominion to SR and TT but in reality the stratedgies from these formats don't work in dominion. Don't complain that your favorite champ doesn't work because 9 times out of ten they don't work because you need a team behind you to make it work.

I really don't see why they don't go ahead and implement ranked play. I've got over 600 games played and really, other than a few champs, who can be banned, the game mode is quite balanced. And like Basoosh said, how can they even try to balance it without a competitive scene that matches people of equal rank together? I love Dominion, in fact it's all I play now, but it gets old getting matched up with people who have like 25 wins. The good games are the ones where everyone has at least 80-100+ games won. Those tend to be some epic battles.

Dominion is amazing fun, and I think Riot did a brilliant job with it. Many people that I'm friends with simply don't like the slow pace and farming of SR. We like the explosive battles and close games, where even an insurmountable lead can be overcome. Dominion has something that no other MOBA game has and Riot should capitalize on this and promote it. I think as more people play the mode and realize that there is a lot of depth and complexity to, especially as you better understand the intricacies that exist, the more popular it will become.

The problem with ranked Dominion: ELO hell. You can't carry on Dominion, so good luck getting a decent win/loss ratio.

Ranked team Dominion would be great, but solo queue would be a nightmare.

I'd still like to see some map tweaks to make bot more interesting, such as changing some of the jungle layout so it's easier to get bot and gank. There's been so little done to Dominion recently (no Warmog's replacement after several months), that I'm not sure what we can really expect.

edit: drive-by downvotes don't change my opinion.

The game is mature and ready for ranked at our level, yes. We've played the game hundreds of times, we know the ins and outs, we know what's good and what isn't.

At the lower levels though, there are still a LOT of people who still are not playing the game the same way we do.... and it's clear that without intervention from forums or guides that a lot of them will continue to play the game that way. When these players become 30 they're going to jump into Ranked and things are going to be ass.

Summoner's Rift has a tutorial and battle practice. It has goals that are clear and properly rewarded (kill this dragon and gold coins fly out of it and gold coins let you kill dudes!), with every objective cleared yielding a visible amount of progress towards their final goal of killing the nexus. Every minion slain gets you a few gold closer to that next item, every kill gets you 300g closer to victory, every turret destroyed brings you a few yards closer to the inhibitor, every inhibitor taken gives you that much more free reign of the map...

Crystal Scar is much more confusing by comparison. The goal is clear, and there are so many different ways to contribute to that goal... but it's never clear which objective is the best (unless there's a quest, and even then there are situations where you are better off ignoring it). It's never clear exactly what you gained in taking the opposing mid, there's no extra bonus for taking it or extra damage dealt, even though it might've been a lot harder for you to take. There's no static advantage gained in building up a minion wave - it either helps you take an entire point or it gets wiped out by a single round of spells.

When the game is this unclear, you begin to doubt if what you're doing is the right thing, if what you're doing is really what most increases your chances of winning. You start to doubt if anything you do matters. Then you go back to playing SR and say CS is a random ass game that requires no strategy. You say you can't carry in CS. You say CS is for players who can't last hit.

If you ask me, that's why they've held off on turning Ranked on. The game is a fine game for us, but it's still far too confusing and far too difficult for a new player to really see what they could be doing better and improve themselves.

You don't see Twisted Treeline receive the level of disrespect that Crystal Scar does.

Dominion will survive cause its not just SR with less balance (thats all TT ever was).

Dominion is different, fun, entertaining, and I don't think that it will die without ranked.

Not saying don't get ranked, but you are so wrong