Level 1 fight is really important. Even if you refuse the fight, if you let them take both altars severe disadvantage.

Because of the level 1 fight, the only good summoners on the map are exhaust and ignite with maybe flash being good on some of the very few viable ranged champions.

Because the map snowballs so hard there is an extremely limited list of champions that do well in that level 1 fight. The game is often over before ultimates are even earned.

The extremely long lanes means fast mobility champions are the only ones that are gank immune. If you run a non mobility champion, jungle basically needs to camp their lane or they can easily die from the middle point of the lane.

Towers drop incredibly fast even 10 or 15 minutes in.

man did you do the Math? at level 1 the 2 altars buffs are anything from+1 to +6Ap depending on rune setup and item start and +5to+7 AD depending on rune setup and item start too, you can compare level 1 Altar fight to the level 1 Bot bush fight in the old treeline, amusing but useless, it snowballed the game because it gave anywhere from one to 3 kills to the team that came out on top, thus being a high risk strategy that was discarded and flagged as a noob strategy soon enough, not because it had a mechanic you weren't used to, just give it time and Elo and those level 1 altar fights will be replaced with a wraith start before capturing your Altar.

edit: i still ahve mixed feelings about the +4gold advantage for once if the enemies cap their altar but faila t capping yours then both teams have a +4gold per last hit it evens but second, if your strategy is just facestomping people at early levels without worrying a lot about farming why would you get it anyways?.