While it may have a place in normals matches I believe it's not a very realistic way to reward good behavior and teamplay in ARAM when it comes to simply rewarding KBs and giving a tiny bit of gold to assists. I think the entire team should be rewarded for their efforts... Often times you see someone that doesn't try to dive for the last kill end up with quite a bit higher amount of champ damage and assists at the end compared to someone that always tries to score the last shot.

Not to say both roles aren't important, but I think the reward should be distributed equally amongst the whole team. This would also go for minion kills. I've caught a few people farming minion kills in ARAM which is entirely retarded onto itself.

Interesting.

1) I think your first idea is quite good. There are so many times where something like a 4v4 is happening in the Northwest, in the brush, and there is a 1v1 on the other side. Now if you are Trundle solo taking on something like a kog maw solo, and your team wins the 4v4 hard, didn't you play a crucial role in those 4 kills? Even if the akali ends up killing you? I think that's a pretty fine idea that everyone gets gold for the fight.

2) Farming minions is not at all retarded - in fact it's the single largest under appreciated facet of the game at the moment. Creep kills matter, and I think leaving those to whoever can get them adds some strategy to the game. It's a good way to quickly get power on to an early game champion, and it's also a good way to help a champ like Trynd become a force in the game at some point.

Yeah, definitely wrong about the minions. They're far more important than you think they are.

I'm unsure about the global gold for kills, though. It is definitely an interesting idea, and it does help give a little more credit to the sometimes under-appreciated actions that help win a fight but won't necessarily get somebody an assist on all the kills. But as fair as that might be, it's just as odd to me to give gold to player who is just walking into the lane while his team got a kill. He had nothing to do with it at all.

I could see having a slight amount of flat gold distributed across a team for kills, but those who have assists on the kill get a bit more yet, and the one who secured the kill gets the most. Or, rather than making the flat gold global for the team who got the kill, give it to players who were within a certain radius of the kill even if they didn't get a damage assist. Obviously, if a player got a legit assist on the kill, they would get that gold also.

I agree on the first point about sharing gold / exp earned for kills. I disagree dramatically on the minion farm. Those minions add up quite a bit. A smart team would let 1 invaluable champion on their team get the farm so they could snowball this player's build.

You can't lane properly in ARAM, which just leads to someone gimping the team by focusing way too much on gold income, sometimes even getting killed doing it. Or leads to other players having to watch where they throw their abilities in order to allow someone to farm properly. It takes away from ARAM and isn't one of the key points of the game play. They're really just there to keep people from eating damage at turrets and occasionally doing damage to heroes that don't look out for them.

That's why I said minion farming is retarded, not that you can't get gold from doing it.

I suppose I'm a little biased because I actually abhor farming/laning phases and that's one of the reasons why I play ARAM in the first place.

It's not a proper laning phase, but you're right that generally you can't expect 100% of the farm to go to a single champion like on SR. But even if half the minions go to a specific person, and the other half get spread among the rest of the team, that's still going to amount to a pretty good chunk of farm and extra gold on the one who wants/needs it.

I understand the frustration when somebody keeps farming minions when they should be participating in an skirmish or fight. Just like in SR if your carry keeps farming during a gank or something, focusing solely on farming is not what you want. But between fights and when there's nobody else to really poke at, there is nothing wrong with trying to farm the minions in ARAM.

I think that if/when we get a queue for ARAM, the farming thing will really be noticed when you get an organized group of 5 doing a premade queue. If they get a ranged ADC, or perhaps Tryndamere or Nasus, perhaps part of their strategy will be to funnel as much of that farm on that champion as possible. In a solo queue setting, you often lack that kind of coordination, so farming tends to be a free for all.

I don't think I've had a case where there 'isn't' someone to poke at in ARAM. You're either running away, running towards their base, or you're waiting for minions to move up so you can attack their tower. There is no farming phase in ARAM. It totally skips that.

Even the beginning minions aren't even present and a lot of the time there is player action on top of it. That's what makes ARAM unique. It's very linear in that way too.

I personally think the farming logic should be killed off before players start trying to implement it and ARAM turns into both teams sitting at their turrets for the first 10 minutes of the game so they can 'farm kills' for their carry. That would be extremely boring and incredibly ****ing retarded. Everything that ARAM isn't players would turn it into just to maximize their chances of winning. That's one of the reasons why I don't play normal games.

You can't tell me you wouldn't see both teams playing defensively till a carry reaches X items before pushing if this turns competitive.

If minion and player gold is distributed equally among team members, there is no farming. ARAM should be random and chaotic; just as the name implies.

Just the other day I had one where the first 5.5 or 6 minutes of the game were comprised of our team farming and pushing them into their turret in hopes that they didn't get to farm as well. And you know what? That strategic decision was a major factor in us winning the game. I don't see why you feel like farming shouldn't be a valid strategic option in ARAM.

As I said, I agree that it is frustrating and definitely not helpful when your ADC is off farming during a team fight. But they don't have to be constantly poking with their auto-attacks. Heck, if their positioning is halfway decent, they shouldn't really be in range to auto-attack unless there's a fight or somebody gets caught out of position (except maybe Cait), especially if the other team has decent gap closers, ranged CC, or high burst. Now, if there's enough beef in front of the ADC to keep the other team at bay, then they can safely throw out auto-attack harass.

Also, it's not a black-and-white thing. The ADC isn't either farming or poking. They can do both. If nobody else on the team is really using spells that clear the waves quickly, the ADC only needs to last-hit the minions. They can be poking at opponents between last hits and between waves. What it comes down to is what is more important in the long run: gold in the ADC's pocket, or poking the other team down prior to a fight? Generally, there are more people on the team that can do the latter than just the ADC. Then when a fight breaks out, the ADC can switch off and join the fight to get their kills and/or assists. Which will do more damage: 8/3/5 Ashe with 10-15 incidental CS, or 8/3/5 Ashe with 65 CS?

It's also a bit of a stretch to assume that because on SR, the support + ADC lane becomes a passive farm-fest, the ARAM lane of ADC + 4 others would default to the same thing. The situation is completely different.

I mean, if it were somehow 'ideal' to just make it into an SR-like farm-fest for a single person while the rest of the team watches on (and ignores the 4 people watching the other carry and the carry itself?), wouldn't teams already be doing that all the time?. ARAM has been around for well over 2 years now. An ADC (or any champion with good scaling) with a decent amount of CS later in the game has always been a good thing to have on your team. But in those 2+ years, the game hasn't divulged into the 'boring farm-fest' that you are worried about. Minions have always been there. The opportunity to farm CS has always been there. Why do you make it sound like a brand new threat to the way the game is played? I think history shows that this is pretty much a non-issue.

I love ARAMs and fully embrace them for the chaos they tend to create. But aside from the luck of champion select, strategy and skill are still two major parts of the game. Why should the player who has the skills to both farm and contribute to fights in an ARAM not be rewarded for that skill? Why should the team with the hyper-carry not be rewarded for making a strategic decision to allow that player to get a majority of the minion kills available?

Removing gold from minions would only serve to diminish the role of certain skills and strategies, while not really enhancing any others. That's just not a good direction to take a game.

Aye, that's the point... reducing the role of certain strategies, such as farming kills to ***** out items. It would further imbalance things if you have as you said if you have a hyper carry and the other team does not.

Having a hyper carry isn't necessary a strategic decision as much as it is a luck of the draw. Chaotic elements are what makes up ARAM, but you can still focus that chaos.

This isn't a design decision for the entire game, it's for one map (which will hopefully be a game mode). If you want smooth sailing where you can play a mini-game of SR, go play TT. ARAM may have been around for quite awhile (most definitely not with its own dedicated map let alone matchmaker), but it hasn't been played competitively or even looked at in that fashion so players haven't had a chance to completely ***** it out, which they will if a ladder is added or even a matchmaker.

Keep in mind I'm not saying minion gold should be removed, rather it should be distributed equally to teamates. So there still is some incentive to killing them over the minions and towers killing them.

So, your argument is that by removing a facet of skill and strategy, the game becomes less about the team composition?

The three main factors I see that influence the outcome of an ARAM are, in no particular order: Individual player skill, team play/strategy, and team composition. When it comes down to it, these really carry over to any of the maps/modes, but the relative importance of each one varies. The difference with ARAM is that you have no control over the team composition. If you reduce the importance of the roles the players do have control over, then the random factor becomes even stronger than it already is.

Your idea basically ensures that that Vayne gets the gold she needs to reach her late-game hypercarry status, regardless of her skill to be able to farm effectively while still contributing when needed in the early game. It takes away the other team's counter-play slow that Vayne down as much as possible. Suddenly, it doesn't matter if you've poked her down to 70hp so she has to hide well out of poke range. As long as her Cho and Cass are splitting the vast majority of the cs (which they will with their strong aoe wave clear), it doesn't matter what you've done to try to shut down Vayne. She's still going to reach her end-game at the same point regardless.

Guaranteeing that a hypercarry will reach late-game status every game they're in would actually put the team that gets one through the random selection at a higher advantage than they have now.

And I still maintain that with the format of ARAM, there is zero danger of it becoming a farmfest/snoozefest like many lanes on SR turn into. Those are 1v1 and 2v2 situations. Even if you stick 5 people in a lane and assign the task of farming to a single champion, do you really think the other 4 are just going to sit there twiddling their thumbs and watching their teammate farm? Better yet, do you think that they'll be willing to sit there and watch the other team's carry farm, and watching the other 4 from the other team watch their own carry farm? People are going to start to do things. Those 4 extra, non-farming, players will likely get bored and start poking/fighting each other, and also trying to interrupt the carry. This is ultimately not very different than the state the game is currently in.