In League of Legends , a change before the 2020 season has made the game slower in eSports, as statistics now show. Matches in the professional leagues last about 2 minutes longer. The reason seems to be a change to the dragons.
Changes in the league in 2020: For several weeks, LoL has been played in eSports again. The 4 major leagues have started. The Korean site Inven has noted that matches in the Spring Split 2020 last on average 2 minutes longer than in Summer 2019:
- In the Chinese league LPL, matches have become on average 1:37 minutes longer, now lasting 33:32
- In the American league LCS, matches last 1:47 minutes longer
- In the Korean league, matches last the longest at 35:39 minutes – here, matches have extended by an average of 2:01
- And in the European league LEC, there is the largest difference between 2019 and 2020. Here, matches now last 2:20 minutes longer
As matches in all LoL leagues extend, something about the “meta” of LoL seems to have changed, in the way the MOBA is played.
This feeling that something has changed corresponds to the “feeling” of many viewers. They criticize that the current meta is somehow slower and more boring than before.
One match at the end of January between TSM and Immortals was considered particularly bad. It lasted 61 minutes and there were only 9-9 kills.
Already in 2018, LoL was criticized for a boring meta, back then it was called the “stopwatch” meta.
The change to dragons in LoL is significant
What is the reason? Inven quotes a representative of a professional team. They attribute the slower matches to a change to the dragons.
In LoL, dragons are strong NPCs that the jungler takes down with their team or solo to gain a buff. The more dragons a team kills, the stronger the buffs become. Since there is always only one dragon on the map, which both teams want to kill, team fights ensue over this dragon.
These dragons were changed in LoL with a patch before Season 2020:
- The 4th dragon a team kills is now particularly important because it grants players the buff “Dragon Soul”. These buffs are powerful.
- Additionally, the buff of the Elder Drakes, which comes late, has also become more powerful: It gives players a chance to execute opponents when their hit points fall below 20%.
- Simultaneously with this improvement of the “late buffs” with the LoL Patch 9.24b, the early buffs of the dragons were weakened.
LoL now offers fewer reasons for early fights
This follows from the change: The team representative quoted by Inven says that this change has led to the first dragons in LoL now being much less important than before. They now have a lower priority.
Without the fights for the dragon, there is no reason to start team fights early. Thus, there are fewer early fights and longer games.
This new play style, however, apparently does not apply equally to all teams. While T1 in their match against top competitors Gen G. in Korea had few kills, the two European top teams, G2 Esports and Fnatic, were clearly bloodier:
- In the duel of the Korean top teams, there were an average of 13 kills per match. The matches lasted an average of 37 minutes.
- In the duel of the Europeans, there were 34 kills in just 30 minutes.
