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Attention LoL Players Arguing Against Mana In LoL

I wrote an essay arguing against mana in LoL. If you're interested or if you disagree, check it out and tell me what you think! Arguments and critiques are welcome.

http://omegathorion.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/case-study-arguing-against-mana-in-league-of-legends/

Or if you don't feel like clicking, here's the text:

[b]Arguing Against Mana In League Of Legends[/b]

This essay takes the concepts from my previous essay The Mana System Paradox and applies it specifically to League of Legends. Knowledge of both of these is preferable, but if you haven't read "The Mana System Paradox", its core argument is that resource systems in action games are bad because they punish players for taking actions in a game that's all about taking actions.

Thus the main question is this: is LoL one of those kinds of games? I believe it is, and that it would benefit from rethinking its mana systems.

In my original essay, I took apart a few games that use mana and analyzed what the resulting effects were. There is no blanket statement on mana systems: they work great for some kinds of games, but are horrible in others. Copying a mana system directly from one game to another can have drastic consequences, because every game is different and reacts differently depending on how its mechanics communicate. Just imagine if Magicka had a traditional mana system.

A game like LoL has a lot of subtle nuance: many factors go into every interaction in every match, and mana governs over a lot of those interactions. Judging mana in LoL requires a breakdown of mana's consequences and its effect on the game as a whole.

[b]Problems With Mana: Hoarding Encourages Passive Turtling[/b]

LoL's design philosophy is all about interactive play between opponents, and mana doesn't allow much of that to happen. The problem with a statement like this is that "mana" is often connected to "abilities," but they're two separate concepts that are considered separately in battle and need to be considered separately in design as well.

There's no way for players to intentionally cause their enemy to run out of mana. It's bad for you when your enemy has a lot of mana, because that means they can use a lot of abilities on you. But the only way for you to reduce their mana (and thus reduce their threat level) is to let them use abilities on you. Gameplay around the actual usage of abilities has plenty of interaction, but there's a distinction between using an ability versus deciding whether or not you should use an ability.

Let's say that I'm playing as Ezreal and I want to hit you with a few Mystic Shots. There are two decisions that I need to factor into the equation before I fire an ability off: how it will impact my current mana pool, and how it will impact my enemy. The net worth of my ability depends on the latter, because even though two casts of the ability cost the same amount of mana, it's worth more to me if it hits than if it's a complete miss. However, enemies still don't have the ability to do anything to my mana pool: they can only change what happens after my ability is fired, if they react fast enough to dodge. All resource-consuming abilities have this dual nature between deciding when to use the ability (mana) versus deciding how to use the ability (counterplay).

Thus we run into a problem: what happens if I just decide not to use any abilities? I can maintain high amounts of mana (which means a higher threat level) and there's nothing that my enemy can do about it. Sure, I'm not using abilities, but I'm not losing mana either. It's beneficial for me to do damage to my enemy, but it's also beneficial for me to have lots of mana, and I can only do one or the other because damaging my enemy costs mana. If I'm able to do enough damage to my enemy to kill him, the benefits outweigh the loss of mana. But on the other hand, if my enemy outplays me, now I've done no damage and I'm out of mana, which is a bad situation to be in. If I just don't use any mana in the first place, neither of those outcomes will happen, and I'll be in an unremarkable but safe place.

It's a decision between the high-stakes path versus the consistent path, and the latter is a pretty popular option. LoL has struggled with passive play for a long time, most notably with the support sustain meta. But it's important to notice that mana systems also contribute to passive play. No one wants to get yelled at for being killed, and it's a lot easier to avoid being killed when you have mana than when you don't.

One solution might be to strengthen the connection from "using the ability" to "deciding when to use the ability." Ezreal is a good example of this, because when he hits an enemy with his Mystic Shot it reduces his ability cooldowns by a second. His decision to use Mystic Shot is reliant on how well he can land Mystic Shots. For every other champion, it's the other way around: their decisions to use their abilities is reliant on their available resources, whether it's mana or cooldowns. Enemies can reduce the rate at which Ezreal uses Mystic Shots by dodging the ones he fires. This places emphasis within the action of the ability rather than the decision behind its usage. Olaf's Undertow and Reckless Swing abilities were recently reworked to use similar structures.

Another possible solution would be to allow interaction with mana, but LoL decided not to go in that direction. If enemies could somehow reduce the amount of mana you have, they could actively prevent you from using your abilities. In the MOBA realm this concept is called mana burn, and LoL intentionally removed it. Having mana burn would solve this current problem, but it still feeds into the next problem I'm about to describe.

[b]Problems With Mana: Being OOM Sucks[/b]

Naturally, resource systems cause things to run out. The paradox is that the gameplay experience depends on having resources that are consumed by the gameplay experience itself. Why does playing the game as it's intended to be played cause you to be unable to play the game anymore? If the core gameplay experience of LoL is to use abilities, and using abilities causes you to run out of mana and be unable to use abilities, then there's a problem. It's antithetical and confusing for the game's core experience to prevent you from fulfilling the game's core experience.

But it's a matter of understanding what exactly LoL's experience is supposed to be. Is it to outsmart your opponent? Get the most gold? Last-hit the enemy nexus? Kill Teemo as many times as possible? Have as much fun as possible? You could take each of these random ideas I just threw out and design a whole game around it. Implementing a mana system makes perfect sense for some of these ideas, and is a horrible idea in others. If you went all-in with a ton of mana and your opponent outsmarted you, that's a proper punishment in a game about outsmarting your opponent. On the other hand, if you run out of mana because you killed Teemo too many times, and the only reason why you play the game is so you can kill Teemo, it's a total buzzkill. What is the core gameplay experience of LoL, and why don't mana systems play into it?

Many of Riot's prominent designers have said that counterplay and player interaction is a major focal point for LoL's experience, and you can feel this in the game itself. If you look at supports in LoL, traditional healers were nerfed because they didn't provide strong counterplay: there's not a whole lot you can do when the enemy Soraka heals your lane opponent back to full health every ten seconds. However, recent supports have been designed with counterplay in mind. Nami's Ebb and Tide ability is a weak heal outside of combat, but gains strength when used within an engagement, so it becomes an active skill used in the heat of battle rather than a way to patch up allies after the fight. Thresh has no heals whatsoever but is able to reposition his allies, so enemies must coordinate in order to catch an enemy being assisted by a Thresh. Other trends like the rising amount of dodgeable skillshots have also pointed towards this direction.

A large part of counterplay lies in abilities. If I'm Ezreal and I fire a Mystic Shot at you, your counterplay is to dodge. If I'm Yasuo and I place a Wind Wall in front of you, your counterplay is to navigate around it. If I'm Zyra and I place a seed on the ground, your counterplay is to trample it. Other than abilities, counterplay also happens through item purchases and through metagame. But counterplay through abilities is the main hook, the event that happens most often during a match, the part you remember after an awesome play, the moment when crowds get up and cheer at tournaments. Nobody gets up to cheer when the tank buys a Randuin's Omen.

In order for counterplay through abilities to happen, it's obvious that abilities need to be used. However, the existence of mana presents two cases which prevent the use of abilities: holding back in order to save mana, or being out of mana. Either way, someone is unable to interact meaningfully with their opponent, and it's frustrating.

These concepts are even used thematically in champion design. Rumble's overheated state is functionally the same thing as being out of mana. For him, the frustration of being unable to unleash all of his abilities is a part of his character. He has to fight against himself as much as he has to fight against enemies, which is why he needs Danger Zone benefits: the more he fights against himself, the easier it is to fight against enemies and vice versa. On the other hand, manaless champions like Katarina can divert focus away from herself and more towards her enemies, like an assassin concentrating on her prey. As thematic mechanics, both of these champion's resource systems work fine. But giving a champion mana is basically giving it a toned-down version of Rumble's heat. It's not for everyone, and it shouldn't be the default. Ziggs is a "blow-up-everything" kind of guy, but since he has mana there are times when he has to stop himself from blowing things up.

There are plenty of other situations that prevent abilities, but those situations tie into LoL's core experience. If you're silenced or stunned or dead, you're unable to use abilities because the enemy outmaneuvered you in some way. The punishment is reasonable because your counterplay was not as strong as the enemy's. However, being out of mana isn't a matter of being outplayed, it's a matter of using the abilities you were supposed to use. Mana systems inevitably lead towards OOM situations, but in a game about interactive counterplay it's more fitting to focus on dealing with your opponent rather than struggle to balance your own expenses.

[b]Problems With Mana: Balance Revolves Around It[/b]

Regardless of anything I say about mana, it's still a valid point that LoL was built from the ground up with mana, and it's a core part of how the game is balanced. However, mana is a balancing point for the decision to use an ability, not the action of using an ability. Attaching high post-usage costs feeds into the passive turtling and OOM scenarios described above, and doesn't deal with the abilities themselves.

Currently, nearly all ranged champions are gated by mana costs to limit their harass potential, and manaless champions generally have higher ability cooldowns, but mana and cooldown gates both shift too much focus into the decision to act rather than the act itself. Mana and cooldowns serve very similar purposes: both of them limit ability usage by forcing the user to wait for a certain duration. An individual ability's cooldown can be thought of as a miniature mana bar, with its own regeneration rate. Xerath's 20-second cooldown on Locus of Power can be reimagined as a mana bar that's capped at 100, regenerates 5 per second, and costs 100 to use. Thinking this way, it's as if all champions have five different mana bars, one for each separate ability and one to govern them all.

Many of my arguments against mana also apply to high-cooldown abilities like ultimates and summoner spells. If you don't use an ability, it won't go on cooldown, and it'll be ready to use if you're suddenly caught in a bad situation like a gank. Offensive flashes are rarely used except when a kill is almost finished and it just needs to be secured, but defensive flashes happen all the time (in fact, offensive flashes are generally used to follow up after defensive ones). The similarities between cooldowns and mana mean that both systems carry similar effects on gameplay. High cooldowns should be condemned as much as high mana costs.

Abilities need to provide windows for counterattacks, but mana and cooldown costs present those windows outside of the ability itself. Sion's Cryptic Gaze has a high mana cost, but it doesn't lend much counterplay. This has historically turned Sion into a one-trick pony: once he stuns you, he either succeeds at bursting you down with his shield, or he fails and he's unable to take other actions. In the former case, his enemy has no meaningful actions to respond with because the stun is inevitable. In the latter case, Sion himself is left out of mana and has no meaningful actions to use against enemies. The counterattack case is clear (if Sion fails to kill me, attack him), but that's an external cost that lies outside of the ability itself. If, for example, Cryptic Gaze was a skillshot, it would provide counterplay in and of itself because it would be dodgeable. Lissandra's Frozen Tomb is the cooldown equivalent, and presents a similar gameplay pattern (but unlike Sion she can still function without her on-demand stun).

Up until several months ago, every champion has been gated by either mana or cooldowns, but recently abilities have been gated by windups instead. Mana and cooldowns are both post-usage costs, which makes them feel more like punishments for taking action. However, windups shift the cost to pre-usage, so players need to properly set up a scene before using abilities to their full potential. Pre-usage costs are paid in preparation rather than in mana, and the effort invested in pulling off a perfect ability results in a positive payoff. Lucian's Culling is a strong example of this: by itself, it's rather difficult to land and doesn't do much damage. However, when Lucian first hits an enemy with Ardent Blaze, the movement speed allows him to keep pace during The Culling, so more of his shots will land and he does more damage. If in addition he also times his Relentless Pursuits well, he gains even more potential out of his ultimate. Thanks to all of these elements, The Culling is able to have relatively low post-usage costs, because so much of its cost is shifted to pre-usage preparation.

Contrast Lucian's Culling to Miss Fortune's Bullet Time, which doesn't benefit from prior preparation and is instead balanced by longer cooldowns. Let us imagine for the sake of example that Bullet Time has a 60 second cooldown and The Culling has a 50 second cooldown. The Culling just by itself is drastically weaker than Bullet Time, but Lucian can invest ten seconds to properly prepare a perfect scene before ulting. This means that each ability needs 60 seconds to reach its full potential. However, those ten seconds that Lucian is spending on preparation means a ten second window for enemies to respond. His enemy can dodge Ardent Blaze, or try to force him to reposition with Relentless Pursuit, so that The Culling's potential drops. In this case, enemies have ten seconds to exert force and try to outplay Lucian to reduce his total power. On the other hand, there's nothing that enemies can do about Miss Fortune's Bullet Time except dodge it and spend the next 60 seconds on offense.

Having lower post-usage costs is good because it weakens the mana-hoarding strategy and reduces OOM punishments. In this over-simplified hypothetical case, Lucian's The Culling is able to have lower post-usage costs than Bullet Time because it's weaker. To compensate, Lucian can invest time and effort to make The Culling stronger, but likewise enemies can interfere with his efforts. This way, both abilities can be balanced without running into the problems of high post-usage costs.

Of course, there are so many other elements that play into the actual game, so I'm not trying to say that The Culling is the paragon of balance. Still, many recent champions have taken advantage of pre-usage preparation. Yasuo's Q and R put emphasis into windup, so they're able to function with plenty of counterplay without having crippling cooldown costs. If his ultimate wasn't restricted to airborne enemies, it would essentially be a 1300-range AoE stun nuke, and its cooldown would have to be ridiculously long to compensate. Since it has that prerequisite restriction, Yasuo and his enemies are able to have interactive, exciting battles where the most skillful player wins.

Mana costs work well enough at balancing abilities, but they do so on a game-wide scale rather than fixing the dynamics of individual combat scenarios. Costs are a necessary element for counterplay to exist, but they do not necessarily have to be traditional post-usage costs. Abilities can be balanced by attaching high mana or cooldown costs, but that doesn't give the ability counterplay and runs into the mana hoarding/OOM problems. On the other hand, abilities with pre-usage costs can have windows for counterplay, low post-usage costs, and balanced power levels.

[b]Conclusion[/b]

Being unable to act should be a punishment. Taking actions is what makes LoL fun, and if you're rendered unable to do that, it should be because you did something wrong and your opponent rightfully bested you. And yet, mana systems bring you closer and closer to being unable to act every time you use an ability. When you lose mana, you're being punished for trying to play the game.

Rewards and punishments should be justified. Punishing players for using an ability is not justified in a game where you're supposed to use abilities. Instead, reward players for their successes and punish them for their failures. This allows opponents to focus on dealing with each other, rather than worrying about themselves. If your opponent is unable to take action, it should be because you intentionally rendered them unable to take action, not because you curled up into a ball and let them rain blows upon you until they got tired (unless you are Rammus).

Windups create anticipation, whereas cooldowns create dread. Ability gates need to exist so that opponents can have a meaningful opportunity to counterattack, but the timing of where those gates go changes how the ability is experienced. Time spent preparing for an attack makes the payoff a reward, whereas time spent waiting after an attack makes the result a punishment. This also gives enemies opportunities to disrupt a powerful attack during its preparation phase, so the outcome of the battle depends on how well the combatants play within the battle itself rather than how many costs they incurred before the fight.

It may be presumptuous for me to say this, but I want to see a game where every player strains their hardest to win. I want to see a game where people clash with absolutely everything they've got. I want to see a game where whether I win or lose, I understand that the result was fairly and soundly earned, and I can be satisfied thinking about how hard I tried. LoL is very, very close to being that game, and I believe that it would benefit from rethinking its current mana systems.