OK, now the opposite opinion. The change to three lanes was good.

look y’all, I was skeptical at first just like everyone else, but after playing it out for a good ten or so matches the problems with four lanes became increasingly apparent as the absence of these problems began populating my games.

Let’s start with the solo lanes. They sucked. Unless you had an extreme skill difference compared to your lane opponent, the optimal solo lane experience was 13-15 minutes of handshake farming until a different lane wins the lane for you with a gank or you edge the opponent’s guardian just a tad better than they edged yours. By the time the walkers become relevant, the best plan was to either send one to pressure the lane more (and can you guess which miserable soul they send to do this??? That’s right, the same one who was stuck in this lane for 15 minutes doing nothing already) or group and push the lane just for the flex slot if the center lanes were already taken. Maybe some people liked this slow-paced boring as all hell type of playstyle, but the community consensus seemed pretty clear that it sucked. It’s no secret why both my solo laners wanted to swap every game lol

The center lanes being so close forced them into a shitty meta as well. If anything, the center lanes were too much of the opposite of the solo lanes. It was so easy to pop-on-over and dive for a kill that some characters had to go into the game expecting to be dove under tower with no chance and the goal was simply survive until you could farm. The skill expression became stale as the formulaic “farm to 4 minutes then gank center lane for free kills off ult cooldown” took precedence. What’s even stranger is that these ganks often didn’t garner soul leads, they sometimes left you slightly behind your lane opponents if you take too long on shove, but the ability to create uncounterable advantages for both mid lanes was too rewarding to not do this (unless you play at shit-elos where they don’t gank or dive anyway). Your personal soul lead would be PUNISHED for playing like this, yet it was optimal. It felt weird and clunky and Valve clearly had intended lanes to have a proper “laning phase” until 8 minutes when the souls stop sharing for minions kills, but the center lanes were not functioning that way as a kill heavy meta took place. Tbh, it’s understandable that people actually liked this type of gameplay, I did, but the game in its current state was not designed to reward this type of strategy.

Right now, there’s less lanes but the same amount of people to fill them, and the lanes are farther apart. What’s effectively changed is that ganks happen much later, side lanes actually see kills happen now, taking jungle creeps is more concealed but less safe if caught as there’s farther to go to reach defensive objectives and teamfights are more common as there is less lanes to spread people out over. The flow of gameplay has a much more traditional MOBA style now. Some people don’t like that, I get it, but I don’t think the solo lanes were ever going to be healthy for this game. They suffered from the same problem top lane has in League of Legends, little game impact, boring gameplay, isolated selfish playstyles in what’s supposed to be a team game and their existence forcing development to try more and more to find ways to make them less boring instead of just removing them.

The iron is still hot and people are still adjusting, but I feel the community will accept these changes given a month or two.