League of Legends bounty system sparks controversy again

League of Legends' bounty system has once again sparked controversy, with players pointing out through the latest example from the LEC pro tournament that the system could exacerbate the advantage of the leading team and make it more difficult for the lagging team to turn the tables.

In a Reddit post on February 17, a player shared a screenshot of the LEC Winter Playoffs match between Karmine Corp and Vitality, revealing the unreasonableness of the bounty system.

At 17 minutes into the game, Karmine Corp's K'Sante was tagged with a 153 gold bounty, even though he was not ahead of his opponent in economy. At this point, his team was 4,000 behind in economy, two towers, and even lost six Void Larvae.

What is even more puzzling is that the enemy team's heroes with better performance (such as Vi, Tsar, and Braum) do not have bounties, even if they have kills and no deaths, which completely violates the original design concept of the bounty system. In this way, the leading team can continue to gain additional gold, making the game more one-sided and further compressing the lagging team's chance of a comeback.

Former pro player and streamer Tim “Nemesis” Lipovšek also criticized the system, saying that in one of his matches, he was given a bounty even though his team was 10,000 gold behind, which was not fair.

The earliest bounty system in League of Legends was relatively simple: if a hero got three or more consecutive kills, he would be marked as a bounty by the system, and the opponent who killed him would receive an additional bounty reward.

However, in 2018, Riot adjusted the bounty calculation method to include the economy of minions and monsters in the calculation, aiming to make the bounty distribution more reasonable. But the real big change happened in version 14.21, when Riot completely restructured the bounty system to be based on the player's total economic income (including kills, assists, last minions, monsters, etc.), rather than simply killing streaks or comparing economic gaps.

In response to the player's criticism, Riot game designer David "Phreak" Turley responded to the Reddit post that K'Sante's bounty value may be displayed incorrectly, because in the same situation, the opponent's Vi should also have a bounty. He said: "This situation is indeed very strange... I will investigate and try to solve this fundamental problem."