After heavy criticism, more changes to jungle plants are coming

After some heavy criticism about the upcoming plants added to jungle, Rioter Andrei “Meddler” van Roon noted that the plants are still very much a work in progress and changes are incoming.

The plants have spawned countless complaints about adding unnecessary random elements to the game. Meddler said there already is a good amount of healthy randomness in the game, including Drake types, Kindred passive locations, where Draven’s axes fall, etc, and that the balance team will attempt to be careful to make this an example of “good” randomness.

The biggest concern about plants themselves we've seen expressed overall is that they're random and that randomness has no place in a competitive game. Can fully understand the concern there, given randomness can make for pretty miserable experiences in game at the expense of player skill. We don’t think randomness is automatically a bad thing in a competitive setting though. We see it as more a tool that, if used in the right way, can create good tests of skill and emergent play or, if used badly, can nullify skill and create a ‘that was bullshit’ feeling.

- Meddler on the forums

He also gave examples of bad randomness in the game, like old phage and low crit % rate (he also said the ability to start the game with crit chance will be removed).

Meddler also stressed that plants are still being worked on, with Riot reading feedback and making changes that seem necessary. The plants would be launching into live for a long time, and the company intends to make them as perfect as possible before pushing them out.

Changes coming include making it so Blast Cones spawn less, upping the warning time you have before seedlings spawn to 60 seconds and reducing overall plant spawn rates. He noted that the team is also looking at the discrepancy between melee and ranged champions and changing how often plant interactions can happen.