Why did a bug hit the live servers that allowed funneling?
The funneling strategy has recently begun to dominate in League of Legends. Although it is not as popular as it was in the past, it can still be extremely annoying. In games, you can find players who do not go to the jungle alone, and a champion from the middle lane with a smite currently can be considered something normal.
Riot is aware that funneling is harmful, and an employee assured that the studio will intervene.
Rioter also explained why the preseason is not being tested as thoroughly as one would expect. The sample of internal testing is far too small compared to the huge number of players around the world. Because of this, the results could be quite different from each other, and as a result, testing inside the studio would prove meaningless. However, what exactly has been written about funneling and why could players use this strategy again?
Riot on funneling
In a nutshell, funneling is a strategy that requires two players to work together. One of them at the expense of the other will receive more gold and experience, which is supposed to result in snowballing and victory.
It is not hard to guess that playing against such a combination can be extremely annoying. A hero who has a significant advantage in gold will be difficult to kill, and over time the growing gap makes this even more difficult. As a result, in the mid and late game, winning can be a really challenging task.
Cookies necessary for pet evolution, which play a key role in the funneling implementation currently in use, have been changed several times. For this reason, Riot has not been able to thoroughly test them for bugs. Riot’s Ray Yonggi writes that their current state was not intentional.
Intuitively I, like you, would expect 0 cookies without Smite so I never tested it personally or asked someone about it, but at any time that could have been inadvertently added and nobody checked. That’s how these bugs, and therefore exploitative gameplay patterns, hit live.
Rioter explained the reason for the bug hitting the live servers, which contributed to the effectiveness of the funneling strategy. He also pointed out that eliminating the bug will be really simple and a fix can be expected soon on the live servers.