When I read the V-27 patch notes for Paragon, it wasn't difficult to predict that match lengths would increase. Three of the main changes EPIC made: reduce shared card experience, reducing the number of minion waves and effectively halting "deathballing" would all serve to slow the game down. Deathballing and all nearby players receiving card experience upon an enemies death ensured that you and your team could spike in power quickly. It also meant that when a wave of minions was approaching a tower, the higher number of minions meant you could spend longer attacking them before said tower turned its attention to you. By altering all these things, everything has become slower. You gain power slower, you don't need to roam, your damage stays lower for longer and you can't spend much timer attacking a tower before you have to leave. It effectively ensures that the first 20 minutes are spent doing nothing but laning. Even then and my first match played after the patch was well over a hour. 

Fortunately the suggestions made by EPIC seem sensible and I'm hoping that with the future patch removing Travel Mode that matches will settle down to reasonable times. Check out the blog post or text below.

Hey everyone,

We’ve read lots of constructive feedback about match length post-V.27. I wanted to let you know that we are aware of the issue and are actively working on a resolution. With so many changes in V.27, we failed to accurately estimate the length of matches in the wild. We dropped the ball on this (large) issue, and for that we apologize.

Our target vs. current match lengths:

We are exploring a series of adjustments, targeted at V.28, that will help drive match duration closer to the targets. From the numbers above, we have a clearly defined goal of bringing match times down by ~10 minutes. As always, we are trying to be as transparent as possible with our awesome community with the understanding that some of these ideas may not survive experimentation and testing.

One of our primary goals is to keep the outcome in players’ hands as much as possible. To that end, many of these ideas are aimed at increasing Card Power (CP) disparity via player performance. Teams that perform better should see larger separation versus opponents CP, and thus have a chance to capitalize on their advantage.

We are *intentionally* accepting the risk of longer matches with perfectly matched teams, because these matches are (theoretically) exciting back-and-forth, edge-of-your-seat, all-out battles. 

Changes undergoing evaluation:

• Adjust super minions.
  • When a team loses an inhibitor waves will have two super minions instead of one.
  • After 40 minutes, teams will get an additional super minion.
• Adjust tower payout and health.
• Last-hitting a tower causes the coins to fly to the killer.
  • Card Power is shared similar to minion last hits (100% to last hitter, 100% split between local assisters.)
• Increase Prime Guardian CP reward.
• Flatten tower damage per-shot scalar.
• Decreasing global team Card Power drip.
  • Naturally increases the % of CP coming from player performance like last hits, player bounties, towers, and harvesters.
  • Add additional CP into player performance CP to account for the loss from drip.
• Armor (both types) mitigates tower damage.
  • Players are able to itemize toward tanking towers. Tanks will do so naturally because they both itemize and get more armor per level.

We have been consistent in our philosophy of getting changes into player hands quickly, knowing that there is a risk of a misstep. We always intend to own those results and correct them quickly and deliberately. This is one of those times.

Thank you for sticking with us and cheering us on as we drive forward.

Steve Superville
Creative Director / Paragon Team
Epic Games