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The Strangulation of League's Diversity

jllemin·8/8/2017, 10:20:52 PM·1 votes·423 views

League of Legends, a game renowned for many accomplishments, milestones, and intuitive gameplay features; one of the largest known being the diversity and replay-ability of League of Legends. Who would have thought that 67 million people would sign up to basically play 1 map of the same game over and over again? The simple way put, with over 100 champs there are more than 46 quadrillion(46,000,000,000,000,000) Different matchups you can have in a simple 5v5 on summoners rift. League of Legends is a great game, personally I have played countless hours on this game learning every single champion and all of their play-styles, strengths, and weaknesses to be able to always be prepared no matter who im playing vs who... but that doesn't matter. Recently with the evolution of Riot in the Esports community there has been a phenomenon which I like to call metalock, and put simply for anyone who doesn't know what im talking about, a meta-lock is from how I like to see it, a near perpetual state of gameplay where the majority of ways to play the game fall under a category of being called either nonviable, or simply put you cant play it like that and win. Im tempted to say that about 80% of the current roster of champions in League of Legends would most likely either lose lane or the game to a more popular or meta champion while 20% are meta pick, but neither do I have statistics, or any real grounds to go off of other than my own personal experience, which in the scope of professional to dirt 5, you can put me towards the latter. League of Legends just isnt a casual game anymore, you cant just click a random champ on fill and see where the dice take you no, the random champion button was removed in just about all champion select. For the average player you cant go full lethality lee sin min and probably win because of the meta block, im not saying its impossible im just saying with how League of legends is tailored by the devs atm, unless your a professional you will just get either destroyed by your enemy wave clear ap mid laner, or not be able to do anything later in a group because you die instantly. The whole entire game is being slowly narrowed down with how you can play it into a neat little channel of viability called the meta. Soraka was reworked because someone in pros didn't use her the meta way. Rengar had a rework because too many people were playing him AP and having fun. Remember sword of the divine? Reworked because it didn't fit in with how Riot wanted to direct their game, more simply put it wasnt popular in professional play thus it was removed, and if you have played long enough I am sure you can think of a few other things that had this same effect happen to them. League of legends is not fun anymore because the law of the vital few determines that because 80% of people play according to the meta, 20% of the rest probably aren't. Right now it feels like the vital few meta picks have such a large impact on the game, that in a game where you can play 46 quadrillion different games with just different champions, 80% of those games you would be statistically likely to lose, to only 20% of the champion pool. In a game where you have a near infinite different combinations of unique champion matchups, for the large majority of those games you will constantly lose to the same 30 champions. Want to make this game an Esport? Make an Esport build and update it for Esports.

Doubt me? Lets play a fun community game then, play a few games with a completely off meta pick, like Evelyn top. I bet all of you that ~80% of the people who actually try this will probably lose to some stupid meta top laner if they have half a brain, while ~20% will totally win and dominate and maybe even go on a winning spree, tickle my fancy and lets find out.

6 Comments

Shikigami8/8/2017, 10:33:45 PM5 votes

Please for the love of fucking god. **Paragraphs. ** Use them.

Number two, you brought up some really interesting points. One, you fail to realize why a lot of popular "Nonmeta picks" got nerfed into the ground. I'll bring up AP Rengar since you used that, but the logic works for champs like AP Yi and AP tryndamere. Those champs were popular because they had low to no counterplay. Rengar's midair double roar with guaranteed auto means that as soon as he clicks you, unless you have a knockback, you'll die before flashing due the immense damage for the double roar and the guaranteed lichbane auto. It was overpowered and played in competitive constantly. Most of your examples (including Sword of the Divine) in some sense were meta at the point of their removal. The reason why they were removed was because they removed diversity. In assassin metas, you need to play utility/safe AD's and hypercarries were nonviable. Keeping those items out of the game allowed hypercarries to return into the meta.

Now you brought up full lethality lee sin... and I see people play it all the time. I have no clue what rank you are (assuming bronze or silver) but you fail to see what the point of balancing is. There is really no such thing as a perfect meta where any champ can be played, so riot lightly adjust champions to give others the chance to be played at every level (remember chogath?).

III BAKURYU III 8/8/2017, 10:50:31 PM1 votes

League won't NEVA...........EVA.......NEVER but 100% fixed in a way that every champion will be viable, every champion can be played etc, it's just the way it is. Items will also need to be pretty much under the microscope because certain items produce different and same ol' champions because it works best for those specific champions and vice versa.
For league to be fixed or more polished League will need to pretty much take 1-2 years to pretty much have every champion dealing the same amount of damage, every champion pretty much having the same abilities and every item being the same because of the points I stated before.
Sorry but that's the way " the cookie crumbles"

GeminiRune8/9/2017, 2:52:28 AM1 votes

I'm just gonna avoid a bunch of detail and put this link here regarding:

The simple way put, with over 100 champs there are more than 46 quadrillion(46,000,000,000,000,000) Different matchups you can have in a simple 5v5 on summoners rift.

This is almost where I just assumed it was an over exaggerated post complaining about "Champion Diversity because I only watch like one and a half leagues" or something like that and decided to just stop reading. But then I look at the rest and think...why? You can't force universal viability without someone getting the short end of the stick. And that goes for every game. It's not necessarily a meta lock more than it is imitation, especially in the middle of the majority important rank ladder emerging from the bottom. I don't blame it; most players play to win. But sometimes that doesn't mean off meta should be burdened or immediately classified as troll until a pro plays it. Had numerous examples of that: Ziggs bot, Prework Soraka mid, etc. And I was one who did a bunch of non-AD off meta stuff on Soraka before it got played in LCS...then reworked and ruined my joy.

There's just way too much I can rant to debate against your points though. But the last question you input: want to make it an eSport? For what? Total diversity? No game has total balanced diversity. That can never be obtained. Someone or something will always get the short end of the stick no matter where you look.

Final note: I've played and won with Eve Top several times when I was learning different ways to play her. Last memorable one was against a Riven...it was a kind of a pushover after I built gunblade

Psyrix8/10/2017, 2:16:32 AM1 votes

First off, please use paragraphs next time.....or at least double space your sentences haha, makes it easier to read and clearly displays points. Secondly, for the past two years the esports meta has been more diverse than ever for quite a while. Especially this year. The reason why you won't see certain champions picked is due to the fact that they don't synergize well with the type of team comp the team wants to create, that or they have certain restrictions that make it too risky/glasscannon. That's a large reason why you don't see many assassins being played often, due to the fact that they are reliant on getting ahead and staying ahead, or at least staying around the same level. If they fall behind they have a high chance of being unimpactful as they generally don't have alot, if any, utility (barring some assassins and those are the ones that generally are played).