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Is LCS boring due to limited champion pool?

stowed4sea·7/10/2016, 11:12:19 PM·3 votes·1,326 views

I don't play LOL that much any more, but like many others, I still love watching LCS. Rather, I used to. I'm tired of watching the same champions get picked week after week. Just watching a game or two per week, I never got fatigued, however this season, I've seen nearly every single NA LCS game.

Has Riot thought about any other ideas for limiting this? Am I the only one who cares?

Just spit-balling ideas:

Remove champions with a pick+ban % from selection during a given week. This would force a few other champions into the mix.
In each series, if a champion was picked/banned by either team in the previous match, it is removed from selection for the rest of the series.
Have a snake format draft at the beginning of the year. Each team takes turns drafting two exclusive champions to be used on their team for the rest of the season. This is the most limiting form, as it would mess up worlds, or else every league would have to compete in the same initial draft at the beginning of the year. You could even expand this to drafting the entire champion pool spread out between the pro teams of the world in something like reverse order of previous year standing, but that seems doubtful.

Anyway, those are just a few ideas off the top of my head. Each probably has several reasons why it wouldn't work or be good for LOL eSports. I'm sure there are better options. If I'm the only one who cares, then that's fine, but I'm just wondering if Riot has talked about this at all or if others are as tired as me of watching LOL eSports. If I'm the only one then that's fine, I'll just watch less often.

I searched for similar threads but couldn't find any, sorry if already asked and answered.

24 Comments

Miror B7/10/2016, 11:40:44 PM3 votes

Doublelift actually did a "chat" about the new LCS and its massive loss of viewership recently, will try to share a snippit of it. Sum of it though: LCS is far more "forced" now as people are having to watch their favorite teams instead of all the teams (unless they want to spend 20 hours a week watching videos), because of this it's causing a bit of a split where the newer/"neutral" audience probably won't watch much of it or won't get to see all the teams while the devoted audience (fanboys) will still only watch their favorite teams, causing little exposure for the other ones.

Shadowatom7/10/2016, 11:17:49 PM2 votes

I feel like this split is much better than last split imo. Granted I haven't been able to see as many games this split, but Top and Support have been seeing some good diversity compared to the previous split and the other roles except maybe Jungle have had a decent amount of variance (not a huge amount, but a little more).

III BAKURYU III 7/11/2016, 8:39:48 AM1 votes

I don't mind it to be honest. I mean does it bother me some yeah a little bit but its not just the champions that matters but the players who play them. Doublelift could play Lucain and go ham 24/7 , while Sneaky picks Lucian and plays passive so you will always get multiple sides of the same coin in some ways.
I also know that its a business and they want to win. The pros will not play champions that suck just so fans can love them for it, no they want to win. The fans will come around when the Wins pile up.

Its also the meta each year it changes, however season 6 was the biggest one.

Season 4 I think the year SSW won Worlds, players could sustain and pick any champion they want and fight around the 30-35 mins after lane phase. Most games lasted around 40-50 min mark. So any champion will do for example Alistar top-Support.

Season 5 Saw less lane phase and more fights but the games still lasted around the 35-40 min mark but the sustain was still there with flask etc. So picking champions that had great team fighting potential was needed.

Season 6 its really just play champions that don't need sustain as most of the sustain items and masteries are now gone and its fight fight fight with shot calling on the side.
This season is also the most snowballing season to date so picking champions that can snowball easily without too many items is what it calls for.

I don't know if my post makes sense but hope it helps, just wanted to get my opinion and thoughts on the matter. Thank you and Have a Good One !

TBakes7/11/2016, 5:16:02 PM1 votes

I think the main issue with champion viability is the mid lane. We're all tired of seeing Azir Vladimir Viktor Ryze . At this point I would love to see more assassin viability in pro play other than Leblanc . I was so excited when Quas pulled out Illaoi and whenever Huni tries to play Riven . Lately we have seen some niche picks like Ahri JarvanIV Nunu . I really enjoyed All-Stars last year simply because you get to see rarely played champions in the hands of the pros.

However, there are not any realistic, fair options to expand champion diversity beyond Riot having better balance. But then again, there will always be a bias towards champions that work best with clear communication and team organization because that is the nature of pro play.

Lugg7/11/2016, 9:15:58 PM1 votes

It really does get boring watching the same champs picked over and over. Riot desprately needs to increase the bans to 5 per team. This would really open the amount of champs played and tons of new combos and strategies.

Marshbouy7/10/2016, 11:13:08 PM1 votes

it is subjectively more boring without champion diversity. generally people want more diversity.

DingleNutsMcGee7/11/2016, 10:34:12 PM1 votes

Yes, plain and simple. Its always been this way. They have a total champion pool of about 20-25. And every single year its the same ones over & over, plus 1 or 2 surprise picks. This is 50% of the reason i dont ever watch the LCS anymore. The other 50% is this stupid meta for the past couple years where teams avoid any and all interaction with the enemy team for the first 25 min. Lane trading, double jungling, trading 2 top towers for 2 bottom towers....its all about avoiding confrontation at all costs. Makes it insanely boring and repetitive

FillyPhlyerz7/11/2016, 4:57:48 AM1 votes

I would like more diversity, but I don't think creating obligatory rules just to force diversity is the way to go. The best way to go, and I know this is much much much much easier said than done and realistically is impossible, is to balance the game out where all champions are strategically viable.