Boards›Gameplay

Negativity towards the State of the Game goes far beyond the boards.

Holgranth·7/14/2018, 2:49:11 PM·204 votes·21,747 views

People who are trying to pass it all off as "The Boards are a tiny vocal minority," are ignoring the bigger picture.

Reddit usually a bastion of Pro Play worship and Riot boot licking is popping out threads like; "Discussion: How many people have actually quit League or severely reduced their play time in the past couple of months" Comments about how shit this season is are getting upvoted instead of downvoted.

LCS viewership is down, sometimes by 60%.

Youtube is full of negative video's about league.

Pro players on twitter are increasingly neutral/negative towards Riot.

Fortnite is the darling of Twitch now. Big League Streamers have either quit or keep playing through sheer inertia.

There are tons of anecdotes about "my entire friend group quit league," (I myself am the last of 6 people that used to play together all the time.)

Bitching and negativity in game is high at all elo's.

Burn out is definitely a factor. League is a pretty old game at this point. However the current state of balance, snowballing, damage creep, et cetera is fueling that burn out. Riot has made massive changes to the game this season none of which have actually made the game better or addressed frequently brought up issues.

Ghostcrawler once wrote on his blog, "Another way this is visualized as you being on one mountain peak, and wanting to be at an even higher peak, but having to go down the mountain into a scary valley of chaos before you can climb up to that other peak." Bascially advocating Short Term Pain for Long Term Gain.

Sadly it has been long term pain for no gain.

154 Comments

Madsin257/14/2018, 4:08:36 PM67 votes

I used to love watching LCS vods, now it's just irritating.

It's basically a game of who can get the biggest wombo combo cheese.

Sylias Ravenmore7/14/2018, 5:55:41 PM50 votes

I've been gaming well over 20 years now... There is a pattern to the rise and fall over every game.. Riot and League of Legends is exactly where Blizzard was with WoW when the released CATA.

Same as asherons call.. meridian 59, everquest and countless other games..

Eventually the company comes off as "arrogant" they keep changing the game mechanics, they ignore the players, but before all the commmunity becomes a nightmare.. elitists pricks treat newer and lesser equipped players like shit... the game becomes about money.. loses sight of the fun..

Something new comes out, all the 12 year olds flock to it, the rest follow, and the game dies..

Rinse, wash, repeat..

DragonShea7/14/2018, 5:15:16 PM48 votes

We can all agree that if board toxicity is found outside of it. Then shit has gotten really bad and riot is in denial over it. LCS, Youtubers etc. Have become disillusioned with the game. Without a doubt that just shows that League IS dying and Riot need to fix this or risk failure.

Vlada Cut7/14/2018, 3:26:58 PM37 votes

This. Absolutely this. ^

Teridax687/14/2018, 5:52:29 PM31 votes

I think it's time we started looking at the facts, and stopped listening to the "Boards are a vocal minority" crowd. Gameplay gets called an echo chamber by some Rioters and a handful of players, and to some extent there are those problems, but the reality is that it is these people who are living in an extremely minoritary echo chamber: all around, whether it be on the Boards, YouTube, Twitch, even Reddit, League's appreciation has taken a turn for the worse. League's viewership on Twitch has been reduced to a fraction of what it used to be, many content creators have left League, criticized the game heavily, or both, and everywhere there is discussion to be had, that discussion itself tends to be critical of Riot and the way they've been handling their game. There is not a single indicator of growth or positive developments on social media, no new content creators on the scene, and the fact that Riot has chosen to hide their player count for the past three years, when they had been doing everything they could to announce it as loudly as possible back when it was still rising, is itself an indication of decline.

All of this begs the question of where exactly these people are getting their positive feedback from, or any kind of sign that League is still growing without problems. Personally, I'd be more than happy to see these positive signs, because I don't want League to suffer, yet at the end of the day, all that subgroup can do is insult and dismiss others, without pointing to any evidence. By contrast, stuff like Twitch viewership, streamers quitting, negative comments and threads on the internet, Riot hiding their player count, etc. are all independently verifiable facts, and all of them point towards the same conclusion. Not only is League suffering, League is suffering for a number of reasons that just so happen to be consistent with the consensus on the Boards. Attempting to isolate and divide their social spaces has also been a tactic Riot has used in the past, notably with the whole Dynamic Queue fiasco where, most of a season in, Riot released a video with the express purpose of trying to convince us Dynamic Queue was popular, and that those complaining were in the minority. It seems neither Riot nor we have learned from that event, as they're still using the same tactics, and we're still believing them, despite everything that has happened.

Dope Solo7/14/2018, 5:21:32 PM22 votes

The hardest part about being successful, is staying successful.

The Most Important Video Game on the Planet

How Fortnite became the Instagram of gaming. By Brian Feldman

To be honest, these devs are failing every aspect of the game right now. Clash, client and balanced gameplay.

SwiftKitten887/14/2018, 9:52:57 PM11 votes

its blatantly obvious...

i mean their youtube channel has advertisements. to start playing league they actually decided to update the tutorials and now we are getting in-game mission to "level up a friend?"

i they KNOW they are losing players at a record rate and instead of trying to stem the flow and figure out why their horrfic balance team is alienating thier entirely playerbase.. they spend the time and money on "advertisments"

how about they spend their time and money on getting rid of the morons on the balance team, and return league to the game we all joined to play in the first place..

Linna Excel7/14/2018, 7:51:30 PM9 votes

I think that focusing last season on the new rune system has probably made things worse. Whatever happened, the new runes haven't subtracted from the problem. So runes are messed up, ADCs are messed up, towers are garbage (which is partly why no one needs an ADC anymore), etc.

Hastega Slowga7/15/2018, 4:55:19 PM7 votes

You know its bad when Doublelift and Faker are complaining about the state of the game.

SpongebobIsLife7/14/2018, 11:41:30 PM6 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhI-QLG_DJU

Just gonna leave this here...

Eye Sux7/15/2018, 11:06:08 AM6 votes

One person cant win the game anymore. One person can 100 percent lose the game now. There are too many trolls playing this game to take it serious anymore. I sometimes still watch streamers play the game and get trolled in front of thousands of people. It drives the good players insane. RIOT always punishes the people who "fucked your mom" but they never punished the peopel who actually made the game unplayable. Im glad to see it die. RIOT didnt take the fan base serious enough. They only cared about selling skins. The only sad part is that there still isnt a game to take its place.

Spacesuit Spiff7/14/2018, 9:01:03 PM5 votes

Riot: but the casters are still hyped about everything that happens!

Pandeonor7/14/2018, 8:02:18 PM4 votes

{quoted}

I think it's time we started looking at the facts, and stopped listening to the "Boards are a vocal minority" crowd.

and then:

.... League's viewership on Twitch has been reduced to a fraction of what it used to be....

This is what such discussions are about. People don´t know about facts and telling others that their fictions are reality.

So. League had about 115k viewers average last year. Actually (past 30 days) it is around 100k. And guys like you are writing "reduced to a fraction" obviously not even knowing about any number. Perhaps heard yourself about this or have in mind that league was 1st in Tweitch ranking and now only 2nd, half of viewers of Fortnite, wich lead you to claming "fraction".

And statements/clams like this, filled with wrong "alternative facts" for weeks and months, spreading this throughout the net. That makes far more harm to the game then every "bad patch" or "worse meta" could ever do.

Read: https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/general-discussion/mXbJtfdb-league-playerbase-fortnite-some-data-around-all-in-2018

Have a look here: https://www.superdataresearch.com/us-digital-games-market/ and here: Newzoo 20 core top PC games June 2018 and here: July 6th2018, League of Legends' retook the No.1 spot in the 'Korean PC Bang Game Rankings'

Or at least sullygnome for the "fraction" of viewers you claimed: https://sullygnome.com/games/30/watched

"Start looking at facts"

Would be glad to see this happen. But I am quite sure it will not.

Pika Fox7/14/2018, 7:37:08 PM2 votes

The games fine. The reality is its a small number of people complaining about mostly nothing. People who think the balance is bad are ignoring the massive issues of previous seasons; if a release LB or Xin were released today you would lose your shit. People complain about zoe, you havnt seen release lb, xin, irelia etc.

mack91127/14/2018, 7:25:52 PM2 votes

It's definitely tricky to say if league is going in a healthy direction or not. Personally I have had some of the most enjoyable games on the past few patches and I'm sure there are many people like me. The trick is the silent majority dare not come on these boards anymore because it feels like they are immediately flamed .