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Is it just me or is league not as fun anymore?

Helltoken·6/29/2016, 3:47:01 PM·106 votes·8,819 views

League of legends used to be a game where you could decide what player you as an individual wanted to be. you could be a team player in ranked 5v5s, you could enjoy all the diverse game modes (blind pick, draft pick, aram, dominion, 3v3), you could be a solo ranked grinder, you could grind 3v3, could grind 5v5, or just play the game for fun in normals.

However, recently, the Meta is too dominant, causing a lack of diversity in builds and champions, and very similar games. This is because champions are either too strong or not strong enough, or builds are just too efficient.

Item builds have been fun back in the day. I remember being able to do homeguard tp thornmail rammus plays at 13 mins from toplane, but now i gotta wait 20 mins to be able to do it. Non-meta builds also do not exist as much as before, simply because they're very crap, and the common builds are too strong. This is eu and na only btw. korean's are theory crafters for a reason. Item builds are now very strict with limited room to adapt.

The game modes are getting removed one by one. Dominion is gone, and tbf i had a blast in dominion. whenever i get stressed out i'd be there chillin and practicing my skills. Ranked 5v5s and solo queue have been merged together to form this offensive "competitive" system that is different from normals in only one way: ELO (and if you wanna add the lack of rewards for climbing to high elo altogether, then 2). However, in ranked i see a lack of balanced gameplay. It used to be if you were silver 3 youd play silver 4-2. Now i see bronze 5 - silver 2. Its also only a matter of time before TT is gone. The fact that crystal scar is gone due to "Them not sustaining it" is a fault on their part for not putting enough effort in developing other aspects of the game.

The game used to be less punishable. Nowadays, you win lane by picking a champion and a mastery. Back then it was all about how you play the matchup. Counterpicking was always a thing, but... now op champs counter everything. Items would make a champion strong. Nowadays masteries, runes, and items work together to create assassin tanks.

Speaking of which, champions do not classify under a typical role anymore. Sustain/tankiness/burst/assassin/damage carry all fall under a tightly knit category based on builds and masteries, not the champion itself. Tanks should be tanky, and damage carries should do the damage. Not the same guy.

The game is finally implementing stuff that should've existed ages ago. Hextech crafting (or reward boxes is pretty much on every mobile and mmo game nowadays, and has been for a while) is extremely lame the way they did it. you only get a few, and the rewards aren't abundant, and quite expensive to get in terms of effort. The mastery system, although implemented last season, is also an ancient thing from the past. in COD 4 i believe you could already get attributes and unlockables on guns. here you get a flag. Also their kits/abilities also existed a long time ago in other games.

The rewards that made the game interesting to begin with are slowly being taken away as well. This is in regards to the recent reworks (since the juggernaut, and i mean most, not all), and gameplay changes, especially the Early Game one from 6.13. Now, playstyles are starting to flatline too. In other words, playing like a bitch and scaling is now not as punishable as it used to be, and playing aggressive doesn't have the same rewards either. Denying a champion any XP in teamfights also not a thing anymore, and i think there was something with assists, but i might've missed that. Point is, the game is becoming much easier.

I want to use this paragraph to explain the contradiction i've made. The game is getting too easy in the sense that winning and losing is much more heavily defined on a pick, rather than mechanics, playstyle, objective control, builds, and counterplay combining to create a difficult game to play.

my final point: The game is really not as diverse as they think it is. There are about to be 6 champions with a global teleport. Jinx & Ashe have essentially the same ultimate, only different with the former having more damage and the latter having more utility. Talon is essentially a worse Zed. Ahri, Ekko, and LB are mage assassins who blow people up. The champions really aren't that diverse. They may have one ability that sets them apart (like ahri charm, ekko R, and LB passive), but essentially they do the same thing the same way. the build paths are the same, the playstyle is the same, and the result is essentially the same.

I dont care too much about the lack of diversity in champions, cause that can be altered. However, I feel like riot games is really adamant that the other things exist. I don't think the Balance Team is "Balancing" anything anymore, rather balancing a plate on a toothpick in such a way that one side always tilts far above the others (as in these are now op, the rest are not). In the end, there is never a balance. They're changing the game too much, and the problem is they don't ever undo anything they did that cause the "op" and instead propose more often than not worse solutions, like reducing malzahar's early damage to pretty much nothing when there was nothing wrong with him before the rework.Riot is also just creating new problems time after time without fixing anything. There's no shame in undoing dynamic queue, but they wont. There's no shame in undoing the monstrosities that were vladimir and swain and rework-released malzahar. All this combined, in my opinion which i possibly share with others, makes me unsure whether I play league cause it's fun and rewarding or just because i feel like i have to cause due to the amount of time effort and money i spent on it.

(PS Overwatch coming out is just another popular multiplayer game. People aren't switching, they're just quitting one and playing another. If i quite league and play Mario Kart or some shit I'm not switching to mario kart im just playing a different game).

87 Comments

JMoormann6/29/2016, 8:31:18 PM29 votes

Is it just me, or is League still a fun game and are people complaining too much?

Sire Hippington6/30/2016, 4:57:32 PM9 votes

There are 4 main issues for league beeing far less fun than it was for mee.(TL;DR in Bold for each section)

  • **The new champion design philosophy: ** Some time along S5, riot got the fix idea that they need to work out unique strategic niches for every single champ, aswell as focuseing hard on strengths and weaknesses. Now on the first glance, that might sound like a solid plan, but it actually has pretty big downsides: To extreme strengths and weaknesses lead to binary situations. A great example here would be illaoi. IF she lands a good ult and you fight her insight her tentacles, she can basically 1vs5. If you disengage her ult, she's basically usless ina teamfight. Exaggerated stengths and weaknesses lead to a huge difference between worst and best case and thus binary scenarios! . The desperate focus on strategic niches often leads to kinda 'tacked on' mechanics and somewhat 'forced' kits, like skarner's rocks or the morde W passive. And more importatnly, it contributes alot to hardcounter scenarios. Ever since that trend has started, champselect became more and more important, counterpicking has become prevalent to a point where i honestly consider dogeing a game whenever i have to firstpick my lane( i mostly play top/mid). It also reflects in porplay. most of the meta picks, especially top, have very few counters and are generally save picks. The main reason why tankko and tank-fizz became a thing is that they can do the job of a tank respectively diver while beeing alot safer than real tanks or divers due to the defensive mobillity they have on top of the tankiness from their items. Heavy focuse on strategic niches leads to heavy counterpicks, lane matchups and even entire some matches are often won in chamselect already, especially in higher elos(in low elos, the skill discrepency between players is generally higher, there is always a good chance that the team with the theoretically better draft will just fail hard) Also, even if it's not neccesarily design philosophie, the balanceing overall is in about the worst state it ever was since S1, the op champs are not a bit stronger, but much stronger than the rest, and the average deviation in winrates is higher than anything i can remember.
  • Damage-Creep: The overall damage-tankiness ratio slowly started to shift more and more towards damag since S3, but in S6, especially with the new mastiereies, but also with item changes(especially the S5 tank item changes), the damagecreep acelerated imense this season. As a result, any melee that has no huge instantanious burst and/or massive sliperiness goes prettymuch fulltank, as that's the only way they can do anything at all in teamfights befor getting blown up. At the same time, this also means that they still have enough damage to make short work of squishys even if going tanky. Also, going tanky doe not make you really tanky later on. Tank items are generally rather cost efficient, spikeing early-mid, and later on the multiplicative scaleings and %pen means damage outscales tankiness by far. If focused, even a fulltank rammus can die within the 3 sec of a morgana-snare from fullhealth once everyone has 5-6 items. The game feels more and more like UT with instagib, every small mistake insantly gets punished with death. This is also one of the reason why tanky builts at top became popular, they allow atleast some tolerance for mistakes without directly dieing. It also makes nowballing worse, because if you get a lead in lane, you can convert even little mistakes of your opponent into kills. The overabundance of damage makes the game more snowbally, unforgiving and punishing, which often leads to frustration as well as impuissance if you fall behind

  • ** Vision:** We are currently in the dark ages of league, quite literally. Never has there been less light(vision) on the rift than now. In these dark days, getting early towers and mapcontroll is a massive advantage, as it's so hard to regain controll with the limited warding possibillies. The early lane, especially top and mid, is very prone to ganks as you can hardly sustain a sigle ward. As a result, only save laners prevail, or those that are premade with their jungler and know that they have backup. Playing an immobile champ top is like russian roulette, if you have luck the oppsing jungler does not care about top, if you don't have luck, you die unless you hug your tower 24/7. if your not premade and share information about the jungler psition and missing lanes, any agressive action is incredible risky. But also fo r teams as a whole, the lack of vision is really limiting. The prevalent strategie are teamfight comps, as thats the only comp you can execute even if you fall behind, as you don't need much vision if you just run around as 5, you won't get supriseingly outnumbered, and the trinkets+wardstone are just enough to cover your flanks. If you plan on splitpushing, you need alot deep vision to get more than the outer and maybe inner turrets, which currently requires you to have full mapcontroll. Once you loose mapcontroll, you can't really setup the vision and splitpushing only works if your are fed enough to dive anyone 1v1 while your team can brave a 4vs5, or if your opponents do stupid calls. Tp flank strats have a similar issue as you need the deep wards to set up the tp flank. Same for pick comps, that also require a good vision setup to pick of targets in between rotations. A big issue is also how it works together with damage creep. Ventureing into the dark becomes ever more frighteneing if you know that what ever lurks there might just kill you befor you know what happened. The lack of vision promotes passive, risk-adverse play(stall and boring) and limits strategic diversity while increasing snowballing, which kinda gets multiplyed by damagecreep.

  • Earlygame focuse and snowballing: This is mostly a result off the previous 3 points, though there are some more things that contribute to it:

  • Gold flow changes: Shut-down-gold is spread among the team, makeing it harder to bounce back from a loosing lane as indivdioual, Assist-sprees no longer exist, so despite the higher shut-down-gold from kills(teamwide), you gain less shut-down-gold overall unless you opponents have only solokills. To clearify this: If the oppsoing jungler went 0/0/4 in previous seasons, he was worth some shut-down-gold, now he can go 0/0/10 and still is worth the same as with 0/0/0. Minions in the earlygame are a higher % if the total gold earned than befor(the % increase of theri base values has been higher than the increase for shutdowns, ambient gold or the goldgrowth on minions) As a result, if you dominate lane and get a cs lead, it contributes to a higher relative gold lead than it did befor S6.

  • Item-cost changes: The stats from component items have been lowered across the board and the combine costs have been increased, thus reaching item spikes results in bigger powerspikes, which means if you reach your itemspike befor your opponent(which usually happens then you got a lead), you get a bigger powerspike over them than you used to. Another sideffect of that is that some champs with high specific item synergie have absurd powerspikes. Irelia is a prime example for that. You can trash her al lane long, but once she finishes Trinity, even if you have a lead, she probably starts trashing you from that moment on. If you respect that power spike and don't feed her till 1-2 more items are finished, she starts to drop off as she doesn't synergies as well with other items. This also contributes to the 'tanky meta', since tank items like sunfire or iceborn are very gold-efficient, giving you a relative early powerspike in lane. Iceborn for example costs 800g less than hydra, so you get a significant powerspike much early which gives you a great window of power over your opponent.

To be continoued on a self-reply, damn that post length restriction, whats the point off that anyway? For those that don't care about the details a Tl;DR: Many small changes all contribute to more snowballing, some even reach as far back as S2/3. Each on their own only a minor factor, but if combined, especially with the S6 changes, it all piles up to alot more snowballing

Keevalroy6/29/2016, 6:31:05 PM8 votes

Haven't played since mid April - not missing it.

RookPusher6/29/2016, 3:53:35 PM8 votes

Your argument on diversity lacks robustness. Jinx and Ashe may have similar ults, but their overall kits aren't similar. You can't judge things in a vacuum.

Lirik6/29/2016, 7:28:01 PM7 votes

league of legend is way overrated and peoples start to understand why its way too mainstream and make it worst for the community also. i remember in 2009 the community was since back then because it was just only real gamers who would have done research and be invlove in the game, now every lil kid or even non-gamer playing it because "its cool i play league too" yeah basicly its not only you alot of real gamers and real competitive enthousiatic person will move on and only a bunch of non appealing to play with, will stay.

already the queue times as growth alot and the quality of games in generals as gone down by alot, nobody speaks anymore fearing the report, or nobody speaks because of premades, the states of the game never been this worst, i speak from experience since day 1 alpha league in 2008, peoples like to be blind and try to blame peoples like me for not liking something which has change that much so they will use stuff like ohh your grammar or your a negative person or w/e thoses dudes always comments, the reality is i am a living person and i played this game for 6 years so yeah i can speak about it and screw the rito fangheys who are not objective about their comment.

Linna Excel6/29/2016, 4:58:48 PM6 votes

Some popular youtubers are getting to the point they aren't happy with LOL.

Gulma6/30/2016, 6:41:05 AM5 votes

league used to be pretty fun..

then everything changed when the fire nation attacked.

profilin6/30/2016, 6:20:13 PM3 votes

feel the same way mate

MaidenMomiji6/30/2016, 12:03:48 AM3 votes

Played a lot less ever since I lost the 5th game of my promos to gold 4v5. Feels kinda pointless when the apex of my ranked career is "lost thanks to AFK". Tilted far too hard for far too long, got banned, made new account (new player experience is trash as well). I don't remember the last time I played League and felt like I didn't waste my time afterward. Feels bad after 3-4 years, man. Dominion was my favorite game mode, so of course they removed it. Nowadays mostly play ARAMs at work.

Blanchimont6/30/2016, 11:53:15 AM3 votes

I dislike a lot of the changes they made because it punishes solo players. Hextech crafting favors premades. Ranked favors premades. What do solo players get for it? A badge.

Noblewind6/30/2016, 5:50:11 PM3 votes

The meta gets old real fast, it's jaded, it's boring. Every month or so you see a pool of about 20 champions in every single ranked game. Sometimes you feel you have to follow it to stay competitive, and even when not this pool is still selected by a HUGE percentage of players in your games. Balance = Variety, and we just don't see that.

However, I do think the game's variety is on the rise. One by one they're taking out the OP champs with nerfs. They even did it quickly with the recent Irelia/Fizz ones. Keep up the good work, there's a looooong way to go.

Kei1436/30/2016, 2:54:51 AM2 votes

its just you.

things don't become fun when you decide its not fun.

dEAdbUs6/30/2016, 1:05:44 PM2 votes

Most thing that I loved (and it made me to move to LoL from Dota) was options to build champions in unusual builds. I was so impressed that melee fighter Master Yi can be built as mage! And his gameplay was changing too! Same with Sion: AP Sion or AD Sion. It was so insanely cool. And what's now? Riot removed most options and keep removing the rest.