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Season 9 is the last chance to stay relevant; League cannot afford another Colossal Cock Up Cascade!

Holgranth··190 votes·44,711 views

First let us look at the player-base alienating cascade of dickery that was season 8.

The runes rework was 4-5 years late and half baked. Making runes free was important step; but it proved less balanced and offers less meaningful choices. Reducing resistances while not allowing players to pick the stats they wanted was a massive mistake. Making 3 offense trees, 1 defense tree and 1 utility tree was a mistake. (I firmly believe 1 offense tree, 1 defense tree, 1 utility tree, 1 hybrid offense/defense "bruiser" tree, one hybrid offense / utility tree would have made a much more stable meta.) Pumping up Keystones to make them even stronger just forces champions to pick the most synergistic keystone.

Damage Creep with discussed in season 7. Snowball was discussed in season 7. Games being decided too early was discussed in season 7. Towers being weak was discussed in season 7. Burst damage being too high was discussed in season 7. Pre-season 8 Riot pumped damage! Pumped snowball! Pushed early game! Nerfed towers! Buffed burst damage!

They also released Zoe. Zoe was a multi level failure for Riot. They knew she was a problem before release. To quote Ghostcrawler on Reddit: "Our QA lead said it well. "When I play as her, I have the most fun I've ever had in LoL. When I play against her, I have the least fun I've ever had in LoL.""

https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/96922n/ghostcrawler_is_moving_off_of_league_of_legends/e3yqr8y/

Releasing a super frustrating champion is EXACTLY what NOT to do with your aging playerbase. Peoples tolerance for BS is lower than ever. Releasing her hilariously overtuned, poorly tested because QA was busy with "Runes Reforged" and RIGHT before Christmas break was the worst decision in champion release history. Worse than Xin or LeBlanc or Yorick or Vlad. At least Riot reacted quickly to those abominations.

Players almost universally shit on her for the entire season. Pro players, Solo Queue players, high elo players, low elo players, LCS Casters: https://streamable.com/z4bwa Refusing to nerf her into the ground for MONTHS was unfair for everyone including Zoe abusers Zoe mains.

Now let us talk about LoL moving forward.

The time for big system changes was 5 years ago. We have more than 130 champions, any big changes to runes, items or summoner spells has a direct impact on at least 20 or 30 or even 40 and indirect effects on the rest of the roster. Big changes to items and runes in particular need to happen occasionally and only when there is a clear benefit.

New Champions need to be less frequent and clearly worth the cost of adding them to the game. Delaying a release because of circumstances is acceptable. Releasing broken shit and refusing to fix it for a year is not.

Lets recognize some people loved season 8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgcpw8rtojU Sadly the irreconcilable, marriage destroying difference between me and Foxdrop is that both of us HATE the other's perfect version of LoL. I want a slower paced game than the majority of the community. Foxdrop wants a faster paced game than the majority. Riot needs to find a compromise for summoners rift. Then release some new faster paced maps.

We are long overdue for new maps, Nexus Blitz is a good idea but very rushed and 3-5 years late. Dominion needed proper support in season 2. Twisted Treeline still needs proper support. Riot's obsession with SR seems to stem from Pro play and it has hurt the game as a whole. If Riot had taken the blinders off and stopped catering to LCS years ago we could have a large and stable roster of maps and champions. As it is we have a mess where 20% of the roster has low win and play rates in the audience that actually matters because they are OP in professional play.

Nerfing potentially fun champions until they are not even fun to play because pro players can abuse them is a terrible solution. Make a global ban system or something because this ain't cutting it.

149 Comments

Douglas Funnie89 votes

Season 8 was a total mess. An absolute trash for 9+ months.

As soon as Ghostcrawler stepped out of the Lead position, both Meddler and Scruffy acknowledged that the state of the game has been complete garbage.

Hopefully, they'll fix most of the issues during Pre-season 9.

charge attack25 votes

Yeah ghostcrawler stepped down and suddenly damage being addressed, and Zoe getting a huge nerf hammer.

Thank god.

Terozu14 votes

That was issued by Ghost Crawler

Teslyn4 votes

do some actual reading before you talk.

Terozu16 votes

I think you should take your own advice.

Those changes were shipped to pbe before he stepped down. Which means they went through testing and were signed off on by GC.

3TWarrior6 votes

depends upon if it was company policy to leave or a personal leave

with company policy, you can be delegated to a lesser position while a replacement is found and then you are officially out

It seems to be his thing though as he has seen the decline of three very popular game companies and after he leaves they make brief, almost instant recoveries but are left with a much smaller playerbase permanently as a result of too many mistakes

Terozu8 votes

Ghost Crawler was not fired. And he did not leave the company. He was promoted.

RecessHero2 votes

Promoted? More like reassigned. Probably didn't want to pay him a massive severance to just go away.

Terozu6 votes

Ummm no. He was promoted and is now working with Ryze and Tryndamere on their "Putting the S in Riot Games" project. In fact he is still Meddler's supervisor. He just isnt the head of Gameplay anymore.

Ulquiorra01232 votes

You cannot possibly know this, like you actually can't unless you were in the meeting where he "stepped down". They have never come out and said they have fired people, but Monte got fired. You will never know if he got fired, and you can't say he didn't.

Terozu3 votes

He posted about it on the boards... https://media.giphy.com/media/SV1tb2JXlPqkE/giphy.gif

He was promoted and is now Meddlers supervisor but not on the gameplay team.

Eye Of Terror4 votes

[{quoted}](name=Douglas Funnie,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=8KMILa2z,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2018-08-18T20:50:07.654+0000)

Season 8 was a total mess. An absolute trash for 9+ months.

As soon as Ghostcrawler stepped out of the Lead position, both Meddler and Scruffy acknowledged that the state of the game has been complete garbage.

Hopefully, they'll fix most of the issues during Pre-season 9.

My concern is why would someone with at least 2 brain cells hire Ghostcrawler considering he turns games' pvp into a mess?

Saianna2 votes

As soon as Ghostcrawler stepped out of the Lead position, both Meddler and Scruffy acknowledged that the state of the game has been complete garbage.

Don't fall for the trick, though.

PowerSlave9937 votes

They actually won't. Riot really wants that the game is faster and more broken. Do you think they are honestly stupid and they don't know where the game problem is? Of course they know! They have no intention of fixing it... It's supposed to be like this. If Riot wanted otherwise, they would fix it by now.

LegitBusinessman45 votes

The longer games are in league, the less they appeal to the casual player.

This is objectively false. At its peak we had lane swaps and late game team fighting. Ironically, since going to a damage meta, viewership has decreased. Want to throw that out right away. I have no idea how you can actually back that up.

With that said he makes a good point about nerfing early game damage while buffing tanks. Did they not learn the lesson of trying to shift power to/from places 4 different ways at one time was a horrible idea when they decided to nerf items, stats, and sustain of marksman? We lack diversity because where there could be a few gentle taps toward diversity Riot gives us swings of the mallet instead and it goes too far.

I agree with op. I like teamfighting metas. I think high damage playstyles are gimmicky, lack strategic depth, and are extremely frustrating to play against. While it's fun for the team snowballing (Some don't think that's true) it's nothing but a 10-15 minute period of frustration as the other team hopelessly defends against an inevitable loss. Comebacks are few and far between, often relying on the other team to get too cocky and make some dimwitted throws.

THIS IS MY MAIN POINT. YOU CAN HAVE A DAMAGE META WITHOUT MAKING DAMAGE SO EGREGIOUS AND OVER THE TOP AS IT IS NOW.

You could have literally just buffed runes but let people keep all their defenses instead of only compensating them the 0 to maybe 1/3 of stats they lost. That would have increased damage across the board. You could have taken away defenses and made rune damage baseline to what old runes were (TLD v Electrocute).

But as I mentioned before, Riot can't seem to give gentle taps to any one direction or the other and see how it settles, they insist on twisting the knob as far as it goes and then just leaving it to sit for too long. If you like fast paced high damage short games, ardent meta was a nightmare, and lasted way too long. If you like strategic teamfighting macro play, this season has been a nightmare, and has lasted way too long, and it ends up that everyone is frustrated over time.

HaIlMonitor2 votes

Are you sure that is related? Viewership was down during worlds too during the tank/ardent meta...

I honestly cant see how people like watching the 50 minute 5 kill games of tank meta for baron win vs the games currently that are more action packed and fast paced. Its like golf vs Hockey, like I get it some people like golf but its boring af if you hate the sport and most people dont just flat out hate watching hockey/football/rugby style sports.

Trauja37 votes

I will just comment about the title, and i agree. I don't think LOL will have a future if they mess up season 9

DW Diana19 votes

I just think of Malzahar the last year and a half... I can't really argue with the OP lol

Teridax6812 votes

I have some reservations on the overall tone, but I agree that Season 8 in general has been one big sequence of bad decisions. Adding to the above, I think the way Clash was handled is also worrying: the implementation of a tournament mode was, by all rights, mostly just an addition to the client, yet even such a simple implementation turned out buggy to the point of being unplayable, even after testing. The fact that Riot tried to sell tickets to a mode that had not even released properly to me also comes across as desperate and unprofessional, as have many of their other actions this year. I agree that Season 9 will indeed be make-or-break time for both League and Riot, but I can't shake off the feeling that Preseason 9 itself will be too little, too late. Time will tell, but things are not looking good.

Nausicäa 11 votes

Sorry but bringing up the Zoe thing is this thread is fucking stupid. The whole Zoe situation is a massive fucking circlejerk and all you're doing is contributing to that.

Yes some people genuinely dislike her, ya she might be frustrating to play against, but bringing her up as a major problem with this season when things like snowball, broken Rune system and damage are WAY more pressing issues is not appropriate.

Holgranth41 votes

You underestimate just how much one champion can warp the game. Release Eve got changed because she was single handed destroying the game for new players. It is a perfect example of how bad decision making at Riot has been. They played with fire with Yasuo Fizz Zed Leblanc for years in the player frustration department. Then they doused the playerbase with napalm with Zoe.

Nausicäa 7 votes

{quoted}

You underestimate just how much one champion can warp the game. Release Eve got changed because she was single handed destroying the game for new players. It is a perfect example of how bad decision making at Riot has been. They played with fire with Yasuo Fizz Zed Leblanc for years in the player frustration department. Then they doused the playerbase with napalm with Zoe.

Except Zoe isnt that bad by any stretch of the imagination. Her win rate has never been out of line. Maybe she was a top tier pick, but she didnt shit on mid overwhelmingly hard and did have hard counters in assassins.

Again, one big circle jerk because people hate the champion. A pro player or a caster says something, everyone bandwagons.

Dope Solo30 votes

How does it feel to be wrong?

Kairoptra7 votes

[deleted]

Dope Solo7 votes

How does it feel to have the most derp comment in the thread?

TeCoolMage3 votes

I agree with you but he’s right you know

ModCaptainMårvelous11 votes

Ima be real with you chief: League isn't gonna be relevant. That said, it's NOT because of the game state or any sort of balance/release.

MOBAs, as a whole, have run their course.

While people will come in and tell me I'm wrong I am and that this is unique to league, every game across the board has had playerbase drops. If anything, DOTA2 is mirroring League in a lot of ways although their changes which happened years ago. Valve recognized the market was changing and tried to change things for DOTA2 to appeal to newcomers. They added talents, fountains and more to ease newcomers in. They added "Turbo Mode" which greatly increased game speed. The new heroes added are much more fun, cartoony and (dare I say) League-esque. All of this happened in 2016/2017. Guess what? DoTA2 is still declining as a game according to steam charts. Average players are down. Peak players are too. People only tune in for the International

League is trying the exact same thing: Major reworks to stuff to help ease people into the game. A new mode that caters to faster, punchy gameplay. An approach to design in the past season that has 100% catered to casuals. Everything Riot is doing is just as Valve did: A push to get people invested.

People, and especially younger kids, don't want to invest a thousand hours just to learn the basics of the game. They want to jump right in with little-to-no barriers. PUBG/Fortnite are taking off because of fast gameplay and low barrier of entry, two things no moba can earnestly boast. This is the exact situation WoW and the MMO genre was in around 10 years ago as well. They ran their course and they couldn't compete with a game genre (League/MOBAs) that had a lower barrier of entry and less time to learn game basics.

What we're seeing now is the game moving more towards the core audience. Those that played League socially aren't going to stick around anymore and/or they've gotten too old to play. Those that love League/Riot through thick-and-thin will stick around, just as there are those who stick with WoW/Blizzard no matter the state of the game. Will League have spikes? Sure. WoW recently shot up high thanks to Legion and BFA seems to have landed well. It isn't going to be the megastar #1 game in the world anymore. Just as streamers and content creators stopped making WoW content, so too are League streamers moving away.

Could Season 8 have helped? Maybe. Maybe not. I'm gonna haphazard that this season could have been the greatest and we'd still see a decline. At some point you gotta look beyond the state of the game and realize that the problems are well beyond anything Riot specifically did.

Shobek1 votes

Always trying to appeal to the new while leaving your loyal players in the dust.

Developers never learn.

ModCaptainMårvelous8 votes

Only issue with that is the loyal playerbase rarely, if ever, grows. Games are usually divided into a few subcommunities:

A.) Casuals, who only play when it's big but are also the largest group. B.) Casual Fans who might not play but love some aspect of the game. (Lore, art, roleplay, music, etc.) C.) Fans, who play/take breaks but aren't tied down. D.) Hyperfans who will play regardless of any situation but are the smallest.

Right now the best fanbase to try and grab is B, as while League the game may not be welcoming, people seem to love the characters, story, art, music, etc. It's also the easiest way to build your brand. Question is if Riot captures it, how they can capture it. MMO? RPG? Fighting game? Battle Royale?

Shobek5 votes

I don't really find this relevant.

Riot spends too much time ruining their game and not enough time releasing content. There are players that love champions so much that they will literally buy EVERY skin and chroma offered just because.

When riot reworks that love is lost. I guess new players could love the rework but couldn't that have just been a new champion?

Examples of champions who have become completely new champions with reworks. ( deleted their old forms )

Akali , Aatrox, Poppy, Taric, ryze ( many more )

Enthusiasts buy everything. They don't release enough content to make money off of. There should be chromas of every skin and every champion should get a skin a year at least.

ModCaptainMårvelous5 votes

Legitimately shocked you think they don't release content fast. Riot was, and still is, one of the most content heavy publishers out there. Every two weeks since launch there's been something new, be it a balance patch, skin, etc. It's almost entirely way League stuck around in player's minds: There was ALWAYS something new to log into versus WoW where you could have months without new content and be running the current content for quite a while.

As for reworks, I've had this discussion before but there's always a cost. Reworks can't be new champs due to thematic overlap, kit overlap, roster bloat (If we made every rework a new champ we'd be close to 200) and gameplay issues. The goal in general is to adapt a champ to new players while minimizing the impact done to older players, albeit this can be easier or harder depending on how well a kit has aged.

There's also the idea that while an enthusiast might buy everything (Might!), 1 enthusiast buying every skin can't compare to 100 players buying one skin apiece. Plus Riot seems to try to have each character having a decent playerbase. Maybe not Yasuo 65% pick rate levels but something above 1%.

SwiftKitten8810 votes

as much as i love fox drop.. i highly disagree with him.. they are nerfing damage creep.. i dont agree with them buffing thanks as well but damage creep and burst DID need to be tones down and it still does by a LOT, before we will see any change and people actaully willing to trade multiple times in lane rather than having 1 trade meaning a person is dead or is forced to back

TheSingularity8 votes

100% agreed, devour my upvote

Holgranth6 votes

NOM NOM NOM

TeCoolMage7 votes

Tbh I’d say riot can afford 2-3 more seasons like this, not 1. People blow league’s decline way out of proportion despite it practically monopolising the moba industry in a way

That being said, it’s better if they fixed things, yes

BlackEyesBlue7 votes

I completely agree on state of the game, but completely disagree on you Zoe condemnation.

This is getting old man... To this day I've seen like... 3 good Zoe players, and I'd still rather face her then Yas, Zed, or LeBlech...

Fízz v25 votes

Refusing to nerf her into the ground for MONTHS was unfair for everyone including Zoe abusers Zoe mains.

why is not gutting their main unfair to zoe mains tho? why is it unfair to anyone?

also

Nerfing potentially fun champions until they are not even fun to play because pro players can abuse them is a terrible solution.

is pretty ironic in a thread complaining about zoe lel. Zoe has statistically always been garbage out of pro play and high elo

Tormentula38 votes

Because Zoe mains will have to put up with a roller coaster of balance changes until they gut her completely then evaulate Zoe and make her kit strong again but healthier. Instead they're love tapping her into slowly weak but nothing becomes healthy about her regardless of the nerfs. She needs a hard mechanical update, akin to rek'sai or aatrox.

Holgranth8 votes

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Kai Guy22 votes

Lock out on passive. Add a small CD.

Increase R duration. Give slower reflex or meh ping players opportunity's to responds and aggressively position onto her recall. Gives slower reflex Zoe players more opportunity's to cast her kit. I feel this change lowers both the skill floor and ceiling. Alone it would be a gross buff, combined with a lock out on passive it would function as a risk in upper mmrs and help higher ping and lower skill players use her kit.

W. MS gain is generated by the orbs doing damage rather then instantly. Hits refresh duration. Lower Minion RNG, Add a Stack mechanic to generate minion drops Or just stick it onto cannons exclusively.

Tormentula2 votes

This actually sounds perfect.

Never thought of fixing her this way. TBH she needs this and some kind of non-RNG version of her W, remove randomness (maybe in specific intervals like first is GLP, second is proto, third is exhaust, etc) and those changes and I think zoe overall would be healthier with your method.

Fízz v22 votes

If you increase the R duration she is probably just gonna get oneshot in it if she ever tries to poke tho, then she will be even more useless than she is right now lul.

Dope Solo4 votes

She's hasn't been out for a full year. Go back to your old main, you shoudl have known better for jumping on the latest bandwagon to pass through.

Tormentula8 votes

This champ didn't have to be released to be looked at as a bad idea, fuck this champ didn't have to be revealed to be called a mistake according to what some playtesters and developers said. Simply put her kit is bad, even slowpoke doesn't need a year to realize that. It's why champs like kindred and ivern haven't yet lasted a year.

I'm self aware of what mine did. I only ask for buffs when they're compensations (losing attack speed sources, hows it fair to lose all sources of attack speed when originally, while still weak, you had 15% from runes/machete and pantheon of all things get compensated with bonus attack speed first?). Difference is there hasn't been a complaint about mine since season 3-4 except the occasional tower dive post (which I've only seen twice on the boards, both this year when she's weak, and never once in how ever many games it takes for 2m). Zoe's standard is way higher, especially when there is nothing to compare her to but another unhealthy play style that even riot destroyed because they hated it (lane nidalee). Imagine how midalee players felt when riot actually did the right thing and destroyed it, then created Zoe contradicting all their reasoning for getting rid of midalee, not that anybody really wants to play against that again in its original form.

MiladyDW4 votes

If anything, League is going in a direction where its practically going to implode on itself. It seems most of the changes are made more for the High ELO, those who have 50 accounts holding the top 50 in a country and the professional E-Sports players. It's never what the general player base wants, us the casuals, the lower to mid ELOs.

Blenos2 votes

Yep, they want those sick outplays and team based games where everything goes smoothly if your entire team knows the fundamentals of the game, but not for us casuals who just want to play and not have to analyze every little thing even down in silver. If the game was more like " the more you're fed the better you'll get" and not "if you're team sucks you suck" , then I wouldn't mind most of the bullshit that the company does

Sire Hippington3 votes

Damage Creep with discussed in season 7. Snowball was discussed in season 7. Games being decided too early was discussed in season 7

Actually, all that already was discussed in S6 allready with the first adc-update and introduciton of keystones(league of thunderlord's)

DiabolicalDude2 votes

LoL is still the most played, non-mobile video game in the world. It isn't going to disappear in a year, lol. Don't be silly. But yeah, this meta sucks, the new runes are horrible, and I really hope things are better soon.

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