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How the new system feels (thoughts on the current state of leveling)

Skullgetti·11/11/2017, 5:54:11 PM·4 votes·333 views

Throughout the boards i've seen alot of people complain about leveling saying that they "hate it" or that "it sucks", but i've never seen anyone explain just why they think it feels this way. If you do not feel like reading a bunch or you want to know my general opinion before you invest the time, there will be a TL;DR marked somewhere near the end of the post with summoner spell icons

I've been playing online video games for about 4-5 years now (at the least on PC ) and league since about 2013-2014 and i can say that leveled rewards as well as lootboxes aren't a very new thing in video games , but they have been used more and more lately, which isn't really a problem, it can be a fun and rewarding way to reward your players in a game, given that the effort-reward ratio feels fair, or at the most, only a LITTLE bit grindy. However, i do not think this is the new system that'd work, or at the least for not very long. The current issues that seem the most clear for me are the following:

  1. TL;DR: unsatisfying and unrewarding The system feels very unsatisfying and like a "you might maybe get something alright" grind, and it feels horrible. In games like Overwatch (which of the system i personally dislike alot ) the system doesn't work well, but at the least it is just cosmetic and would never change anything gameplay wise
  2. TL;DR Forced to participate in RNG In games where you have a chance-based RNG system to get rare cosmetics or rewards (Team fortress 2, CS:GO, DOTA 2, and so on) the systems are completely optional and have no drawbacks if you do not wish to participate in RNG, the hextech box system was partially based on this, but remained to reward players for playing occasionally, as well as keeping it a good and fair- feeling reward both if you wish to pay with rp or wish to "grind" for boxes and keys.
  3. TL;DR feels like Korean MMORPG and mobile games business model , this is my main problem with itsummoner 3 League of Legends is a game developed by a company and companies want to make money. Riot however, had been widely known as a great fan-feedback orientated company that really took the middle ground between staying fair whilst also making enough money to continue producing amazing new content. This new system however, HEAVILY resembles the Korean MMORPG business model as well as the mobile gaming industry model which have been widely known to be very toxic towards the industry. The way it is designed is to first give you fast and easy rewards as to get you easily hooked and therefore emotionally invested into the game as you put more time into it, then slowing down the rewards (leveling past lvl 30) up to a point where it will be very painful and slow to gain the rewards you wish to get without praying (or if you're not religious, wishful thinking) that you get the right champion shards, in order to get players to spend more real life money on the game easily without the company having to release effort full content, as the players will most likely invest into progressing further into the game and reaching the goals they wish to reach.
  4. **TL;DR It will get very old very soon ** Other level rng-based rewarding games have already showed us that the "oh look, i just got 10 credits too little for the thing i've been wanting. Time to play ANOTHER 5 hours for that little amount,haha" system is horrible and unrewarding, especially if it is possible to get duplicates (Looking at you, pre-lootrework overwatch) and getting chest after chest, HOPING you get something useful and aren't hardstuck dissing 90 essence shards for the next 50 games feels bad and unrewarding, especialyl in comparison with the last system.

I believe Riot has stated that this is because, as you level, you'll eventually obtain more and more champions and content and thus you will reach a point where you get champions faster than they come out, so you'd need less rewards as you level on. This however, seemingly doesn't take in consideration the fact that only a few exceptionally early users that joined the game in its early days, or those who play the game extremely hardcore would have this "problem". I have been playing this game for years now, and i have yet to reach even close to obtaining all the champions, whilst i am a very invested player that often plays many, many hours a week , and to someone's calculations, it would take at the least 300 too 400 levelsto obtain every champion, not considering the fact it is possible to get 90 BE shards every single capsule on several times, as the system is completely RNG.

The summoner 4 summoner 6 _TL;DR _ summoner 6 summoner 4 and conclusions:

This system does not feel like it was designed as a middle ground nor as a reward system and more as a system to lure new players in and hook them to the game ( which is good,if not great) but to also make it so it become progressively more difficult and a test of both patience and sanity to not spend RP and thus real money on buying champions. (which is bad,if not horrendous) ** Possible solutions around the boards**

  1. A little bit of BE every win,and maybe a little bit on losses, too. Even as little as 5 or 10 would give the player a small feeling of achievement and progression that the experience system lacks to give, whilst also giving higher level players a steady and straight line of BE income to rely on so they do not completely ripped off each time they open a 3 soraka shard capsule
  2. Daily missions giving out rewards (E.g: destroy the enemy nexus with 2 times-300 BE, destroy an inhibitor with your team 6 times- 150 BE,play 2 games, play a certain role, etc). even IF these missions would stay repetitive,challenging, or even if they give random rewards (E.G ranked missions that rise in difficulty, epic missions give 100-300 BE,legendary ones 150-350 and ultimate,extremely difficult ones could give out some special kind of capsule or 200-450 BE but are very rare) Be if done right it could at the least give the player some feeling of being rewarded as well as reason to keep looking forward to opening league again.
  3. Random reward drops in between levels (or on level ups) giving out little random reward capsules that contain essence of either kind could be a rewarding system. I am aware this is how the honor system is supposed to work, but it seems severely flawed as i have experienced first hand that many users including myself who refrain from acting toxic besides the occasional "can we surrender this one?" are hardstuck on honor lvl 3 whilst people who wish death and disease upon others through /all continue to level in honor at a steady and fast pace, (i have several users from my personal discord server as first-hand examples for this) and since the new system seemingly feels less rewarding, especially for higher level players, it could be a way to compensate in between levels

summoner 4 summoner 6 FINAL TL DRsummoner 6 summoner 4

I feel as no one is really satisfied with this system and that it was very uncalled for. Rioters often refuse on explaining why it was implemented saying things such as "we wanted to change for a long time" and "the system was flawed and unrewarding" whilst seemingly not seeing that this system is not the answer at the moment, and most likely not ever. I hope this system gets reworked soon and doesn't get put into the "we realised fans didn't like this after only 2 years of negative feedback and constant attempts to fix it" limbo.

Eager to see some red post answers as constructive building blocks for this discussion, as well as thoughts of others.

1 Comments

Small Otter ARAM11/20/2017, 5:16:36 PM2 votes

I have been playing LoL since late season 2 (Naut was the newest champ when I started) and this new system is easily the most unrewarding system League has ever had. I have been playing preseason on the PBE, and my NA account is already level 41. I have all the champions, so this purely a cost-benfit analysis of the new champion shards. After eleven levels of grinding, followed by disenchanting all of the shards I had received from ALL of my levels. I received a grand total of 10300 BE from all of those shards. Eleven levels in league of legends is not enough to purchase two 6300 champions, and only enough blue essense for me to upgrade 2 champions from Mastery 5 to Mastery 6. This also is a huge problem because I am disinclined to disenchant the shards now as they are worth so little, and upgrading champion mastery level costs 3250 BE from 5-6, and 3900 BE from 6-7. The new system has its costs tuned way higher than its rewards, and as a result I can no longer upgrade champion mastery until I get lucky and unbox the exact champion shard I need. As a player who feels they have to save their champion shards because it costs too much BE to upgrade mastery, there is essentially no source of BE for me in the game. Regardless of how long it takes me to gain levels, levels are where the rewards are supposed to be, but I am not seeing them yet Riot.