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Riot today feels... slow

PaffWasTaken··72 votes·13,913 views

I was talking to my friend how the game felt several years ago. It actually went forward, riot actively added more things to the game and fixed what was wrong every 2 or 3 weeks. And now here we are, waiting for months for the reworks we care for, for the fixes, nerfs and buffs that the game needs, for the requests that thousands of players are asking for and for the things who could fix the game for the countless persons who are quitting the game.

I feel like the old Riot would already fixed most of the flaws of today, or atleast they would've tried much faster

Edit: I didn't say that the "old" Riot was perfect, but the "new" Riot definitely feels like being miles away from its former self's efficiency. Yes, some previous game flaws were badly managed back then, but as of today, almost every single changes that Riot makes definitely dosen't satisfy the community, even though that its number is steadily decreasing since several months (Please, don't bring the "League of Legends dying is a myth" argument; this isn't the topic and several recent posts talks about this topic and shows raw and reliable data clearly showing the game's popularity going downhill faster and faster)

36 Comments

Dnyarri38 votes

Have my upvote.

I'd rather have Riot change the game drastically at the moment (with the risk of fucking up) than those baby steps that they are taking right now. Things are just happening too slowly (or not at all) - last season wasn't particularly good and alot of the problems are still not solved way into Season 8. It's frustrating because I really really want to like this game again. I mean, even if they can't fix everything instantly, they could at least communicate with the community more openly (even though Meddler is doing what he can).

I hope midseason will make it better, but maybe it's just time to move on.

PaladinNO19 votes

Tencent came, Tencent saw, Tencent took over. ...And it went downhill ever since.

RIP a game "for gamers, by gamers"; RIP season 3, back when this game was good.

Leetri6 votes

I mean, Tencent owned the majority of Riot during S3.

PaladinNO3 votes

Yes, but what does history teach us when something becomes too big for its own good?

In this case, they took "competitive" over "casual", and that's pretty much a textbook killer of fun.

Battalion3 votes

If Tencent was already a significant owner of Riot, which it really was back in Season 3, and that's your hayday of League, why would Tencent (who has always been a business, run like a business, for businessmen) suddenly be the issue? It's not Tencent, it's the people who saw big game developer resumes and said "Oh yeah this guy is qualified". They might be qualified, but that doesn't mean they know what they're doing. The amount of degree holding or otherwise qualified people who are actually terrible at their jobs is oustounding and game development is obviously no different (ex. every Early access game ever)

But what do I know? I'm just a bully who's picking on a small indie company name Rito.

PaladinNO2 votes

Well, you certainly know how to pour petrol on the flames there, mate, because I read

early access

...and immediately felt like hurling before going on a killing spree.

Seriously, whenever I see a game offering "early access" or "DLCs", I instantly blacklist that company permanently.

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/649/515/5a8.jpg

Which is why my game collection pretty much ends at 2005.

Battalion1 votes

ARK: Survival Evolved had been in Early Access for 2 (or 3) years. They just released their game out of early access a few months ago, maybe about 4, and at 4x the E.A cost, but released their first paid DLC a almost over a year ago. Which means the company who's game was still in Early Access had been using E.A money to fund a paid DLC, that E.A purchasers still had to purchase for $15 or $30 USD, I forget.

PaladinNO1 votes

EA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJrxKiW5f-4

I actually got an EA game...it's called "Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit". ^^ That's pretty much where my care for EA ends.

DLCs and microtransactions are disgusting - you pay way more than necessary for a game, you don't get value for money, and you don't actually own anything.

Maybe that's why it's so popular among developers.

http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3984914

I wonder how it would be if for example Valve came on my door to take away my Half-Life cardboard boxes due to violating the Steam(ing POS) rules.

DBS Ronovon15 votes

Riot has so many problems as if its impossible for the people running the game to be fired for poor decision making. If I was in charge of changing the game and firing people, I'd fire the people in charge of Player Behavior and Penalties, MMR, Honor system, Chat system, Reporting system, Champ Select, Alternate game mode design, and Jungle changes.

T4underbolt16 votes

Let's start from the fact that thanks to meddler and ghostcrawler replacing morello we have what we have right now. They took over and forced their unhealthy and unbalanced and toxic game design. They screwed up one game already like this. I wonder why let them do that to LoL.

Cosmic Warper3 votes

{quoted}

Let's start from the fact that thanks to meddler and ghostcrawler replacing morello we have what we have right now. They took over and forced their unhealthy and unbalanced and toxic game design. They screwed up one game already like this. I wonder why let them do that to LoL.

Don't act like champions and changes in S3 and S4 are better than they are now. Take off the nostalgia goggles and remember old ap nidalee, kassadin, supports being useless, assassins oneshotting as a result of supports being useless (not saying i agree with the current state of supports), shyvana renekton mundo meta, devourer, etc.

T4underbolt2 votes

You could ban most broken champs and wait for their fixes and had influence as a solo lane. So it's not nostalgia. It's a simple need for balance and healthy gameplay

Velasan2 votes

You know some people list these things like they were bad. I played during Kassadin era and he was banned most of the time anyways. Devourer was one of my favorite items along with old Feral Flare. Miss them both. :/

SILVER ELO GOD4 votes

{quoted}

Let's start from the fact that thanks to meddler and ghostcrawler replacing morello we have what we have right now. They took over and forced their unhealthy and unbalanced and toxic game design. They screwed up one game already like this. I wonder why let them do that to LoL.

Yeah for how much people trash talked Morello, the guy had his shit straight. Season 4 was garbage but there was this golden time in early-mid season 5 when the game was really FINE (almost felt as good as s2 and s3) and then they slowly started taking huge dumps on it. Literally after some patches I would be like ??????. And I'm still salty they made Shyv and Nidalee jungle exclusive picks and almost did it to Rengar too.

Hexs Fortune6 votes

In terms of content such as reworks, new champions, events and skins, riot is moving at a tremendous speed.

KazaJhodo1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Hexs Fortune,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=AUA7AR6m,comment-id=0005,timestamp=2018-04-16T13:58:08.104+0000)

In terms of content such as reworks, new champions, events and skins, riot is moving at a tremendous speed.

Yeah I agree, and besides the fact that reworks/newchamps are always broken- always, clearly on purpose, I say they do a pretty amazing job.

Balance isn't really the right word for it, champions just have different uses/strats/spikes so on.

The real problem I see in the game right now is game quality. The skillset of players in games is really random.

50% winrate is prioritized over game quality. That right there is a huge, huge reason why games are such a mess. Riot is giving you worse 'teammates' when you win alot, instead of pushing you up the ladder to better opponents.

ModKnightsKemplar5 votes

Follow-up question: does it matter to you if those fixes don't work?

Riot often says that they want to avoid making these band-aid solutions that just cause more problems, but it seems like many of the Boards regulars were happier when the game's meta was more in flux. Like, maybe the solution would cause new problems, but at least it address the old one, thus keeping the game fresh. Is that something you would agree or disagree with?

Tomoe Gozen8 votes

{quoted}

Follow-up question: does it matter to you if those fixes don't work?

Riot often says that they want to avoid making these band-aid solutions that just cause more problems, but it seems like many of the Boards regulars were happier when the game's meta was more in flux. Like, maybe the solution would cause new problems, but at least it address the old one, thus keeping the game fresh. Is that something you would agree or disagree with?

I don't agree with the band-aid fixes personally. No one's actually addressing an issue this way, it's always left for later. Sometimes this might be the right course of action if you need to respond quickly and then make adjustments (might've been worth for Zoe) while if we've gotten a band-aid solution for Liss, we'd have likely gotten her new passive that would've felt OK a few patches and the same problems would've arisen.

It does suck sometimes to wait longer for a change for something you feel passionate about but it's a necessary evil in order to make sure you're hitting the right mark. Being all over the place and taking a shot in the dark isn't helping anyone, it's just wasting Riot's resources.

Last time i heard from boards, the general opinion was that they don't approve of big changes because oh boy, they have to adapt to play League again. And yet now, the completely opposite opinion surfaces that big fluctuations are OK when RIot's dropping the nerf bat hard to quickly "address" the problem areas.

It's a general misconception that those times were actually better for League, mainly because the champion pool was "larger". It was only an illusion because when Riot quickly nerfed someone, someone else would've taken their place. So we were quickly going through the available roster on a much faster rotation than what we have today, where weeks can pass before we see Cait/Ez get replaced with measly 2 other Marksmen that rotate on specific nerfs to others.

The other misconception is that while LCS lasts, pros usually play on a single "pro" patch for quite a while before Riot allows them to play on other patches. Just watching weeks of footage on 8.5 patch (for example) gives you an illusion that Riot's not nerfing those strong picks in order to influence the meta. It's like they're fine with it for a long time. WHich isn't the case at all.

Karunamon1 votes

The other misconception is that while LCS lasts, pros usually play on a single "pro" patch for quite a while before Riot allows them to play on other patches.

This is problematic on its own, really. If literally everyone up to and including challenger level are expected to git gud with having the rug constantly pulled out from under them, it makes no sense to remove that variable (part of the game) from the highest levels of play.

Tomoe Gozen1 votes

{quoted}

This is problematic on its own, really. If literally everyone up to and including challenger level are expected to git gud with having the rug constantly pulled out from under them, it makes no sense to remove that variable (part of the game) from the highest levels of play.

I get the pros and cons of such a decision, though. Pros would be that the pros get more time in advance to test out the content and changes we are playing with (outside of LCS) to have a working and stable strategy for the future events while the cons are that we, as spectators, often get borish LCS streams where weeks on end we get to see samey-same champ compositions get picked/banned by either teams.

One of the things i think that's a pro player skill is the ability to adapt on the go. So i'd allow pro scene to use the most recent patches for us (except for new reworks and champs for a certain period of time), in order to clearly avoid the abuse cases of introducing relatively new things to disrupt the actual strategies of pro teams.

ModKnightsKemplar1 votes

I have shared that opinion for most of my time playing this game, but I have to admit, it did keep things interesting to have things on a faster rotation. The issue I take with the approach is hidden in one of your other comments on this:

where weeks can pass before we see Cait/Ez get replaced with measly 2 other Marksmen that rotate on specific nerfs to others

The problem is, while the changes are slower because they are supposed to actually make it more balanced, we still see a hierarchy of champs. I would love to hear a Rioter explain that the gap between the top and the bottom is smaller than it used to be, but I don't know; it doesn't feel that way, even if it is true.

Helmight2 votes

I think we still get a hierarchy because it's easier to default to the current B-tier picks than it is to take a look at the C- and D-tier champions and see if they're any better in the new environment. It's the same reason pros take a while to recognize when a pick is good - why spend time practicing someone that only MIGHT be good when you can instead just play the champs that you know are decent?

So unless Riot buffed the underperforming picks at the same time, most players aren't willing to try them out and instead go for the former B-tier champs now that the A's got nerfed.

There's also the case that, at the end of the day, a competitive game is always going to have a hierarchy. Not all champs are made equal, so people will always prioritize certain picks over others. It's worse in the ADC class since the primary thing they have to bring to the table is damage and nothing else, but it certainly happens elsewhere.

ModKnightsKemplar1 votes

I don't buy that analysis. We have decent data on most of the champs on the roster every patch; most every champ has at least some dedicated mains that give them a significant amount of games on the patch. That's how a lot of the OP picks are found out; people who already play that champ start doing amazing on it.

If you go to op.gg and look up champs, you can see win rates, play rates, and even breakdowns of what the most successful item and rune builds look like. It's not that we lack the data to identify the strong champs.

I hear you that there are sometimes really weird strats that aren't discovered the same day the patch hits, but I would dispute the idea that underperforming champs are underperforming because no one is trying. People are definitely trying, but they aren't having success with the typical strategies for those champs. It's not a solution to act like "well, you just haven't tried anything weird enough yet." It's often the case that some champs just can't do what their competition can do.

Cosnirak1 votes

I would dispute the idea that underperforming champs are underperforming because no one is trying.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Often no one is trying it well enough or in the right way to do well in the new patch. A lot of champions receive little to no play at the highest levels of solo queue and it's not until some pro or well known and skilled streamer/youtuber shows off some potential choice that it remotely catches on and turns out to be good. This certainly isn't always the case, but I think it does happen at times.

Also people are generally terrible at data analysis so some stuff just takes longer than it should to be "known."

Tomoe Gozen1 votes

{quoted}

I have shared that opinion for most of my time playing this game, but I have to admit, it did keep things interesting to have things on a faster rotation. The issue I take with the approach is hidden in one of your other comments on this:

I'd personally love to have more viable champs from our abundant champ pool at any given time, for LCS. But we all know that pros don't really care about innovation, they most often min-max the already proven strategies and picks in a highly coordinated environment, which leads to weeks on end of same 20+ champs being played over and over again.

remakoro1 votes

You make it sound like every problem around can only be fixed by breaking something else and there is no clearly visible isolated issues.

ModKnightsKemplar2 votes

I talk like the playerbase may not be that happy with the "slow and steady approach."

Here's the thing: there have been a lot of great balance decisions and changes in the last couple years. There have also been some flops. The faster pace is clearly something that some players miss. Is it a majority? I don't know. Can I honestly say that there have been the same number of successes and flops compared to when the changes were faster? I don't know.

These are things for Riot to collect data and think about. I'm not pretending to provide answers, but I do think they are questions that are worth asking.

As an example of what I'm saying, I would have strongly preferred an over-nerf to Ardent meta that could then get re-buffed until we landed where we wanted; instead, we got weeks of the least interesting bot-lane meta in a long time. There are definitely cases where faster changes are better. Finding that line is the real challenge.

Wolfeur3 votes

I feel like the old Riot would already fixed most of the flaws of today, or atleast they would've tried much faster

If old Riot was such a blessing, why were there problems in the first place?

SmashinBob1 votes

{quoted}

I was talking to my friend how the game felt several years ago. It actually went forward, riot actively added more things to the game and fixed what was wrong every 2 or 3 weeks. And now here we are, waiting for months for the reworks we care for, for the fixes, nerfs and buffs that the game needs, for the requests that thousands of players are asking for and for the things who could fix the game for the countless persons who are quitting the game.

I feel like the old Riot would already fixed most of the flaws of today, or atleast they would've tried much faster

Well reworking always takes more time than making something brand new. Especially on the programming side, as far as balancing changes, its often better to wait as people adress builds, playstyles and compositions when somethign changes, and it takes time to properly read into those, league has become pretty huge and they try to do less mistakes overall, there has been a lot of things in the past where they would create absolute chaos on the rift.

ModCaptainMårvelous1 votes

I think you're overestimating how many of the problems they "fixed" and how many they just pushed under the rug in the form of nerfs.

It's an old addage but we have the examples of Olaf and Evelynn: Both problematic champions, Riot's solution to these characters was to kneecap the shit out of them and make them so bad to play that they didn't have to worry about them ever coming into play. Morello himself said that Poppy was purposefully kept bad because of her kit and if anyone found a way to make her work they'd "nerf the hell out of her."

Comparative to today, while it takes longer and they go over a champ's issues perhaps too slowly, you don't really have to worry about that champion being nerfed to the point of being a joke. Direct comparison is Zoe: Despite taking a while to be nerfed in a meaningful manner, Zoe is still a decent pick in certain situations. If this was 2012 League, we'd call her "being Zoe'd".

I'd also argue that reworks/updates come out faster (We've gotten more champ VUs this year than Riot ever did earlier), although some of those have been hit or miss. Mainly class updates were problems.

Velasan1 votes

To the contrary... they add a lot more things, it's just that it creates an even bigger back log of things they haven't got to yet. A lot of projects get thrown on the back burner for ages.

ThunderSkelett1 votes

Well focus on the important ones then

Dope Solo1 votes

Slow or just unresponsive to obvious problems?

Nunya Bezwacks1 votes

i didn't read much just enough to get the jist and thats because its True when i started i was being blitz'd by updates, patches ,nerfs, buffs, and new characters every week there was something and it felt good that i found a game the devs cared about enough to put that much effort into despite the aggravation i felt from having to download a new patch every few days. The problem is they sold out to tencent games who said "fuck the players we want money" next thing you know we were being charged for re-colors (things competitors were giving for in game currency), the game was being balanced for the LCS not solo queue, and now they ignore everyone saying ADCs and tanks are to fucking strong that its not fun to either get one shot from a point and click attack that you can't outplay,or getting run down by Trion Juggernaut.

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