Dear Riot, Please Help New Players Better

Elohaven··22 votes·1,349 views

Riot, if you are reading this - please listen.

We all know that runes and rune pages are absurdly high-priced. Grinding 6300 IP for a new rune page is also a long time of grinding, and this is still considering you win every game. Let's not also forget that champions are also high-priced when you want any 4800 or 6300 champion excluding outliers to that range.

I won't go into the math as another discussion already did but what I will say is this:

I've found Riot's services to new players to be horrendous. There's no real in-depth guide to helping new players or ways to help them progress within the game with true rewards. It's more of grinding than playing and then they'd have to wait to get 16 champions. At level 30, you'd have to grind a bit more to even get 16 champions - especially if you dislike the taste of 450 IP champions.

Smurfs also ruin new players' morale, making them feel their skill is horrid in comparison to the rest of League's community when it's not true. Instead of expecting players to have so much play time, Riot, I suggest you reward new accounts with their growth.

1 | Option 1 - New players should get 6300 IP when they become level 30. This should be mandated as it allows them to either get an additional rune page or go get a sweet, sweet champion they really like but it's way too expensive to buy.

Option 2 - Grant a player a random champion from the pool of beginning champions players can play. E.G. Jinx, Wukong, Lyssandra, etc.

2 | Their first chest grants them 450 RP or a free skin permanent. I think this is a small amount of RP and is enough for low-tier skins. It is also rightfully earned as they got an S in a game to gain that chest. In order to gain that RP/skin, a player must hit level 12 - the point in time they have one section of their mastery page completed. The skin will be for a champion they already own and a random one.

3 | Every 10 levels, new players get a free IP boost for one day.

At that point, players will have at least have played a decent amount of champions and can afford some runes. They'll also feel attended to by Riot, making them feel a sense of appreciation for devoting their time to Riot's game. This also would welcome a new base of players who may not have time. This spares some time for them and helps them get that little jolt of catching up they need in order to play ranked games.

Let's admit it! Many of those 6300 IP champions look wicked sick but are really expensive. They also have high skill ceilings but people can't afford them. Most of all, they're really fun to play! Why not at least give them the probability of getting a random champion from that pool of characters?

Now, you'll say "Smurfs will just abuse this." No actually - this won't be abusable. They're just playing the game more. And if they do dominate matches, it's helping other players at least grind some experience and exposes them to higher skill-tiers than themselves. Grouping players with people of the same caliber keeps them there. Smurfs are healthy and they're not common as they take a long time to level and grind for. This won't be massively abused at all. Champions/skins gained from this system can't be gifted either.

Do you guys agree with this?

10 Comments

KazaJhodo3 votes

Completely agree, new player experience is horrid. My first experience was ranked promos and thrown into silver 2. At the time, I thought it made sense. I quickly realized I was way out of my depth.

My map awareness alone was no where up to par with the people I was playing with, it was terrible. I could only play a few support champions- and I had no remote clue what I had gotten myself into.

No player doing first provisionals should be thrown into games with players that have hundreds of games played. Its beyond ridiculous.

It literally encourages players to be toxic. They are grouped in a game with someone that has no idea what they are doing, and they've played tons of games to get here- even possibly multiple seasons.

It blows my mind that this happens. Meanwhile after I have tons more experience, all of my promos since then have placed me in bronze. Literal cancer induction.

Elohaven1 votes

Yeah, I feel there should be a Summoners Rift full-on guide that guides you through the jungle and discusses basic pathing, laning, and farming. This way, newbies don't feel completely lost.

This will take a while understandably but the UIs and the discussions with Challengers/Masters should make it viable by next year.

swordofsun1 votes

{quoted}

Yeah, I feel there should be a Summoners Rift full-on guide that guides you through the jungle and discusses basic pathing, laning, and farming. This way, newbies don't feel completely lost.

I like this idea. I only had a vague idea of what a jungler did because I'd watched 2-3 LCS games, which is vastly different than MasterYi farms for 20 minutes then kills everyone. I didn't even understand what smite did when I first unlocked it.

Learning how to support has been a trial too. Some guides on what exactly a support is, their impact on the game, how to peel, and how to roam effectively would be nice. No one really even tries to support at lower levels unless they're playing with a higher ranking friend.

woodvsmurph2 votes

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Elohaven1 votes

No - this won't be for older players who already have many champions and grinded. They already have this. This is purely for League's future players. And if older players feel it's unfair, this is simply to help new players catch up. The most we should give old players is 4800 IP or 450 RP on the day this system is implemented. But none of the other benefits will go to old players and that won't be a gap closer.

It'd simply put them still way ahead of newbies. Newbies need this help more than we do. We know how to grind. Do note when I said 450 RP or a free skin permanent I meant cheap skins like Assassin Master Yi - not legendary or actual rich skins. Maybe a free skin like Riot Girl Tristana.

In addition, do you know how long it takes to hit level 30 and play ranked in League?

1-2 months of weekly playtime if you give it 1-2 hours a day(considering you have a life and school) and this is ignoring rune pages. Now add runes to this...

...Now that's where new players get slapped around. That 6300 IP is on them. They can use it for some free runes, a champion, or a rune page. This still restricts them into thinking about what they want to do and face the implications of their actions as there won't be any refund unless its a champion and they have a ticket.

It's unrealistic to expect newbies to continue to want to play a game where they don't have access to at least 50% of the content. (Masteries, runes, champions, ranked, TT, ARAM).

woodvsmurph1 votes

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Elohaven1 votes

"I get annoyed when people act like they are entitled to the world and everything should just be given to them for free without them doing anything in return" - I strongly believe you ignored my post. This is simply a thread to get Riot to help new players - not us. Not us, the experience players, the ones who did grind, the one who don't need the help. But yet you're being too toxic in this post, acting like a child and failing to read.

This still requires players to grind themselves. But let's not forget that a season is 10 weeks, and this is simply to help players advance to explore new content while not being downgraded by smurfs. The 6300 IP is only a one-time reward by the way. So players should use them to buy viable runes for their free rune pages. They can't buy champions and runes. The grind is pretty large taking about 70 wins to actually fill a page(ignoring IP boosts and losses).

Then you're comparing two completely different games: WoW and League? Really? Do you know why games are made as subscriptions? That's because WoW's content is very expansive - much more than League's and new players can immerse themselves in a large variety of diversity within the game.

I get annoyed by obnoxious people who don't read threads and go on rants thinking they're right. And why I know you could not read the thread?

"Riot, I suggest you reward new accounts with their growth." - Elohaven

It's a suggestion thread to suggest ideas for Riot.

Also, League is League not swtor, now wow, not hot. These games have different factors into why they're structured the way they are. And please don't compare different games so vaguely. There are way too many reasons as to why your counterargument has a weak backup(financial, marketing, social - I just don't want to type a whole essay explaining why a RPG like WoW shouldn't be compared to League or why HotS has a playerbase different from League's largely due to the different and its targets playing style. It's also a reason why League players do not migrate to HotS. HotS has a smaller playerbase than League for reasons).

But apparently your ego is too high so you feel the need to be obnoxiously rude. So how about you take the time to analyze, give a formal argument, then I'll take you seriously. Your counterarguments actually come from different environments and have various factors affecting them.

Dank Magiciann1 votes

i agree

TONY IS SO HOT1 votes

I just think players should get keystones from the start, because it so unfun without one.

EpicPizzaMaster1 votes

Agreed. When i first started, a couple of months before the release of Hextech crafting, i had no freaking idea what i was doing all the time. I was scared of playing PvP because the couple of times I tried it i got stomped and kept playing against bots for weeks. But the nice thing at the time was that you got 400 RP when you get to level 5 (or was it 500?) anyway now you just get a stupid free chest with always the same rewards. A garen, an Ashe, and an Ashe skin.

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