When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?

Tier 1 Tier 2 runes probably shouldn't be in the game. Everyone is better off if they don't even get runes until the good ones. As far as the free week system I don't have much of a problem with it. It lets new players see different champions that they will have to know about if they want to play the game.

Riot really needs to read this, as every word that you said is 100% true. It looks dam near impossible to newcomers. and champions take too long to unlock if you are playing casually. If you're one of those guys who plays 10 games a day? Sure, you can get enough IP in a very short time, but for people who just play for fun, its pretty impossible. Upvote this thread guys, we need a red in here.

This is so accurate it hurts. Part of the reason I stayed away from LoL for as long as I did was because of how massive the learning curve is. Even when I gave in and started learning to play, mostly to have something to bond with over friends, I felt constantly harassed, and like I wasn't learning anything or getting anywhere. For months it felt like I was stagnant, couldn't seem to really get any of the basics down. Sure, looking back now I can see that it was a part of the trip but there's NO reason it should be so much of it.

My brother is trying to learn to play with a couple also brand new friends. I am watching, not smurfing with them, but trying to teach them (because apparently I am alone among the player base in not being a tremendous cunt) and I feel like this experience might legally be considered a form of abusive hazing if taken to court.

I'm a newer player (lvl12 now), and I totally feel their pain. I started with several friends, and only myself and one other friend have stuck around so far after the brutal introduction.

My first ten levels, it was NOTHING but smurfs, re-rolls, and newbies like myself being seal clubbed. I basically grit my teeth and just pushed through it, but it was hellacious. Now I'm starting to run into the fun of a much higher level player joining queue with a brand new character and getting stomped by them instead. I'm told 'the MMR is supposed to balance that situation', but that's complete freaking rubbish. When I'm level 10 facing a level 20-something with all those masteries and runes, it's just completely time to be farmed. And I'm told it's going to get worse as my mid teens, early twenties, I'll start seeing ranked players joining with lower level friends and rerolls just completely stomping the matches.

I've also had to go to completely third party sites like 2ez.gg to get a better understanding of items, situational buys, and counter buys because of how useless the in-game tutorial was on items. Same goes for runes (although I'm glad I found out not to buy any more of them until T3 runes), masteries, and just champions as the game is very light on actual information when it comes to actually playing the game. DOTA has a great system where you can load up player item lists, skill orders, combo advice, etc... both outside and inside matches, and each item/skill/etc... can have an author tag explaining why they are doing this.

IP, I'm not sure how they haven't gotten at least 6300 in a month. I have probably 7k in champions, 500ish in crappy T1 runes (whoops), and about 2200 IP saved up right now and I'm not sure when I started, but I don't think it was a month ago. And my win rate is only around 35-40% (I was about 1 in 2, but since hitting 10 I'm getting into a lot of games with DC's, and one sided stomps.). However, instead of the 400 starter RP they give us, they should just give us one free champion of our choice. Maybe exclude the brand new guys like Kalista and the Sand Queen one coming out, but yeah... The new champ rotation is nice, but when you are just starting and don't understand where these guys are supposed to go, what they do, what they need to avoid, etc.. it just makes some horrible matches in the beginning.

I will agree though the IP grind seems a little silly. Knowing I need so much IP at 20 or 21 for t3 runes is just ugh. The game should only have 1 set of runes, even if it means they make it take longer to open up rune slots until 30.

The bots also teach you nothing in this game but bad behavior. The bots are sloppy, easy, and way too easy to fall into the trap of using them to speed up leveling and IP farming. You learn bad habits like overextending, not warding, only playing with a gold/lvl advantage, improper times to push for Baron/Dragon, etc...I wish I would have gone straight into live matches instead of doing my first few levels in bots as I was worse than a new player when I did my first couple live ones.

Also, I'd consider chat restricting the games for awhile in the lowbie games. It has been HORRIBLE. Constant fighting, blaming, braggarts, and just overall rudeness from Day One. This is a problem because it's showing other players this is acceptable behavior, so a lot of the ones who do move on to higher levels will probably carry this toxic attitude with them.

It may sound like I hate the game, but I don't. I actually really enjoy it, but I can see where the system Riot has in place is complete and utter crap, and for every person like me that sticks around, several others probably throw up their hands and just walk away.

/endrant

Riot tends to stay very far away from topics based around New Player experience and the toxicity of smurfs. You won't be getting a reply here.

To fix runes they should just give you the ability to upgrade tiers so you don't actually lose any IP by buying lower tier runes.

For example: Tier 1: 15 IP Upgrade to Tier 2: 80 - 15 = 65 IP Upgrade to Tier 3: 205 - 80 = 125 IP

Problem solved.

I agree. Level 1-2 tier runes are noob traps and thats all, free week however is nice for trying out champions before you buy them. With limited returns i'd prefer free week to regretting a buy.

I remember when I started League...like there was always that one smurf that got **really **fed and proceeded to be such a toxic person. I spent literally all my IP on tier 2 runes before I saw a forum post that it was a horrible thing to buy. I think they should get rid of Tier 1 and 2 runes but idk how to fix the smurf thing D:

Smurfing is an issue, however, I would not claim that just because they get demolished in a particular match it is due to a smurf. During beta I used to main Evelynn (she was my first character to seriously play) and did duo bot with a friend who was also new (as was I). I would take smite and heavily roam from level 4+ grabbing Blue Buff early with smite (which is fairly close to what later became a very serious issue of roaming/jungle Eve during S2 onward I think it was once people caught on to the fact that wards didn't counter her due to how fast she could close a distance before people realize and try to deal with her/flee). I averaged in the range of 40-80 kills almost every single game as her. Eventually I got bored and started maining Teemo where I averaged 20-40 kills per game. I had an extremely high win vs loss ratio back then and I was completely new to League of Legends which was still in beta. The same thing could, effectively, occur for new players who adapt well during a certain point in time of a game's life and may really hit it off with particular characters, strategies, etc. Same thing happened in Darkness and Light SEA easily topping as the best player by a very large margin despite it being in early beta to the point I could solo enemy teams by mid and late game and this was not due to balance issues as the game was extremely balanced. Same thing for other people with Halo series, or fighting games, etc. You see people come from Starcraft/Dota series and try to climb to the top declaring their effort in a short period of time. Some people just adapt extremely well with certain games. Then you have the dunces who just keep dying and dying and dying (no offense to them >.<) and you may wonder how they can be so terrible (had a roomate like that). Thus this issue is no where near as straight forward/easy as one would like it to be.

There is also the issue of non-30s being matched against entire teams of gold/diamond/plat/etc. mixes with maybe 3-4 non-30s and 1-2 bronze/unranked on their team. Match making has very serious issues atm.

As for the paywall and noob traps... There are a ton of viable champs for 400~3k ip range and there is the champion rotation. Unfortunately, the 6.3k IP range really isn't friendly at all (but this is one way of Riot generating their revenue). Thankfully, we have most of them being relatively affordable.

Runes... T1 are so bloody cheap that they can be an effective choice as you work on getting at least a couple of champions and make your way to 30 despite their low stats they are not worthless (16 ip runes, etc... I mean really). T2 are simply far too expensive for their slight boost over T1 and their neglible stats compared to T3 as a final alternative. T3 are quite expensive but there are several cheaper runes that work excellently as general purpose (flat AD/armor/mres and scaling mres) with the only real issue being the price on Quints.

Issues I take with new players that Riot doesn't handle properly: -Smurfs (not always the case as I indicate but it IS an issue and while Riot has some measures to deal with it I don't believe it works correctly due to matchmaking) -Match Making is utterly broken before you have a pretty solid number of games and in some cases it clearly doesn't work at all (a non-premade non-30 4x and one bronze player vs a 4 man premade of gold/gold/plat/diamond and a random non-30 should NEVER happen EVER, period and I have screenshots of such match making too). -Botting is an issue with the AI vs Bots. -AI vs Bots doesn't really have advanced enough AI and uses cheap tricks to try to get by so it does not properly prepare players for matches against real players and actually puts them at a substantially worse position when they start playing vs real players. It also acts as a scapegoat for those frustrated with real players and their performance and handicaps their growth as a player.

Apologies for poor formatting, really lazy post.

A million times this.

Bump for heavy support.

Probably the thing I hate most is the tier 1 and 2 runes. Why are they there anyway? All they do is become an IP sink for players who don't know better. One thing they could do is allow people to pick any one champion in the game for free once they hit level 15. That way they would have enough experience to know the character they want while not just spending all the IP they earned from their first 10 levels on it.

209 up votes.

8 pages of responses.

Red acknowledgement: 0

Honestly, I think new players when coming to the game on referral from someone else should be allowed to pick 5-10 champions they think look cool to UNLOCK AND OWN PERMANENTLY. YES, YOU HEARD ME. Who cares if they pick all 6300s? They still get barely any content overall. It'd also allow them to have more fun playing ARAM, or learning the game. They're going to be losing non-stop at first with all the damn smurfs, why not allow them a few free champs? Maybe to avoid people making a bunch of alt accounts for different champions, make it like "you have to play actively for a week and at least hit level 5" or something first?

With the amount of champions we have, that'd still leave them over 90% of the content to unlock. Plus skin money.

Why not smurf to help rather than just to smurf? Sure I may be a smurf, but I don't play face rolling champions or pub stompers (okay maybe blitz may be considered one). I try to be constructive and help out by pulling in bots and stuff, but sometimes they have to learn the hard way. I once had a fellow claim that he/she didn't need any AD in any of their builds and proceeded to build only AS items on . However, she eventually bought a last whisper after getting beaten down a few times by the intermediate bots.

Unfortunately, I have little experience with the smurfing in PvP with the exception of when my friend was trying to get his girl into the game. After a month of playing we decided to help her transition into PvP, which turned out to be a big mistake. During the loading screen, I identified a few smurfs sporting SKT1 in their names, one was and the other . Long story short, his GF went bot lane and the two enemy smurfs exploited her to snowball. Needless to say his girl friend was almost in tears by the end of it, because of how useless she felt.

However, that IP wall is something that needs to be addressed.

Sadly the pvp was so shitty that I learned on bots.

Soooo, let them play vs intermediate bots? Let them play ARAM or dominion? If there are 3 of them let them play twisted tree line? With their win rate, the reduced IP gain shouldn't be an issue.

Under level 30 smurfs are definitely an issue. It's incredible how much people care about winning irrelevant games.

NO runes or masteries should exist.

No masteries? Are you kidding me?

It's a gimmick to get people to grind more games.

Aside from the fact that runes actually have a competitive aspect to them... yes.

Old players need an IP sink, new ones who play maybe once or twice a week need easy access to ip.

Just gonna highlight this because it's a great idea.

What is even the point of smurfing? Why can't you just check a box saying you're already a player and get a lvl 30 acc automatically? Aside from making the new players get hopelessly wrecked, I see 0 reason to force regular players to play a ton of boring games against newbies who are just trying to learn. I don't know about you, but I don't get any satisfaction out of basically going into primary school and beating up a bunch of innocent kids.

I am new, been playing for a month and a week now. This game isn't hard, at all, because I came from a background of MMO's which require a far larger understanding of how everything works. That aside, it's not that this game is hard to learn, it's that nobody has patience. Hell, I have been playing not long at all and find myself frustrated when my support steals kills from the ADC, or when the jungler refuses to actually gank when you're struggling in a lane cause of a bad match-up. League is rough because it's SO team based that individual performance hardly matters until late game. Sure, you can "get fed" early, but that's usually if everything works well. Good ganks, good support, lack of skill on the other side, etc. This doesn't necessarily mean, if you're good, you win. The worst part is, you get somebody who is struggling vs. a Fiora or a Yi. That's GG. Impossible to comeback unless the game drags out.

You know what I think is dumb? I have all the champs I want to play, which is about 9-10. I am new-ish (been around a little over a month), but I am nearing my 30. If I want to even play ranked, I need what.. 20-25 champs? WHY. I don't want to spend the damn money on the champs, because at that point it's just wasting money for characters I'll never play. What's even worse is that I did mystery skins with my friends recently and of course, the champs I do not want to play are the champs I get skins for. WHY. This is something I will never understand.

Another thing.. When I first started, I got RP after a week or so (since I was making ass IP because I was constantly playing with 20~30 level people), and I wasted some. WELL, I used my refunds and now... you're just f***ed? Like, why? You've already made the money on the RP, why can't I refund more than 3 times? Make the resell value lower than what you paid, like 3/4 the price or something. Penalize us, sure, but don't limit us. We are the paying customers, with time and money, why aren't you abiding to what WE want. And don't anybody say, "this will increase hacking". No, this is about as valid as me saying because you're playing a violence based game, you're going to go shoot up a school or mall. That is a invalid argument, because it's not true. People will do what they're going to do anyways, so if somebody is hacking accounts, they're doing it either way. For things like Mystery Skins, there should be a no refund policy because you're rolling the dice, that's a gamble you take. But give us options for more refunds (lord knows you'll probably make us purchase RP to get more), but still, allow us to refund those skins we bought when we were noob (like buying Xerath for RP, or 2 Quinn skins that I never use). Don't make me sit here and feel like I have wasted money or time playing this game, because this is how games die. Sure, you're thriving, but all good things die.

Yes, being new, I am probably still missing stuff. But these are some of the most immediate problems that I have experienced (and frustration). I know there are smurfs out there, but I never really experienced it much because I played with my level 30 friends from the start. Which honestly was probably better. Also, I had all chat turned off so I didn't know people were yelling at me on the other team until I turned level 25 or so. Either way, I believe that they need to fix the RP system as well and allow more refunds. Because like I said, they already made their money, the RP is worthless currency, refunding it has no downside to them.

I am not saying I know it all, or I am super pro at the game, but I am saying from what I have gathered playing this month and a week, these are the things I have noticed wrong with the system.

Ouch 4 month old post in the top 10 threads of the forums and Riot still has not acknowledged this huge problem. Kinda sad to me.

lol I actually quit league after a week of picking it up. I only started playing again after I found out some IRL friends played.

Now with a delay in E he will feed with all the ganks they made against him. He will just die over and over again. You wanted to buff him because the removal of the dfg ? You ruined him. All the fast champions that can jump in your head are ok, but you just fucked up that stunt. Ok.

I empathize and agree overall,but "not one 6300 champion?"

Plenty of perfectly great, useful champs are outside the high-end bracket...

"They've been playing regularly for a month. They haven't earned the IP for one 6300 champion."

Uh, nice lie, OP.

What do you possibly mean by regularly?

{quoted}

My brother is trying to learn to play with a couple also brand new friends. I am watching, not smurfing with them, but trying to teach them (because apparently I am alone among the player base in not being a tremendous cunt) and I feel like this experience might legally be considered a form of abusive hazing if taken to court.

HAHAHAHAHA oh man if you truly feel that then get off the internet. Someone being mean online? Hold the press!

With three real new players every game, they have a 20% overall winrate and get demolished by abusive obnoxious smurfs every. Single. Game. At level 10 there is no light at the end of the tunnel in sight. Until they hit level 30, it seems they will not be allowed to play a single fair game of League of Legends. Oh, and speaking of not being allowed to play...

It happens but dont over exaggerate that its a constant problem. It happens and in reality, it teaches you how to actually play. Got rekt by someone? Learn from it. How did they do this better than you and apply it to your next matches. Or do what I do, look at guides on how to play certain champs better

One of them has already blown IP on tier 1 runes. I told them afterwards that they'd completely wasted everything they'd worked for and they very nearly just quit. The noob traps in this game are retarded and more toxic than any player.

The only part I agree with. Tier 1 and 2 runes are beyond wasteful. Give pre lvl 30 accounts free access to tier 2 runes and let them experiment with them. That would tremendously help new players.

Oh and let's talk about dat IP wall. They've been playing regularly for a month. They haven't earned the IP for one 6300 champion. If I played WoW, and by level 40 hadn't earned a single item, I would probably quit.

How? I was able to earn a 6300 IP champ in a month along with 3150 and 1350 champs throughout the same timeframe. Tell them to invest IP like money.

So let's chat, Riot. I want to hear someone defend the system that's actively screwing over these three new players. I want to ask how you feel about me telling them that sorry, the champion they liked last week won't bevavailable for two more months and they will never earn the IP for them before level 15, so unless they want to pay 10 bucks for less than 1% of the content of this game they're shit outta luck.

Not sure what to tell you but thats how MMOs work as well. You got to grind to get a certain skill or item.

Tell them to look at guides, the wiki to understand ratios (which I dont know why Riot wouldnt give the ratios ingame) and look how some professionals play. Majority of us who are in the upper levels had to go through the same experience like what you're complaining about. Does Riot needs to address some of the faults in their prelvl 30 system? Hell yeah.

But all in all, im going to tell you what the Dark Souls community would tell you and what im going to tell you, coming from someone that was Bronze 4 to Gold 4: Git gud.