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The new player experience

Quepha··5 votes·863 views

What happens when a new player asks people what they're in for? They get this:

You will not enjoy it. It has the worst new player experience I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing. It's so fucking bad, I'm level 22 right now and constantly getting matched against level 30's with full runes/keystones while half my team doesn't even have keystones or t3 runes, just what the fuck.

Leveling 20-30 also takes a fucking decade, it's like 300 games or something stupid for those levels and 95% of your games will literally be decided at the loading screen.

Masteries and runes matter too much for riot to think it's ok to match 30's against 20's and 20-25's against 10-15's. I just don't even know what the fuck they're thinking.

It's obvious the majority of the player base is 30 and the new player experience isn't even considered by riot because this games retention rate on new players is probably less than 5% with how awful it is now, and only veterans are left playing so why the fuck would they waste time and resources on something pointless.

TLDR: Shit new game experience, you will playing insufferable 1 sided matches for ~500 matches then still not even have enough champions or runes to fill roles properly unless you spend money on a bunch of champions(like $60-100 worth when they're on sale only).

The XP grind is terrible, the initial champ grind is terrible, the rune grind is inexcusably bad.

15 Comments

Miku Lv992 votes

Yeah it sucks, and for even more reasons than the ones you said. It's so hard to understand how to do better in so many ways in games where just everything you do works or nothing you do works, too. Or it's just too tempting to think that he just had higher stats from being level 30 so that's why you lost, obviously you did nothing wrong. And it's very easy to get misled into thinking bad things are good so it'll just take forever to figure out how to even get to the basis from which anything else can be figured out from. IMO if you don't already have an account at level 30 at this point, you should just never play.

At least you can play ARAM or co-op vs. AI and those games don't seem as bad.

ZLbSwAR23I2 votes

Oh yeah, new players experience is terrible.

Fuckin' smurfs, man. (myself included)

TragicTrajectory2 votes

Current new player experience is god awful.

Step 1: account creation, simple enough. Step 2: Patch for hours. Annoying but standard. Step 3: Tutorials the first is useless and the second does its job. At this point things start to get bad Step 4: Intro bots with 2-4 leveling bots that just march up and down mid. Step 5: Meet toxic players in beginner mode that threaten to report you because they wanted to play that champ or any other reason really. Step 6: PvP for the first time where you get destroyed by smurf accounts. Step 7: lose enough at PvP to either get away from the smurfs or step 8: try other game modes like dominion because nothing else is unlocked. Step 9: realize dominion is nothing but bots and go back to coop vs AI. Step 10: spend hours days playing in a game mode that is impossible to lose. Step 11: you are now level 30 and can play the game as intended. [slayer-jinx-unamused] Yay...

There are other aspects like how the grind encourages you to buy xp boosts and xp win boosts reward you for playing longer games. So you are basically rewarded for not helping your team to drag out a bot game. Unreasonable queue times for anything out side of bots. Way too much content in the store and only the oldest of champions having a decent bundle. And tier 1 and 2 runes that only exist as a trap to get newer players to waste their ip on, seriously riot you have almost 130 champions new players do not need more IP sinks.

NoobLearninGame1 votes

One tip, the 6300 IP champs when on sale, when you compare their RP cost to other champs, are the best value per dollar. I was buying all the most expensive champs for a while using RP just to have them, but only when they were on sale, then stopped. Only bought like one 4800 IP champ on sale because I wanted it right then.

One thing to look up is when 6300 IP champs are going to be brought down to 4800 IP, because if they're next in line, or one of the next 3 or so in line, you might want to hold off on buying them with RP. The oldest 6300 IP champ released is the next one in line.

I also waited until Rune Pages were on sale and bought those, preferably with RP I bought when they were giving double bonus RP.

Would have taken a very long time to get them otherwise (at the rate I play), the rest you can much more easily get with IP, though you still have to make some choices if you want more expensive champs. I'd focus as much IP as I can on the more vital runes, and try to settle for cheaper champs for a while if you'll buy them with IP. Unless you find a specific champ that you try during a free week that costs more IP, and it really clicks with you, as long as you're pretty sure it won't keep happening, then I'd save up for it, putting some of the runes I need by the wayside so I can have a champ I want to try maining.

You can settle for a few basic types of runes for a while, thought it's nice to have enough options to be able to specialize for every champ's needs in a variety of situations.

Quepha2 votes

{quoted}

One tip, the 6300 IP champs when on sale, when you compare their RP cost to other champs, are the best value per dollar. I was buying all the most expensive champs for a while using RP just to have them, but only when they were on sale, then stopped. Only bought like one 4800 IP champ on sale because I wanted it right then.

One thing to look up is when 6300 IP champs are going to be brought down to 4800 IP, because if they're next in line, or one of the next 3 or so in line, you might want to hold off on buying them with RP. The oldest 6300 IP champ released is the next one in line.

I also waited until Rune Pages were on sale and bought those, preferably with RP I bought when they were giving double bonus RP.

Would have taken a very long time to get them otherwise (at the rate I play), the rest you can much more easily get with IP, though you still have to make some choices if you want more expensive champs. I'd focus as much IP as I can on the more vital runes, and try to settle for cheaper champs for a while if you'll buy them with IP. Unless you find a specific champ that you try during a free week that costs more IP, and it really clicks with you, as long as you're pretty sure it won't keep happening, then I'd save up for it, putting some of the runes I need by the wayside so I can have a champ I want to try maining.

You can settle for a few basic types of runes for a while, thought it's nice to have enough options to be able to specialize for every champ's needs in a variety of situations.

That still doesn't make charging this much money for essential parts of the game OK. Even on sale a champion costs about 5 bucks worth of RP. In fighting games, 5 dollars would be expensive for a dlc character and if you got it on sale it would usually be down to 1 dollar. Fighting games have way fewer total characters even if you count the main cast that came packaged from the start and players generally play fewer characters and don't worry much about counterpicking or strategy since the game is more about personal skill than strategy. To get the full cast in league through RP it would cost something like 300 dollars. To grind up even a mediocre set of rune pages it takes 6 months.

The IP/RP system is ruthless to players, especially new ones, it has to be at the point where Riot doesn't just lose player confidence and satisfaction from this, but actual money from the bottom line due to how many players get turned away from the game due to their own experiences AND ADVICE FROM THE CURRENT PLAYERBASE.

Beldair1 votes

You are comparing a MOBA to a fighting game. Look at all the other Mobas out there. For a champ on them, it's $5 for the cheapest. So on average, a cheap champ will cost ya $5.

Or you can wait for your IP to build up from several matches and buy them that way.

So to reiterate, this is a Massive Online Battle Arena. While there is fighting, it's not like your typical arcade fighter games.

Quepha1 votes

{quoted}

You are comparing a MOBA to a fighting game. Look at all the other Mobas out there. For a champ on them, it's $5 for the cheapest. So on average, a cheap champ will cost ya $5.

Or you can wait for your IP to build up from several matches and buy them that way.

So to reiterate, this is a Massive Online Battle Arena. While there is fighting, it's not like your typical arcade fighter games.

League's biggest competitor gives away all its champs for free and has no XP or rune grind analogue at all so I don't know why you would ever think comparing League to other MOBAs would end up looking favorable for League. I was being nice by comparing League to fighting games instead of MOBAs.

Or I can look at smite: 50 gems per week from log in bonuses, 4 weeks buys you any champ in the game. 1250 favor per week in log in bonuses, 4 weeks of that gets you almost enough for almost any other champ in the game on top of that, that's an average of 1 champ per 2 weeks. A single 6300 champ in league is about 1 full month of daily win bonuses. It appears that gems cost about 8 bucks for 400 gems. At 200 gems per champ that's about 4 bucks base price, aka half of a 6300 champ in league. AND there are far fewer champs in Smite to get up to a full collection.

So maybe you should come up with some MOBA competitors that don't have much fairer pricing models than League, because so far doing this research just seems to be giving me more and more ammo.

Beldair1 votes

Take a look at Heroes of the Storm. Plus league charges that so they can stay on the web as well as bringing out newer stuff. If everything League did was for free, them we wouldn't have League.

Beldair1 votes

I had no issues with this game starting out. It wasn't until a few weeks ago that i got my account to 30. And i only really started playing May of this year.

I tend to buy whoever i feel like i'd enjoy playing. Like i just bought Mord with IP because he looked fun, which he is to me. RP, i got me Bard and his Elderwood skin because...well Bard lol.

But if a champ goes on sale, i tend to try to jump on it. Especially if it's one I've been dying to get. In fact, my first champ i bought with rp was Mundo. Still love the sadistic pyschopath XD

Gusicles1 votes

Honestly, playing this game without friends is probably one of the most tortured existences I can think of.

GlockHammer2 votes

{quoted}

Honestly, playing this game without friends is probably one of the most tortured existences I can think of.

Seconds that, and still my friends refuse to play this game with me as they've all moved on from it, thing is, I don't like shooters or Fifa, which are popular among my pals. So I'm stuck here lonely playing a game that no one I know will play with me because of terrible new player experience or because they've gotten fed up and moved on. :,(

Gusicles2 votes

My apologies to you. :(

I hope your friends get interested in this. One way I got my friends into this was just by playing customs/bot games until like level 18. Maybe that can help?

GlockHammer1 votes

{quoted}

My apologies to you. :(

I hope your friends get interested in this. One way I got my friends into this was just by playing customs/bot games until like level 18. Maybe that can help?

Not really and to be honest, bots aren't that fun to play. They've made it pretty clear they aren't gonna start or come back. So I have accepted it already. But thanks for the condolenses. :,>

Quepha1 votes

{quoted}

Seconds that, and still my friends refuse to play this game with me as they've all moved on from it, thing is, I don't like shooters or Fifa, which are popular among my pals. So I'm stuck here lonely playing a game that no one I know will play with me because of terrible new player experience or because they've gotten fed up and moved on. :,(

I can't in good conscience recommend this game to friends. I remember how much of a pain it is gathering runes and champions, and how awful it is trying to team up with players outside your MMR so you go into games where everyone destroys you and you just have to hope your friend can carry. If people ask about getting in to League I always tell them to just go to another MOBA and I wouldn't be playing this one if I wasn't already invested in it.

Calabok1 votes

I suggest your local community park jungle gym and swing instead. Less stress.

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