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League of Legends is actually just a harder game

Lady Destruction·10/24/2016, 1:13:16 PM·35 votes·4,460 views

I have been playing since season 1.

What has happened to the game since then? Alot but from a general POV the game has been tailored to competitive play. Everything about the game, from the mechanics, to the map design, to the champs, to the community itself.

But league first got popular because it was simple and easy to learn. Laning phase was pretty strict, people didn't ward as much because there was normally only jungle or a roamy mid ganking. Now with botlane mobillity and teleport ganks and expanded MS items and champs it's not at all uncommon to be ganked by 3 people. Or the entire team. The need for serious map awareness has made constant conscious evolving strategy. Or as I like to call it, has made botlane in particular stressful (generally too stressful to play)

In the hopes of originality we now have vastly more complex champions and items. They're not just situational, its more difficult to gauge when to use these abilities. Nocturne was considered relatively complex when he came out. I'll let that sink in.

There are a lot more champions. And with constant nerfs, reworks, and item changes it is extremely difficult to estimate damage and ability to take damage on instinct. The game was predictable in matchups until Rito tried to balance out the assassin meta. That is how we got the tank meta, and the AD meta and now the current "everyone does rediculous amounts of damage and mistakes are unforgivable" meta.

Which has always kind of been the meta for high elo competitive play. Not for mid/low level. I've seen alot of threads about how much harder it is to climb out of low elos. It's because the game is now catering almost exclusively to high elos and serious competitive players. It is not just a play for fun game anymore. That's why so many people are so angry about the current state of the game. The predictability and memorization factor is out for all but the most serious and committed players. It's much less about being outplayed on an individual level and more about outplayed on a team based level (there are very few cases of single player carries, that's why elo hell has made a crazy come back since season 1) too much got changed too fast. Before this season there would be tweaks and a handful of reworks (like 3 or 4 tops) and a few items replaced, usually to balance out a particular class. This season reworked everything into more complex situational and time sensitive gameplay.

TLDR: Rito has made League into a chore.

And it's sad to see because I and many of my friends have invested alot of time and money into it only for few of them to play now. Making everything overpowered and needlessly complex (especially in a very short period of time) was not a fun way to balance out the game.

It will always hold a special place in my gamer heart but the game isn't the same anymore. If I wanted to play something complex and strategy intensive I'd go play Starcraft.

16 Comments

ChargeItDownMid10/24/2016, 1:23:16 PM9 votes

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Dukues10/24/2016, 3:17:20 PM4 votes

Can't imagine trying to get into this game now. Between all the low level smurfs and constantly getting dumped on early until you lost enough to play with other new players. Then trying to learn a few of the over 130 champions. Then finally hitting 30 and thinking you know what's going on just to realize you probably have no idea.

I have also been playing since season 1 as well and finally just hit mid gold this season (lol I know) and I feel I have a bare minimum understanding of the game. Can't even comprehend how new players must feel.

Off Meta Evan10/24/2016, 8:28:16 PM2 votes

for me i like that league is getting harder, but its not as hard as i'd like it to be. For those not understanding, my favorite games are Dark souls/bloodborne, ninja gaiden , street fighter 3rd strike, and Metal slug. I LIKE hard games, i want this game to be hard as fuck. i go out of my way to play goofy champs like Ziggs Aatrox Karthus Kassadin almost full damage, trying to get no defensive stats at all. My dream day would be a day where every mage, assassin, fighter, ADC, and hell even support gets items like item 3031 item 3041 item 3285 item 3147 item 3089 item 3100 where a 2 mistakes will result in getting bursted into oblivion.

Backup4now10/24/2016, 6:15:02 PM2 votes

To the contrary, I view the game as getting easier and easier. While there's more things to pay attention for (like extreme ganks) and more mechanics to keep in mind, what you actually need to do to win a game is a lot less. Surely, this means that new players are turned away more easily, but once you actually know what to keep an eye out for, the game is so snowbally/abusable right now that you can just pick the best character (or the character you're best with) and stomp (unless you're a support main. Lol. Hope you like Brand).

With every passing season I play league less and less, and yet I keep ranking higher than the last season from just how stupidly easy winning the game has become, mostly from playing OP champions before they're known as being OP (Like old old kayle before the koreans started playing her, like shyvana before she became fotm and got weird changes and nerfs due to the jungle items at the time etc).

Swaid10/24/2016, 7:42:33 PM1 votes

I don't know about the player base as a whole, but I feel this game is just getting real stale, real boring with very little new content besides cosmetics and the occasional new character I play for a bit, get bored of, and go back to one of my mains like Cho'Gath, Dr. Mundo, or Singed. The game feels stagnant. At least with Warcraft 3, I could switch to a different MOBA map if I got bored; the anime ones were a guilty pleasure.

Lovelle10/24/2016, 8:57:50 PM1 votes

There's a lot more tutorials, compared to the past, so they've made the game somewhat easier to get into. Support and Jungle in particular are much simpler to get into compared to the past. Not just anyone with CC/utility could support and/or jungle like they do these days. Both of these roles used to get so much less power through items that you had to really play your ass off to carry from them, which is one of the primary reasons most people used to avoid playing either of them.

Build-pathing takes much less thought these days, especially concerning offensive itemization. DPS champions don't have to think about balancing their builds nearly as much, because both penetration and CDR come in spades these days, pretty much invalidating any other build that isn't support. Back in season 2, it wasn't uncommon to see even ADCs build 1-2 pure defensive items. Fights also lasted much longer, so that one lucky Light/Dark Binding wouldn't win an entire teamfight like it does these days. There were also a lot of anti-snowball options through itemization, so if you wanted to win you had to keep playing well the entire time. In contrast, the losing team had more options for dealing with teams that had a significant early-mid advantage.

Overall, I feel like the game is losing strategic diversity in return for becoming more mechanically challenging, which I guess most people find fun to play and/or watch. In this game, those that value forethought-based/tactical gameplay over reaction-based/flashiness are definitely in the minority and Riot has demonstrated how they feel about their minority playerbase.

Edit:_ To make things worse, I hear Riot is thinking of removing custom item sets, which removes even more strategic diversity from the game._

Randomonium10/25/2016, 12:51:19 PM1 votes

Well thought out post but the whole reason Riot keeps expanding and reinventing the game is so things don't get stale. If League was the same as it was in season 1 now most people would be bored with it. A game's long term success is hinged on not only people enjoying the basic premise of the game but also on having something new to learn/discover in the game. The reason most games die out is people figure everything out and the game loses its magic.

Jeanne fan club10/26/2016, 4:34:33 AM1 votes

The reason you don't think the game is good is because in most players minds, the game is only good when they start playing it. Once you master the game there is very little "'new" stuff that can be added to refresh the whole experience. League right now is in the best spot it has ever been in, and its almost impossible for old time league veterans to see that because of how old the game feels to them.

Its not a bad thing if the game is tailored around competative play, and tbh it doesn't change very much. Many of the champs with 54%+ winrates are never even played in the LCS. Also, what players play in the LCS gives Riot some good ideas on what to change to make the whole experience better for players.