What happened to league?

Fallen Starlight·Mar 3, 2019·17 votes·10,058 views

Your local average player here. I've been with this grave since mid season 2. I don't believe I deserve better than silver so that's not what this is about. Through the years we've had ups and downs but iI to NEVER seen things this bad.

We've got jungle as the butt of the joke, high elo smurfs playing low elo ranked games, and much much more.

I remember a time when riot games fixed their mistakes. Seems those days are behind us. I think it's wrong that's a community we tolerate being fodder for the pros. Just because we don't bring in as much money as they do doesn't mean it's ok to completely ignore the issues we reflect folks face.

Something needs to change with ranked que and being allowed to use smurf accounts otherwise this games life is over. I have fond memories of this game and its really sad to see it in this state.

22 Comments

deadlychuckMar 3, 201917 votes

Riot shifted their target audience because their existing audience wasn't as profitable as new players. The result was numerous systems being reworked, rebalanced, and ultimately ignoring the existing design that stuck around as a result of the identity of the game.

Trying to shove this new system design into a map that hasn't been significant redesigned, a stat system that hasn't added any new secondary stats since inception, and a shift towards skillshots and mobility, then you end up with a game that's trying to juggle two fundamentally opposed designs. League is no longer "fit" to serve any target audience, now it's split between the legacy aspects which serve the old audience (which many have chased away from the game by the power advantage given to the new systems) and the new systems which are constantly trying to appeal to a new audience.

Without getting into more specifics on what has changed, riot initially released a game that was basically a kind of more concise version of original DOTA (A very RTS style of design), but now the design has leaned more towards a kind of battlerite/bloodline champions design (a very action heavy style of of design). Yet these two categories of markets don't exactly see eye to eye, and yet you're forcing two groups of players with completely different "ideal" concepts for a MOBA into the same games under a single design, that can't properly cater to either of them on account of also trying to cater to the other.

Unfortunately riot has put themselves in a bad position, BRs have overwhelmingly taking over the action focused portion of their market and they've already undermined the trust of the strategy focused portion of their market. So going back isn't an option now, but it's equally frustrating to want to play a particular style of MOBA that still exists in the game, only to be strong armed into playing the action moba of the newer generation of players, who are given excessive influence and initiative in a match. Riot would be better off pulling a DOTA 2, opening up their custom games, and allowing players to create lobbies with a range of global and targeted changes to champions as they see fit.

Instead they're going to get more authoritative and try to keep their seat as the "true E-sport" and push their game to become hyper competitive, taking advantage of the fact that people already have a ton of game knowledge, since they've nearly completely lost all of their non-competitive markets either to their own intentional market shift or the rise of new genres.

SaiannaMar 3, 20194 votes

That was a solid read with very good analysis.

It's kinda funny how since the start in S0~ I kinda fanboyed LOL and never bothered to try DOTA2. I always took the suggestion more of a joke. Now the only and I really, really, REALLY mean ONLY reason why I haven't just gave up with LOL forever is the fact I love certain champions lol has. At least whatever are left of them. No HOTS nor DOTA2 has Teemo. They sure have something similar, but similar is not good enough. And same goes with several other champs.

I so damn wish we had old LOL back. But at this point I'd rather take it as an insult if Riot tried to go "lol classic" as blizz tries with wow.

deadlychuckMar 4, 20192 votes

With regards to "classic" it depends on where it initiates from... Classic WoW was initiated as a result of a market demand for that version of the game and supplied by blizzard out of a necessity. Blizzard likely just looked into what they were going through to shut down the constant popping up of bliz like classic servers and decided that it would be more cost effective to give people what they wanted rather than trying to play off of nostalgia to draw players back in.

Honestly I might drop the money on the current version of WoW along side the subscription I plan to get for classic, just so that I can juxtapose the two and analyze where the formula fell apart, since the last time I played was the release of WoD and that was after having skipped MoP (I was pissed at the talent changes, ironically I was pissed with the rune changes too still am).

Again, if we saw LoL classic private servers popping up (which I've heard mentioned people might be attempting), then I might considered playing LoL classic, but for now as you said, it'd feel more like an insult for riot to attempt to release it unprovoked, because frankly we've lost trust in them to act in the interest of the players.

ArtumisPrimeMar 5, 20191 votes

{quoted}

(I was pissed at the talent changes, ironically I was pissed with the rune changes too still am).

I'm no internet tough guy...in fact, I'm kind of a teddy bear most of the time. Willing to call people on their shit, but almost never violent.......that being said, i swear to God I would punch Greg Street in the face if ever I met him IRL. Fuck you, Ghostcrawler.

HügöMar 4, 20191 votes

There is actually no other answer needed for this thread, up you go.

Nea104Mar 3, 20197 votes

Season 8 happened. They proved they aren't competent at all in what they are doing, a thounsand of times in a few moths. So Season 9 is just the same, cannot be elseway (as it was predicted months ago).

ArtumisPrimeMar 5, 20191 votes

Seasn 6* happened. Keystones ruined the game. It has been a downward spiral since.

Douglas FunnieMar 4, 20196 votes

Riot did exactly what 343i did with Halo 4. Turn a competitive gaming franchise into a casual shi*fest.

Season 8's "Runes Reforged" System was designed for casual players. The skill gap was reduced due to the over excessive damage, overpowered/overloaded runes, RNG elements, and overloaded kits from new/updated champions.

You can clearly tell that Riot wanted to introduce new players into the game with their "Noobs" campaign ads.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyq844xq2yY
Low tier animated, "What is League of Legends" ads
Forcing Pros to talk about being a noob
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvSeRqntf7U

League is not competitive anymore. It's a casual game masked as a competitive game. The gameplay is a total mess. The sad truth is that the game is not fun for casuals, too. So, that's why people are leaving.

During the late mid season 8

Ghostcrawler steps out of Lead Position
Meddler takes over Lead Position
- Meddler and his goons admit the state of League is garbage.

The matchmaking is awful at the moment because Riot is forced to rely on the "Auto-fill" system and tried to cover up the population issues by implementing the Positional Ranking for Season 9. A system that also helps hold casual players hands.

deadlychuckMar 4, 20191 votes

I think that you have it a little off, it's not that league isn't competitive anymore. It's almost exclusively competitive even, just look at riot's behaviors and the kind of people that still play the game, don't you dare try to play something that doesn't have the competitive advantage, else face the wrath of every player in your game, 3 players from next game, the announcer, and fucking baron (probably).

The term "casual" has never managed to settle on a definition, but I think it's fair to say that you can see an audience that is best catered to by the game's current design. Unfortunately it's too small of a demographic and most players are bleed over from one of the other two target demographics the game has historically had. The committed audience and the Noncommittal audience.

Committed: Learned every champion, have internal timers on base CDs for every champion, knows skills/details about the game that have since been added to the game's UI (e.g. buff/dragon spawn timers). These players aren't necessarily "competitive" playing ranked mode, but they do enjoy the game enough to want to learn as much as they can about it.

Noncommittal: Has a hand full of champions that they know well enough to win matches, have a good amount of experience in their role/class but don't know the first thing about, likely, supports (except for maybe Pyke), wants quick games, these are the kinds of players who will frequently use 3rd party software to pick their build, and really just care about the excitement in a match rather than the details about the game.

Sadly a lot of the noncommittal players (as the name implies) are quick to jump over to other genres that offer more of what they're looking for, but especially the ones who aren't familiar with PC FPS games aren't likely to make that transition to the current action trend of BRs.

But, I just realized I'm rambling again, in an attempt to make a game that catered to both these committed and noncommittal players, riot ended up with a game that best fits players who are noncommittal and competitive... Players who don't care to learn a ton about the game outside of what will get them those sweet sweet W's and as few L's as possible. This specific category of players isn't very large, because it's nearly impossible to make a cohesive game that only requires very narrow knowledge about the game. Yet (according to a lot of people who play the game) the ranked system tries to enforce a 50% win rate anyway, so good luck with that [sg-lulu]

Douglas FunnieMar 5, 20191 votes

"It's almost exclusively competitive even,..." give me a break. League is far from competitive. It's a mess. A total joke.

During the start of Preseason 8, do you really believe Riot was thinking about competitive integrity when they introduced the abomination that is Zoe? One shotting champions across the screen with RNG in her kit requires skill? Riot's "balance team" did nothing to address the excessive damage from Zoe for 4+ months.

Do you believe Riot was thinking about competitive integrity when they implemented Klepto in their "Runes Reforged" system?

What about when a developer who is a hard stuck silver Jungler decides to implement an RNG based Plant gimmick in the game. Was Riot thinking about competitive integrity?

Riot wanted to cater toward new/casual people, period. There's no doubt about it.

deadlychuckMar 5, 20191 votes

I don't think you understand. The game is designed for a competitive audience that wants excitement, not for competitive integrity. In fact, it was never designed for competitive integrity, it's just that it now attracts a more competitively focused audience.

The competitive integrity of the game comes secondary to appeasing the competitive audience of the game, which often want exciting matches which don't require much investment.

ChrisBrownzeMar 3, 20194 votes

Riot got bought out by Tencent, and return on investment became the number one priority

LeetriMar 4, 20191 votes

Dude that happened in 2011, they have little to do with it.

ArtumisPrimeMar 5, 20191 votes

When Morello left and Ghostcrawler took over, the changing of the garde that occurred is what caused it, IMO. Different philosophy on game design and radical changes took place thereafter.

Dope SoloMar 3, 20193 votes

Riot is underwater in terms of how much money the pro scene makes vs how much they have to put into it. They want it to be otherwise, but I don't believe its ever going to happen they way they want it to. Makes catering to that aspect vs the mass of average players seem shortsighted, but they have the right to fail as a company if they're determined to do so.

Mr ElessarMar 3, 20193 votes

Riot are too busy virtue signalling and selling skins to care about that.

SaiannaMar 3, 20193 votes

Just because we don't bring in as much money as they do doesn't mean it's ok to completely ignore the issues we reflect folks face.

The thing is, Riot is still workin mostly because of skin-selling, which means its average players funding the game.

The SkáldMar 3, 20192 votes

Well, there will be a time they will need new players from SoloQ for their teams. And then they will start to work on SoloQ too. And uhm, something tells me that it is not far from now.

Spacesuit SpiffMar 4, 20192 votes

I think they've concluded that old league wouldn't be profitable anymore due to the BR genre and other things siphoning off people who just want to run around killing everything. So they made Silver Troll Tactics very nearly the optimal way to play in the hopes of milking that audience a bit longer. I don't think there's any long-term plan at this point, just attempts to squeeze more cash out before the game dies.

deadlychuckMar 4, 20191 votes

If that's what they've concluded then they've got it all backwards. That's why the current version of league is slowly drying up.

I think they're in an impossible spot, but that's of their own making. BR screwed over their new target audience after they back stabbed their existing audience, so why would those players trust riot to be genuine if they attempted to appeal to them? But equally so, old league also wouldn't be profitable for them either, for the same reason that they pushed to get a new target audience in the first place... new players have the entire history of skins and champions to purchase, where as existing players only have new releases that they MIGHT purchase. Ultimately that means you want to cycle as many unique players through your game as possible to turn the greatest profit.

1 new player might make them easily $100 for $50 of marketing, but an existing player might only make the $5-10 on a skin that costs them $15 to make, or a champion that costs them $50 they'd... well probably get the same $5-10 since most legacy players actually have enough Blue Dust (idk I still call it IP) to purchase the champion for free.