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new players experience is horrid

Strabane·2/7/2016, 3:33:06 AM·37 votes·1,892 views

Im leveling up some new accounts to play with some friends from College. I am originally a Gold 3 player, so nothing extravagant, but I see so many issues that have had my friends quit this game.

There are SOOOOO many issues to list, but the one I will work on is the runes and masteries. First off, we are always going against smurfs....that alone is tough to get them to overcome when they lose 90% of their games. Second.....I was attempting to teach them how to jung. The game is designed around jungling with RUNES AND MASTERIES. Do you know how impossibly hard it is to jung without those runes and masteries? Half the time you can actually die to a second camp, and HAVE to port back with the ever waking fear of a Lee or Reng killing you. It's very frustrating.....honestly Riot you should just give max runes and masteries to level 5 players....upon finishing tutorials and bots.

Also I advised my friends to post on the forums here to ask for help on some game play discussion, but you need to be level 30 to do that lol. GG

38 Comments

Mysticman892/7/2016, 5:22:16 AM6 votes

The thing with smurfs is they rapidly get matched against smurfs, since non-smurfs have a tendency to win their first few games while true newbies basically go 50:50 if even that.

The other issue is what level people go into pvp matches in the first place. Most true newbies are afraid of letting their team down, so will try maybve 1 pvp match, lose, and then go back to bots until level 20ish. The people who are in sub-20 pvp are inevitably smurfs (sometimes smurfs grouped with legit newbies, but smurfs nonetheless), so sometimes the 'fairest' new player experience is really just throwing them in by themselves and giving advice, rather than playing in game with them. They'll get roughed up by smurfs sometimes and it feels bad to not be there to counter-smurf them, but in the long run it might be better to let them fall to a smurf free elo.

Troiann2/7/2016, 8:18:50 AM5 votes

First of all, great original post buddy. I can really see you're putting a lot of effort into making threads that are thought provoking and revolutionary.

Second of all, you're smurfing and saying that you're always getting matched against smurfs. Kek? That's how it's supposed to work, I have a smurf (this account), I played maybe 2 games and then all I did was get matched against other smurfs.

When I first started I played bots until level 10, then started playing PvP. I didn't even know all chat existed until level 20. I was building gunblade shiv on katarina, and no one even said a thing. We were all equally bad, and even after all chat was turned on I never got flamed for building weird shit because I sucked at the game. I'm pretty sure I used heal/revive up until level 17 too, no one even bothered telling me they were garbage summoners for wukong.

For Christ's sake, for once I would like to hear an actual NEW player's experience with the game. I don't want to see this "I'm smurfing and only getting matched against other smurfs, it must be the same for all players!"

And you only need to be level 10 to post on the "Gameplay" board. So uh....what?

mogonk2/7/2016, 5:24:11 AM4 votes

So you're smurfing and talking about how bad the new player experience is.

That's ironic af.

TurquoiseYoshi2/7/2016, 4:19:39 AM3 votes

I'll keep saying what I always do, NEW PLAYERS DON'T CARE! You do, but new players will gladly use double top and seeing occasional smurfs that they don't know about.

FortisDominus2/7/2016, 4:15:01 PM2 votes

this is how riot teaches new players how to play the game:

  1. this is how you auto attack
  2. this is how you use and ability
  3. this is how you buy shit

"gl, have fun, tell me how it works out you fucking scrub" ---- riot

Festive Bear2/7/2016, 12:28:28 PM1 votes

What do you expect when you are smurfing? their new players, they don't know masteries, and runes and clear speeds, none of that, I literally didn't know what the hell runes were until I was lvl 27. Literally. And I did not know most of league, like last hitting, gold efficiency and all of that, until I started playing ranked and met this really cool dude that showed me all of it. But then I got banned. This is my second account and I did not know how to jungle efficiently until I was lvl 16 on this account and it was Rengar free week. Seriously, RIOT needs to give game tutorials on this stuff. Add it to the base tutorial, last hitting, gold efficieny, poking, that kind of stuff. And when you hit lvl 10. Give a tutorial on jungling, show ganking and warding, seriously. It would make things sooooo much better than just having players not knowing how to gank and ward at lvl 30. (Happened to me). This is stuff that will make league suuch a better place, by a lot, I mean a lot. The new people will know what to do, how to correctly CS, how to ward and support, how to gank, poke, peel, all that stuff. And just add a video tutorial that must be watched by new players, teaching them about runes and masteries and summoner spells, more people would know how to play the game earlier in their gaming life. The community would become cleaner and in the future, people will know what to do!

High52/7/2016, 3:37:19 PM1 votes

  1. Riot does a poor job teaching the game to new players

  2. Why are you jungling without the appropriate masteries and runes? Just 212 like everyone else who's low level. Of everything to complain about, this was an odd choice.

WhiperSnapers2/7/2016, 8:16:49 PM1 votes

There are a ton of things that make the game so unappealing to new players:

  1. smurfs are not fun to play with or against
  2. tier 1 and 2 runes are a waste of IP and you have almost no rune slots anyway
  3. The masteries are worthless unless you have at least 5 points to put in to them and keystones which are the main theme of this season arent even unlocked until LvL 18
  4. High champion prices means you have to grind for over a month to get a single 6300 IP champion
  5. summoner spells are unlocked by level (no summoner 4 until level 8)
  6. Jungling is a nightmare: they dont explain anything and you cant even use summoner 11 until you are level 10
  7. There are over 200 items on Summoner's Rift and no explanation on when to get which one
  8. There are roughly 130 champions and if you dont know what they can do, they will beat you
Kairya2/7/2016, 9:28:00 PM1 votes

if you are a beginner you should avoid being premade with anything but other beginners.

Penns2/7/2016, 3:42:03 AM1 votes

I tried jungling with Twitch on my level 11 smurf a few hours ago. Lets say... Gromp was a hard fight. It also didnt help that my enemy jungler was a tryharding Lee smurf lol

WingsofGulgazor2/8/2016, 4:50:04 AM1 votes

I think the main issue a lot of people aren't seeing is that it's not only about smurfs winning or tryhardign games that's hard on the new players but it's the fact that you can make a new account and your first game you can be with 7 obviously new players with 2 other people raging there hearts out at every death. I swear making a new account at the early levels 1-10 is the most depressing thing. But yes I agree I think before lvl 20 or lvl 30 all champions should have buffed base stats at least buffed defense and health/hp regain so that they can at least jungle or can play with a little more ease and then as mentioned starting at level 20 start taking those buffed stats away until they come completely off at lvl 30.

disregardable2/7/2016, 3:44:20 AM1 votes

The experience you're trying to get them to have is bad, yes. Realistically they're still supposed to be playing bots until level 12-15, then transition into playing pvp.

DeloricVI2/7/2016, 4:01:52 AM1 votes

I'm still all for an overhaul of the tutorials and climb to level 30. Shouldn't be easy, but it shouldn't be this much of a slog. It took me months to get to level 30, and I hated pretty much every minute because I got destroyed by smurfs constantly. It was soul-crushing... no one tells you that those people are actually one of two kinds of players. 1) Bronzies that can't climb out of "elo hell" so they ruin new players' days so they feel better about themselves, or 2) people in gold and plat that are sadistic fucks.

Then you just feel like League just isn't for you because you suck so bad, and you want to quit. In fact, you might give up... maybe you'll be back, maybe you won't... who knows? I'm sure tons of people have level 12 accounts that they won't touch because they get destroyed by smurfs, or they see an ally go godlike because they're a smurf, but they feel like they're just bad because they couldn't do something like that.

I swear the experience would improve if, as you unlocked things, you got some real tutorials about items, stats, summoner spells, explanations of systems present in the game.... They tell you the controls and that you can buy items, and that's pretty much it.

Baby Ghoul2/7/2016, 4:43:16 AM1 votes

Evidently you don't need a level 30 account to queue up with your level 30 friends in normals.

I've been running into this problem more and more. People try to teach their friends in the game and end up wasting everyone's time. The best thing you can do for your friend who is learning how to play is let them learn by experience.

I'm not the oldest player. I started playing again early last year, and leveled up just fine on my own. Sure I ran into the occasional toxic Riven who brags about being silver and curses everyone out, but besides that it was fine.

I actually played bot games until about level 15, and I think around there is when you know enough to try your hand in PvP. Some people think that's too long, but it honestly went by crazy fast. After that I hit level 30 in no time. When I started doing PvP I began to watch some videos to give me a very general idea of what I should be trying to do. Truthfully, I didn't ask help from my friends all that often.

Here's what I tell my friends who are learning how to play. I DON'T QUEUE UP WITH THEM. Don't do that. You're stunting their growth and wasting people's time. Anyways here it is.

  1. Don't buy runes until you're level 30. People make a lot of exceptions to that, but honestly just don't.
  2. Avoid guides for now, but learn what roles and lanes you find the most enjoyable.
  3. Take advantage of free champion rotations to try out all champions.
  4. Understand that your journey to level 30 is more about learning and less about winning. Mute people you don't know. Don't quit the game. It's a bad habit to start.
  5. Practice last hitting as much as you can.
  6. Save your RP and refunds. Don't waste them.

This game is about learning through experience, and it's just better to do your level 30 journey on your own.

Silents4292/7/2016, 7:57:12 AM1 votes

And award for most original post goes too..