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What made people enjoy this game, and what has changed?

Spacesuit Spiff·1/6/2019, 2:27:02 AM·1 votes·1,095 views

I've been playing some traditional grand strategy games in multiplayer lately, and had a realization about League and why it resonated with people so much that we played a ranked 5v5 game with strangers for years on end.

The draw is simple: abstraction.

League is relatively simple and low-mechanical most of the time, at least in terms of the barrier of entry. Compared to RTS, you're only managing one character at a time, and compared to turn-based, you're dealing with far fewer processes to micromanage. There IS a cost to this, but the payoff is that interesting and coordinated macro-plays can actually happen without a prohibitive amount of effort. Go play the more involved games and tell me how often those big moments actually happen; it's always just one side bulldozing the other because one of them micro'd better.

League was compelling because the game was largely determined by deliberate moves the players made, collapsing bot and intuiting everyone's movement on the minimap to line up the play. Micro mechanics existed, but they were essentially a source of power rather than how you actually took over a game. Playing the map like this is something games have a hard time offering: mechanics are too complex and nobody bothers because you can win on the back of the mechanics, mechanics are too simple then everyone learns a basic algorithm for the macro and it gets stale. For all it's other problems, league nailed this.

I don't need to explain the problems the game has now, and why they diminish this experience. Choices don't feel like they matter. Not oneshotting people feels like trolling. Risks are too high for bold macro plays. The best way to have agency is to negate everyone else's agency. High damage stifles many strategies. We've all heard this.

Riot really needs to think about what this game is supposed to offer. Smash already exists and is really good, a mechanically inferior Smash with death timers and some strategic hoops to jump through is NOT a good direction to take this game. Get back to letting us sweep around the map in a calculated but casual way, like you never really get to in RTS and 4X games.

4 Comments

Illabethe1/6/2019, 3:13:20 AM2 votes

Honestly?

  1. Damage is not out of control, and micro/macro play are similar to always.

BUT

  1. Players are better, and everyone is feeling it. The average CS capture is up to 6/10 from about 4/10. The average hit rate of skill shots is up from about 45% to about 65%. People are just microplaying better. This increases gold, XP, the abuse of level thresholds to seal kills, and consequently..... the damage.

BUT ALSO: Most players are not getting rewarded for it. The bitter truth is......the game generally compels a 50% statistic win rate, which is extremely hard to defy, and the 50% Win rate threshold generally falls in Silver.

-Short of season rewards. -Smurfed by boosters. -Trolled by unranked placement accounts. -More ways to lose any achievement whatsoever than ever (You can be a rank but not receive the border now) -Harder time earning free content (Good luck farming cheap champs with the way BE works now) -Now there's 12 ranks under Gold instead of 10 (Yes. The new ranks are actually further obstacles to overcome, not less)

Most rankers just want one thing...... Those Victorious Skins to be proud of. And, 70-80% never get there.

....... And...... they've been stuck there for 3-6 YEARS..... most of them.

And every time they fail to acquire those rewards, they need something to blame. So they begin to pick apart champions, in game objectives, and teamwork.

When you've been picking something apart for years because you can't accomplish the goal you want to reach, in lieu of spending less time with your families, more time pulling up average, and the game becomes faster due to skill increases.....

Is it any wonder people are constantly trying to undercut the game and getting increasingly distressed?