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League is Dying? Here's Why

Lolipoppers·7/28/2016, 10:54:22 PM·8 votes·1,106 views

Many people feel that League is dying. Most would say this is due to Dynamic Queue or game imbalance. As I have watched people leave the game for different reasons, I realized it all boils down to one thing: Riot has been alienating different portions of the playerbase. Here are some examples:

  • Failed reworks have turned away the mains of certain champions (ex. Morde and Skarner).
  • DQ has made solo players unwelcome.
  • Rank discrepancy and premades under DQ alienate those who value a fair competitive experience.
  • Legalized Elo boosting under DQ is an insult to honest players who strive to improve and climb the ladder.
  • Dominion was removed, though the community was small, their favorite game mode no longer exists.
  • 3v3, my favorite and most played game mode by far (Yes I'm strange) is now in danger of being removed as a permanent queue and put on the rotating game mode list.

What League is going through now is eerily similar to the death of popular games Runescape and World of Warcraft, both of which I used to play. Runescape was likely the most popular free-to-play MMO of its time. I remember when he developers essentially removed the PvP area, which was a major component of the game. They lost a lot of players and continued to make changes contrary to the wishes of the community. WoW, the most successful MMO for many years, sought to make the game more casual, angering the hardcore playerbase. The game has roughly half the number of players as it did during its prime.

The point of these example is to show, as it was once said, "The customer is always right". Instead of giving us what we want, Riot has given us what they think we should want. Of course, it is impossible to please everyone, but when a player's place in a game is taken away, they will move on to another game no matter how much they enjoyed it. Riot needs to understand that their game is not invincible. No matter how many players they have, no matter how much money they make, if they continue to push people away, their game will fail. I love League as much as anyone else and want to see it succeed. But with the direction things are headed am truly worried for the future of League of legends. I can only hope that Riot wakes up and does not let their arrogance be the end of them, as so many developers have before.

7 Comments

Harvey Rabbit7/28/2016, 11:25:04 PM4 votes

[{quoted}](name=Phantom Echoes,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=ZPQgxdba,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-07-28T22:54:22.420+0000)

Instead of giving us what we want, Riot has given us what they think we should want.

Word.

Xenos111117/28/2016, 10:56:19 PM1 votes

Don't forget removing Team Builder to shove everyone who loved that queue mode into the new CS/dynamic queue.

Zelnick7/28/2016, 10:57:47 PM1 votes

Like, I play solo queue in this current dynamic queue system and I don't see any difference in my opponent's average performance compared to the old queue, I don't feel unwelcome at all. But, I get even more trolls in solo queue than anywhere else, so now I just play dynamic whenever I can. Who would ever want to play solo queue with all these trolls running loose? At least in dynamic queue I can play with people who I know I can rely on.

Elo boosting is pretty bad though, no idea how Riot allows it.

BigBellBrute7/28/2016, 11:01:59 PM1 votes

Why is it dying? Because that is what happens to old video games.

Tract7/28/2016, 11:05:14 PM1 votes

Runescape was never bigger than WoW

Eagleheart7/28/2016, 11:51:42 PM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Phantom Echoes,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=ZPQgxdba,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-07-28T22:54:22.420+0000)

Runescape was likely the most popular MMO of its time. I remember when he developers essentially removed the PvP area, which was a major component of the game. They lost a lot of players and continued to make changes contrary to the wishes of the community.

The removal of free trade and the wilderness was a move against botters. Done as a measure of extremes. About 60% of the playerbase used to be bots. Runescape "Died" because of the repeated bot nukes and other changes. Players were angry, sure, but Jagex was acting with good intentions. You really wanna know what killed the game? The EOC. But that's a whole other can of worms that will derail everything. (I started playing around 2005/2006, and quit mayhap a year or so ago.)

WoW, the most successful MMO for many years, sought to make the game more casual, angering the hardcore playerbase. The game has roughly half the number of players as it did during its prime.

I'm not going to say that Tv Tropes is a compltely 100% true source, as it's akin to Wikipedia, but I'll paste this from the YMMV page. (That alone means that not everyone agrees. Your mileage may vary, after all.)

"Be Careful What You Wish For: Every time a class bitches enough to get class buffs or reworks, you can bet your bottom they'll be complaining they're oversaturated with noobs who don't know how to play them.

The fanbase complained about long convoluted attunement quest chains and being unable to complete them because nobody would lift a finger to help. Now that that's no longer required and you don't have to run a dozen dungeons (That nobody wants to do anymore) and hope your token actually drops so guilds will look in your general direction. Then they complained about how annoyingly hard the game was only now are complaining about "Casuals" taking over the game. (Don't try pointing out that there are in fact heroic raids meant specifically for these "Core" players, or that they offer stronger gear and require much more coordination than Raid Finder - they're not listening.)

Throughout Wrath, the fanbase bitched non-stop about how "easy" the Heroics were. (ignoring, of course, that they were "hard" before people started running them in Naxx gear or with heirlooms.) Then when the last three Wrath heroics were added, they bitched about how "hard" they were and would constantly ragequit the Halls of Reflection. When Cataclysm was released, what was everyone's response to the Heroics? That they're too hard. Of course nowadays, nobody complains about how "hard" they were because just like Wrath, they all outgeared the Heroics enough to just rush through.

For that matter, they complained about the needless amounts of Fake Difficulty in the game, alleviating the Catch-22 situations. Now they complain about "Wrath babies" or "noobs" running their Heroics."

The problem with World of Warcraft isn't the fact that some changes have been bad. (Though I'm not saying that a game shouldn't change, change needs to happen.) it's that World of Warcraft is an interesting amount of money to play instead of being largely freemium. You've got to buy your way in, buy the xpacs, and also maintain a costly sub. ($80 or so for six months time. where Final Fantasy XIV, a game I enjoyed playing for a bit but didn't feel like starting another MMO on top of RS and WoW, is $12.99 for 180 days, along with the Xpacs and inital buy-in.)

Realtalk? All those people playing Vanilla WoW? You wanna know why they were playing it? Because it was free. That's honestly the bottom line, the playerbase that would honestly enjoy Vanilla WoW is much smaller than a lot of people realize.