League's status as a Free-To-Play game is dragging it down
I'll include a tl;dr at the bottom for the points I make here, for those who don't like long discussions.
When I started playing this game a few years ago, I was so hyped to start having fun. Unfortunately, back then I'd also been immature and childish (being that I was a late teenager back then) so when my first few games got me tilted I decided to quit. And that was fine, I decided to leave the game at that time (I was around Level 10 when I left). Then a bit more than a year ago my girlfriend got me back into the game because her brother was playing it. Before I left and after I came back, my favorite Champ had always been Tristana, and having the mindset I grew into I started having fun; after that, I bought more Champs and got skins for a lot of Champs and before long I became a lasting fan of the game. It started to wear off when Season 6's changes came along, but I held onto my love for the game because of its diversity and random changes that kept me coming back. For several weeks now, I've been thinking in my spare time about why League has been suffering. LoL is popular, yet people say they hate it and the changes Riot makes. Riot's employees make decisions to benefit the players, yet the players (sometimes myself included) argue about them -- right or wrong, there always being two sides of the same coin on every discussion. So I thought to myself, what has Riot been doing wrong? I couldn't find any answers for myself, as even when thinking about the risks they've taken I've seen them always improving on those decisions. So I fished around for other reasons as to why it's become like this, when I found my answer: it's not Riot, it's the community. I thought of several reasons why I think this, which I'll list below; but the conclusion I came to was that to fix most if not all of these problems, was for Riot to make League of Legends a paid game. Even if it's a small fee, it would improve upon everything League has to offer without destroying its successful player base. 1) The nature of League of Legends, the decisions Riot makes, and the mood of the community are all too competitive for casual players. The problem here is that because it's free to play, there's no real barrier for anyone to get in. Because of this, there's no real punishment for leaving (other than having spent real money on skins, but that's besides my point); thus most players don't feel a need to be anything more than casual. In such an atmosphere where any decisions your team makes can spell victory or defeat, this is a toxic mood that casual players offer. Especially when some people are more competitive than others, and the mixture of casuals into the mix spells unneeded trouble. The true problem here is that Riot's adapted themselves to trying to appease both the casual and competitive player bases, and it's causing them trouble. Changes that are good for competitive players are seen as terrible decisions by casuals, and decisions made to appease casual players angers its competitive players. Risks have become overbearing to the point where no one is pleased with any decision Riot makes, especially when you account for peer pressure and its domino effect for the community. Making the game need to be paid for creates a barrier. While that sounds intimidating, it's really not. Creating a barrier of entry, even it it's small, weeds out players who just don't really care...and when this happens, you see less people just playing it casually. As this domino effect takes place, the mood of the community starts to match the nature of the game and people will start to agree with competitive decisions Riot makes for its game. In its own way, it's like burning a field of crops so the infected portions don't reach the uninfected. 2) League of Legends is incredibly popular now, and it's reachable in several countries (and played in several languages). It's grown popular enough that having its players pay to play the game wouldn't affect it much, because the people that matter for the game will play it anyhow. Sure, there's something of a fine line between cost and demand (higher cost, less demand), but Riot's proven capable that the cost they'd decide on would be one everyone would accept -- at least, everyone except those extremely casual players who don't really care about the game itself, but as it's proven time and time again they're just a cancer. 3) Riot's decisions would benefit from having a price barrier, because they'll be able to make decisions more based off of its competitive community instead of its casual players. A lot of decisions implemented into LoL lately have been to balance game modes and items to be healthy for new and less experienced players, but those of us that aren't new are forced to look at our favorite game modes get destroyed and reworked into something that we don't know or want. Definitely Not Dominion and the reworks of Ascension and URF are examples of game modes, while the removal of Spell Vamp from items is an example of...well, items. The problem with these is that Riot puts either far too much or too little stock in the community's opinions, and (like I said above) they aren't able to please anyone with the decisions they conclude with. Especially when a huge majority of the community knows more about picking their noses than they do about their own Champions they play. 4 - Optional) Putting up a price barrier when we have these harsh punishments for leaving games and other small things would almost seem like overkill. "Oh no, why would I want to pay for a game that I easily could be permanently banned from?!" Well, this one...I'm not so sure they could fix. Unless they added a fee for making accounts (which would be undoubtedly unfair unless they found a way to fix that problem), they won't be able to prevent trolls from entering the game. This is why I made this optional, because you can't just wish that your game could have no trolls whatsoever and suddenly they're all gone. There are people that masturbate to doing that exact thing, and a simple price barrier wouldn't fix it. But for those players that aren't like that, things like leaving games could afford to be less harsh because of the nature of it being a paid game. Power outages are one of those things that are extremely unfair and unconquerable, and having less punishment for leaving because of that would make things far easier for the community.
There are more points I'd like to make, but I've been so busy fleshing out what I wanted to say that they've sort of been forgotten. I also have a neighbor whose (special) son likes to burn tortillas on the stove, and through that excitement I lost what I wanted to continue with. When I find more reasons for my thinking, I'll list them down. If anyone agrees and wants to list down their own reasons, feel free to add yours. If anyone disagrees and wants to list their own reasons as to why, feel free to add yours as well. Anyone who wants to debate with each other about it, whether they agree or not, is free to do so. Please do keep things civil. At the very least, I'm glad that whoever reads this gave it the time of day to be somewhat important.
TL;DR
- League is too competitive, and its casual community upsets this.
- League is popular enough that it won't be affected much by the price they set.
- Riot can make better plans without extremely casual players upsetting its balance. 4 - Optional) Punishments would be able to be less harsh due to the price implemented. 5 and on) TO BE CONTINUED
