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I've found what will kill LOL

FlyingRoboticCow·6/10/2018, 10:30:11 PM·64 votes·19,552 views

I truly believe that I have found what will finally kill LOL and please bare with me as I explain it.

Recently I've gotten several friends (all of whom are gamers) to begin playing LOL (4 in total) and now not even a month later they have all called it quits. When I asked them why they didn't want to continue playing they all had a similar answer and it basically came down to the fact that the game wasn't fun and their main complaint was that everyone they seemed to play with was either extremely toxic or so far above there skill level that they essentially couldn't play the game.

That leads me to my theory on what will finally kill LOL and that is that its own player base is going to cannibalize itself. After my friends chose to quit I created a smurf of my own (playing mainly low impact champions whilst trying to not unduly impact the game as to not destroy my mmr) to see what the experience of a new player is like and it is nothing short of hellish. The road of leveling your account is filled with learning road blocks by riot (summoner spells and runes) toxicity and smurfs.

Based off of my friends experiences and my own I truly believe that LOL is going to continue to scare off people new to it and that will be the end of the game. I'm not sure what the fix to this would be though I am certain that the current attitude of sticking their head in the sand and ignoring the problem isn't going to work. The first step of fixing a problem is admitting that there is one and it's high time that riot (or tencent) face the fact that there is one.

62 Comments

KazaJhodo6/10/2018, 10:38:39 PM53 votes

Correct. The new player experience is shit. Especially when they are placing new players into mid silver. Thats how I started, and I'll tell you what- I got shit on, and flamed, hard.

I deserved it too, I wasn't as good as my teammates and was ruining their games. Thats the truth, players don't like the truth. I fell down the ladder and eventually started to climb once I became better. I should have started in bronze 5. Period.

This is exactly what is happening. This game has an enormous learning curve, and the ladder is already fucked up. Creating poor matches with players of wildly different skill levels. Which in turn creates a frustrated player base that becomes toxic and screams for improvements, or leaves.

The current explosive meta has magnified this issue- in combination with the carry meta coming back into play as comeback mechanics have largely been removed. I'm all for this, but since the games are badly matched- games become extremely one sides really quickly.

Smurfs and trolls have a ton of power to snowball and make this worse. Causing game quality to plummet, which in turn will cause player satisfaction/fun to follow.

This post is perhaps simple, but correct. Its also just four people, but I've had many friends quit for the same reasons. Competitive players play to win, losing isn't fun, being unable to carry due to feeders is not fun. Poorly matched games are not fun. League becomes not fun.

its only been becoming worse every season. Don't even try to play in the low elo, you have to belong 2 divisions higher to actually climb. Its insane lately. Actually I take that back, bronze is fine, games feel fine there. Silver is a trainwreck.

The game quality in bronze 1-2 is far far better than silver 5-3. FAR. High bronze players are equal to silver 1-2. Although it is hard to even tell what a silver players looks like, as games are so inconsistent.

rtbf2234347216/11/2018, 11:28:50 AM17 votes

People that played the game for a long time are getting more and more disinterested. Riot have a mentality of change for league of legends.

Change is a double edged sword; it can add freshness to the game and prevent it for getting boring but it also kills the content of the game. Champions change, strategies change, win conditions change, the game change... the problem is that the things changes replace will be lost forever.

Do you remember old Gangplank ? Old Maokai ? Old Evelynn ? Old Malzahar ? Do you remember Dominion? There were people that enjoyed those things. They are gone and deleted from the game.

Not only that; the changes Riot are implementing, stuck champions one single roles, make champions unavailable or make champions broken. Do you remember Alistar Top or Jungle?

They had a problem balancing Nidalee because she was toxic and one shoted ppl with one skill shot... and they create Zoe with THE SAME PROBLEM Nidalee had.

Riot is killing the player base. Players that play the game for years are leaving too, they are losing many things they enjoy. New players don't stay for long. There is nothing to enjoy while being a new player.

Kai Guy6/10/2018, 11:00:42 PM5 votes

First off I completely agree the new player experience sucks and would love more tools to assist new accounts.

That being said, I don't buy this is gonna kill the game. Mobas started with a custom game types, match maker was non existant. They still became a popular game type, arguably the most popular wc3 custom gametype. There was no penalty for any toxicity back then, there was entire clans doing premade pub stomps that put all the smurfs in lol to shame. Eventually folks used 3rd party programs for MMR but they did not work all to great due to spoofers etc. hell man there where hosts of games that used 3rd party programs to forcible kick players out of a match when they started losing, and when out of a match there was no reconnection. The learning curve was worse for that game as well, 0 hand holding in game. Plenty of "noobs only games" got made daily and attracted higher skill players to them like flys for the pub stomp. All in all it was a much worse environment for games yet the game play was engaging enough in a good matchs to generate popularity that spawned an entire genera of video games.

Frankly the games not gonna be for everybody, there is a really steep learning curve for mobas. Any game that's dependant on players for the quality of it has a lot of factors the devs cant control for each individual match and your just going to have to resign yourself to some shitty games because people online all so often suck. As more casual players bail on league well that's kinda when the quality of matches is gonna go up.

Far as changes that would be good imo for league. Make duo que restrictions off MMR not Divisions, to many ranked duos create weird matches because their mmr gap is huge. Harsher and/or more rapid punishments for players who receive 5+ reports. A harder stance on toxic behavior built around what the majority of the community agrees is unacceptable is the end goal for me here. Discourage smurfing, difficult, I don't have any fair or realistic ways to accomplish this besides irritating account registration systems like SMS requirement for ranked play etc. Better tutorial, Bit more Restrictions before players can hit Ranked matches.

I feel like riots kinda accepted that most players use ranked for their normal majority games and don't have the attitude to actually play them as seriously as they want. So I think they just shifted focus, normal are now as chaotic as custom, Ranked is just normal matchmaking for a bunch of players, hence the creation and focus on clash for a competitive environment.

LibroMastro6/11/2018, 9:02:45 AM4 votes

Yea, it's league of smurfs now

New players have to really get into the game and learn how to play it or they just can't have fun, everyone is tryharding and picking the same meta champions even with new accounts. It's just stupid and it's going to kill the game

Spoofghoul6/11/2018, 5:10:55 PM4 votes

Well yes.

But one of the reasons the game is both less fun and hard to master/very punishing comes down to similar things

Faster paced snowbally games with heavily enforced meta

you are not allowed to play offmeta as riot ensures it simply isn't viable in a competitive environment they force the meta down our throats, if something is popular and riot doesn't want that particular strategy/champion to be a thing they just gut it, Sion for example becoming strong with comet/banner got his other foot cut off because he wasn't limping hard enough. first heavy nerfs then nerfing the stuff that made him strong. and now he is back to being nonviable These half measures leave many champions in sad states for ages. You simply aren't allowed to play anything that riot doesn't want you too in a competitive environment One mistake leads to massive snowballs so you cannot even come back against competent enemies, how can you learn from that And then there are these bots, smurfs and a shitty matchmaking system to deal with as well when you are new to the game

So you end up with new players picking inferior champions getting punsihed by feeding bot teammembers vs an all diamond smurfs team fun fun and then after a month they come to the conclusion that the champions they actually like to play are disliked by Riot and therefore kept down so now you are forced to play something you don't like along with toxic teammates whilst getting crushed by smurfs before the 5th minute mark with no hopes of winning whilst being held hostage in the game because some bot or troll wont surrender

Yea i can see how new players will just say:''you know what, go F#ck yourselves!! ill go play something else'' It's more then understandable

Meanwhile veterans are being disenfranchised from the game so with old players leaving and new players throwing in the towel there isn't much hope for this game in the future

Getting rid of smurfing is going to be hard, getting rid of bots has to happen in waves so here aren't many solutions to be found.

However adding more diversity by stopping the enforcement of the meta, and not half arsing champion balance when something becomes strong so it actually stays viable whilst addressing the problem points. Well that would at least make the game a lot more fun for more players. making games a lot less snowbally by addressing damage in particular, but perhaps also just working on the power of defensive options/items will make mistakes a little more forgiving. This would actually improve skill expression and strategic options. That also would make the game more fun. ( and as added bonus would make lcs more interesting the bigger the snowball the less risks are take the more dull this esport becomes and let's not forget the shallow champ pool)

The other improvement they can make is fixing matchmaking So what if queue times go up by a minute, or even 2 minutes. still better then wasting 20+ minutes in game. So go for quality over quantity i'd say in the end people will be more happy with a quality match then 20 minutes of being held hostage

And i think this would not only improve new player experience but also keep veterans around

But you know, i could be totally wrong about all this.

vergil80846/11/2018, 5:27:03 PM4 votes

I totaly agree lol is simply a bad game. Money ruined it Riot is a slave to capitalsem.

VoraciousX6/11/2018, 4:23:20 AM2 votes

For one the summoner spells and certain runes being used as secondaries being locked behind levels is probably a big part of it. I don't understand why Riot wants to run off players by locking things that should be open from the beginning. You can't even have junglers until level 11 iirc. That's 1.1/3 of the way to level 30. Riot introducing better tutorials is another thing obviously that needs to be done. Especially on jungling specifically. Another problem is that Blind Pick itself is absolute hell. You're locked behind draft pick until you have 16 champions and a level requirement which I don't remember.

Hammermancer6/10/2018, 11:04:51 PM2 votes

MMR system outside of ranked is twice as bad as it is in ranked

I shouldn't, as a silver player, go against someone who is d2 with a 60% winrate in ranked, this happened a few weeks back, would I prefer to have the option to? Fuck yeah, but it shouldn't just default shove me in with these people

there are many ways to record your skill level with both the recorded stats in relation to others of your winrate, and various unrecorded stats like positioning, as well as simple winrate (As a factor) and KDA (As a factor), healing, saves from death as a support (Did your raka heal happen just before your cait gets hit by a varus arrow that would have killed her otherwise?)

So many factors

even just win/loss honestly would be decent enough, but it's not quite that simple, they've engineered winstreaks and loss streaks for us.

Now couple that with the fact that most toxic players i've seen who get banned come back with New accounts, with the fact that mechanical ability isn't tracked for purpose of placement, and beginner matches are therefore a medley of plats, golds, silvers, bronzes, and brand new players. We see some terrible matchmaking

His Bonnie6/11/2018, 5:56:05 PM2 votes

Honestly people who smurf like that are going to be toxic. They can't play with their own elo. When I was new I played for 3 days then called it quits because people were super toxic to me (this was like 4 years ago). Then I decided I really wanted to learn this game (to play with my brother) and I came back, played bots till I got the hang of it, and now fast forward 4 years lol.

BigFBear6/12/2018, 1:35:58 AM1 votes

Community was toxic since ever and LoL still exists, so pls stop talking.

shoe65356/12/2018, 3:01:46 AM1 votes

yep im still fairly new, i remember when i first started playing i was playing veigar and i was dying a lot and some smurf was flaming me, later on i tried playing ranked got placedin silver II and then i was shit so people flamed me a ton, i could see a lot of people quitting in my place, but i've improved and i have fun in soloQ and i play with friends a lot

Eye Of Terror6/12/2018, 3:59:52 AM1 votes

It's just the game being popular and Riot decided to tilt the players (give them more and more reasons to be toxic) by the idiotic changes they do (terrible balance, terrible matchmaker, shit gameplay) and then ban them (the glorious ck sucking player behavior team not hesitating to ban people turned toxic due to the game's state and ....suck more cks perhaps).

D4M2X06/12/2018, 5:59:41 AM1 votes

here's what i think riot could implement, whenever you create a new acc it has to be with the same email to verify its you. so if you are diamond 4 you should be put 3 tiers lower or some random shit on the new acc, which would be plat 2 in this scenario.

Wínters Dawn6/12/2018, 6:59:03 AM1 votes

Sometime people get bored. Sometimes even if a game is doing okay people just get bored and confuse that with the game "going down hill"

Even league of legends will become stale over years and years. Dont confuse your bordum of a game with failure on the games part.

BeastHorus6/12/2018, 10:17:37 AM1 votes

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/NEUdUnOj-improving-new-player-experience-took-me-an-hour-to-write-this

I made some possible solutions to fixing New player experience

hi ìm groot6/12/2018, 10:56:37 AM1 votes

I don't think league can die till a replacement comes along, but it does feel ready to. And alot of the problems you talk about happen with other competitive games as they get older. I got into WoW arenas when it was brand new, and came back to it over and over for several expansions. When it was new being good at it was very easy and fun. But after years of the game being out, you couldn't be fuckin around and hope to get anywhere. Its the same shit as in this game, alot of older players complain like riots hard enforced some meta on them. It's not that, you were just able to get away with alot more when everyone was new and information was harder to find on the "meta" way to play the game.

KlydeFrog6/12/2018, 4:48:26 PM1 votes

Tbh every game is toxic so that point is minute. People should get thicker skin howrver . i can give two shyts what soneone says about me in the game say im trash all you want lol it doesnt effect me at all

Cyrosi6/12/2018, 11:13:43 PM1 votes

I mean, as a new player who doesn't play LoL all the time, the game is very new (or returning) player unfriendly. The playerbase is just a small part of why that is. If you're brand new like I was, then pretty much none of the roles are explained in the tutorial. I've played support in tons of other games, and this is the only one where I'm expected to not attack anything except the enemy hero; and the game never told me that. It took someone yelling at me in my first blind game to figure that out. Jungle is even worse. The tutorial literally doesn't even mention jungle.

There also isn't any way to see what's changed if you don't play LoL for awhile. I came back after awhile, and had to find out about item changes, hero reworks etc. on the forums and not in game. The first time I knew Irelia had been reworked was when I played against her and went, "gee who is that? I've never seen that hero before." Then went "Irelia? I guess she got reworked?"

BLACK REALM GOD6/11/2018, 5:39:38 AM1 votes

have you seen this video? :P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyq844xq2yY

BlackEyesBlue6/11/2018, 5:32:27 PM1 votes

Ok this one is REALLY old; but I think it shows that this is not a recent problem.

I'm had a game WAY back in season 5 that was stupidly, insultingly one sided against my team.

At this time you could still see the number of wins a player had in the game mode you were playing. At this time I had around 850, the other four members of my team had less then 150 COMBINED!; and our opponents? They had between 1200 and 2000 each!

So normals or not; WHY did this combination happen? There were no groups in this game, So why would it seem like a good Idea to match five long time players against four newbies and a "veteran" player who himself had played less games then their best players had won?

No one likes losing, and losing in a mismatch like this just feels extra crappy... Even winning starts to lose its luster if It's constantly a stomp! I didn't blame anyone in the game. They got the same mismatch I did... but now here we are years later, and the whole thing is MUCH worse!

Venomar6/11/2018, 5:33:40 PM1 votes

I started playing preseason six. Can confirm as this shits still ingrained in my brain. I probably wouldn't have kept playing if not sheer stubbornness and the fact that I was playing in the first place because of my now wife (which is the only reason I continue to play at all).

The toxicity isn't what bugged me. It's the absolutely rediculous non existent matchmaker for normal games. I remember having like 30 games expirience, getting my ass handed too me, only to see my lane opponent was playing his role and lane main with over two thousand winsin the post game lobby (back when you could see that shit, funny how it's hidden now). So best case scenario he's a God player and has a 66% winrate, that's still three thousand games of expirience literal thousands of hours and years of game knowledge, vs somebody who's played the game for a few weeks.

This wasn't exclusive to that's one game, it's the most erroneous example and remember it best because I had a chat with the fellow (I was bitching about the Matchmaker) and he told me if I didn't like it to play blind pick because worse/newer people play blind. To which my response was "oh okay, so I have to play an shitty game mode if I want to avoid a shitty matchmaking system". Makes alot of sense, right?

Frequently I'd find myself up against people with several hundred wins, a lot up above 500. I got them on my team too, but that's equally as bad of an expirience. Games are so fun when someone goes 30/0 on either team and just blasts down a lane and ends it in 15 minutes when le you have no idea what's going on or what you're supposed to be doing, right?

After almost three years of playing though, I can say without a doubt that my first impressions where absolutely correct. The matchmaker is still shit. You can either play ranked and bathe in the wonderful glorious toxicity that it brings with it, people litteraly trying to just ruin other people's day, for the sake of 'fair' games. Or you can play norms and deal with wildly swinging teammates wondering why you got absolutely shit stomped only to find out your bronze ass was laning against a diamond or platinum on thier main warming up for ranked.

So I play ARAM, maybe once a week with my wife, when she finally pouts enough to get me to play.

It's not that I don't like a coin flip, let the fates decide, see where the cards fall, some other cliche about chance, but if I do want to gamble, I'll go gambling, I don't want it in my games.

Theres a millions variables why league could and will eventually die. This is certainly one, but with Tencent acquiring larger and larger stakes in PUBG and Fornite, that's what will kill league. Tencent has always and will always continue to milk what's good, and jump on what's hott. It's thier entire business model, they've made billions by doing nothing other than buying shit up when it's becoming a sensation and on the rise. League is in the milking phase, it's plateaued. The company has its attention elsewhere. If ya'll really want to save league then stop playing other Tencent games. You're just paying the same company through another avenue, and fortifying the idea that they should move on from League and focus thier capital sledgehammer in a different direction.

amirreza21426/11/2018, 6:35:12 PM1 votes

the thing is this that lol even cant hold its old players , first keep old players then look at new players ( if there is any new player for lol OMEGALUL)

The23rdGamer6/11/2018, 9:33:50 PM1 votes

To be fair at least Riot has stated a couple times that they are working on making the new player experience better by remaking the tutorial ( https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/2018/05/dev-new-player-experience/ and https://youtu.be/wSi9fXhGAEw ) and they have mentioned that they have interest in remaking some of the ranked system so that there are more divisions and such because most of the divisions have widely different skill levels within them, most notably Bronze, Silver, and Diamond ( https://youtu.be/SPJ85U8rz0E )

Not that this necessarily invalidates your post or anything; all I wanted to do was to mention the fact that Riot is looking into this themselves so it may not be the end all for League of Legends. [sg-syndra]

ßluę6/11/2018, 9:46:20 PM1 votes

Reforming the community is hard. They try to make it more casual - but that is an absolute must not.

Barcid6/11/2018, 11:59:38 PM1 votes

Yes and no. Most smurfs nowadays are the kind that've been banned before, so "far above their skill level" is more like "has played the game before".

This could have been fixed by Riot implementing similar disciplinary actions to DotA2 - basically accept that the game is built to make a toxic environment since it's a team game with a focus on the lone player (I.E., team game where somebody can viably "carry"), and make a low-priority queue for the toxic players instead of banning them just to send them back to square one.

Sending players back to the beginning for toxicity puts them back with new players, which subjugates new players to a toxic experience. You will legitimately see no end to the piss poor new player experience until Riot actually steps up and fixes this aspect.

Leonerdo6/12/2018, 1:13:22 AM1 votes

This happens with every single multiplayer game in existence though. The long-time players form a kind of elite veteran community that is impenetrable, because they are both so skilled and so inconsiderate to new players. It should be a well-documented problem, or at least well-known.

If League is to avoid this fate, then Riot has to tackle the problem of smoothing out the transition from "noob" to veteran. New players are always needed to balance out natural churn in playerbase, but "noobs" will not stick around for long if they can't quickly fit in with the existing, elitist community. And let's be honest with ourselves, the community isn't going to accommodate new players just because it's the right thing to do.

League used to be revolutionary for it's cutting-edge matchmaking and player behavior systems. Most multiplayer games have those now, and League is no longer pushing the envelope for online-multiplayer. But I could very much see this (the New Player/Old Player Rift) being the new "fundamental online problem" that Riot attempts to solve, or at least alleviate. Unfortunately, we won't see the fruits of that work (if any) for at least a year, by my estimation.

(This is a pretty good discussion, btw. I wouldn't mind seeing these on the front-page regularly, instead of all the Yasuo hate and matchmaking complaints.)