Sad for the direction of the game.

FearMyGrowl··3 votes·317 views

I would almost say i played this game 3-4 years straight, a lot of good changes and bad ones. Now i love this game and i'm not trying to bring riot down but bring some opinions from a player that is too addicted to the game. I started in season2, the game had a variety of items and more complexity and strategy to the game but throughout the seasons slowly.. "The change i hated most was the nerf in total movement speed in the game on all champs... you feel like a snail now going across the map and limits good kiting anymore until you buy a ton of items.. not one.. a ton that helps movement.. i noticed Riot dumbing down the item selection process for a wider audience base which is understandable cause it's a company trying to make as much money as it can. trinkets come standard with players now, recommended build is hardly different anymore.. oh look another ie, cause it's like the only thing to build, there's no options.. it's more of a lack of freedom and i predict as the game goes on.. there will be a increase of recurring players from other tiers that played in the past and less subscriptions of new players as the game goes on.. The community system is just horrible now but it always has been, the pinging system is a great feature but potential for spamming which is annoying and makes the game more of a turn off now.., it also made players lazy in keeping an eye on the map and positioning. You can't even hardly make custom builds for a champ anymore i mean really, that was one of the joys of the game to go it a bit different and it made it a "strategy game to a better degree" but now the lack of items and consolidation of items is preventing that.. it's what Mobafire was all about.. Armor pen is useless about now rune wises.. i mean why have runes if they hardly make a difference,, another lack of more freedom in selection is the new masteries.. pick one side or the other... "riot: we don't care just pick one cause it's more simple for you" the game as you should be able to see the amount of champs that are played variety wise now is highly unbalanced.. i knew it was coming with all the additions and everything getting simplified to one click gaming.. I'm very sad how this game has evolved.. there is much more i would like to point out and discuss but let's start with this. Please share you discussions and opinions, thank you.

5 Comments

ModThe Djinn1 votes

I'd actually disagree (and for reference I've been playing since pre-Season One: doesn't mean anything about the relative value of our opinions, but it should help you understand my perspective). Compared to Season 2 especially itemization for everyone except maybe AP Assassins is more diverse than it has ever been. The specialization of items does occasionally create a "best choice vs. their team," but that's a normal and desirable feature of an item system.

What builds do you think are overly prevalent? What builds or items do you think have become less so? It's hard to address your arguments without specifics.

Either way, I think our freedom has definitely expanded. We have items to support niche playstyles (Banner of Command, Zz'Rot Portal), items that support different styles of the same role (IE vs. Essence Reaver, Hydra vs. Duskblade, Randuin's vs. Deadman's Plate, Runaan's vs. Statik vs. Phantom Dancer), and the introduction of trinkets have only opened up player build opportunities since wards are no longer something relegated to the support alone after the 25 minute mark.

Rune-wise, Armor Penetration runes have probably become weaker, but only because we're seeing less Cloth Armor + Pots starts. If that becomes popular again they'll become stronger. Runes in general are pretty strong though, and always have been.

Additionally, masteries are more flexible, although I'll admit I'm not happy with how that system is currently tuned, as I think Capstones need a bit of an adjustment to be more universally competitive across characters. Previously there was always a "best" choice for a given character, and now, while both options may be good (so you can pick one without caring and be assured you'll at least see some benefit), optimizing is still important.


Also, in Season 2 World Championships there wasn't actually that much diversity. There were only 12 different mid picks in the Group Stage, 12 different top laners, 11 different junglers, 8 different supports, and 7 different ADCs (not counting pick rate, which was always skewed towards the same 2-3), with 25 different bans.

The season 5 Group Stage, by contrast, had 79 characters picked (vs. 50 for Season 2) and 36 separate bans. Yes, there were more games, but that doesn't equate to the same percentage increase in champions picked due to the fact that there's only so much room at the top of the champion pool. The increase seems to indicate that there's at least as much variety going on now as there was back in Season 2.

FearMyGrowl2 votes

Thank you, I"ll get more into specifics now that i have more to go on discussion wise. As to the season i was simply trying to reference the change i saw from then which is season 2 in my experience.

First biggest issue is the movement speed of all champions which got bumped down a bit, makes the game feel a lot slower paced, and it's just tedious getting from point a to point b unlike before the change. Also adcs are incredibly slow movement speed wise which just doesn't make sense.. they should be lighter and faster than other champs, as well they need to focus on kiting which is limited now with the lack of movement. On top of that... most junglers have cc and slows.. " example getting chased down by a jugnler.. adc no escape abilities.. usually screwed" the movement balance is totally unfair and doesn't make sense. so a buff to adcs movement at least if not the whole is needed to balance things out...

AS for the builds.. it's all too standard.. i constantly hear players why are you not rushing ie? it's very limited in the adc ragne, ie, bt, one of the zeal upgrades, lw, botrk,, that's about it,, can't really go anything else.... at all.. it's build these items.. cause that's all there is.. sure there is the new last whispers, duskblade, but it just feels off.

Ap wise, there is many options, I agree and it's great, and as well for tanks but for the adcs it's still lacking, we knew the adc area is severely lacking so for a quick fix i feel they buffed certain champions.. honestly to me it was great but it was a small patch to a balance problem and more of a here's a band-aid guys.. we'll figure it out later.. and I'm sure it's getting more difficult to figure out.. more champions, different, items,,, hence more coding and more balancing, bug fixing, it's getting a bit harder for riot I'm sure. it's called the tank-assasin meta now from what i heard.

There was zephry, that was a great item.. u always have to build zeal.. which can go into 3 different items which is nice but it's almost like i feel like a trained zombie,, oh that's next.. nothing else solid will give movement speed unless maybe boots of swiftness but it's really limited unlike before on slightly different items of similer nature but different mode of play and strategy.

unless you're in a higher elo, you see alot of the same champs again and again and again..... which shows unbalance.

I know i'm not describing everything super detailed.. i'm tryign to get some points across and go from there.. i haven't had my morning caffeine :)


The more champion selects is great i agree and adds more variety to that area of selecting a play style of champ.


Also the game tends to go more one sided now,, i would assume because of the dragon buffs now, but it' I'll quickly landslide and hardly as fun games or competitive comebacks are possible as before.

ModThe Djinn1 votes

{quoted}First biggest issue is the movement speed of all champions which got bumped down a bit, makes the game feel a lot slower paced, and it's just tedious getting from point a to point b unlike before the change. Also adcs are incredibly slow movement speed wise which just doesn't make sense.. they should be lighter and faster than other champs, as well they need to focus on kiting which is limited now with the lack of movement. On top of that... most junglers have cc and slows.. " example getting chased down by a jugnler.. adc no escape abilities.. usually screwed" the movement balance is totally unfair and doesn't make sense. so a buff to adcs movement at least if not the whole is needed to balance things out...

Refresh my memory -- when did this happen? I remember all champions getting a 25 movement speed buff when Boots were changed (something that actually increased the speed of movement in the early game), and a few Marksman lost 5-10 points during their update to make their earlier game a bit weaker (a weak early game is a defining trait of several Marksman), but that's all I can remember.

AS for the builds.. it's all too standard.. i constantly hear players why are you not rushing ie? it's very limited in the adc ragne, ie, bt, one of the zeal upgrades, lw, botrk,, that's about it,, can't really go anything else.... at all.. it's build these items.. cause that's all there is.. sure there is the new last whispers, duskblade, but it just feels off.

Ap wise, there is many options, I agree and it's great, and as well for tanks but for the adcs it's still lacking, we knew the adc area is severely lacking so for a quick fix i feel they buffed certain champions.. honestly to me it was great but it was a small patch to a balance problem and more of a here's a band-aid guys.. we'll figure it out later.. and I'm sure it's getting more difficult to figure out.. more champions, different, items,,, hence more coding and more balancing, bug fixing, it's getting a bit harder for riot I'm sure. it's called the tank-assasin meta now from what i heard.

This puzzles me. From Pre-Season One to Season Four the ADC build was Infinity Edge or Bloodthirster first (whichever was stronger in the meta at the time) into Attack Speed (always Phantom Dancer or Statik Shiv) into Last Whisper without exception. Now we have many more options, with BorK / Essence Reaver / IE as your major damage item, three viable attack speed items, two armor shredding items, and more viable defensive items (Mercurial / Guardian / Banshee's / Sterak's) instead of two (old Banshee's / Guardian). Some carries even thrive on odd things like Guinsoo's, Trinity Force, Iceborn Gauntlet, or Black Cleaver.

As a Marksman main for over 4 seasons, this is the season with the MOST choice available for DPS builds, and by a large margin.

There was zephry, that was a great item.. u always have to build zeal.. which can go into 3 different items which is nice but it's almost like i feel like a trained zombie,, oh that's next.. nothing else solid will give movement speed unless maybe boots of swiftness but it's really limited unlike before on slightly different items of similer nature but different mode of play and strategy.

Zephyr was not a particularly great item, honestly. That's why it was removed. To quote Xypherous: "Based on purchase rate of highly ranked play - this item appeared in the bottom 5 items...Zephyr was most likely either a trap purchase or an item which was rightly identified as one having little worth or to be avoided. Buffing the item did not seem to create desired gameplay results - as it lead to many champions who were unnaturally stick and shut off the innate defenses of many champions...The item's flavor did not lend itself to an easy rework - not did anyone have any promising reworks for the item that lead to gameplay we preferred."

While buying Zeal every game may feel boring, it builds into four distinct items, and the design is more appealing to the characters who typically purchase attack speed. Even Marksman who typically prefer AS to Crit benefit from some crit, and they also now have BorK to assist their build paths.

Also the game tends to go more one sided now,, i would assume because of the dragon buffs now, but it' I'll quickly landslide and hardly as fun games or competitive comebacks are possible as before.

I'm not sure I agree. I think towers may be a little too weak, and death timers in the late game are almost certainly a little too long, but I've still seen games swing at all ELO levels. Is it perhaps a little too hard to stage a competitive level comeback? Maybe. But that's sort of always been the case, and snowballing in general is much lower than it was in, say, season 3 and 4.

As for Dragon, it's actually pretty weak -- to the point where Riot has stated they're looking into making the benefits MORE appealing. It definitely doesn't have the swing that Old Dragon did back when it was 150 gold for everyone on your team.

FearMyGrowl1 votes

I remember all champions getting a 25 movement speed buff when Boots were changed (something that actually increased the speed of movement in the early game), and a few Marksman lost 5-10 points during their update to make their earlier game a bit weaker (a weak early game is a defining trait of several Marksman), but that's all I can remember.

This was awful ^ the boots were changed.. the speed of boots was decreased by quite a bit if i remember correctly and adc as you said lost so points as well which doesn't make sense.. can you get where I'm coming from though?

Is it perhaps a little too hard to stage a competitive level comeback? Maybe.

Thank you ^, it's not as well as before, the game select champion wise takes a little too long.. it just adds more time to 40 min games, and come on we have lives people!

ModThe Djinn1 votes

{quoted}This was awful ^ the boots were changed.. the speed of boots was decreased by quite a bit if i remember correctly and adc as you said lost so points as well which doesn't make sense.. can you get where I'm coming from though?

Not really, because you got it wrong -- speed in the early game INCREASED, because while boots lost 25 movement speed, all champions had their base movement speed increased by 25. The only net effect was that buying boots early became a little less mandatory. Anivia, for example, used to have a cripplingly slow base movement speed of 300.

Then a few characters who were moving too fast too early got 5-10 points off of their movement speed, which isn't that much overall.

Thank you ^

You're welcome? I'm not sure I entirely agree, but the likelihood of a competitive comeback that doesn't just involve a 40 minute ace is something I'm not knowledgeable enough about to have a full discussion on.

It's not as well as before, the game select champion wise takes a little too long.. it just adds more time to 40 min games, and come on we have lives people!

I think champ select could use a little MORE time, actually, just to let that last pick set up their runes and masteries properly. I haven't found it overly long, save when someone dodges three times in a row.

More from Gameplay