Yes some people are outraged over aspects of the game be it Teemo still existing, Autofill making # neversupport people play support Yasuo, Marksmen having their "divine right" to bot lane challenged by a bomber yordle, turrets dying to fast or Top lane feeling minimally impactful on a games outcome, League is not going the way of dawngate or Infinite Crisis any time soon.
CppL34 votesMaybe not dying ,but the quality and balance are fucked up...
Bronze II Yasuo 12 votesThe interest over time according to Google Trends have been at an all time low since 2012
https://www.google.ca/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F04n3w2r
Not to also mention the amount of people playing ranked is closer to 700k right now (I know it's only two months in and it's a little early to tell) but in 2015 the number peaked close to 5M according to op.gg
http://na.op.gg/statistics/tier/
But yeah i love league and would be sad if it actually died off.
DrCyanide13 votesTo be fair, when was the last time you searched "League of Legends"? For me, I start typing it and my browser brings up the website I'm looking for (usually the main site or the wiki), so I never hit the search engine.
Bronze II Yasuo 5 votesI generally google "lol boards" same can be said for that.
DrCyanide3 votesReally? You don't just leave open a tab, have it bookmarked, or click the suggestion in your browser to get to it?
AMYS GRAVE3 votesYeah, there's a reason they've been fighting against high queue times for the past two years or so. Its unclear to me if they have the same number of players, but those who do play are doing so less and less.
Snowplosion1 votesThis game can't be balanced with the amount of champions and items in the game. This is a sad truth.
Sraeg20131 votesWell, adding more items and champions before trying to properly balance things sure won't make it better.
Snowplosion1 votesYeah, but if they don't the game will get stale. Riot is at a lose-lose situation right now.
Sraeg20131 votesThere's no need to shit out new champions, when there're like 30-40 old ones that need attention and half of them would end up being basically new champions in the process.
Trying to do both equals half-assing.
BastionKross24 votesI would say it's not dying, but it is bleeding out. Something as big as League isn't going to die overnight, it's going to take a long, steady decline. Riot does a good job of hiding the actual numbers, but there are sites that estimate the number of players and games played each season. And the trend is that it's less and less each year. You could argue a large part of the decline was the terrible way season 6 handled just about everything, but the trend starts further back than that.
It's going to be like WoW and Runescape, years and years later they'll still have players, but it will be nothing close to the number they used to have. League will become a zombie, kept in a state of "not quite dead but not quite alive" due to hardcore players refusing to let go.
Yaskamasandwich3 votesI would say it's not dying, but it is bleeding out. Something as big as League isn't going to die overnight, it's going to take a long, steady decline. Riot does a good job of hiding the actual numbers, but there are sites that estimate the number of players and games played each season. And the trend is that it's less and less each year. You could argue a large part of the decline was the terrible way season 6 handled just about everything, but the trend starts further back than that.
It's going to be like WoW and Runescape, years and years later they'll still have players, but it will be nothing close to the number they used to have. League will become a zombie, kept in a state of "not quite dead but not quite alive" due to hardcore players refusing to let go.
This, was going to mention WoW and zombie state, but beat me to the punch.
Manwalrus1 votesYou've got to remember that the recently released playerbase numbers say that 100 million active monthly players play league, up 25 million from when they last released statistics on it in season 4. The boards and Reddit populations are extremely small and don't represent anything close to what the main playerbase of this game feels, these are the most dedicated players that will look at almost every change and criticize is. League will become a zombie inevitably like any other huge game, but that day isn't very close.
BastionKross1 votesThat would be pretty impressive if everyone didn't have a smurf or two. Hell, tyler1 himself had over 20. True, he didn't play them all at one time, but you can't look at that number and say they're all unique players. In fact, I'd say a rather high percentage (35% or more) is the same guy playing two or more accounts. Smurfing is just a normal part of playing League, as is making a new account when you get perma'd. (Both of those things would be an even bigger issue now then back in season 4, since now many bans are done without human input and season 6 was just perfect for using smurfs to legally boost friends)
In addition, that says nothing of the frequency of which those 100 million players log in other than "monthly". In season 4 those 75 mil could have been playing every day, while the 100 mil only play once a week. The first situation has less players, but it possesses a more healthy fanbase.
In truth, the whole "dynamic queue fiasco" that happened dispels the argument that boards and reddit can't represent the majority of League players. Riot brought back solo and made flex specifically because the majority of players thought dynamic was a mistake. The boards and reddit were both filled with topics and discussions about how horrible DQ was, and often the dissenting opinion was "Well you guys don't represent the majority of players". Turns out, they did. And Riot bowed their knee to them.
Finally, I couldn't read the article (Forbes kept asking me to whitelist it on my adblocker before I could view the article, and I politely told it that it can go to hell), but is there actually any evidence in the article that that 100 mil is correct, or do we just have to take Riot's word for it? Because honestly, I took Riot's word about a lot of things, and some of them turned out to be straight up lies.
Manwalrus1 votesEveryone doesn't have a smurf, most people play the game casually and even so, 25 million new active smurf accounts in just 2 years? These are also active not unique accounts IE they play regularly, I know a lot of people just make a smurf and never use it, hell I'm one of them. I'm not going to go surfing through Riot comments but I remember it being mentioned somewhere that most players don't have smurfs. Second of all, not many people get banned period, never mind permabanned once again the boards have disproportionate amount of permabanned people, you know what I mean? There's dozens of "Rito pls unban me I wasn't scripting I swear" posts per day, the boards are where people come to whine about that. Also, permabanned accounts don't count towards active accounts because they don't play. As for daily vs weekly, there's no statistic we have that can confirm or deny that but I'd say that the claim doesn't hold water since Riot's revenue was even more than last year (I believe 1.7 billion dollars) and it hasn't taken a dip in any year since the game's release. I would assume that people playing less often means less microtransactions but that could be because of the extra players so there's no way to confirm or deny the claim unless Riot releases new numbers. Finally, you've got to keep in mind that most players probably didn't play daily to begin with since most people play the game pretty casually.
As for the dynamic queue thing, I didn't say that Reddit and the boards CAN'T be right, only that they don't represent anywhere close to the majority of players, just look at users, reddit has like~900,000 users (and that number doesn't have Active profiles accounted for) and the boards has far less than that. Now obviously 900,000 people is still a lot but when you're dealing with a game with 100 million players it isn't that big, it just objectively doesn't represent your average player, it also only really represents NA and EU when there are a lot of other servers and China for example has way more players than NA.
That's of course not to say Reddit can't be right, but taking something as broadly disapproved as Dynamic Queue isn't a good example. Of course it was bad and they bowed to Reddit in part because compared to normals, ranked isn't played by nearly as many people, it's played mainly by Veterans and hardcore players, just the demographic Reddit represents. Riot tried to incentivize more people to play ranked with Dynamic Queue but they went back on it when they realized it was both a failure and it undermined the competitive integrity of Ranked in general. Another example would be Reddit saying something like Ghostblade Lucian was really broken back when it first became a thing and it was in fact really oppressive and terrorized the game until they nerfed him into the ground, most players hated the fact that Lucian was that strong and was picked in like 30% of games with an absurd winrate so Riot nerfed him, that wasn't Reddit representing the whole community, that was it being broken and the community as a whole not liking it, which in no way proves that Reddit suddenly represents everyone. Of course Reddit gets it right pretty often and have influenced a lot of changes that most casual players wouldn't think about, most recently the Heartseeker Lucian splash and the Heartseeker Quinn ingame model, the best example of that sort of thing would be Riot pulling back the original god awful SKT skins and making new ones.
As for the validity of Riot's numbers, you're right in saying that we have no way of knowing because no one else has the capability to give accurate data, but we didn't have anyway of knowing back when they said 75 million and their Revenue numbers, esports gains, the fact that so many people actually consume league of legends content be it on Youtube or official Riot videos in the client and the multitude of other things I haven't thought about certainly support a game that's both massive and still growing.
If they were lying which they have done in the past, wouldn't it be kind of easy to expose by looking at other figures? I feel like that wouldn't be worth the risk and would destroy their reputation (believe it or not outside of Reddit and the boards they have a very good reputation) and it could totally destroy them as a company. Not to mention that if the game were failing why would they support just one single game for eight years without coming out with a new one, we only just started hearing about a new Riot game being in the works in 2015. I feel like we can trust them on the 100 million players data because of those factors. Sorry for the wall of text.
Miku Append18 votesThe game may not be dying, but its sure killing veterans will to play. Only $10 and that Genji booty is mine. <3
Sraeg20132 votesYou are going to get rekt on Genji. I guarantee it.
Ahristocats5 votesi play this game since 2010
i met so many godlike players in diamond from 2012 to 2013
no one of them plays anymore
rip my old friend FrozenQQ
Akali is SO HOT2 votesYeah most of my friends left too
BALDG1VEN BOOMER6 votesEver since S6 there number one goal has been end games by 20 so I would only assume that clearly doesn't please a lot of people.
FourVsFive6 votesif was not dying why would they need autofill? Would there not be enough players to fill the role?
Irelia Bot2 votesClearly to concept of bottle necking eludes peoples understanding.
Say 5% of players play support while Top, bot and jungle are all at 20% and then Mid is at 35% just for an example.
Support would be a huge limiting factor in how many games are able to happen since for every 4 top, bot and jungle there is only one support player and for every 7 mid there is only one support.
Lux Is Mai Waifu1 votesNah, it's more like "if Riot was good at game design wouldn't enough people want to play the role?".
Naqel3 votesWhen you get the option to play "the hero" or "the sidekick" few people will choose the sidekick, especially when there's 4 flavors of hero to choose from and only one flavor of sidekick.
Lux Is Mai Waifu1 votesThen why don't all games have this problem?
AtheosisX1 votesPeople don't like playing support in Overwatch either.
Manwalrus1 votesThey also released more playerbase statistics earlier this year showing that league has over 100 million active monthly players, up 25 million from when they last released them, so the whole 'not enough players' argument doesn't really hold much ground.
Genocide Victim5 votesThat's because Riot doesn't leave the game in a fucked up state for too long. It's usually just fucked up for small periods and goes back to "normal" for most of the season.
iTaLenTZ4 votesThe way things are going I don't think LoL will survive another 2 years. All my friends I started playing with during season 3-4-5 have quit the game. I hardly play a lot nowadays just some normals and arams.
Irelia Bot2 votesI remember hearing people saying this in season 3 and 4 also 5 and heck I was kinda feeling this way with the start of 6.
Manwalrus1 votesLeague still has 100 million+ active monthly players so I think your guess is a tad off.
BeatzBoyFTW3 votesThe ones who said that League is dying were permabanned players.
AMYS GRAVE7 votesI've never even been chat restricted.
League is bleeding out its playerbases will to play.
MrWasjig2 votesWho's saying the game is dying? This is the first mention I've seen recently.
Glory ln Death3 votesAnytime people get upset by a new champion or new items or a nerf to their main or a buff to a "cancer" champion/class or any change in general or the absence of a change or if they get banned for any reason, they hop onto Boards and complain about how "League sucks and Riot is braindead and everyone knows the game is dying."
GayFluffyUnicorn3 votesWell currently gold 1 is the top 6% of players in euw.... usually that was around what? 15? So either there are way less players than before or just a handful actually ranked up into gold 1 and above.
Sagan Forever2 votesGold itself is usally top 20-15% so gold one being top 6% is normal for plat is usally around top 5%. So right before top 5% would be around 6-7%.
MrWasjig1 votesI'll take your word for that, I knew Gold made up a small fraction of the playerbase but I didn't know the numbers before hand and I don't know it now.
Still with that in mind to say "less people are playing" is jumping to the most extreme possibility pretty quick. Bare in mind the season has only just started and a lot of people have been shunted down the ladder. Master and Challenger will fill back up very quickly as will Diamond. But anyone who was in Gold last season are now sitting somewhere in Silver, and let me tell you climbing outta Silver is a drag. So if I were to throw my hat into the ring, I would put it down to people still jostling for position after placements put plenty of Goldies into the scrub brackets. Afterall I was Gold last season, but that's only Gold and solo carrying your way out of Bronze or Silver is more difficult than winning in Gold if you ask me :P
But that's just my gut feeling, based on recent experience xP
Who is Taliyah1 votestop 6% of players that play ranked in EUW. Either many people stopped playing ranked, or more people started playing ranked most of them are below gold.
The more people play ranked, the more noobs are with them. If last season 100 people played ranked, 15 of them were gold. This season 200 people play ranked, 15 of them are gold. The same amount of people in gold, but the percentage is lower.
Same with when people stop playing ranked. If last season 100 people played ranked, 15 of them were gold. This season 50 people play ranked, most in gold stopped playing ranked, so only 2 are left. The amount of people playing decrease and thus the percentage.
What I wanted to say is, that you can't really tell if people stopped playing, or if more people started playing, by just looking at percentages.
Mr Wright II1 votesIts slowly bleeding out. Just think how you still have 2 minute queues When you queue up as support
Obeliskofflm2 votesBlame two ranked queues. Eventually I got over DQ, so now I'm just a solo in flex until gold. It's actually a lot harder to climb, but I guess that's what I get for going into the boosting queue XD As a side note, queue times are pretty low, though that's likely because silver is low, and people start new accounts to boost new players to gold. I'm having fun though, no rush to climb til October.
Mr Wright II1 votesNo I mean in NORMALS
Mister Support1 votesYeah still because of an added ranked queue, you realize most people played normals because they were with friends. And now, Flex queue offers a ranked version of that which doesn't change solo rating. Normals are now the prime area for practicing roles and champs now without care.
VoidStaresBack1 votesYou missed melees having their divine right to no-ranged top lanes, but other than that you're spot on :P
Irelia Bot1 votesWe try but still have to deal with champs like Kennen and Jayce.
Kingnewgameplus2 votesYeah if only there was a top laner who could deal with range while being melee... like, I dunno, maybe resetable dashes, maybe some true damage, oh and sustain to heal up the damage, oh and maybe a conditional stun. Oh, and I got a good one, how about an ultimate that lets you easily proc 4 sheen effects. Too bad I can't think of a champion like that that exists :^)
Irelia Bot2 votesIf Irelia who was designed to fight ranged in a meta that had basically made melee less effective then ranged is your only answer to this then you are suggesting we are playing rock paper scissors and one person gets to chose after the other one picks rock.
Who is Taliyah1 votesAm I the only one that thought about Fiora?
