Change in League of Legends

SirChancelottt·Oct 18, 2017·2 votes·976 views

Everywhere I look when I'm reading comments about change or preseason in League of Legends I find overwhelming negativity, springing from something as small as plants being added to something as large as class reworks. I remember people saying they were going to quit when Riot added shields to Tier 2 towers and made Inhib towers shoot lasers that slowed. I've been playing since Season 3 and I've got to say that the ONLY reason we all still play is the constant innovation that Riot presents us with.

I play Chess competitively and win money from tournaments every month or so. I'm not top 100 or anything near that level, but I manage to get by while being a College Student majoring in Game Design. I may be biased towards these changes, seeing as I've dreamed of working for RIOT since the 8th grade. But I think I am capable of presenting an objective argument in this case.

Chess has been the same for a long time. Omitting tournament rule changes, the last "gameplay update" was in the 15th Century where, according H.J.R Murray's "A History of Chess", the double pawn move was being added in India. So, with such little change how can this game still be considered playable at an International Level? This is because the game is perfectly symmetrical. League of Legends, according to the Game Design Youtube series known as Extra Credits, "Is a great example of perfect imbalance," this is to say that the game is asymmetrical with small imbalances used to keep it interesting and provide real decisions for the player rather than encouraging perfect play. Even Faker himself gets baited by cannon creeps into being ganked by EDG, hence the Worlds 2017 match when EDG was 10,000 gold ahead at 25 minutes. This tells us that the best players in the world are extremely far from being considered perfect, and that perfect play probably isn't achievable by humans ever or machines at this time (looking at you, Mr. OpenAI in Dota 2. How'd you lose to the pesky cheese humans had to offer after beating Dendi?) Since this is the case, change allows us to focus more on adapting to the brain babies that Riot drops on us from season to season.

Change is good. Change stops games from becoming stale. It helps prevent players from perfecting any Min-Maxed strategy and then winning without contest, as what happened with Samsung White in 2014 when they solved the vision game. Especially when so much money is made off of spectated events such as Worlds. No one wants to watch or even play the same "perfectly balanced" meta. Heck! People constantly gripe and complain about a "boring" meta, only to then have it changed and two weeks later they are complaining again! I understand that not everyone can be happy, but it scares me that so many people can be adverse to innovation when it does so much to help the game. I am giddy with excitement at the thought of playing with the new runes, they are so much fun to use on the PBE! Yes, Riot can make mistakes in balancing and then seemingly not "respond" to it for a while but you have to look at it from their shoes. It takes many hours of hard work to design content and then play-test it thoroughly. And Riot loses money if they have to scrap this work or keep adding to it. The Time input to Money output is an important idea to keep in mind when designing these things, so please be more considerate before you flame Riot for trying to let the players solve some of the issues that come with the Rioter's blood sweat and tears put into their work.

I have a ton of ideas on this kind of game-play (philosophy?) floating around my head and I decided to share it with some people to hopefully engage into a fun and interesting conversation. Feel free to share your thoughts, I can't promise to read all of them because Design Projects take FOREVER to do, but I will definitely look at most of them! I'm not trying to alienate people who play casually or anything like that and I know my arguments are all over the place here but I wrote this for fun and since I'm not getting a school grade on it I don't feel the need to make it perfect in terms of grammar or flow.

Have a nice day!

10 Comments

DrugothOct 18, 20171 votes

People will always resist change, it's just our nature. It take a us out of our comfort zone.

SirChancelotttOct 19, 20171 votes

This is very true. I've been adverse to change all my life until now that I'm in college. I've found it very fun to participate in new events, or talk to new people. I think it might be a maturity thing but I'm not sure.

Poison BoltsOct 18, 20171 votes

change has made this game go from a fun competitive game to a casual infested cash grab that will die infinitely faster

PrimaquariusOct 18, 20171 votes

I want to label League as a pay-for-convenience game, considering you can buy Champions and Exp/IP boosts, but other games with this label give you much more for your money

Poison BoltsOct 18, 20171 votes

{quoted}

I want to label League as a pay-for-convenience game, considering you can buy Champions and Exp/IP boosts, but other games with this label give you much more for your money

i think champions are pricey but you have to factor in that the game is made for people who want to take it seriously with the option to do whatever you want, realistically you're going nowhere if you play more than like 3 - 5 champions regularly, so an investment of maybe 30-40 bucks for those main champions, and boosts that will easily get you to 30 in 5 days costing another 10, you basically get pay what you'd pay for new videogame

playing casually and wanting to try everything is a rip off though i mean if you bought every champion it has to be something like 900-1100 dollars

PrimaquariusOct 18, 20171 votes

As of this patch, with 13x 260, 22x 585, 24x 790, 47x 880, and 32x 975 RP champions (ignoring sales). If we take the value of $1 of RP as 130 via the $5 option, you would have to pay upwards of $819, rounded up to $820 in cards.

SirChancelotttOct 19, 20171 votes

I understand your point. I honestly do not think Riot has much control over the shop values. Tencent owns a lot of the Riot Stock and so they can dictate these things. It is definitely something that could be more player friendly, but some issues will not be resolved. I doubt Tencent or Riot even SEE the prices of champions as problems.

SirChancelotttOct 19, 20171 votes

I think people forget that Riot is, at the end of the day, a company that wants to make money. I won't pretend to know what goes on inside of Riot but until a player with a bigger wallet is receiving an unfair advantage at a competitive level, I don't mind. Also I'm not sure if you're talking about skins or just the direction of the game in general.

TheHobbitsOct 19, 20171 votes

Change is good. Change makes a game fun for the future. "League of Legends as made some stupid changes," one might say. "The should have kept it how it was when it was good."

Just look at this. Really look at it. https://www.pcgamesn.com/sites/default/files/LCS%20Week%203%20results%20-%20Vulcun%20vs%20CLG.jpg Yup.

"The new lore is so stupid. They retcon'ed my favorite champions backstory."

Back when the summoners of the Institute of War would summon champions in the summoning chamber with a powerful summoning spell to fight for them on Summoners Rift to settle petty disputes. Taric was an alien from another world, Nasus was a space Librarian and Sion was... well I don't even remember what he was.

Change is a good thing. Otherwise this game would have failed years ago.

SirChancelotttOct 19, 20172 votes

I agree with you, League of Legends has some of the most polished game-play in the MOBA market. I would honestly like to see the style used in other games that RIOT creates. As for Lore, I feel like it is in an interesting spot as I barely read lore anymore. I would rather get the lore from voice lines, animations, and the overall feel or look of a champion. However, some people are different, they like to dive into the universe of League Champions through comics, books, and videos. The universe and lore within the game wasn't in the front of their mind when creating the game. It felt more like a poor excuse as to why champions are on the map rather than the story of the universe and so it is very difficult to craft a world where a dirty annoying rat known as Teemo can exist and fight against Star Dragons, Celestial Beings and of course a boy who throws snowballs from the shoulders of a Yeti.