Riot Needs to Ask Themselves: “What makes LoL better than other mobas? Why should people play?”

Originally it was the community being cool, riot being close to the player base (now they just have a few rioters running around like the person in a Chuckie cheese costume to make face.) The likable characters, the fact league was a good middle ground of mobas not too easy not too complex. (Like Goldilocks story of the bears and their food.) And other aspects.

Now, that is tough to say. The community is shit between the Tyler1s and report happy snowflakes. Riot selling out to tencent years back. The push from a decent paced strategic game into this cluster fuck of one mistake vs someone with a brain means the game is lost at least for your lane. (all likely in the name of the sin known as e-sports and catering to the ADHD having new era.) The blatant favoritism of AD based champions lately.

It is sincerely hard for me to find reasons to suggest to someone to try league. (Not that many people that don't play exist these days.)

The porn.

I enjoy the game most (playing or watching) when I feel any player can truly carry nearly by himself. I want high individual skill to be maximally rewarded.

I also think one of League's greatest assets is its high pace arcade style gameplay (while still preserving strategic depth). DoTA feels really clunky by comparison. Then again, some recent additions like Hexflash feel really out of place and clunky in League as well. It's a bit like Hold'em poker... accessible but infinitely hard to master.

Dude Riot cant get past the question of "How do we force players to buy more RP?"

Then they sit there drooling over their billions of dollars dreaming about more $$$$$[zombie-nunu-hearts] $$$$$

Characters.

Riot's strength and what elevated them above most other games were the character design. Was it TOTALLY ORIGINAL UNQIUE AMAZONG? Well not really. Riot did, however, find a way to wittle down the absolute boilerplate of what makes a character enjoyable to look at and listen to. It was also a far cry from DOTA classic, which used mostly generic archetypes from Warcraft 3 units. Not that it was bad (and DOTA2 has improved that characterization) but it always felt like League was a step above.

There's a reason that even people who quit would still like to know about or play as the characters they love, after all.

About a decade ago, the most popular MMORPG in the world was World of Warcraft. It was not the first of its kind, and many of its features could be found in other games, but nonetheless it dominated the genre for years, and still continues to do so. During that time, many other studios tried to develop "WoW-killers", MMOs that were deliberately intended to offer an experience like WoW's, but with targeted improvements. All of them failed, not because their games weren't good, or because WoW was better than them in every respect, but because WoW had been around for longer, and was the bigger game with the larger dedicated player base. Every game that wanted to challenge it had to go up against years' worth of content, polish and community building, which nobody could really achieve.

This I think describes League as well, to a large extent: it's not the first MOBA around, and I think many more modern MOBAs in fact have some features that are better (HotS in particular has far more diversity of customization due to its talent system, for example), but it's one of the largest and oldest on the market now, and as such has some of the most content, as well as years' worth of an evolving design philosophy. League is to MOBAs what WoW is to MMORPGs, which is why it can also afford to make riskier moves, such as the current preseason, and still come out of it successfully.

Beyond that, though, I also genuinely think League has features to it that make it worth playing over others irrespective of seniority or size: most of the champions are completely unique, and I feel are far easier to get attached to than, say, ancient gods or random archetypes from a conglomeration of franchises. There is a diversity and a depth to these characters that we don't really see anywhere else, and the ongoing universe update tying them all together has truly created this engaging world, I think, even if it's not the focus of matches.

With that said, none of this specifically refers to the gameplay, and this I think is something League has fallen behind on relative to its competitors. Not so much because of new developments or balance changes, but because League's core systems are fundamentally not optimal. I think Riot's design and balance teams are truly excellent, and despite some mistakes, are doing an amazing job with what they have, but Riot's character customization systems have run their course, and I think have ended up limiting the game far more than they're improving it. Runes and masteries were once a key feature of distinction for League relative to the competition, but they never really were a great selling point, and didn't really better the game with their presence. Even the new rune system, which I think is a massive step forward in this respect, is not a real selling point, and I don't think really justifies its complexity. Similarly, itemization and summoner spells once promised diversity and the power to tailor a champion's playstyle in many different ways, but for years now have offered little to no real diversity at all, and have, again, usually made champions more difficult to balance, and in the worst cases have even made them more similar to each other than they should be (e.g. supports last season). Systems like leveling and crit are relics from older games that have aged poorly, and that have severely warped design around a framework that doesn't really lend itself to diversity or fairness either (look at all the champions who have been overloaded just so that they could hope to contribute when behind).

Personally, while this may be a far cry from the current state of the game, I think League has the potential to be truly perfect if it continues to overhaul its core systems. I don't care for runes or items, or even summoner spells, but I do want different playstyles for my champions. I don't care about discovering hidden synergies between two different equippable mechanics, what I want is a game where every champion feels like they do unique and awesome things, but also where they can easily be balanced and polished as needed. I also would like a game where team compositions aren't so rigid, and where the entirety of its balance isn't predicated on certain classes being mandatory, or forced to commit to only one or two specific positions. I think the game has accrued a ton of complexity over the years, but not all that much of it has brought about depth, and as a result the game has also become increasingly inaccessible to newer players. Riot needs to take a hammer to its core systems, rebuild them from the ground up if necessary, and while Runes Reforged is a great step in that direction, I feel there's still much more to be done.

I'll list out what makes LoL better than each competitor:

DoTA: Control. It feels far more responsive. Playin DoTA makes it feel like you have 200 ping all the time when that's actually just how the character responds to your commands. This issue trumps any other flaw.

Smite: Age, business, and ease. I personally LOVE how accurate they are with the lore of the gods and most of their interpretations. That said, it's far newer so the god pool isn't as big. They have some ass-backwards business sense; the God Pack that grants you every single god and every god that will ever be released is only $30, but for some reason they make Ultimate skins (transforming like in League) LIMITED, and only possible for purchase after you buy $70 worth of content from the event they're available in. It's completely ridiculous if they want new players. And everything is a skillshot, including autos-- which is turns the easiest role in League into the most difficult one.

HoTS: Age and comfort. Blizzard has quite a loyal fanbase, so they'll always have someone to play new games. But HoTS is still fairly new so again they have fewer characters, and the fact they have a completely different leveling system/ no items means it's extremely uncomfortable to switch from some other MOBA. There's also the fact that it's hard to translate characters from their original game to something different. This stands whether it's because the characters are more intricate in their own games-- Diablo characters who have thousands of possible ability combinations and 8 abilities at minimum at any given moment, or because they're completely one-dimensional in their own game-- Starcraft characters who are just units need abilities that fit a MOBA. Not getting to pick your map is also hard to get used to, and since there are around 6 maps that are complete trash in my opinion, it takes away from the fun.

i was ready to spend some money on the game if the update would have turned out great, but i can hardly bring myself to start the client now ..