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Over the last several years, Lol has not declined - it’s gotten better

BeatinWarDrumz·6/19/2019, 12:01:18 AM·17 votes·3,617 views

In recent years (id say since around season 5), it’s become fashionable to say that league has declined as a game, that the new designers don’t care about the players. While some level of complaining is legitimate, the argument that all around (that is, not just on any specific quality, but overall) league has declined is clearly false.

  1. Quality of life

From the client update to better graphics to role preferences, the game experience has gotten more streamlined and less irritating as a whole. I’ve played since late season 3, and I remember when you weren’t guaranteed your main role, or your off role, but had to go with the luck of the draw. This caused constant trolling and flaming in lobbies, and was one of the biggest issues in the game. Now, I get auto filled maybe one out of every ten or twenty games. This issue will never be entirely solved, but it has gotten unbelievably better. But there are other things too - the graphics have gotten better (compared old and new nunu), we have a sandbox mode, and new game modes are added to the game quite frequently.

  1. Champion design

People love to bitch about reworks and new, over complicated design, but champion design has gotten better, not worse over time. Old champions rarely felt particularly unique in important ways - they were often created in mere weeks, with abilities that often didn’t particularly fit their gameplay fantasy. Take, for example, Pantheon - what about his gameplay screams “badass hoplite warrior”? Now, champions add mechanics that not only make them unique, but fulfill their gameplay fantasy. Fiora is a great example of this - with her passive and ult, it actually feels like you’re in a duel and trying to find the openings of your opponents defense rather than just being another right click machine. Warwick, too, feels very satisfying since the rework. For new champions, almost every new champion adds new, exciting mechanics to the game. Some of them feel a little jammed in (for example, Sylas’ últ stealing in my opinion feels a little forced), but some like Neekos disguising feel both unique and thematically appropriate.

  1. Balance.

Overall, I would not say league has gotten particularly more balanced over time, but it hasn’t become much less balanced either. People complain about stuff like new Mordekaiser, but league of black cleavers was a thing. Kassadin being op for an entire season was a thing. Cinderhulk health stacking was a thing. The game has always had metas that are dominant - it’s part of the nature of competitive games, and riot does a good job of keeping the metas fairly fresh.

  1. Build paths/unique champions One common complaint that I see is that riot has been removing “unique” champions who have random ratios in their kit that don’t make sense together. Maybe these players think league should be a single player rpg, where you can “experiment” and just fuck around, but in a competitive game, players will very quickly find optimal ways to play champions, forcing generalist champions who can’t be as easily min/maxed out of the meta. Unless you want every champion to be like old nunu, there isn’t room for champions to not have optimal build paths.

Just my thoughts on some key issues. I think league gets better basically every year.

26 Comments

Koiyaki6/19/2019, 12:58:26 AM6 votes

you hit the nail on the head. People will always look back at older things with rose colored galsses only to fail to realize that even then there were things they complained about. Do people really want league of black cleaver back? Do people really want negative mr true damage raka q back? Do people really want feral-never see your jungler till 15 mins- flare back. Do people really want top lane follow ur jungle to share xp cuz yes back. do people REALLY want DFG back? I doubt it.

Capn Of Capns6/19/2019, 12:55:45 AM5 votes

I understand your points but I disagree.

  1. The client is buggy as hell and requires a better computer to run than the game itself does. That is so counter-intuitive.

  2. I've also been playing since end of season 2 and to me League has gotten less fun because, as SivHD put said, "it used to be like a weird game of chess." Now it isn't. There is more damage, more mobility, more Swiff-Army-Knifeism. New champions used to always bring mechanics to the table. Now we get new broken mechanics or nothing new at all. Neeko's whole kit is a mishmash of other abilities.

  3. We argue about items needing to be adjusted more than champions. Stormrazor was a bane, and lethality is a mistake.

  4. There has always been an "optimal" build, but more and more you see the same items on every champion. It used to be a meme how ADCs always built the same stuff in 90% of games, but now you see the same thing on mages, assassins, and bruisers. About the only people you see variety on are tanks because there IS no optimal build path for them.

I can tell you as someone who lost the ability to play for a couple years that the game I came back to is inferior in every way except graphically. And draft pick (which is actually another broken promise because Riot said they would never enforce a meta).

Moody P6/19/2019, 2:09:56 AM3 votes

If you want to argue that champion design has gotten better than can you pick better champions to make a case with? Fiora has no counterplay for any melee that isn't equally as mobile as herself and her kit sums up to "AA reset and dash a lot." Warwick is trash and the clumsiest champion in the game for years now.

Most new designs are incredibly samey with the same grab bag mix of Sheen passives, X hit passives, generic line skillshots and generalist gameplay that garners a playerbase by being incredibly OP once you've gotten a hang of their mechanics. No, we haven't gotten better here; aside from a few designs most new creations are degenerate stains on the game's integrity.

Jamaree6/19/2019, 12:45:00 AM3 votes

Sorry man, you know the rules, you aren’t allowed to say anything good about League on the forums, not part of the circlejerk, that’s a paddlin.

KFCeytron6/19/2019, 2:41:16 AM2 votes

I stopped reading when you brought up "client update" as a sign that LoL has gotten better. It may be newer than the one it replaces, but it's still horrendous, and possibly even worse than its predecessor, Adobe AIR and all.

Serika Zero6/19/2019, 4:29:30 AM2 votes

counterpoint to your argument nr1: the population (player size) of europe and na has dropped significantly, which is why riot carters to korean and chinesse players the most (not like they gave a fuck about eu in the first place).

counterpoint to your argument nr2: you can get banned anytime now if a streamer dislikes you. He can just go to his riot friends on tweeter and get you banned that night.

counterpoint to your argument nr3: riot introduced the iron league, and now every league has only 4 tiers. However, what this did was essentially "push up" the vast majority of the players. In order to give them the illusion that they are "climbing" and getting better. To put it in perspective, 1-2 years ago, Diamond 5 (lowest diamond division) was top 1-2% of the players on that server. Now its top 4-5% for diamond 4.

Due to the heavily declaiming player base. And due to how much riot plays favorites with balance as well as with streamers. And with how they tried to lowkey dopamine hit their playerbase and make them seem like "wow you are better, welcome to gold" (gold+ is now 50% of the playerbase, compared to 30% before). And the most important, seeing as they constantly push adds and sponsors during their LCS games (something you do when you want more $$$).

Its quite obvious to see that this game is doing quite poorly from both a quality standpoint as well as its profit margins. It still works, but its like 2 times worse than 3-4 years ago

Glaricion6/19/2019, 5:04:25 AM2 votes

I don't get it, you keep mixing lobby experience in w/ the actual game. The old Battlefront II on console had an insanely poor online experience, does actually being playable online make Battlefront II the better game? (bonus points because League took years to not have long periods of downtime at random intervals)

Role selection was a great improvement, but that's separate from the game. Client's quality would be a joke even for a new developer's title that has a userbase of 400 unique players every day.

You talk about how competitive games can't have a vast array of viable builds and need optimal build paths, Dota's the most competitive /hardcore AoS around and you have several build options and niche picks on virtually every champion.

You praise new new champion designs when they're just overloading to the point where they make simpler designs obsolete.
I mean, just look at Zoe's W, that one ability could pretty much be an entire champion's kit by itself. The whole previous season was just recent releases being broken, supposedly the pro scene is also dominated by recent champs and reworks.

The whole 'skill expression' design meme also negatively impacts players by heavily limiting their champion pool and usually just means "How many mechanics can we fit into each ability? ALEX, GET THE BETTING POOL STARTED, WE'RE GOING IN!." Recent releases and reworks have been pushing "maybe 10 games to get them down" champion mastery curves to "oh yeah, 30 games before the learning lines stops being a cliff's face, let's go!"

And you're complaining about Sylas being forced because he can steal ults? Sylas' ult is just Rubick's hamstrung.

Terozu6/19/2019, 2:07:23 AM2 votes

im sorry but the new client, while definitely prettier, is much less quality of life

Other than that, yeah the game is generally much better all around.

FantasySniper6/19/2019, 6:47:45 AM1 votes

Time to kill has become a fraction of what it was before. The Cinderhulk update was the last time tanks mattered, and assassins actually felt healthy. At least in Overwatch, you can at least actually survive for more than a few seconds and ult timers feel reasonable. In LoL, no matter how far behind Yasuo is, once he's picked up his item power spike, he's fucking unstoppable with his ult up every single fight.

More often than not, Riot's champ design misses the mark; Cassiopeia's rework, Ryze's many reworks, Ornn, Galio, Kalista, Skarner, Ivern, etc.

The lack of build path diversity is just a symptom of the lack of variety in team composition and strategy. The game has had so many snowball mechanics and kits added that it is now homogeneously geared towards high aggression and team fighting, whereas before you could actually make up for a lack of micro with intelligent macro.

I remember when a shut-down actually mattered. I remember when warding actually saved your life. I remember when turret diving was considered risky instead of routine.

This game has gone so far down the gutter, it's already swimming down the drain, and I'm honestly glad I quit so I could take a step back and realize what it's become. Then lament its loss every time I come back to try and relive it.

Soul Dealer6/19/2019, 12:03:19 AM1 votes

I think league has overall gotten better over time. The problem is not so much that there are still issues (that’s to be expect of course) It’s that there are some issues that are so severe they should have been fixed along time ago

Toxic Teeto6/19/2019, 10:18:04 AM1 votes

11/10 troll

Lovelle6/19/2019, 1:49:11 AM1 votes

Not if you actually like playing maps other than Summoner's Rift. Dominion was removed back in 2014 and the RGM system has been handled terribly since then. Custom game mode options are also seriously lacking.

Why is there no Crystal Scar mode in 2019? Literally over half of my complaining would stop if they would bring back Ascension or Dominion. I'm so tired of playing 3v3 (which never gets any decent updates, let alone balancing) and I've no intention of returning to the Rift (unless the layout of the map is completely changed). That's my primary issue with this game right now honestly.

mack91126/19/2019, 1:54:46 AM1 votes

Since my entrance in season 3 the game has improved year over year.

Blåsigt6/19/2019, 2:18:29 AM1 votes

I agree. As with any game community, they people that post on the forums are those with some existing problem with the game. It’s like yelp reviews

Ionian Vulpix6/19/2019, 3:37:06 AM1 votes

I agree, the game did improve, and I don't remember the Legacy client now, but if the new one is an IMPROVEMENT, the other must have not even opened in the first place.

AR URF6/19/2019, 5:08:47 AM1 votes

Except for every season has catered to one class of champion. This one is a bruiser meta. So you're wrong, league has not gotten better.

Morticianjohn6/19/2019, 6:10:16 AM1 votes

The biggest issues I have with the game

1 - rate of change. The game changes way too fast. Sure some of the changes are good but some of the changes are bad. Let's absorb the change before charging into the next change. We have changes coming down the pipe to fix problems that were created by previous changes when a simple revert of a bad change would be the best option. This goes for champions too. Every patch doesn't need a new champion. Which brings us to the next point

2 - Complexity. There are like 150+ champions to learn and every new release introduces thousands of unique reactions. Just look at one simple ability (yasuo R) and how many variations on where he could wind up when he presses the button depending on tower and ally locations. If things were intuitive and consistent that would be one thing but every new champion has to break some rule for example akali shroud being able to move around under opponent's turret. Or Zoe sleep not being classified as a stun, root etc... Instead we have to make a whole new ability with it's own unique classifications just for inconsistency sake because if players can predict champion interactions the game might be too easy. Look up a simple spell like Sivir spell shield and you'll see pages and pages of information on what it blocks and unique interactions. It's a simple spell shield, don't make this complicated but somehow... it is.

In these two significant areas the game has not gotten better. I do think 30 minutes is a sweet spot and I appreciate that games are shorter than when I first started playing. While there have been some changes that have improved the game I think they need to look seriously into complexity and do all they can to combat the complexity creep. We aren't getting as many new players and the new players that I've played with and introduced to the game have all fallen by the wayside due to the insane learning curve.

Onandaga6/19/2019, 6:37:57 AM1 votes

If there's one thing I'm grateful for about league now as opposed to the old days its the draft system. I mean yeah there is autofill which sucks but I prefer that a hundred times over racing to type TOP every game and getting to stupid arguments about who gets which lane.