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I'm finding it harder and harder to stay interested in League in 6.2

Hot Cousin·1/31/2016, 11:41:03 AM·657 votes·29,701 views

Why?

Personally I think the pre-patch and this season is a disaster. I'm going to use dot points to try to make this concise and easy to follow.

  • Towers. Ohhhhhh boy, towers. Not one person, not a single person, in real life or on these boards or even on a stream, never have I ever seen anyone say 'yo these towers are too strong, let's nerf' or think it would be a good idea/good for the game. I get that you wanted to make games shorter, but this wasn't the way to do it.

  • You made a conscious decision to make games shorter buuuuuut where are the adjustments to late-game champs? Irelia, Ryze, Nasus, Cass - you've made absolutely no adjustments to these or any other champs that rely on farming all game to hit max power. All you've done is reduced tower strength and increased death timers which screams of laziness.

Side note: Ryze and Cass have still seen play in Korea for various reasons, but the risk is huge when taking these champs (less so with Ryze) but they are played in spite of the game changes, not because of them.

  • Increased death timers has only lead to more risk-averse, punishing gameplay and moronic win conditions. Korea has been the most prominent in this area, but solo queue is equally as frustrating. It's always been the case that getting caught late game probably leads to a loss, but that has shifted about 10-15 minutes and it just means that people, especially pros, play way, way safer in the 'late game'. It also unequally and unnecessarily places a lot more importance on what happens in the first 5-10 minutes of the game.

  • Despite all of this, these changes have failed, for the most part, to significantly reduce game length. All they've done is made the game more punishing, frustrating, and worse to watch, especially Korean pro League. A lot of the games (and series) have been incredibly boring and it's a real shame. I have gone from watching LCK at every single opportunity last year to having it on in the background this year and not bothering most of the time. The hyper risk-averse gameplay combined with 'oops fight one time we lose' is utterly mind-numbing and BORING.

  • The turret trades at the start of every pro game are a joke. Yes I'm aware this occurred before this season, but it wasn't ALL the time like it is now.

  • You do a massive overhaul of ADC items but the big winners have been bruisers.

  • You think that CDR is more important for AD champs than AP champs and leave 40% CDR totally unattainable without buying an item that is terrible on most champs (grail).

  • There are so many unhealthy and toxic champs in the game right now, and with only 6 bans, I struggle to find playing against or with them any fun.

  • The current state of Fiora, Tahm Kench, GP, Graves, Kalista is an embarrassment to the game and to your balancing team.

  • You introduce new mastery Keystones that break the damage output of previously balanced champs like Swain and Karthus, but instead of nerfing their damage output you nerf their utility - what?

  • You then nerf the Keystones but LEAVE THE PREVIOUSLY NERFED CHAMPS IN THEIR NERFED STATE instead of compensating them. This is the very definition of being 'Sejuani'd' and you should be fu#$ing ashamed of this because it shows your favouritism towards keeping certain champs in/out of the meta.

  • The Riot post that admitted to keeping Sejuani 'Sejuani'd' proves your favouritism and destroyed a lot of people's confidence in your supposed impartial desire to have every champ be a viable pick. This is utterly disgraceful, imo.

  • Still 3 bans for each team despite the champ pool growing exponentially since we went from 2 to 3 bans (and even that was long overdue). This is REALLY overdue.

  • The new player experience is still atrocious.

  • The removal of mana pots and in turn, taking something interactive and making it passive (increased passive mana regen) has removed an interesting piece of decision-making from the game, particularly in the laning phase. I HATE this change.

  • The Juggernaut update did nothing but make those champs less fun to play against than before. Darius is more binary than ever and Garen's whole 'Villain' deal is just an uninteresting and non-interactive flat damage buff. Kindred has this down pat - making a choice for who to potentially increase your power from is a far, far better way to achieve the same result. Playing Kindred feels way more rewarding because of this one aspect alone.

  • Your champion reworks in general are... special. Very, very special (and not in a good way). Some of them work, most of them ratchet that power creep dial up to 11.

  • Games feel less carryable than ever before. Comebacks feel less possible than ever before.

  • Warding changes but no 7th ward-only item slot for pinks.

  • Illaoi is a hot mess of a champion and you've made no attempt to make her any better.

  • Thunderlord's, especially on assassins.

  • Keystones in general.

  • It's not just me, a lot of people I know are having a lot less fun with the game than they did last year. The broken champs, the punishing gameplay, the over-emphasis on early game decisions (and mistakes), the state of AP CDR itemisation, the turret nerfs, the incredibly lazy 'whatever it takes to make it happen' adjustments to reduce game time without consideration for the game as a whole, the boring pro games (especially in Korea - RIP) the list just goes on and on and increasingly I'm finding other things to do with my time because logging in and playing in this state of the game is just not enjoyable anymore, and worse still, nothing looks like it's going to change anytime soon.

EDIT: Wowowowow 463 upvotes, 401 comments and 10.3k views?? HOLY BALLS. I never thought so many people would agree with what I had to say (or at least some or most of it), but having said that I'm also not surprised given the state of the game right now. I've probably now read every single update to the thread and overwhelmingly people are supportive of the points raised.

Here's the thing: I didn't write this post to get a red response like a lot of people might think. I did it purely to vent and raise issues with the game that are bothering the f@#$ out of me and to give feedback. That is, after all, what this board is about, is it not? Riot won't respond to this thread because of the tone of my post, I know that, but that's probably not important. It would be nice if they acknowledged some of the points raised, but the unfortunate truth is that they probably won't. What is important is that they see the thread and take it on board. 463 upvotes?? That is insane for what is essentially a state-of-the-game thread. Surely it just can't be ignored...

454 Comments

shark music1/31/2016, 12:31:59 PM144 votes

I agree so much with all of OP's complaints about the recent "games should be shorter" theory. The worst part is that it all feels like Riot's neurotic omg-is-she-prettier-than-me response to Heroes of the Storm. Not only have all the changes made the game less fun, it's just been embarrassing to watch.

The weaker towers are a terrible idea. All you're doing is punishing people who are trying to learn the game and need tower support. And people who are trying to expand their champion pool. Why/how on Earth would anyone look at League, and then make changes that make the game worse for new players?

This is weird for me. I'm typically a big fan of Riot's changes, whether they're tiny or sweeping. This move to cut down game length has just been awful, though. I wish they'd roll it back and pick a new branch of the League tech tree to spend their resources developing.

Lord OwlBear1/31/2016, 11:49:58 AM96 votes

OP you just laid the smackdown....... I applaud you sir. Well stated.

Retillin1/31/2016, 2:05:43 PM75 votes

Pro games. It's not just LCK. Both LCS regions and the LPL are boring. The main reason? Just about everything Riot has done to speed the game up (increased death timers, minion pushing, tower changes, ect.) has had the effect of staling the game. Increased death timers mean pros take less risky chances. Towers are just free gold, so we see team just trade towers and call it good. It's very unhealthy for the game. Makes viewing the games bad...

Cowgirl Ed1/31/2016, 12:23:06 PM61 votes

Most of the points are good points, but the biggest offender I think is the amount of cancer champs and all the "reworks" in the last times that failed. For one good rework, three fail

Sire Hippington1/31/2016, 5:35:19 PM41 votes

Agree with every point, though i would like to add some points:

  • The rather high increase in gold from CS early on makes CS leads more snowbally
  • While shutdowngold overall is higher, the global distribution makes it way harder to come back in lane, and the 'assist-spreas', which made targets that had alot assists more valuable, have been removed, so unless you opponents only have solo-kills, the total shutdown gold is lower than befor
  • Turret gold has been increased, so takeing early turrets snowballs more
  • Overall damage, especially burst, has been favoured by masteries, items and neutral buffs -> more snowbally as mistakes more likely lead to death rather than retreat.
  • Riftherald offers even more resources to take for a team with an early lead
  • Darkness is upon us! Warding is now jungle+supp only, as laners can't keep even a single ward up constantly till 18, and if your jungler neither gets trackers nor sightstone, say goodby to your vision.
  • The low vision leads to passive and stall gameplay, as any active action without vision is just to risky, which can easily observed in proplay.
  • Running around in darkness always leads to harder snowballing.
  • The overall increased costs of end-tier items, mostly with above 1k combine costs, makes it really hard to atain coregear when behind and leds to a hard power discrepancy between a fed and a behind champ.
  • The high cost of Rabadons really hurts mages that rely more on ap-scaleings. Most mages that are/were effective had very pen focused builts due to high base-mediocre scaleings. Aditionally, nearly every ap-mid in competetive rushes abysal or roa, or both, as those two have been buffed while all other ap-items have been nerfed.
  • many great items have been removed/reworked, and their nich is now empty....
  • ...which forces many champs into crit builts while they had valid options to opt out of RNG befor - hello built-deversity!
  • The LW changes remove it as the save midgame powerspike that was important for adc to have some impact when behind, while totally invalidateing any armor items later on(with mastery you get over 50% pen!), still rendering tanks rather usless once 5+items are reached(though people don't notice that, as you rarly get so much items unless insanely fed these days)
  • The crit itemisation gives ADC all the tools they need to snowball an advantage really hard
  • Mercurial is just stupidly strong right now. Such a massive active should come at more costs.
  • Tenacity is a joke right now, as a result hard cc has become more powerfull
Synx71/31/2016, 1:30:59 PM40 votes

Ikr. I'm considering going to HoTs despite im used to playing LoL this game went down to shit and im tired of their champ favoritism hello LeeSin

FuntaC1/31/2016, 5:45:14 PM37 votes

It is often spoken in business that smarter people have less common sense. it is a fact that many of the pinnings of game mechanics are built upon common sense factors. This idiom versus fact becomes a paradox.

A rioter stated in January that recent changes have questioned some long held anchors of LoL game design. I am assuming that the current devs are very smart, since the common sense factors were being questioned. This is the root of all the problems you listed.

We can talk about turret diving as a prime example. The reason stronger turrets make for a better game is that the risk:reward ratio is more reasonable. It is a common sense factor. The enjoyment of watching a turret dive is knowing that there is a high risk. Now, we have no risk turret dives, and the result is boring. The thrill of turrets was nothing more than the tradeoff of damage given versus damage assuredly taken. That is the player and viewer perception that incites emotion. That effect is also common sense.

So, we have devs that are too smart, so the product becomes more stupid. Interesting twist right? The only solution is to hire devs that understand this balance, and that have the power to enforce it.

Radioactive Man1/31/2016, 2:52:42 PM34 votes

Season 6 feels more and more like bullshit every day. Yes the other seasons have had their moments but I can't think of a single one where my first though in a game for the day is how much I hate every change they made this time around.

PapaGreg211/31/2016, 4:48:48 PM34 votes

A lot of valid points here unfortunately. Late game champs are basically shelved in this meta because nobody is hitting full builds. I remember the cinderhulk meta where outside of 2 or 3 outlier strong champs almost everything was greatly balanced and the game felt so fair and rewarding.

Uiraya1/31/2016, 6:54:10 PM33 votes

The best part about shorter games is that Riot already has TWO ENTIRE MODES dedicated to shorter games that they IGNORE. Why fuck with Rift this much?

BALDG1VEN BOOMER1/31/2016, 4:09:15 PM28 votes

Did you see the C9 vs TSM game yesterday, it was just a base race for the inhib and first blood was at 20 mins into the game...

FrankerX1/31/2016, 12:02:43 PM26 votes

i hope someone from riot will answer to this thread. a statement. especially on the champ thing. wasnt it like every 5th new champ, 1 champ does down in ip cost???

sadly this is true. i dont like these threads because mostly they are shit but this one is true TRUE AND TRUE. i barely played in 6.1 and when 6.2 hit us i tried an aram and the cam was all fucked up and i stopped playing again. its just... i think i played 4 games this season so far.

that is sad. because its just boring. even aram isnt fun anymore

LaughingStapler1/31/2016, 12:46:24 PM25 votes

I'm most mad about what they did to my AP Kog. He used to be a great but slow-scaling poke mid-laner and they just randomly butchered his poke to force him into some on-hit monstrosity. Sorry Riot, I like poking and aiming stuff instead of just spamming autos like a coked out Kalista. They took a champion with many cool playstyles and builds then reduced all that to one true path.

Besides the stylistic differences, he just isn't good mid anymore because he still scales slowly but lacks the hypercarry potential from before. To maximize damage output, you really need to get close and that means almost instant death without a perfect team comp. Before the rework, he was always useful mid because at least he could poke and show some lane presence. Good luck trying to use your W on a Zed, Talon or even normal mids like Orianna and Viktor. This explains a lot of what I mean.

Saianna1/31/2016, 12:57:33 PM23 votes

Everyone rememebrs Sejuani nerfs, they even call champions "sejuani'ed"

But the real victim of Riots dumbfuck decisions is Warwick. He lost by far more of power than Seji. He's still viable, but the fun part... Gone.

Earl Eulrich1/31/2016, 12:34:25 PM20 votes

  • itemization also adds a lot to the snowballing, as hitting core-gear now takes longer than before and there are no alternatives like getting an early last whisper if you fall behind anymore (mostly the reason most korean teams try to avoid fighting till their carry has at least 2-3items completd, so there is still a chance for a comeback if you lose a fight)

  • vision is entirly balanced around the jungler playing wardbot - making the game unplayable in soloq if you don´t jungle yourself most of the times. And even if jungle and supports ward properly vision is still insanly snowbally, as the winning team can easily clear out pink and bluewards while protecting their own. Again, this leads to very passive gameplay once you fall behind, because you can just stare into the darkness and hope the monster that is somewhere in there screws up.

  • rapidfire canon is just silly....marksmen are balanced around their respective ranges and this item just invalidates all that balancing - a 3item vayne can q-rf-crit you from 1000range for 700+dmg, outranging and outdmging any skillshot reliant poke in the game. And she´s not even the worst offender.

Rain NT1/31/2016, 12:58:38 PM19 votes

The mana pots man... it feels bad man

dEAdbUs1/31/2016, 4:01:08 PM18 votes

I have to agree with every point. You just clearly explained what I was thinking about since previous season. Special... reworks with doubtfully fun kits, badly designed last champions (now I can't just sit and get some fun from game, I need to work hard to be able to play my champion, it feels like I'm fighting with my own champion not with enemy), etc.

To be honest I stopped to play in this preseason and still have no wish to keep playing, because game is becoming too hardcore. It's becoming like StarCraft or something, where you need to control over 9000 things same time, but here you else need lightspeed reaction.

Lugg1/31/2016, 5:58:28 PM18 votes

Great post. I agree with you on pretty much everything. Towers are incredibly weak, any champ can take them down now. They need to either do more damage or be harder to kill. Late game champs are pretty much a non factor now.

The game is awful now due to the fact that you can play a perfect game up to the 30 minute mark, and then lose the game on just one mistake. I have seen games where the one team is up 10 kills, has an inhib down, and in complete control of the map. Then they lose one teamfight and the other team has time to take the Nexus since the towers are so weak and the death timers so long.

I really agree that their are WAY too many toxic champs now. If a champs kit is naturally toxic, they should honestly be put slightly on the UP side versus the OP side. The balancing team really does need to be fired and replaced with people who have at least some common sense.

More bans are definitely needed. The new season works perfectly into this. 10 bans for a match only shuts out about 8% of the champs in the game.

Niaphim1/31/2016, 3:50:25 PM18 votes

Because of these changes both EU and NA LCS are more boring and even frustrating to watch. Increasing the cost of mistakes has led to the exact opposite effect - pros tend to stall games, then someone inevitably makes something wrong and everything collapses in a matter of minutes.

Personally after I've completed placements I can't find motivation to play anymore, I feel like every game is going to be a clown fiesta. So I ended up blowing dust from my hundreds of indie games on Steam which I got on sales and finally getting into it.

Gardevoir Pony1/31/2016, 3:50:22 PM16 votes

I agree completely with the OP. This is not the League I used to enjoy, I used to love League and picking up a mage like Soraka and Zilean when they could BOTH work as Solo laners. Both were much much better before Riot DESTROYED them and now Soraka is getting MORE nerfs because she was played ONCE in the LCS instead of the usual boring mix of Thresh/Alister/Morgana. I am TIRED of seeing the same champs like Lulu in the LCS. The bitch was supposed to be a support and now she's doing better then Soraka EVER did in solo lanes and somehow she's NOT getting a rework.

The favouritism from Riot is annoying and completely unfair to AP mains like myself who prefer skill over spammy assassins and bruisers.

jQuery2/1/2016, 9:08:14 PM14 votes

I don't feel like I have played much league as most people here, but i feel the same.

In the 2 and a half years I have played it, the biggest pause i had from league was in preseason, 2 whole weeks.

I just... I dont know, I am just loosing interest. My wife too, she started playing less and less since the bilgewater event, whenever I asked her why she playing less, she would just say "I don't know... ". She does not care much for patches and usually plays ARAM. And i think to much changes just made her feel estranged to the game she knew.

I feel the same way now, so many changes so fast, I feel like the game is running away from me;

  • I don't have a main role anymore.
  • I don't have main champions anymore.
  • I did more unlearning of league last year then learning.
  • It starts to feel like work sometimes.

It is like I am loosing a race against Riot Games and I never even wanted to race them.

And at this point I feel like they are gonna stay blind until they drown this game or until we do something as drastic as a boycott. These posts never helped us even more it feels like they keep doing things out of spite and it makes me sad.