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Spent the day watching a friend learn the game....

BubblyRainbows·11/9/2017, 12:37:26 AM·32 votes·1,126 views

I noticed several big issues that made it infuriating to watch, none of which had anything to do with her being new.

First, I have to admit, it was a mistake to recommend that she wait until the preseason started to start playing. I figured starting her off two days before major changes would be counterproductive. But grinding for champions takes FOREVER with the new changes. She played for HOURS. Worked her way all the way up to level 8. Ashe and Garen were automatically unlocked for her, she was given Graves and enough BE to unlock him. The rest of her level up rewards? When disenchanted, she ended her day with 1300 BE. Are you kidding me? Two starter champs and one other for 8 levels worth of games? At that rate, she'll be level 30 before she can purchase even ONE 6300 champ.

Second, they really don't let new players figure out the runes AT ALL. For those of you who haven't seen a new player (or a smurf I guess) starting in the new season... You are stuck with predetermined presets for the first 8 levels. You can't even choose WHICH rune page you use. You are stuck with whatever Riot has assigned to your champion. If you play a tank, you're automatically stuck with a certain rune setup. No choice at all. None. And worse! When you hit level 8, all you unlock is the ability to choose which of the four presets you use. You still can't create your own rune pages! I believe it said the ability to set up your own rune page was locked until level 11 or 12.

Finally, and this one is more of a suggestion to Riot than anything: Lock intro bots to everyone but new players. Like... Level 10 or less. In two separate games today, while watching my friend play INTRO bots (not beginner. INTRO), she ended up teamed with someone with a gold rank border and mastery 7 on a champ, only to have said player follow her around, last hitting ALL the minions, stealing all the kills, and constantly spamming their mastery emote and apparently the laugh taunt as well. I couldn't hear it myself, but she was complaining about it after both games (she was at 0 CS at 11 minutes in one game because the Lee Sin laning with her stole EVERYTHING and would NOT leave her alone). What is the point of having a game mode aimed at new players if veterans will just pop in to troll new people for the fun of it?

But all in all, my take on the first day of the new season after watching a friend start today? Not very new-player friendly. Let new people play with their rune setups. Let them choose which rune page they use from the very start at least, and please, for the love of all the things, DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE ABYSSMAL BLUE ESSENSE GAIN! Seriously, it seems agonizingly slow. I can't even imagine how much this will slow down MY earning of new champions. If I have to play 10 games per level and it takes 8 levels to get 1300 IP, I'd have to play about 60 games to earn 6300 BE. At that rate, I assume I'll be able to unlock a new champion once every six months at best...

32 Comments

PhDs Nuts11/9/2017, 8:37:48 AM11 votes

God forbid she levels up and falls 5-10 BE short of a champion she wants. Time for another 6-10 hour grind.

Visionova11/9/2017, 5:33:59 AM10 votes

I'm leveling my own new account, and I'm amazed that Riot somehow managed to make the early levels even duller than they were before. Most of the early level alternate rotation isn't even fun champions.

Need Gold 4 Tent11/9/2017, 8:53:00 AM7 votes

the runes being locked don't make sense for helping newbies learn the game either. how would they learn about the runes if they can't test them out in the first place?

Bob the Toastr11/9/2017, 8:15:54 AM4 votes

Cannot upvote these enough.

DemainaNyx11/9/2017, 12:01:47 PM4 votes

Yeah, that all sucks.

Question, at lower levels, are the full pages filled or are only certain parts filled? I still say that's stupid that you can't decide. Yeah, I may have had Soraka with Attack Speed and AD/AP per level on my first few games, but at least I got to make a choice. Being told "this is right" when it might not be right, just sounds dumb especially for newer players trying to just learn the basic parts of the game. Unless they redid the tutorial, it's still crap at explaining whats important in this game. I didn't even have Runes until I was level 20 or something because I was told not to worry about them.

I was leveling a smurf to play with a new friend last year, so kinda an unfair example, but I could at least explain what each mastery meant and explain why Jhin takes X while Ashe takes Y. Being stuck with "Use this" until level 8 seems unfair and "Use one of these" until probably 20-30 is even worse.

Smurfs in bot game still bugs me. I played stuff like Soraka when I duo'd with him, so while I could just farm the bots for kill since I know their pattern and even went 22/1 on AP Soraka in Intermediate bots before when our game had 3 IP farming bots in it, I didn't if all our teammates appeared to be actual people. I tried to let my friend figure it out and heal him up if he made a mistake instead of just winning the game for him, with the exception IP bot teams. If someone in Gold is in Intro bots, I hope they are either training a friend because I can't think of another reason why you'd go to Intro instead of Beginning or Intermediate if you're that good at the game already.

HalcyonDweller11/9/2017, 5:08:04 PM3 votes

Holy crap you are right, higher level players do not need access to intro-bots. That lee sin player sounds like a dumpster fire of a person. They should not have done that to your friend.

Take note Riot, the new player experience in this game is still awful.

Fullmetallic11/9/2017, 1:11:49 AM2 votes

The BE gain is fine, considering everything, but i agree with you on the new player experience. also you could just get a PBE account for free and have all the champs on there.

Quepha11/9/2017, 6:00:09 PM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Amy the Raven,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=oOw1BB7w,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-11-09T00:37:26.542+0000)

Worked her way all the way up to level 8. Ashe and Garen were automatically unlocked for her, she was given Graves and enough BE to unlock him. The rest of her level up rewards? When disenchanted, she ended her day with 1300 BE. Are you kidding me?

Did you ever play League of Legends before? Serious question.

Earning 1300 IP in a single day of playing would be considered a lot of games, that's like a full work day of just grinding out game after game. Earning 7,000 in a single day? Literally unheard of.

The rate of champion unlocks was always approximated at 1x 6300 champion per month of casual play and your example of a single day of play is already miles ahead of that benchmark.

I am seriously tired of the blatant display of ignorance on this forum and reddit of people who are blatantly ignoring obvious math showing that BE gains are extremely close to IP gains of the past, and even better in a lot of instances ALL BEFORE CONSIDERING THAT WE DON'T HAVE TO SPEND SHIT ON RUNES ANYMORE.

DeathBurst11/10/2017, 3:44:47 PM1 votes

I mean, 3 champs including a decently recent one and 1300 BE on top of those 3 champs at level 8? Seems fairly even with the old system, if you ask me. She will get more raw essence and less champions automatically added in later levels, so she'll be able to actually choose what she wants. So I understand that for now it can be frustrating to get forced champs, but if you look at the value of what she got for those 8 levels, that's perfectly fine.