Boards›Gameplay

What happened to this game?

TodaysKiller··9 votes·1,579 views

Hello everyone,

Just a quick question...

What Has happened to this game?

Hear me out:

This game use to be a LOT of fun, there wasn't too much balancing issues, you could play almost any champ and have fun doing so. You'd have players who actually knew what they were doing, or if they didn't, they wouldn't just start trolling.

The way I see it is, currently this state of this game (for me) is becoming more and more of a "joke".

Why?

Because of the patches (since around 6 months ago, or so) the balancing has got way out of hand. And no, i'm not stating it for any certain champs or anything like that. Too many champions are becoming under powered, even when fed. While other champs can be 0/5/0 yet when they receive one or two items it's game over for the other team.

Now, this isn't per say a "QQ, quit whining" post, this is just my honest opinion on it.

I'm not sure if all of the focus has pertained to micro transactions (which i've bought a lot of, don't get me wrong). But where are these decisions to do nerfs/buffs coming from? They use to be practical nerfs/buffs now they're just a laughing matter.

I'm genuinely not having fun playing this game anymore, whether it be ranked/norm/aram/etc. I use to be able to play a game or two and be happy doing so, since it was my favorite game and I had fun playing it.

Maybe it's the increase of trolls or just overall toxic people or the lack of skilled players playing.

What do you all think?

These recent changes to the game/community/etc have made me uninstall League. I've just had enough after trying to find ways to enjoy it again. And no, it's not to say I'm a noob and suck at it, I'd consider myself pretty good sometimes unless i'm having an off day.

19 Comments

KrazyIvanUSA5 votes

I believe it is just the life of most any PvP game. After 3-5 years, if they last that long, they start messing with too many things, hoping to bring in new players. This gets out of hand and ostracizes the veteran players. Unfortunately by losing a lot of the veteran players because of this, they lose the word-of-mouth advertising that brings in most new players. This eventually leads to a game in ruin that no one likes and a game that loses hundreds of players by the day, permanently, while only gaining a few that may only play for a couple weeks then get turned off by the lack of any greatly active community.

TodaysKiller2 votes

{quoted}

I believe it is just the life of most any PvP game. After 3-5 years, if they last that long, they start messing with too many things, hoping to bring in new players. This gets out of hand and ostracizes the veteran players. Unfortunately by losing a lot of the veteran players because of this, they lose the word-of-mouth advertising that brings in most new players. This eventually leads to a game in ruin that no one likes and a game that loses hundreds of players by the day, permanently, while only gaining a few that may only play for a couple weeks then get turned off by the lack of any greatly active community.

Thanks for the reply, and I agree, there's just too much going on and too many changes. What use to be fun is now riddled by constant changes.

Enkidusmurf2 votes

I think you're right, and I think they see it, too. They were a lot more responsive to issues in the game in 5.5. Hell, they're even giving Quinn some bug fixes in 5.6. And then they had a link to a survey on 5.5 on the home page of the game.

So yeah. I think there's a good bit of PR work going on, just to try to hang on to all factions of their customer base.

Keevalroy1 votes

I believe it is just the life of most any PvP game. After 3-5 years, if they last that long, they start messing with too many things, hoping to bring in new players. This gets out of hand and ostracizes the veteran players.

Look what happened to WoW. It took Blizzard multiple YEARS to earn the trust of some of the older members of the WoW community, while others still look at Blizzard with contempt and disgust for ruining the game they used to enjoy.

If you change too many things and actively refuse to listen to the community on the basis that "we the content creators know what's best for our game," then you're damn right you're going to push people away.

Athenes Lulu3 votes

All in for #LCSBigPlays, ladies and gentlemen. Anyone who can stop mobility are usually gutted to oblivion.

Jokes aside, it's more than just that. It's also how the playerbase have changed and adapted to "play to win, no fun allowed" instead of "play whatever you want, win or lose, and still have fun". Also, the sheeps that followed whatever the pros do. I won't be surprised if one day, people began picking up Bard because he made plays in the LCS.

Raptamei1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Sadistic Lulu,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=shMRJHuf,comment-id=0004,timestamp=2015-03-19T05:13:20.429+0000)

It's also how the playerbase have changed and adapted to "play to win, no fun allowed" instead of "play whatever you want, win or lose, and still have fun". Also, the sheeps that followed whatever the pros do. I won't be surprised if one day, people began picking up Bard because he made plays in the LCS.

Probably because losing in a classic MOBA is not fun.

It remains to be seen if HotS can tackle that particular hurdle.

Sinister Snail2 votes

I've only started playing like a year ago, but I do have $0.02 for this.

I really admire the effort riot's gone into for their aesthetics. Honestly, looking at old league videos, I wonder how the hell people played on that old SR; the new one is just so clean and pretty and modern, and the old one just stank of 2006 WoW. It really helps new players stick around, imo, when the game just looks nice. Also, the clarity of wall hitboxes is much appreciated; trying to flash over the old trees was frustrating sometimes.

About balance... I think they're putting a lot of conscious effort into achieving a 'vision' or 'design ethos' or something, and that makes them pretty farsighted sometimes. They'll make a change with their eyes set on their big goals of 'counterplay' and 'design clarity' or whatever, and then we get veigar.

Course they still have their obnoxious quirks, like lee sin favoritism (yeah, yeah, upvote bait circle jerk, reach over and do me), but I think we just need to wait out this phase. This game has a lot going for it; the devs are experienced, and care a LOT, they have a strong pro circuit and large pleb playerbase, who are both quite vocal (for better and worse).

All things considered, I can't see League ending up in BAD place, but it'll go through some rough stuff until Rito finds its feet.

ScurvyNave1 votes

Too many variables

Too many champs and items for pure balance and now its a spinning cycle of power spikes. While there have been improvements to the game the gameplay itself may suffer from too many new toys that riot's implementing.

Nonetheless have faith, Rito seems to be stepping up the champion rework rate.

Sailor Mint1 votes

I'm not too sure what the breaking point was for you, but nothing has really changed in the past 3 years. Champions get balanced around competitive play and players in SoloQ play whatever champions pro players and streamers are playing. They call things they don't know how to beat overpowered and everything that isn't seeing play in LCS is deemed underpowered.

LoRdJeSuS69694201 votes

I feel like you are just inventing reasons to account for your decreasing interest in the game. At its core the game has not really changed much at all. If you don't enjoy it anymore I would guess that it's probably something that's changed on your end moreso than anything about the game (which is totally fine).

Baron of Bread1 votes

I honestly don't understand how people an come to dislike this game so much. Sure, I haven't played for very long and I don't really play ranked much at all (which is where I am told the toxicity lives), but no matter how many bad games I have I can find at least that many good games. There was a post I saw recently from a guy talking about a game he had that kind of describes why I think I can always still have fun with this game. I think it shows what some people think is the problem they have had with having fun here: League doesn't always feel like it is just a game. You are here to have fun, not to climb ranks, not to have the greatest mmr. That and that a lot of games have some really similar team comps. Sure, this Ahri-Zed lane won't go exactly as the one before it, but it isn't likely that anything crazy or interesting will go down there other than some skill shots. It would be nice to see some AP bruiser Cho'Gath versus an Anivia or something, just to mix things up a bit.

If you do decide to re-install, I recommend just trying something like that guy had and if you need someone to do it with, just send me a message. I would hate for you to end up leaving a game that you liked so much.

Drackolus1 votes

I've actually become pretty zen with League lately. I just hit three years with the game, and I've seen what must have been at least a thousand buffs and nerfs. I've also carried games as support tanks and won lanes where I was "hard countered." League really is a skill game. At this point, I think the most "op" thing in the game is the rng on crit, just because it's probably the single biggest offense to actual skill in the game - and isn't that what we really mean by op? And sure, I've seen a lot of really toxic and mean people. But I just don't care anymore. It might just be because I'm a huge psychology buff, so I place high importance on morale... but being toxic is probably the worst thing you can do for your odds at winning. I think I lose more ranked matches to toxicity than afks, trolls, and lack of skill combined. And it's hard not to fight back with people who are just being stubborn idiots. Once I finally trained myself to not fight with people, since it's completely unproductive, I still got demoralized just because someone started being mean, because I was expecting them to rage the whole game and bring us down. And it REALLY sucks to see somebody who could be carrying because, mechanically, they are very good, but actually are making the rest of their team preform so much worse that it negates all the hard work they put into learning the game. But I started trying to just focus on being positive - almost autopiloting my gameplay at this point. I started looking at the game as "I get online and Alistar*%&^ with nine other people in a competitive setting." I start cracking jokes from champion select to endgame chat. I just don't get mad anymore. I really do enjoy every game I play, win or lose. And really, I think that has to be your starting point. Because focusing really hard for two games and then getting tired because you're frustrated is really awful practice, compared to enjoying ten games. You learn better while you're in a good mood, and you're also more inclined to practice. I've actually stopped playing ESO and MH4U, and I still havn't finished Bravely Default even though I'm right by the end (and I'm a HUGE longtime fan of both Elder Scrolls and Final Fantasy!) because I've just been enjoying league so much these last couple of weeks.

omegaLULW1 votes

Mad cause bad?

IcyPepper1 votes

Rude because you have nothing better to do?

xNameless1 votes

This is the nature of games as both they and we, their players, mature and change.

Without going into too much detail (and forcing me to write a TL;DR), I think there are a few key factors at play when it comes to losing "veteran" players:

1 - Nostalgia. When the game was new (or just new to us), we were oblivious to the finer points, and we outwardly accepted that we sucked and had much to learn. Now, we "consider ourselves pretty good sometimes" and it changes our approach to the game, from something that is shiny and new and exciting, to something that we are familiar with - and when you change something people are familiar with, it can be upsetting.

2 - Professional play. With Riot practically leading the charge on eSports in the US (no disrespect to ESL et al), they will have MUCH greater focus on balance at a minute level. Keep in mind, balancing characters from a professional's perspective will be different from the "average user's" perspective, and honestly many of the subtle changes would probably go unnoticed if Riot didn't publish their changes. I imagine it is insanely difficult to balance a game that is competitively fair for the pro's and equally fun for the masses!

3 - The community. I honestly believe that League of Legends has one of the most toxic communities I have ever experienced in video games. The Tribunal and the reporting system help keep people from entering a game as a complete d****ebag, but there isn't much to do to keep someone from exploding on their teammate who is simply having a weak game. There are more psychological explanations for d-baggery in LoL (and video games in general) but that is beyond the scope of this post.

My simple thoughts. I have been playing the game since release (not that it means I'm any good at it!), and I always have fun :)

When your happiness is tied to victory, you will never have fun. You will only have stress.

-xN

paShadoWn1 votes

Every public game at certain stage gets overrun by profane mobs. Then wise ppl leave it as not to suffer. Thats why all good stuff usually hidden and kept secret.

Miku Lv991 votes

Mobility creep. That is why the game is just constantly being ruined. They don't care though. They want something new and different rather than something good. So the game is just going to keep getting worse until it's just horrible.

sling141 votes

Its pretty much a combination of way too many things being changed in rapid succession, constantly, which turns players off because why bother playing X champ when in a few weeks X champ will suck and Y champ will be good. I know that as a member of several FGC's, we don't want a patch anywhere near our games for at least 6 months, in order for players to settle in, discover new tech etc. Even after that 6 month period id still prefer no patch and id only hope for 2-3 major patches over the course of the games entire lifespan.

Constantly changing things just constantly alienates players and makes them not want to come back to the game

Someone said to me once, "Riot is basically a kid that came up with a fantastic idea by accident and now has no clue how to make that idea a reality", so basically, a young company stumbled upon a good idea for a game, made the game, and now has no idea how to keep up with its success, and that in itself is killing their own creation.

Xela Syab1 votes

Bro, it's a free to play game with endless content and customization, sure the community can suck and be troll at times but the designers can't fix that. Towers got buffed, snowballing happens alot, and drag requires a huge focus now and baron is ridiculous but other than that the game is more fun with tweaked death timers and such. Idk, the pain of trolls is way better than wasting 60 dollars on Destiny.

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by TodaysKiller

And people wonder why this game is a joke
Gameplay8 comments
2
votes