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Just an observation...take it for what you will.

Zalinthel·12/28/2017, 10:19:43 PM·88 votes·4,638 views

FAIR WARNING: This is a bit long, but the whole thing needs to be read to get across what I want to show to everyone.

Now, many of you who played World of Warcraft might recognize this:

https://i.imgur.com/AupwjmN.jpg

The original talent tree. Total freedom of choice, ability and flexibility to do whatever you chose. Did cookie cutters exist? Yes, however, even within them there was often freedom for certain points to be moved around based on preference, especially in PvP specs. Many successful talent builds throughout the history of this system did not have to go all the way to the bottom of the tree.

Move forward a little:

https://i.imgur.com/LPD8Ba3.jpg

The first of the "condensation" of the talent tree. No more total freedom, "locked in" to a specific path for most of your journey, with some choice along the way, until you reach the end of it and can "branch out" to the other two trees a little. Based on your primary, get predetermined abilities. Flexibility and freedom of choice lost for "more meaningful and impactful choices". While many players disliked this system for taking away options, they didn't abhor it.

https://i.imgur.com/BAgI9Ro.jpg

And here we go. The final and current iteration of the talent tree system. Your specialization determines 90% of what your character is able and allowed to do, and these few choices are the last bits of agency you are given. Many of these choices are illusions of choice or false choice; sometimes, these choices are so similar that the decision means almost nothing (i.e. warriors at this time had a tree of "charge is better"), others, one choice is so blatantly superior that the other choices might as well not exist.

Cultural memes within the game's community arose based around words used by explanations of these changes that were just...wrong in the given context. Examples include "fewer but more meaningful choices" and my favorite, "FUN AND ENGAGING GAMEPLAY.

Now, I'd like to draw an...interesting parallel:

https://i.imgur.com/9ueXQZN.jpg

Total flexibility, freedom of choice, individual customization options, bonus for going "all the way" but doing so not required or even always optimal.

https://i.imgur.com/1Pf1O91.jpg

Restriction of path, limited number of choices, one of which is almost always the ideal that you essentially never stray from, with limited flexibilty on the way to getting followed by some small freedom to pick some other stuff after you're done.

https://i.imgur.com/aGiWhsZ.jpg

And we've come full circle! Almost entirely predetermined choices, which are, generally speaking, essentially locked in already based on who you want to play. Illusion of choice, options are there but they don't really exist, and many of the choices available to you are worthless and so you come down to a central few you always pick.

This is a trend you see more and more with games as they go on, and players Hate. It. Taking away choice is not fun. Restriction of your play is not fun.

"Let's take away their choices so that it's easier for us!"

FUN AND ENGAGING GAMEPLAY

"Nobody used some of those choices, why not just get rid of all of them instead of making them better or more meaningful options, less work for us and 'easier' for players anyways."

FUN AND ENGAGING GAMEPLAY

"If we make these choices so few and obvious, people won't get held up trying to figure out what they do best with because we already did it for them!"

FUN AND ENGAGING GAMEPLAY

These kinds of design mentalities aren't even conducive to the kind of "ease of design" that these kinds of claims might suggest, since the lack of options makes tuning them so much more delicate. When so many people depend on a certain option to succeed, tuning it even a little can suddenly create chaos where people fluctuate in and out of power based on these tunings.

You'd think that seeing such a similar system in a different game be met with such overall negative response would have tuned in the designers over at Riot that hey, maybe this isn't a way we should go.

Except, wouldn't you know it, the head designer of both games at the time of these changes happens to be the same guy! Interesting coincidence.

Now I know Ghostcrawler isn't the end-all-be-all of decision making over at the design team, he is not the only one that gives things the green light. But the fact that he was there for the talent system changes and saw, first hand, a lot of the negativity towards them...and then supported the same kind of thing happening here in League, seemingly without hesitation...

Gaming is a history of its own. History is important to help humanity learn from its past mistakes. Games are no different. Seeing players respond so negatively to the removal and restriction of options, freedom, and choice should set a precedent to avoid rinsing and repeating that mistake.

I don't have a primary point here other than to highlight this correlation of design and make it known that this same thing has happened to games before, and it doesn't work! People do not like it and it does not improve the game, on either the player or developer side of things. The only benefactors are the people who didn't care to do any of the work in the first place, who are not the people games should be designed towards.

90 Comments

Sire Hippington12/28/2017, 11:36:13 PM36 votes

I think reduceing the number of options but putting more weight on each choice is great and the right call to make, atleast for lol where you have a way more restricted powerbudget for the masteries which makes it hard to have meaningfull impact for to many choices. However, this does not mean that you have to give up freedome of choice by default, it's just a flawed execution on the side of riot(and ghostcrawler i guess).

Again, i think cahngeing the **system **from 30runes+30 mastery points into 1 big and 5 small runes is good thing on a conceptual level, but i don't think the execution is any good in lol(can't say much for WoW) One of my issues is beeing hardlocked into trees, the other is that the 'starting stats' are also alinged to your major rune choice. There are many champs that have runes that would work but don't really give the stats that they'd like. I think the 1+5 runes would offer more than enough choices to really be creative and tailor masteries to your personal playstyle IF you weren't restriced to two trees. On top of that, the trees are split in 3 categories which each have 3 options, so for most champs you have not much 'real' choices as most have an obvious go to in each category. So while you in theory have 6 choices to make, there are prettymuch only two choices that matter, which is the primary and the secundary tree, the rest are rather obvious with clear optimal options. Hell, for most champs even the primary tree is an obvious choice... Another issue i have is that the curren masteries overall focus way to much on damage an lack on defense, and way to many effects are %based, makeing them only usable if you already invest heavily into that direction. Conditioning with it's 5% increased armor/mr for example feels really lackluster if you don't stack defstats, overgrowth with it's %hp increase is pretty poor if you don't stack hp and so on, which means only champs that built very tanky really have any defensive rune choices. And last but not least, i do think the overall power from runes is a bit to high, which is most noticeable on bursty cahmps. In terms of playstyle, phaserush would be the ideal rune for me on champs like talon or wukong, i love hit and run playstyles. However, i feel like i give up soooooo much damage from other runes that it's hardly playable as the champs are balance around those runes, and haveing a very high all-in kill potential with the huge extra burst from electrocute or dark harvest is just superior to all other options.

salty testi12/28/2017, 11:48:54 PM27 votes

[deleted]

Fedoran12/29/2017, 3:38:29 AM23 votes

WoW? League of Legends? Parallels in game design?

hmmmmmmmm

Ghostcrawler.

Daunt12/28/2017, 11:37:17 PM22 votes

I just hate how they strive to give the system more impact to the game. I would prefer that we don't even have runes/masteries rather than having what we have atm. This was the most unfun preseason that i've ever played in and i've been playing this game since preseason 2. And i understand that people cry all the time about certain metas but this is really the only one where i've actually thought about not playing the game until stuff changes.

I don't think runes should have so much impact and decide so many factors. And it's not just the damage creep that they bring. You really no longer have the choice of what you take. The runes we have are, depending on the champion, either generalistic or really bad which is the reason you see stuff like Comet Camille.

In terms of power i think the masteries that we had before runes reforged were the limit of how much they should impact the game and be a part of it. I'd honestly rather prefer the hidden power that runes brought before than what we currently have.

They're trying so hard to distinct themselves from other MOBAs but that's so unnecessary. The reason people like League isn't because it has the rune system while other games don't.

Lowvyr12/29/2017, 5:48:04 AM17 votes

One big reason BOTH games made this change was because they're trying to appeal to the casual player. To your regular run of the mill casual player, the old mastery and runes system was confusing as hell, and NOT conducive to getting them to play the game. Sure you could ignore runes and masteries, but you'll be so weak you can't do anything. Changing it to what it is now I'm sure has worked for them. Riot, just like every other game company out there is getting very greedy. They're losing their original sight. They don't compare about the competitive aspect anymore, they want quick games that anyone can sit down and play. THAT'S NOT WHAT LEAGUE IS. ITS NOT WHAT IT WAS DESIGNED TO BE. I started playing this game because it was so tactical. There was so much depth to it, so many choices, so many ways to get back at your opponents, and it actually felt like I had to try to win. Now all I have to do it feed the adc get tower first blood and bam we win at 15 minutes and move on to the next game. Loot boxes were a good sign that league was goin in the shitter. Destiny only had one big problem before loot boxes: a content drought. League didn't suffer that. League was fine until then except it didn't have anywhere for verterans to dump they're hard earned IP. So to fix this they invented lootboxes, but it just so happens that these loot boxes have been shown to MASSIVELY increase profits in other companies, so why not do it in league. With all the extra cash they can make a better game right? Wrong. Money is a devilish thing. When you get a little you want a lot. When you have a lot you'll screw over your friends, family, fans and even yourself just to get more. That's what's happening here. All the casual players are very willing gamble away their parents money for the chance to get rare skins (That they actually won't get!), and when they don't get it, they'll do it again and again and again and again and again and again and again until by some luck they do get something cool. CoD capitalized on it, Destiny capitalized on it, Overwatch almost did. However, earning a loot box in Overwatch just took a level up which wasn't bad. Granted kids still dumped fuck tons of money into it. This greed kills games. The real players get fed up with it. They want that cool stuff too, but they're not stupid enough to give into the companies greed. This is not supposed to be a casual game. Don't try to make it one just out of greed, Riot.

Nymzo12/29/2017, 1:48:13 AM11 votes

Wait... I hear Ghostcrawler worked on wow, could it be possible he was the guy who came with the current wow tree?

If yes, I guess we know who to blame for the sweet and very fun keystones...

War The Horseman12/28/2017, 10:49:03 PM11 votes

I really miss going 30 points in attack masteries (Was playing Akali in S4 and getting all the AD and AP possible was fun)

Quepha12/29/2017, 5:25:38 PM9 votes

"You didn't HAVE to go to the bottom of the tree"

Good joke, 95% of the time that was the optimal choice and the remaining 5% were considered major balance issues (an EXTREMELY UNDERWHELMING final talent/keystone)

Yrzen12/29/2017, 8:21:15 AM8 votes

Your arguments seem to point towards the new mastery system being a good thing and the old system being a bad thing, except you say it means the other way around.

Many of these choices are illusions of choice or false choice; sometimes, these choices are so similar that the decision means almost nothing (i.e. warriors at this time had a tree of "charge is better"), others, one choice is so blatantly superior that the other choices might as well not exist.

This was exactly the problem the old runes and masteries had. The choice between these extremely small boosts were hardly a choice at all.

Total flexibility, freedom of choice, individual customization options, bonus for going "all the way" but doing so not required or even always optimal.

A choice between AD and AP is hardly an actual choice. That's saying something because 8 points of the offense tree were dedicated to each damage type. (To put that into perspective, there's a total of 37 points on the offense tree. In other words, going full 30 is wasting points if your champion isn't mixed. The only choice available there is for mixed champions to pick up both, though there are very few actual mixed champions to speak of.

21/9 was optimal a huge majority of the time, and usually only with a specific primary tree, for each champion. 13/17 was sometimes a viable option but in my experience, pretty much only Supports took it because they felt they didn't have a choice but to pick up Bandit. (This is mostly a matter of the Utility tree having an underwhelming 21 compared to other trees) Of the choices you actually have, you don't feel most of them, as the bonus they offer is so little.

The next tree offered less flexibility, (in terms of mixing and matching trees) but in exchange the choices actually meant something. It was still held back by the limited power budget it and runes had, and I can see why you wouldn't it like it compared to the old tree. Still, I like the fact that they removed the "choose between AD and AP" aspect and opened up your choices, in some cases, to go into one tree or another instead of feeling pidgeonholed into always going a specific tree. (As a support main, I'm also happy that you didn't need to give up a 21/keystone for Bandit anymore)

And we've come full circle! Almost entirely predetermined choices, which are, generally speaking, essentially locked in already based on who you want to play. Illusion of choice, options are there but they don't really exist, and many of the choices available to you are worthless and so you come down to a central few you always pick.

See, this is what I mean. In the old trees, a lot of choices were straight up better for your champion or had such a small impact that they didn't really matter. It was an illusion of choice, options that are there but don't really exist.

In the new setup, you have five trees and can actually pick between more than two trees for all champions. Many champions don't work with several keystones, but even then, most champions have many more keystones to choose from than before.

Let's take, for example, Lulu. (Mostly because I'm familiar with her) According to winrates, (better or not even a full percent short of her average overall winrate) Summon: Aery, Guardian and Kleptomancy are all viable keystones on her. That's three keystones from three different trees that respectively have three more choices of three additional options for every tree. Granted, some options aren't a real choice due to her synergy, (Never pick minion dematerializer or celestial body, always pick Revitalize if in either tree) but that is still a huge step up compared to before, where her only choices that mattered were either which trees to pick (since the contents are 80% (Literally, 78.947%) cookie-cutter and the rest hardly matters) or to go with Thunderlord's or Windspeaker's.

According to lolalytics, she has synergy with Celerity, Font of Life, Revitalize, and Magical Footwear, and doesn't have synergy with Eyeball Collection or Sudden Impact.

Everything else we either don't have data on because it isn't taken enough (we don't have any data on the precision tree for example, though it's an alright secondary, particularly with an attack speed build for solo lanes) or it is viable on her. That gives you the option to go with any of 26 different runes without Precision. (Since Precision is more for solo lane Lulu, and her dueling capabilities)

Hell, even the alternatives to Celerity and Future's Market have a high pick rate because they actually present a unique choice that some will prefer over the alternative. That brings the total choices up to 29. 29, not including your keystone.

What did the old system have over this freedom of choice? Your choice of tree was basically like your choice of keystone. The actual contents offered choices, for our example Lulu, like Spell+Blade Weaving vs full points in AP masteries vs Dangerous Game/Double-Edged Sword. The first two choices have less of an impact or are less meaningful than modern runes. While Dangerous Game and Double-Edged Sword are an actual choice, you still weigh them against raw stats and bonus damage from the weaving skills, which cheapens them in my opinion. Even then, they are less impactful than modern runes due to their limited power budget.

This extends to the other trees as well. Meditation in particular was a "Take this if you're mana-hungry" kind of rune that didn't offer much of an actual choice. Tough skin was for every jungler and nothing else, while Recovery and Enchanted Armor were mostly based around your champion's interactions with the stats of either. (What they build and what their natural stat are)

"Let's take away their choices so that it's easier for us!"

Having lots of little choices that don't matter is actually easier. It means they don't need to commit to anything having any real impact, and only have to worry about stacking up a ton of bonuses in one area, which they made highly inefficient.

"Nobody used some of those choices, why not just get rid of all of them instead of making them better or more meaningful options, less work for us and 'easier' for players anyways."

That's more work for Riot. Think of balance in a literal sense. It's harder to maintain equilibrium against a given weight (balanced viability) when you have a small amount of large weights than it is with a large amount of small weights, due to the granularity. Likewise, it's easier to prevent overspecialization that could break things when you can limit the strength of the weights you are allowed to choose.

It's easier for the players because you can't just choose the straight up wrong thing anymore, for the most part, because you actually have the freedom of choice.

"If we make these choices so few and obvious, people won't get held up trying to figure out what they do best with because we already did it for them!"

Letting you pick more runes/masteries doesn't actually give you more choices if more of the runes/masteries you had to choose from weren't a choice at all. Compared to before, the choices are less few and less obvious. You don't need to try to figure out what Champions do best with because you actually have freedom of choice now, which is exactly the opposite of "we already did it for them!" because you have multiple dissimilar runes to choose from of relatively equal power, the runes are doing what runes and masteries are supposed to do. They aren't meant to emphasize your strengths in a generic and spread-out fashion, because that's no different from combining with them with your champion's kit. They're meant to give the player a degree of customization to their character, and on that front I believe that they have succeeded, compared to previous attempts. You could argue that champions still have a limited number of keystones that emphasize their inherent strengths, but to that I reply, which strengths?

Anyway, what I'm ultimately getting from this thread is a misattribution of discontent, but that's just my interpretation. Feel free to dispute me where you feel so compelled.

Smitty Manjensen12/29/2017, 2:31:05 PM8 votes

Why are you pretending like you have a choice because there are more masteries/talents? Literally everyone followed a set path of guide in talents in WoW, with minor changes perhaps, everyone will take the optimal thing every time.

PePsiLemoNN12/29/2017, 11:32:10 AM7 votes

Right , old mastery&rune system was so fun and engaging. They were basically invisible power , that's exactly why they changed it.

How long will people run around screaming how good the old runes and masteries were? lul

Nut on my Butt12/29/2017, 2:44:56 AM7 votes

Basically, you have can have few choices that are really impactful, or you can have many choices with very little impact.

Wolfeur12/29/2017, 4:44:10 PM6 votes

Sure, you had a lot of options in the old mastery system. You could do 21/0/9, 21/9/0, 9/0/21, 9/21/0, 0/9/21 or even 0/21/9!

SO MANY OPTIONS!!

FPS P1 xSolusGod12/29/2017, 7:14:37 AM6 votes

Anyone remembers exp runes ? Or Gold runes ? Maybe Faster Revival runes. Riot says they gave us more options but really, they just lowkey took away our creativity at making unique rune pages. Or should I say "masteries" ? Because the new runes are literally reworked masteries, Riot threw the old runes out of the window. Rip.

RÊNGÁR12/29/2017, 6:07:33 AM6 votes

the thing that i hate most (besides new runes) is the fact that old runes didnt need an update yet, they were changed just to change somethign

Z3Sleeper12/29/2017, 5:54:55 PM5 votes

Have to disagree here. Many champions are required a specific path just to be viable due to their current balance states (volibear for instance)

Meanwhile champions like Nasus, Camille, Illaoi, Ezreal, every ADC, Urgot, Janna, Nami, Nautilus (the list goes on forever) have a ton of viable options to meet their needs in the current matchups or to just favor play styles.

Even Electrocute users have the choice between electrocute and dh, then they have zombie ward vs cheap shot/sudden leap and then the secondary path is truly open to any choice.

Durzaka12/29/2017, 5:50:19 AM5 votes

I feel like the WoW comparison is not really a fair comparison to make tho.

A vast majority of old WoW talents were basically % stat boosts (and for stats that dont even exist anymore at that), like 1% hit chance per level. It was worthless tat and its only purpose was to make you feel like you were progressing.

That said, the current system is just a bad, where you dont feel like you are progressing at all because the fun shit is few and far between. The only thing of value lost was the old hybrid builds like SL/SL Warlock who went half into 2 trees. Of course, with 11 (and then 12) that became a balancing fucking nightmare.

Which brings us to league. The mastery system itself is flawed as fuck and shouldnt exist in the first place. Players going into a match shouldnt have different loadouts and stats outside of what is inherent in their character. Again it makes balancing a nightmare. But because they have been in since the start and so many champions cant even function without their masteries, they can never get rid of them.

The problem isnt lack of choice. The problem is that masteries themselves are just shit design and don't belong in the game.

Rouwhorst12/29/2017, 5:58:02 PM5 votes

Let's not idealize the old system. There were clear cut masteries you would pick in a role or for a champion. The strengths of each individual and the whole tree however, was significantly lower. Less impact per mastery makes choosing between two wanted or unwanted thing easier, because they are not that impactful after all. The new system fixed the little impact masteries had but brought some other problems with it. And yes the new rune system isn't perfect either.

The Bad Touch12/29/2017, 12:43:07 PM3 votes

Pretty much what I expected to happen when they hired that idiot Ghostcrawler.

PhDs Nuts12/29/2017, 2:42:40 AM3 votes

My favorite MMO will always be Asheron's Call. The PvE combat was super simplistic, but the options for builds was sooo diverse, and PvP actually took a bit of strategy.

I really wish a company would release an MMO that is essentially an AC reboot with better graphics, quests, and combat, and a better utilization of support skills.

Prime Beholder12/29/2017, 8:37:00 AM3 votes

tldr

Mimr12/29/2017, 6:59:16 PM3 votes

That's the problem of talent trees, there's ALWAYS going to be cookie cutter builds because there's only one that can put out the most DPS or HPS or allow you to be as tanky as possible for any given character or class.

I actually like the current rune system better than the previous mastery system. The runes all have quite a big impact so for those champions that allow it you can actually create quite different playstyles to suit the situation at hand. There's always going to be a lot of champions that have one set of optimal runes for all situations though, that's just an inevitability with these systems.

Hella Kaiser12/29/2017, 9:53:19 PM3 votes

I MISS SO MUCH MY 30 / 0 / 0 MASTERIES

Arthastheiceking12/29/2017, 2:02:19 PM3 votes

new system is better because it's free, and you have a lot of freedom i dont know why you're saying there's no freedom

rtbf22561824112/29/2017, 6:06:00 PM3 votes

I'm pretty sure there weren't any choices in the original Mastery system in the start either. There were always meta builds and literally 2 / 3 variables in dual-selections that you could pick to your liking. Everyone still used the same generic pages as usual.

Cosnirak12/30/2017, 2:07:27 AM2 votes

I've played WoW since that beginning talent tree system. "Total freedom of choice, ability and flexibility to do whatever you chose." Really? Not even close. The newest talent system is by far the best of all of those. I sincerely wish I cared enough to go through your whole post in detail and explain how horribly wrong and misguided it is but you wouldn't budge one inch in your opinion on the matter anyways and it would be a giant waste of time. Just please know that lots of people disagree, especially those who have seriously studied the issue in depth.

Jeanne fan club12/29/2017, 11:48:32 PM2 votes

Bruh, you are literally basing this variety thing on the number of insignificant choices you can make. This new tree is better because the choices you make actually mean something. Also the old trees were extremely streamlined of what choices you could make and still be viable. In all of those old trees, only about 30% of the options were actually viable, and when you went into game they weren't even noticeable, just insignificant 1% damage buffs / 2% armor buffs that everyone else had because they were the only good options.

These new runes are much better because first off, they are actually noticeable, and second off, playstyles are extremely different based on which runes you take. This new rune system was probably the healthiest decision made in a long while in terms of changing the game up a bit. There are so many more viable play styles with these new runes than without.

I mean if you really want to go back to the days where you had the illusion of making choices, then so be it, I am just saying that I would take zombie ward over any of the choices in those old trees. Zombie ward actually changes the game, those 1% damage increases don't. Almost every single individual rune in the new rune system makes more of a difference than any combination of masteries in the old trees. I can understand an argument for having no runes/masteries at all, but those old trees were garbage.

I am really starting to feel like the only thing the boards does is complain about the game regardless of what changes are made. You guys will never be happy, and I think you need to accept that. This kind of Romanticism of old league is completely irrational. You will never get that feeling of starting the game again. You will never get that feeling of learning the game from scratch again. That was the whole reason you liked the game in the first place, it was new. Going back in time won't make the game new again.

VoraciousX12/30/2017, 6:37:35 PM1 votes

Possibly unpopular opinion, but I think the current runes are actually really great. I think we could use more(and Meddler did say they were gonna add more), but I feel that these runes do in fact allow you to customize your own playstyle. I do feel like some things could be buffed or rebalanced, but I mean it's a really good system imo. For example, a lot of people play Yorick with Grasp of the Undying, in fact, most people, if not all of them do. Except for me. I play him with Dark Harvest, get a Q off on a champion and they can be dunzo because you can get Dark Harvest stacks really easily early game and late game with 200+ you can basically one shot ADCs while still being relatively tanky. I've seen Flyerbek play Dark Harvest Katarina despite the winner clearly being thunderlord's, but to make that work you kinda have to have a matchup where you can just farm and play safely or obliterate the enemy team. It's definitely more late game focused for her. A lot of Evelynn's use Electrocute, but I've had much more success with a Sorcery + Inspiration build so I can get items easier and her W creates a guaranteed arcane comet hit. On top of that I can use the entire sorcery tree and Ultimate Hat is glorious on her and Gathering Storm helps with the late game. I feel like this rune/mastery system offers a lot more than the previous one did because there LITERALLY WAS ONE CHOICE for every champion. Now I can find at least 2 on most. I think Phylol mentioned like 5 for Vayne.