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Lowering the bar of entry.

Rikirie·11/6/2014, 8:10:13 PM·15 votes·1,988 views

I am very much a person who sits and thinks for hours at a time. One of the things I think often is how to reduce the stigma of LoL's community. In part because I'm a nerd who hates things I like being talked poorly about, and the other being I'd like to see more people I know playing League.

One of the big things that comes to mind for reasons people are unwilling to play are: 1. Community is mean. (which any competitive environment will be) 2. I just don't get it.

While I can't change the first one I can see certain changes helping the latter point. One of the many reasons is the game rapidly changes as you level up your summoner level.

You start off playing and every little thing harms you to a great deal. Getting minion aggro? Life Chunk Hit by an enemy champion? Life Chunk Tower Dived? Life Chunk

I can see why these things are helpful, negative reinforcement is a powerful tool. But I think that this creates an issue not prevalent at level 30 where the game really starts. Things like diving, jungling (season 5 seems to exacerbate this problem) and proxying seem like scary notions that should be avoided due to consequence of death.

The reasoning behind this hyper vulnerable spot is the Rune and Mastery Systems. While I do not think these are necessarily bad for the game, I think the current system could be improved to help newer players.

Stat perks for those who played longer and summoner spells that effect the usefulness of a character, being bared behind arbitrary summoner levels, are detrimental to the game. Not to mention that the currency for playing is cannibalized by champion and rune cost further put new players behind the core experience.

My advice to lowering the bar of entry and being more inclusive is to take note of other emerging games in the genre.

  1. In smite new players are given 5 free Gods that fill each roll plus a free rotation. League does allow three free champions till level 5 but then you lose them, make these changes permanent. (everyone owns ashe, garen, ryze and maybe some of the other 450s to help)

  2. Unlock all summoner spells from the get-go. There is no good reason to bar them off.

  3. Give all 30 mastery points at level 1 and leave the summoner level to be used as a reference for others.

  4. Remove the tiers of Runes, sub-3 is pointless and waste of IP. Also allow all rune spots from Level 1.

If these changes are made, I truly believe league will become a better experience for new players, or at least a good step forward.

23 Comments

vscAloha11/6/2014, 8:16:57 PM7 votes

The only thing I could think of to justify runes/masteries/levels/spell unlocks was to ease the learning curve for newer players. the problem therein arises when dirtbag players smurf only to ruin everyone else's day (I have before, but I was literally the nicest player while doing so. Well, one other problems arises when said smurfs bring broken strategies that newer players literally have no clue how to react to (splitpushing is terrible for the game in general, but how do you expect new players to stop Tryndamere that has been farming all game from pushing down your nexus?)

I would even teach my enemy laner how to beat me, and then let them kill me once in twice in scenarios to help them improve their play (there have been multiple games where they've actually outscaled me and used that to win the game)

Honestly, the only thin a new player TRULY needs is someone who has game knowledge but is patient and willing to help them out with builds, mechanics, etc.

Happy to, go ahead and add me if this is the case for you or any new player that sees this and truly wants to learn.

Spacesuit Spiff11/7/2014, 5:35:17 AM3 votes

To everyone commenting on this, go play a bot game. Intermediate, even. Compare that to your first experience in bot games. Even disregarding mechanics, without flash/runes/masteries you probably had a really hard time getting any kills on the bots (I know I did). The champions are supposed to be weak on a new account, so that the game is less intense and new players can learn it more safely. This makes you less powerful, but your lane opponent will also be able to do basically nothing to you. Junglers are also almost irrelevant when only a couple can even survive the jungle, let alone gank (ganks are annoying to new players), which is why you see a lot of 2-1-2 in really low level matches. Hell, the lack of specialization even means that players don't even need to know the enemy champ to fight it; the tanks aren't tanky, the adcs don't hit as hard, just focus one poor sucker until he's dead and then move on to the next.

So in short, the champions being weaker at the beginning of the game is good for new players, and that's not even getting into how overwhelming the game would be if they were expected to use everything a level 30 has access to right off the bat.

AloneInTheCrowd11/6/2014, 9:00:15 PM3 votes

The runes and masteries are the carrot on the stick not excluding the champions ofc , Riot benefits from the fact that you have to level to 30 greatly . People who are impatient usually buy exp boosts etc . New players that don't know any would better buy lvl 1 / 2 runes ( I know i did back then lol ) , only to realize later on that they have to farm again the IP resulting in a quick purchase of exp boost and champion packs .

Last but not least is the " hit lvl 30 and the game actually begins " , does that feel new ? No it doesn't WoW and many other MMORPGS did it already . THis is the additional carrot on the stick .

With all this being said , I think that Riot won't benefit form such changes financially thus they will never consider them as an option .

It's like a politician who will vote for lowering his own salary - it won't happen :P

p.s. It's a free to play game , all of the above seems sort of rational when you look from Riot games point of view .

OyddAWqJ5r11/7/2014, 3:49:27 AM2 votes

What... You do realize summoners have 10 permanently unlocked champions that they keep until they hit a certain level (5 I believe). At which point they can already afford quite a few 450 champs

patmax1711/7/2014, 9:36:06 AM2 votes

I agree on numer 1 and 2, point 3 and 4 though are good points, but i would do it differently:

  1. Though i like the idea of unlocking all 30 points at once, I would not put masteries at level 1. They make the game more complex for new players, while not adding much to their gameplay. I would unlock all 30 mastery points, but later on (don't really know what level would be good for that, maybe 10? 20?

  2. I agree on removing tier 1 and 2 runes, and here the same reasoning of the aforementioned point applies: maybe the simplest solution is to just unlock runes at lv 30, leaving levels 1-19 with no runes at all. Most players already do not buy runes until they are level 20+...

And for the more complex tactics and mechanics (jungle, last-hitting, positioning, splitpushing, whatever), currently the best way to learn those things is having someone teach them to you (mostly through guides and video-tutorials). IIRC it was already mentioned recently (maybe in the preseason Q&A), but LoL in game tutorials should be expanded and improved, making videos and/or playable tutorials that explain and teach players how to last hit, jungle,...

Commit Sudoku11/6/2014, 8:42:48 PM2 votes

I completely Agree with Runes and Summoner Spells

Adapa11/7/2014, 8:35:35 PM1 votes

I feel like buying the 450's is irreverent they should make the 450's free along with all the free week champions, that way new players can focus on buying runes and 1350 champions. but i feel like they need to unlock summoner spells period. All of them available level 1. Mastery Points should be around 15-20, the last thing you want is for people to feel overwhelming at the amount of information, Also just remove T1 T2 Runes from the game, there is absolutely no point in having them they lose all usefulness in ranked and normal's 30+, Also there needs to be more information about the informal parts of the game that riot never actually teachers players but have become part of the game due to the popularity among players Teach players about the concept of jungling and explain to people that split pushing is explain the concept of global objectives IE: Dragon and Baron, Global Tower Gold Bonuses, The Person that kills a tower gets extra gold, Also the Value of Warding or at least explain the concept of Fog of war. {{summoner:2}}

TenSlashTen11/7/2014, 2:18:04 AM1 votes

my little brother says its easy and boring despite never playing a single moba. He wouldn't even play Aeon Of Strife with me when we were little children playing starcraft broodwar in the late 90's/early 2000's.... idk guy just hates moba's I guess. Can't blame him. Community is full of casuals. Him and I both hate casual players...so I guess I see his point. But I guess he just doesn't see the beauty of a moba like I do.

At this point. All things beside champions should be free.

No rune cost. No page cost. No leveling. end of discussion. NO one likes grinding.

Xonra11/7/2014, 3:14:46 AM1 votes

If all the mastery points were given at level one along with summoner spells and removing run tiers....what would be the point of having levels at all?

While some may not like the barrier of entry at level one there needs to be a barrier of entry to level 30

There is a big difference between starting out in bot games and pvp'ing at level 30, just like there SHOULD be a bigger gap and a bigger barrier of entry between hitting 30 and going into ranked.

Not saying people shouldn't play ranked for months after hitting 30 but there should be more than "have 15 champs" because in most cases people that get to 30 play less than 20-30 pvp games at all because they are trying to power grind around level 15-20 as they are tired of not being 30....so people play bot game after bot game after bot game.

While you can't do it anymore people used to be able to get exp and ip in custom games when I was leveling to 30 (not that I did that just saying it was a thing) so people were just speeding to 30 with custom games with no other players at all, then jump right into ranked....and how is that fair for the 4 other people on that person's team let alone the person that rarely pvp'd.

Long story short, there should be a barrier of entry, but there should simply be a better way of easing players in as far as tutorials and I only agree summoner spells shouldn't be gated, but runes and masteries very much should be (maybe cheaper runes because they are ridiculously expensive STILL)

NoMonku11/7/2014, 3:16:11 AM1 votes

I slight agree with some of the stuff, but I feel masteries should be held off for a bit. Same with runes/masteries. I feel that the game has a lot of information and "depth" that a lot of new players won't really understand, so by providing them with TOO much upfront will be a negative thing. Information overload isn't a good thing and can possibly turn off new players who aren't interested in this aspect of the game yet, they would probably rather play. I would suggest raising the unlocking of runes/masteries to level 5 or 10 or a moderately decent level instead(I'm not too sure what's an easy summoner level you can get to anymore) just so they players can possibly try to focus on JUST the game and playing first and then worry about things like customization later. This way they will be invested more into the game if they like it and then will somewhat understand what some things do and how it interacts with their character.

ThePurpleKnight11/7/2014, 5:42:35 PM1 votes

Pretty much but rather than the 450 champs, due to the bad effects that can have on ARAM, it'd be better to just give people 1 free champion of their choice at an early level.