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To Everyone saying League is Dying

Blades of Navori·4/14/2018, 10:47:51 PM·22 votes·11,240 views

All I have to say is it comes of to the silent majority as whining. Every time a rework or update comes out that someone disagrees with it's instantly "this game is dying" or maybe it's just dying to you because you're frustrated your favorite champion got hit with a nerf or a rework or an item change happened that made a few champions too strong. This has been repeated dozens of times, just look

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/GD/yWLLysEB-if-league-is-dying-where-are-all-these-players-going

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/GD/kgdUigY6-lol-is-dying

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/miscellaneous/EGjBsGi7-is-league-dying

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/GaaO62P5-im-so-happy-league-is-dying

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/aMrKswa7-league-is-dying

Yes, your champion got reworked and you don't like it. Yes, some changes aren't good. Yes streamers quit.

Not a single thing you say is either new or true.

This game has allegedly been dying for several years now, if you're going to quit then just quit this "dying game". Everything you have posted or agreed with isn't relevant to 2018, nor will it be next year, nor was it last year. I've seen quite a few times that "this game is in its WoW" stage where it just plateaus for a bit and declines, but WoW, and League apparently, have been in this stage for how many years?

I'm not denying there are problems with this game. The matches are too short, sometimes half of the length the estimated time the game says (30-45 minutes when most can end at 20). ADCs are in a really strong spot right now, again nothing new to this season evident from previous posts on the board. My point is saying this game is dying is just somewhat of a joke at this point. All it tends to be is anecdotal evidence since Riot has not released player numbers.

~~Can't wait to get downvoted to oblivion ~~ [slayer-pantheon-popcorn]

46 Comments

Death by Glamour4/14/2018, 11:29:07 PM8 votes

its not dying but I cant really say that its clear that the game is growing

I remember these threads on the WoW forums aswell, "omg wow is dying" ect ect. People would make similar threads to this claiming "na everything is fine and dandy". Then the ingame shop appeared where you could buy mounts, transmog gear and now gold so I am told. depending on who you would ask this was or wasn't a last ditch cash grab from a dying game.

Wow fell because of a number of things, disrespect of the pvp community that had enough of blizzard kicking them in the balls, casualization of PvE raids and dungeons in Wotlk, sheer boredom of it and likely because of the devs would make wild promises and fail to deliver. Likely also because of completion from the likes of Lol.

Ghostcrawler should know best of all, he presided over its downfall from gaming giant to that game a lot of us used to play.

The devs currently are guilty of a lot of the things I have listed

For instance, they have made wild promises in the past to fix the game and yet here we are (various class updates). The latest being the whole "its preseason" meme. What did the actually do besides breaking the game and gutting sona? Now we are heading into the territory of wait till midseason, I cant wait to see how they mess this up and to those who will try to defend just look at the bloody track record.

I really do not know who the hell they are trying to appeal to with this new sort of gameplay, eastern markets? if I wanted to play a fast paced game I would be on battlerite, hots or overwatch. Why would I sit in a lane and farm, have one teamfight and end or watch lanes snowball and just end?

tldr

the game very likely has lost a sizable amount of old school player but where its picking up new players from I have no idea

AquariusGine4/15/2018, 12:11:50 AM6 votes

League isn't dying any time soon, but it is on the decline.

Resolution4/15/2018, 1:47:47 AM5 votes

Google League of Legends under trends, and look at the popularity drop every year drastically. League isn't growing anymore; it's in decline. even twitch views are going down as most veteran streamers constantly bash the game on stream.

Sadly, even half my friends have stopped playing this game.

haaaaaaalp4/15/2018, 12:41:39 AM5 votes

I remember people saying the same thing about dynamic queue. Then the playerbase dropped off and riot was forced to reinstate solo queue.

Mandalorian 1174/15/2018, 4:17:39 AM5 votes

Maybe dying isn’t that he right word. I’d say “at a standstill” it’s still high on the twitch boards, a lot of people still enjoy the game despite its flaws (myself included), but that doesn’t mean it’s in a great spot. I believe in riot to make things better, but there’s a lot of people that’s tired of waiting.

Pubg is in this situation. The game isn’t dead or dying, far from it, it just has enough problems to keep it from getting bigger.

This is how I see it though, I might be completely wrong.

TS Media4/14/2018, 11:03:45 PM4 votes

League only use to be overtaken on twitch when a new game came out. League has consistently topped the view count on twitch on a regular day even when other games had their LCS competitions going on. Now, fortnite is consistently higher than league and league's view count on a daily is dropping. The interest in league, whether it be playing or watching, is steadily declining with the start of season 8. Sorry to say... I won't say it's dying. But 1 or 2 people are quitting league every day.

I'm at my wit's end and league has been something akin to addiction to me. That should tell you a lot.

AirKingNeo4/15/2018, 12:50:34 AM4 votes

Silent Majorities don't exist. People are vocal.

The game is going downhill and the facts prove it.

Azadethe4/15/2018, 11:40:43 PM2 votes

I'll give you an upvote.

Reason?

Riot revenues have been going up $500 million+ annually for the last 4 years. Sure..... some of it may be new sales ideas which create incentives to buy, but some of it is genuine interest.

If League ever does see a decline, I can guarantee Riot is so lush with Cash, it can create a game which draws far more than $2.1 billion annually, and at a better starting position amongst its fans than League, which is plagued by its attempts to continually play Game theory with exponential possible outcomes, revised over each other in multiple Games (if you don't know what I'm talking about, study Game Theory/Economics), because it's easier to balance a new product than one that is already along its evolution path.

Dissenters are loud and vocal because they don't really want to go. In reality, leaving usually means one of two things:

  1. They are growing up. When weighting a frustrating game versus other options of their mature life, they begin to choose life.

  2. They are in a niche of the gaming market where they see substitutes outside the MOBA world which give them equal satisfaction.

Both are natural, and or the same reason they are leaving, other players are joining.

Shísui5/6/2018, 2:56:24 PM2 votes

My champion got buffed. Doesn't matter. This Game is Dying. I'm seeing it with my own eyes. If you have any friends at all maybe you would see that. The fact that more people are saying its dying just gives more evidence that it is. And only recently the masses are claiming this. the minority that claimed it prior technically were not wrong. It was dying at a much slower rate... but not like now. The game has been changing since inception and no one was saying it like they are now. Your long winded excuse for why people are saying its dying (patches) is invalid.

ByeByeBirdie4/27/2018, 9:16:57 AM2 votes

I haven't been playing since season 1, but did play for many years. And yeah, they've made drastic, illogical moves in the past, but the rune/mastery revamp was the point that killed the game.

I am a game dev veteran - to the Riot devs, I may be able to help you fix this game I loved so much - reach out if you're interested.

I suspect they've shifted too much of their focus (and too many of their 'A' devs) onto their new game, which rumor has it, they've had problems developing.

There were a couple of critical mistakes they made... They wiped away the progress of accounts:

  • Farming IP for runes was one of the major forms of progression in the game.
  • They also wiped away all level experience past level 30 (which is the real beginning of the game.) You can't remove people's progression without also removing their attachment/commitment to the game. All that we worked for was taken away. If you reset people back to the start, people will look at other (newer/better) games and think, "well, why don't I just play them instead?"

They also changed the fundamental character customization. People had to relearn how to build characters because everything they had learned up until that point was invalidated. Again, if you reset people back to the start, they're going to start looking at your competition.

I understand the complexities of competitive multiplayer game balance, even so, you also seem to have a hard time with it, and you also allow too many easy-to-catch bugs out to live. I would guess you guys need some serious pipeline and design help.

And the reality is, when you make changes like this, you betray player trust, so your competition looks even better than they otherwise would.

I'm sure you guys are reeling right now, wondering what happened and how to fix it. Well what I've written is the "why". I think there is a solution, but it's not going to be pleasant (but it will be more pleasant than your drastic downward spiral.)

draconicscar6/21/2018, 11:05:44 AM2 votes

this game is dead and I'm happy about it. they choose not to fix anything and they don't give a shit about there player base and they love to ban people all the time. I'm glad this game is dying/dead

WHERE S FRANCIS10/8/2018, 2:21:51 PM1 votes

L

KlydeFrog4/15/2018, 12:10:45 AM1 votes

I've rarely played any game in ranked that was over in 30 min or less

rtbf948006004/15/2018, 2:52:52 AM1 votes

I'm a new player and I find the game extremely appealing in moderation meaning not all the time League may be losing players ,but it is not dying for a while

sKz Aaron D4/16/2018, 2:33:26 AM1 votes

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2008-03-15%202018-04-15&q=%2Fm%2F04n3w2r

It was climbing until Fall 2013. It was largely stagnant from then to Fall 2015, but you could see the beginnings of decline happen during 2015. Since then, it's declined from the points of highest interest - S3, S4, and S5 worlds were equivalent for highest - down to 70% of that interest by S6 worlds. From there, it dropped to 48% at S7 worlds. Now, League is at the lowest popularity (36% of ) it has been since March of 2011 - a couple of months before the first world championship - located in a back room at Dreamhack.

It's seen steady decline in popularity since Season 5 Worlds, with small bumps during playoffs, midseason, and larger bumps at worlds.

Edit: this decline in interest - down to 36% - is consistent with estimates for daily users having dropped from 27 million at its peak to 9.6 million currently.

Scary Door4/16/2018, 2:59:08 AM1 votes

League peaked a few years back, is it "dying" now? Well, that depends upon your definition of 'dying', gameplay numbers are down, viewership is down, engagement online is down, searches/trends/hits are down, etc.

Of course, all you have to do is look at the number of people that are playing ranked this season and compare it with previous seasons and you will see that those numbers are also down. In NA, for example, just under 1.2 million accounts have played ranked this season, that's down from all previous seasons.

Does this mean the game will vanish soon? Of course not! League will likely be around for many more years, but it's peak has past.

I don't play much anymore, most of my friends left long ago, a few still play occasional games and that's it. Out of the hundreds that were on my friends lists on my accounts through the years, only a few remain.

The game will always be huge in Korea/Most asian regions, but NA will never see the numbers it once did.

EU Faker5/26/2018, 2:26:06 PM1 votes

It's not dying, the serious players are just leaving because Riot is pulling some fortnite shit which is making the game as braindead as possible so noobs can feel like they're good. So yes alot of kids will join and buy shit from the store and play tank so they feel like they're amazing at the game, but more and more dedicated players are leaving. I used to play with a big group of friends, i was the last one who was still playing but the game just isn't fun anymore so I finally quit too.

swtos20157/16/2018, 9:42:26 AM1 votes

Well, from my epxerience, it is not on it's peak years. When i created a smurf to have fun with my low level friends 95% of the players i came across at levels below 10 were Silver, gold and even diamond smurfs. League has almost no new players but the OG just dont leave. It's 100% on decline and maybe by 2022 it's wont be as a big game as it is today, or nowhere as big as it was back in 2015.

Summonah123697/16/2018, 9:43:32 AM1 votes

Yes streamers quit. Yes, 24 hour streaming is terrible for your health.

Reganark8/22/2018, 10:15:09 AM1 votes

Except it is dying. Just look at twitch or some population graphs, right now even ow is being watched more than lol and it's because the game is actually bad. Why would you play a game that rewards you for playing what a team of people that doesnt play the game think should be meta forcing you to play something you dont want to to be competitive (since a lot of champions arent viable at all), while being full of bugs and by what it seems not working in it. Sure you have meta changes (the WORST part in lol) but not a singel bugfix in what, 1 month? I have been playing since season 2, and all of my friends have stopped playing. I kept playing because I thought lol deserved a chance but it's way too bad having much more balanced and less buggy games out there. Seems like riot just want money, and its employees work the least possible to get it aswell. E-sports are the only important thing to riot so it won't even add or change unbalanced things if it affects pro players, making most of the population of the game suffer the consequences. If that is not a bad idea i dont know what it is. WEll all being said, lol is dying and im sad that it is that way, but I have to say riot derserved this since the only reason the game is like this is because of their lack of proper work (not skins and stuff you ahve o pay for, I see you coming)