Boards›General Discussion

@riot Stop the Bleeding

Zyorhist·8/22/2018, 3:06:20 PM·18 votes·8,334 views

Recently I sent in a support ticket to riot games support and while I feel that I was heard, I was directed to the boards. So here I am. Also I just got done watching stonewall008's vid about how league is bleeding, and for the most part i agree with him, so here are my 2 cents, its going to be a long one. Go watch his vid btw

  1. Improve the new player experience. There are literally hundreds of ways this can be done but the main thing is that new players need to not be blocked by an impossible to fill champion pool. Blue essence is too rare still and there are not enough champ shards going around.

1a) inside the practice tool players should have access to every champ and skin. This would allow some tryout and practice of champs someone might want or get used to new animations they for a skin they will see in game or might purchase. This would also remove the necessity of purchase refunds as players have an opportunity to see and play their purchase before making the purchase.

  1. some skins need to be available to players for free. I do understand you can get skins in hextech chests but players have little to no choice in the matter, many of the legacy skins and or low rp skins could be converted to a blue essence value to allow new and free players to obtain and have their choice in what they get.

  2. mastery rewards. When a player takes time to learn new champions they need to be further rewarded for it. An emote for that champ is nice but there is nothing for learning new champions, perhaps an emote or icon or skin or something for 250 mastery score, 500, 750, etc. would go a long ways.

  3. increase competitiveness of ranked. I wrote a long list of things that would need to happen here. First off the rewards for ranked would need to increase. Punishment for offensive type behavior would also need to increase. Surrendering would need to be removed in ranked games only. Requirements would need to increase to get into ranked games, my thought was 100 mastery minimum and lvl 50 or 75 minimum. Also it should be required that ranked players maintain a lvl 3 or higher honor. And if a player dropped below that they lose rank rewards for the season. Maybe even require sms verification. No one likes smurfs in ranked.

4a) this might create longer queue timers, however if it maintained the competitive nature of ranked it would be worth it.

  1. game modes. There needs to be more investment into other game types, and ranked queues. Summoners rift is good but twisted treeline is all but forgotten, aram is not credited for its value. Dominion is gone. Players like these but not the same thing every single game.

  2. honor rewards need to be bigger as you only have a certain number of honor value you can get each season. At honor 4 with 3 dots i got a champ shard and some blue essence, i own every champ so this was a little insulting to me for a honor reward.

  3. with the sheer volume of skins in the shop, the price is a little high for new players. Maybe reduce pricing a little to give players more bang for their buck and as i said previously make some older content blue essence purchasable.

7a) possibly consider sombining rp and orange essence. That way if you get enough chests and dienchant enough shards you get your pick of a skin. I mean whats the point in giving out 3 free skins olayers dont want when they coild just have 1 they fo want for the same effort.

  1. make the 95 rp boost available in all modes but unlock 2 skins for the champs for that game. Maybe more blue rewarded too.

  2. mentoring queue. Many veterans want to help new players, the problem is we dint know any new players. There needs to be a way to find and help them.

  3. revamp clubs. Many clubs dont interact and there are no rewards for doing activities as a club. In many games i play guilds have monthly or weekly rewards for various tasks completed as a guild. This would promote group and helpful play.

I know im going to get ignore or downvoted like crazy but i hope a red sees this and looks at it objectively. Also i will be adding ti it as i think of some other things ive overlooked at the moment.

50 Comments

Bløød Zerø8/22/2018, 8:41:26 PM6 votes

Okay here is the deal you say you wanna test out skins before you buy them, well join the pbe be honorable and get to grants. What else is making ranked level capped higher eliminates smudge which riot does not want to eliminate just keep at a line that doesn't get out of hand. Furthermore for example I have a level 41 friend and I am level 157 he is honor 2 because he rarely plays so he doesn't get consistent honor. I am honor 4 almost honor 5, while one may say well he barely plays, another could say he enjoys playing ranked only once in awhile because of his schedule and that it has a less trolly and more competitive feel than normals or aram. Might I say despite being 100 levels ahead and 2 honor levels, he is almost on the same skill level as me. I try to play to get better which takes me many games, but for some players it takes very little. Every person to their own.

Orange essence is for those who purchase chests and have a multitude of skins. That is another reason rerolling skins is available. It sounds like you barely wanna spend money, you have to remember riot isn't just some small team of people. This game is very large so the team behind it should be quite vast. They all have to be paid somehow as well. Reducing costs on things and making things cost free currency or giving out what is supposed to be paid currency for free cuts their funds to make the game better. They try very hard to listen to everyone but when there are multitudes and plethoras of players with different personalities along with the time it takes to achieve what is asked they of course will struggle.

You said you wanted someone in "red" to see this and think of it objectively. Did you think of their side objectively before posting? If you think the game is bleeding or dying then you are in the wrong. The daily average is more players join than permanently quit. Riot has made the game more newcomer friendly. They just reworked the training tutorial and are still working to improve it. They are working on giving huge level up rewards pre-30 such as more than half the champion. For example reach level 2 get ashe, Annie, and master yi. Reach level 5 get cho gath and lux, and the list will go on. This is on top of the champion capsules you always get for level up and mind you leveling that early is really easy so getting champs is too.

Do not tell me you didn't know of these changes since that is but your fault for not researching before making a post you were serious about. By research I mean they announce these things in their YouTube dev videos such as riot pls. For example they said in one video they are going to change ranked for next season to be how the playerbase requested. They also announce many things in their ask riot forums. I read all of these alongside one changes to see where the direction the game goes. I understand they get a lot of crap but they do try very hard to make the game enjoyable for such a wide audience.

Honestly I spoke a bit much but I really wanted to drive my point. So sorry for the large walls of text. Also before speaking or commenting on riot think even if the game doesn't seem enjoyable to you it may be to another person and also think that riot are people too. People who work very hard for the large mass of players who they want to keep to continue the growth of their game.

[vlad-salute]

Zyorhist8/22/2018, 8:17:46 PM3 votes

Yes plz keep discussing

Dirgo8/23/2018, 12:43:43 AM3 votes

Making ranked require level 50 or 75 would make it so i couldn't play ranked, despite playing from season 1 and being knowledgeable about gameplay. :( (O don't play much anymore which is why so low lvl lol) but anyways I think it's a good post and I agree with some of the things you say

BickedWoner8/23/2018, 11:10:57 AM3 votes

My two best friends have played league for years and they finally got me to try it last week. The biggest thing for me as a brand new player would be 1. Give me 5 champs for free, or enough essence so I'm not stuck on rotating champs constantly while I'm trying to learn the game. Hard to learn all the ins and outs while also focusing on learning the mechanics of every single champ. 2. Reduce the level to get into ranked. My friends don't even want to play with me half the time bc we can't play ranked. This is the big one. I get wanting players to practice but it's taking forever to play ranked. I play a few matches a night for 2 weeks now. Just rank me low if I suck. But now my friends are punished if they want to play with me so that's three people wanting to play less and less

Audhulma8/22/2018, 3:50:16 PM2 votes

Putting a bandaid on an axe wound isn't gonna do much, and most of these changes are incredibly low priority and low effect with regards to player experience. The only one on that list that has any real value is fixing ranked, but they consistently fail to do anything meaningful about their ranked and match making systems. Game modes are the next best way to keep and bring back players, but in order to focus on game modes they have to first focus on putting out the raging dumpster fire that their primary game mode has become. Of course all of this hinges on them not shitting the bed with itemization and balance changes, but we have better odds of winning the lotto than that happening.

Akuna Batata8/22/2018, 8:34:18 PM2 votes

Maybe make old skins available with blue essence, even if it would cost a crazy amount of it. It would make players with all champions have something to do with all the useless essence riot is throwing at us

ritzius8/22/2018, 9:53:53 PM2 votes

1a, 2, and 4 I totally disagree with. Riot is still a company and they need to make money, their keys and chests system was a way to reward players free skins without them losing out on a lot of money. Of course the tradeoff is steep (ex. Disenchanting skins and getting a lot less orange essence, or combining 3 skins to get 1).

As for any champion or skins in practice tool, there would be absolutely no point. You have places like skin spotlights or something to view skins if you really wanted to see if it was worth it to you. Practice tool is just working on those mechanics you just can't quite get from a few games here and there.

Finally, as for upping the level to get into ranked is beyond awful. Players do not want to wait that long to get into a competitive match. If you don't take ranked seriously now I don't imagine making the level requirement higher would do anything. Trolls will troll, or those who grief and afk will still do the same. Surrendering needs to be an option, there are just some games which are unwinnable. I don't want to have to sit through a game that I very well know I'm going to lose from early on. I would rather get into another game and hope that goes better.

I do agree that skins have gotten pricey, we have gotten way too many 1350 skins and not enough 975 skins. Of course it takes time for them to create this skins, but that's dishing out a lot of money for just 1 or 2 skins. It should work like champions you play more often should have a higher rate of skin drops in the chest, or once you reach level 7 mastery you receive a skin shard for you to unlock. And then, once you finally unlock all champs (like myself) you only receive skin shards from chests.

Casa En Fuego8/23/2018, 4:08:06 AM2 votes

They could start by not making every new character require 10000 APM in order to play effectively, while at the same time reworking every easy-to-play character into something way more complicated with 100% skillshots. What was the last really straightforward and easy-to-play character to come out that hasn't gotten reworked? Nautilus 7 years ago? Riot's been making it clear for YEARS that newbies and low-skill players aren't welcome, because they've made every effort to make the game harder and harder to play effectively over time.

And before anyone tells me I'm wrong, remember that this game got popular because it was SIMPLE TO PLAY. Zed and Cassiopeia and Vayne were the only high-skillcap characters. Even if someone COMPLETELY sucked, they could still stun someone as Taric, or buff teammates on Sona and GP, or simply EXIST as Zilean with his old passive and be really useful and have fun. Now if you suck, you're going to miss all your skillshots and ludicrously conditional CC and feel completely useless, and that's no fun.

Make new newbie-friendly characters. Stop taking out targeted abilities because you think skillshots are somehow inherently more balanced (they aren't, and just contribute to mobility being overpowered). Stop making abilities and passives ten paragraphs long. And last but not least, stop reworking characters, because every time you do, you drive some percentage of the players who played that character away, and make it that much harder for lapsed players to come back to a game they don't recognize.

In short, 4 years too late: Riot, please stop with this pathological obsession with fixing what isn't broken.

Generation GnarD8/23/2018, 9:56:06 AM2 votes

While I don't agree with your 1 since I myself have too many champion shards and I'm a very casual player (I play mainly Aram and rotation and soon Nexus blitz) I feel like there aren't too many chances to get chests alone and that in of itself is a problem, yea you can team up with people but they have to get a S or higher and that alone is hard in of itself to new players or casuals. It's also hard to team up with higher leveled people and it causes mayhem due to the newbies not knowing what to do fully. Plus even with the random free chest you can get it's not as rewarding when you get one random champ shard and masterwork chests were suppose to exist to fix it and give more/give a chance for skins and other stuff. (COME ON RIOT JUST SWITCH THE FREE REGULAR CHEST TO MASTERWORK AND GIVE US AT LEAST 2 OR MORE) *another thing I wish they would do more often is the rotations...kinda miss when it was something new every 2 weekends..what happened to that?

With some changes to ranked I feel like that can work to get rid of Smurfs though getting rid of surrender isn't wise. sometimes you have to know to quit the game when you're too far behind.

Bundling OE and RP doesn't make sense at all but if they made masterwork chests more readily available it would balance out for everyone to work at what they can get with crafting. (Or ya know, fix the reroll system for skins so you can have a higher chance to reroll for something you own) They should also bring back the BE store more often then they should so we can have more stuff to spend the BE on. Maybe throw in some BE exclusives as well that cost alot. Plus with honor and the checkpoints I can feel you there as I opened one capsule from it and I just got a lousy key fragment and BE....I feel robbed that I didn't get like a emote or something...more...

The club thing is a good idea too, make it like the repeatable win of the day and add special missions to earn keys or chests more often. Just give us something to do with the members. The mentor quene is a good start but in reality most new players feel inferior to veteran players and it would be very frightening to ask to help and somehow get overwhelmed with information or advance play (I should know...my friends like it when I talk to them in game vs my bf who plays like plat but is in silver and expected them to know everything and look at the map often. THEY CANT READ THAT PROPERLY LOL)

The New Samurai8/23/2018, 3:44:58 PM2 votes

Imma keep it real with you chief. Right now, I'm struggling to scavenge up the blue essence to get 6 more 450 chamipns because now you need to have 20 to play ranked. I'm a rank 39 right now, and because I wanted to actually play champions I like, its delaying ranked play completely. I get probably 1000 blue essance a day at most. . . . .I've slowly stopped playing league it seems, and others have too. This is my second account, my first was permabanned for a toxic chat reaction to toxic players, meaning I actually lost 205 dollars because riot things in game chat actually hurts people's feelings... that's besides the point. After I got permabanned i lost motivation to play, as my skins and favorite champions, as well as my progress, just disappeared instantly. I no longer trust putting money into league in fear of being permabanned for another BS reason. So yeah I agree that some skins should be free because I essentially got robbed. I definately say to jack up blue essance rewards so I can actually get new in game content and play ranked. To conclude this hectic message, I want to @TheCorreMaster and say that if you think the game isn't dying, you're straight up delusional. LCS match views seem to be less than half of previous seasons. Queue times for matches must be literally 10 times longer. Now a minimum of 1:30 to enter a match instead of 5 seconds. Also, the voiced community, (youtubers) are leaving the game in hoards, each sending a dagger straight to the game's gut as they leave, ultimately bringing players with them. I got on a league twitch stream and people only complain that they are playing league and not something else. It's just dying.

Föust8/23/2018, 6:12:53 PM2 votes

What if they created an option for a buddy system where players with high honor could opt to pair with a new player or groups of new players to help them learn the ropes while scaling their level etc? It might help introduce some positive community experiences (many times new players are paired with trolls forced to create new accounts or Smurf accounts) and the mentor could earn essence or IP for participating?

Gadwar8/29/2018, 3:28:37 PM2 votes

You got some good points on your posts I hope it will get noticed. Especially the new player experience.

Zyorhist8/31/2018, 12:49:03 PM1 votes

This has some really interesting views and im glad people are commenting. I will be going through and compiling some thoughts that people have brought up and putting them together in the original post over the next day or two but lets keep this active and keep bringing ip new thoughts

Zac x Me8/29/2018, 3:33:03 PM1 votes

"Directed to the boards" means in Rito speech "post it at that place we don't care about because our official forums are at Reddit".

DandelionMan8/23/2018, 7:33:11 AM1 votes

I personally believe raising the minimum level for ranked is most definitely a negative for player retention and new player experience. The competitiveness of league is probably the source of player retention for league. Level 30 is already alot of time spent and I feel for most people the largest drive of leveling is solely to play ranked. Making leveling some daunting experience will only decrease player retention and make league even harder to get into for people outside of the community.

Zyorhist8/25/2018, 11:52:56 AM1 votes

I see some really good points in here can we keep going

HollowMimic8/23/2018, 7:00:10 AM1 votes

I like no.10 Your no.6 would work on a new player so maybe they can just change for the one that has all the champions to get skin shards or emotes? I don't know why emotes are real money purchasable, seems like a failed business to me, especially when they give them through chests (frustration)

Reg1cyde8/23/2018, 1:21:44 PM1 votes

Personally, as someone who started playing for the first time a couple months ago, the mentoring queue would be really helpful, and would teach new players about certain mechanics and game knowledge, and how certain champions and roles change depending on who you're playing or the opposing team is playing. I know that a mode like that would even help players like me out now, I got into league to play with some friends, but friends aren't always the best teachers. Or get too into the game to try and help or explain what to do in certain situations.