Will there be a point where this game will have too many champions?

NinjaFifer·May 12, 2016·3 votes·625 views

League started with 40, and currently stands at 130 (Taliyah being 131) champions; will there ever be a point where that number just becomes too many?

Will there be a point where the burden of information you have to know, in order to walk into a match confidently, just becomes too overbearing? When will new players walk into the game and be overwhelmed by the choices? When will the champ pool become so large that balancing items for every case becomes unrealistic?

What will happen when we reach that point?

Are we already there?

15 Comments

Unward49May 12, 20161 votes

Arguably that point was reached around 90.

JayHog1992May 12, 20161 votes

Probably they should stop the moment that buffing or nerfing a single item by 5 of something makes half the roster OP or UP.

ShikigamiMay 12, 20161 votes

Frankly, I know all of the champions and their kits. So maybe it's not there yet. Riot's already expanding their game ideas towards other genres (according to surveys I've filled from them). At one point (probably by the next game's takeover), they're going to slow down production to 1 every couple months or something.

NinjaFiferMay 12, 20161 votes

I know them all as well, but I've also been around since S1. Someone walking in new has a ton of info to look into before they can play this game at any kind of competent level.

But is slowing down going to be healthy for the game? Will it then become stale? How can they avoid this catch 22?

ShikigamiMay 12, 20161 votes

If they move to a new game it's safe to say that it will severely split the playerbase. Slowing the game down at that point won't be too negative since they can allocate resources towards the new game.

I also think that a large champion pool is exciting for a new player. It was for me when I started .. to a certain extent.

That being said, they want the game to be a long-term sport. Which probably won't happen at the rate they're releasing champs. At one point the game is going to have to choose between having too much content to manage or cutting loose and making a new game.

NinjaFiferMay 12, 20161 votes

That's pretty much my thoughts too. Unless they put a bunch of focus on reworks and just gave current players "new-ish champs" to keep things fresh while not increasing the actual amount of information needed to start the game. Could buy them time before they needed to start fresh.

ShikigamiMay 12, 20161 votes

I don't think they'll do that. If they reworked my favorite champion that I played countless hours on I'd probably stop playing. Sure that'd be fresh for people who rotate through all the champions but the minority who "main" a champion is the same minority who will stick with the game even through a decline, while people who cycle through champions probably aren't so attatched and might be more inclined to move to Riot Game #2 or overall a better game with a fresher feel.

venomous frostMay 12, 20161 votes

i'm gonna go ahead an say for new players there are already way too many champions in theory, in practice however only a handful are played most of the time, so it's not that difficult. even if there are 500 champions, only 30 or so will be picked in ranked

NinjaFiferMay 12, 20161 votes

A fair enough point. As balance shifts and new champs become meta, more info is slowly brought into their focus. Thing is, though, that you mention ranked, which already requires a lot of playing to get to. You are no longer "new" if you can play ranked.

Icestar1186May 12, 20161 votes

I came in somewhere between Yasuo and Vel'koz, and I think I did pretty well. It doesn't take long to learn the basics of all the champions, although it can be a while before you learn all the interactions.

NinjaFiferMay 12, 20161 votes

True that you don't need to learn the intricacies of each champ There's still got to be a point where the persistent frustration of getting beaten by something you don't know about outweighs the desire to go learn what just happened. At some point new players are gonna start falling off because they just start saying "not worth." We may not yet be at that point, but it's there somewhere.

AlienPrimateMay 12, 20161 votes

I don't think you can really say that there are too many champions until they start to run out of original ideas. When abilities start to overlap between champions then there are too many.

NinjaFiferMay 12, 20161 votes

Can you deny the point that the amount of information in this game is expanding, and that this might cause new players to be overwhelmed and turned away? Or that balance will become an exponentially expanding problem as more champs have to be figured into how items get balanced?

DrCyanideMay 13, 20161 votes

Will there be a point where the burden of information you have to know, in order to walk into a match confidently, just becomes too overbearing?

That point has already been passed.

How many months does it take to get a rudimentary understanding of all the champions? To know the difference between a Root/Snare and an Entangle? What all the different colors for scaling mean (Yellow, Orange, Green, Blue, Pink, Red, White)? I was almost to level 30 before anyone explained what in the world "AP" was or how to know who I should build it on.

Add to that how much changes on any given patch. In the time a beginner player is trying to learn all of those things (plus mechanical basics), there's likely going to be champion or class updates.

I've tried helping friends get into this game, there's just too much to learn to make me want to do that again. If someone asks me for a recommendation for a game to play, League won't be on that list (as much as I enjoy it) because of its learning curve.

NinjaFiferMay 13, 20161 votes

Yep, that's exactly my thoughts. If I were to make a recommendation to a friend for this game, it'd have to come paired with my help in learning how things work. Riot's getting better at the whole clarity thing, but the new elemental dragon icons and their colors show that they still have a ways to go yet.