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I See a Lot of Older Players Giving their Thoughts on the Game Recently

Brutalitops01·4/23/2017, 2:19:24 AM·8 votes·750 views

So here's mine. I see a lot of people complaining about balance and League not being fun, but I've found just the opposite to be true. I've been playing since season 1 and my opinion is that the game is still heavily enjoyable, even after 7 years. League is the one game that's kept my attention as long as it has.

Talking about balance, the game is far MORE balanced now than it ever has been before. Allow me to explain. Master Yi with his current Q being his old ult, but with a 5 minute cooldown and a 300% AD ratio. Also, his old Q was a weaker version of his current ult, and his passive was a random chance to hit twice. Also, his E was toggled and made his autos cost mana. The days of the AP Master Yi, when his kit was very similar to what it currently is, but his Q had a 100% AP ratio, his W a 300% ratio, and DFG was still a thing. He could 1-shot your entire team and you couldn't kill him. Beta TF, with his Gold Card being a 2 second AoE stun on a 4 second cooldown, his E being a global version of his ult's teleport, and his ult still being the reveal but with a giant slow on it. Also, his passive gave his whole team crit chance. And later it was changed to give his whole team bonus gold any time they killed anything. Eve when her ult still had the passive to heal her back to basically full health on kill. Also, her stealth was on her W, lasted a minute, and she stunned an enemy when she came out of it. Also, Sunfire Cape stacked and Camouflage or Camouflage-like mechanics weren't things, so she could run around, in stealth, you could only see her if you carried around a pink, with 6 Sunfire Capes just murdering everyone. Ryze when his ult was his old E in that it bounced around between enemies, up to 6 times, and did 1000 damage per hit. Also, it could still bounce to you, so 1v1's your ult would deal 3k damage to the target guaranteed. Need more examples of old, broken stuff? How about Zilean but his W affected his ult and his ult lasted for like 90 seconds? Kayle ult lasting 10 seconds? Tryndamere ult also lasting 10 seconds?

Yeah, old League was kinda absurd. Balance was optional, as Riot was still getting their footing. All of the recent champions I've found to be interesting, unique, fun to play, and also relatively balanced.

Meanwhile, there's the fact that old favorites like Nunu are still viable to this day.

Keystone Masteries and all the new items create some interesting ways to customize your champions, though the Rune system still leaves a lot to be desired and I'm excited to see its rework.

The game is overall in the best state it's ever been in, and the playerbase being over 100,000,000 shows it.

Now, does this mean that the game is perfect? No. League of Legends is and always will be a work in progress. METAs shift, balance changes from every little change Riot makes to the game, and the game can be frustrating at times when you get matched up with the team that's just so bad compared to the enemy team's. I've actually been getting a bunch of allies in ranked today who were really good and we just rolled over the enemy team nearly every game. Skill differences I'm sure will fade once I'm closer to my skill level in rank, but I'm working on it.

However, the ranked experience is undoubtedly better than back in the day, where one loss in placements would send you to the depths of ELO hell where nobody could carry unless they were actual plat players (plat was the highest rank you could go at the time). ELO was hard to get, easy to lose, and as there were no placement matches and no structured tiers kept you from falling way far down from just a few losses. The current system is far better than the ELO system, and Riot is now beginning to try to give even more incentive to climb, giving those at the top of the ladder more than just in-game goodies.

Toxicity still abounds, but in any multiplayer game, especially a team-based competitive game like League, you have to expect that.

So, quit your bitchin' and let's go have some fun. See you on the Rift.

15 Comments

youthere4/23/2017, 2:38:34 AM3 votes

Alpha strike was never Yi's ult... actually... I think most everything you said is factually wrong...

AirKingNeo4/23/2017, 3:10:57 AM2 votes

Dragging out Beta for an example isn't usable for comparison when talking about current balance. Also Kayle's ult was 6 seconds at it's greatest.

Aeszarck4/23/2017, 2:38:01 AM1 votes

I think it's so cool how balanced League of Legends really is when you take into account the absurd number of variables they can modify to balance the game. There are so many different levers they can turn to try and make this game balanced, and if they barely touch the wrong one a Champion becomes OP. I like to cite Leona becoming the highest winrate Champion in the game for a patch because her E root time was increased by 0.25 seconds and her range on Q empowered auto-attacks was increased by about fifty. (She was up for a tiny rework and the buffs shipped but not the nerfs.) Those changes seem so miniscule, but they got Leona up to a 55% winrate. I really respect Riot's balance team for doing such a good job. Sure people can complain "oh balance is so awful right now" but think of how much worse it could be. I am glad that I can pick any Champion and have a decent shot at winning, and not only that, have a fun time doing so. Riot makes changes not only for balance, but they also make changes to make Champions more fun to play or more fun to play against. They make changes to make the game healthier, and I like that. For example, say Morgana had a 12 second root but her base health and health gain were quartered. Maybe she would still be "balanced", but she sure as hell wouldn't be a healthy Champion. Riot's balance team always has to make nerfs and buffs while keeping game health in mind, and that's not easy. X might be too strong/weak, but how should he be buffed/nerfed to remain healthy? That's a question that the designers have to face every work day for every Champion. Yeah, the Boards have suggestions, but there are so many ones that would really hurt the game that it's hard to separate the good and the bad. Not only that, but a vast majority of the players are biased. They might see one Champion as terrible to play against and want unjustified nerfs for the balanced Champion, or see one underplayed Champion and ask for unjustified buffs, for example. Maybe they just want a Champion to be buffed so they can climb on that Champion.

I respect the balance team, the playtesters, and the QA team for the work they do. They're not perfect, but if we take a step back and look at the big picture, they do a pretty good job.

ZT Xperimentor4/23/2017, 5:12:32 PM1 votes

Because it was the older players that got this game off the ground, and back when riot actually cared about keeping the game fun and fair with plenty of communication. Ever since they got obsessed with becoming an esport, they've let the popularity go to their head, and no longer accept feedback that doesn't pad their inflated egos. Adding more employees was necessary, but putting drastically different mindsets in charge of game-changing decisions was a mistake waiting to happen; they had setup design guidelines for several reasons early on, yet in recent years they've been breaking them, and with it steadily ruining the game. Most prominent with the 'fun to play but frustrating to face' design choices of late.