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Dear Riot: "Champion Mastery System Feedback"

TatsumakiSama·5/24/2015, 3:38:39 AM·29 votes·2,848 views

Dear Riot Champion Mastery System Team,

As someone who likes to main champs for a good 100+ games to really understand and learn the ins and outs of them, the new Mastery System puzzles me... I played maybe 15-20 games on Leblanc (on my lb only account) and got to the highest tier without much effort (hardly mastery).

I also noticed that the opponent can't see the badges I've earned or the emoticon I have. This is really curious, as why else would they exist? I have no reason to show them to my teammates...they can already see it by default on the loading screen. The only reason I can image you wouldn't want players to be able to show it to opponents is because it could be taken as bm, or something like that. But, if I thought that were the case, I'd imagine you'd have the same issue with all taunts and laugh emotes in the game (Lulu, Lux, and Zed laugh spams are the most bm actions in the game:) I think the emote badges are intended to be something you can show off and be proud of, no?

I'm curious to know what the design intention is, in terms of what the system is trying to accomplish. At the moment, it feels like a very casual metagame that rewards "collection" in the sense that players are encouraged to play each champ 'x' times to gain an overall high mastery score... But the word mastery I think is misleading in this respect. Perhaps champion knowledge or diversity would make sense, but surely not mastery.

I'd like to know your thoughts on where you think the system is at and how it is stacking up against your expectations as well as any changes you are considering to it in the future. A few thoughts I had that may make it a more compelling experience:

  • Extend the level curve such that players who have actually invested significant time into the champion are duly noticed and rewarded for their efforts. In my mind, this means 100+ game wins, minimum, on a given champ.

  • Make a distinction between players who have played broadly (i.e. have knowledge of many champions) vs players who play deep (are masters of specific champs), and perhaps a special tier for those who have done both (truly dedicated players, pros, etc).

  • Allow opponents to see your emoticons in game (can't wait to see emote badge spamming at the start of LCS matches where players show off which champs they are king with :D )

  • Expose the stats that are used to grade players in game so they can clearly see their areas of strength/ weakness (i.e. your farm was low or you had too many deaths one game and therefore you got a C). Again, this provides essential feedback and reinforces the idea of the system, allowing players to truly improve and master the champion. This information could be hidden from normal view by default, but similar to the death screen recap, it provides serious players with the information they need so they can respond to it.

  • Celebrate the players who are top tier on a given champion or in a specific area in the client somewhere (i.e. the best Azirs, the players with the most skill in terms of champion pool, the most consistent performer, etc.) Granted, that last part is optional, but again, just thinking of really long-term goals for players than can make the system more meaningful. You could also award skins or chromas to players who reach certain thresholds, similar to the victorious skins. And of course, this system would be much more difficult to grok than that one :p

Anyway, would love to know what your plans and thoughts are, as mentioned before (and feel free to point me to existing discussion posts if your thoughts on the matter have already been exposed somewhere and I just missed it).

I do think the system has great potential and I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops in the future.

Cheers,

-Kaz

29 Comments

SmokedAlmonds5/24/2015, 3:46:36 AM8 votes

I feel pretty much the same. To me the mastery system is so shallow that it has no meaning. Its just a grind for grinds sake. The whole thing could be replaced by just displaying how many times you have played a champion.

Shield Villain5/24/2015, 5:14:31 AM5 votes

No thanks...I already played my 100+ on certain champions. The last thing I want to do is do it again so I can get a fancy badge and emote.

ZankouHoshizora5/25/2015, 12:41:50 AM3 votes

{quoted}

  • Extend the level curve such that players who have actually invested significant time into the champion are duly noticed and rewarded for their efforts. In my mind, this means 100+ game wins, minimum, on a given champ.

Assuming you're talking about expanding the system past rank 5, I'm more or less in agreement. I do think it's important to keep some stuff available to the more casual players (especially since I'm one of those...), but I'd be perfectly happy with the system if they increased the number of ranks in future while still leaving some little rewards at the lower ranks, so that everyone could get something out of it while still recognizing the really dedicated players.

I have to wonder, with such an expansion in ranks, if there's a point at which we can make it more about the grade than about numbers of games. Imagine a system where once I'm at rank, say, 7, any grade lower than an A- gives a negligible amount of mastery points, regardless of whether I win or lose the game. I wouldn't want to see that kind of barrier at anything other than very high levels of champion mastery, but I think it could be appropriate to make the later stages of an expanded system more about "you must do well to proceed" rather than "you must win lots of games to proceed". I'm sure there are potential consequences that I haven't fully thought through here, though.

  • Make a distinction between players who have played broadly (i.e. have knowledge of many champions) vs players who play deep (are masters of specific champs), and perhaps a special tier for those who have done both (truly dedicated players, pros, etc).

So basically, add in global rewards for the total number of mastery ranks you possess across all champions, so as to reward players that have played lots of different champions? That seems like the fastest way to recognize broad experience of many different champions, although I'm not sure what rewards would be appropriate. Summoner icons?

  • Expose the stats that are used to grade players in game so they can clearly see their areas of strength/ weakness (i.e. your farm was low or you had too many deaths one game and therefore you got a C). Again, this provides essential feedback and reinforces the idea of the system, allowing players to truly improve and master the champion. This information could be hidden from normal view by default, but similar to the death screen recap, it provides serious players with the information they need so they can respond to it.

Yes. Yes please. I would love to know how and why the system makes its decisions on final grade. And I think that kind of breakdown would be essential when and if they created the kind of "you must get at least a B to pass this rank" system I was talking about earlier, so that players can know what they need to do to get those higher grades.

I will admit, I can imagine such a system causing some problems with motivation. Ideally we want people to be focused on winning whatever game of League of Legends they're in, not focused on getting a certain grade. One hopes that getting a good grade comes by doing things that help you win, and of course there's a huge mastery point penalty for losing a game regardless of your grade, but it's still something to be careful about.

Icestar11865/24/2015, 4:50:29 AM2 votes

love the idea.

Holgranth5/24/2015, 2:22:14 PM2 votes

The lack of transparency with the grading system makes it all but useless as you are forever guessing WHY you got the score you did.

An S+ game where you got 7 dragons and went 13-2-32 is fairly self explanatory, but it would be nice to see exactly why I got a C+ when I was 5-3-4 on a team with a 1-13-6 Rengar.

I can guess it was my lack of assists and lack of objective control, our team refused to surrender and they finally put us out of our misery 43 kills to 21, I still had participation on a little less than 50% of my teams kills.

Raptamei5/24/2015, 2:34:45 PM2 votes

Basically Riot saw hero mastery in HotS and copied it in a hurry, but couldn't do the rewards you get in HotS (free chromas and a free skin) and was forced to keep it hidden (because "toxicity").

Chromesy5/24/2015, 4:35:20 PM2 votes

It would be nice if your rating for individual games was posted in the recent games tab. Just my two cents

Civil Dawn5/24/2015, 4:13:00 AM2 votes

All the feedback in this is completely solid. You can't get higher quality feedback than this. Honestly.

C9 Saskio5/24/2015, 4:32:07 AM2 votes

Well said! I feel the same way.

Clown Apocalypse5/24/2015, 6:15:34 PM2 votes

It would be nice if they worked the grading system into how people are ranked. Personal performance should be the biggest deciding factor in how much you gain or lose in ranked. If you won but were dead weight you should get a few less points. Not belittling anyone's contributions because I play a lot of support. My KDA on morgana is also 5:1 (sadly bronze though). Its possible to support and not feed. Therefore its possible to play every other role and not feed. I'm not saying you should have to get an S to get the full amount of points either. On the other side of the coin, putting up an amazing effort and losing a close game should lose people less points if they performed well. The difference in points doesn't even have to be that big. I think cumulatively though people that consistently play well in spite of bad teams will have an easier time climbing. Just a thought.

Migit785/24/2015, 11:26:56 PM2 votes

I was really excited for the champion mastery system, but am rather disappointed with it, now that I'm using it. For champions that I enjoy playing and feel I'm decent at, i have a very small champion pool. And was happy to play multiple games with them to achieve the mastery banners and emotes. However I've noticed the points into ranking up come pretty much purely from a win/loss perspective than a S-D rank perspective which personally I find annoying.

I'm not a good player, I have some games that go exceptionally well for me sometimes, but as a general rule I'm pretty bad, and I'm okay with that. But it bothers me that I can go 21/3/15 get an S- and still only get +237 points because my team lost, then next game same champ same role, get shat on, go 5/14/6 rank C and get +1526 points.

Extreme Troller5/24/2015, 5:04:00 PM1 votes

emoticon are useless. I would remove them entirely with the option. Worst feature ever created. it add confusion.

YOU BEEN WARNED5/25/2015, 8:23:49 AM1 votes

God please no, not another elitism discriminatory term to derogate other players with. It's great just the way it is and with the direction it is headed, making it competitive is foolishness that takes away from casual players.

SymbolicGhost5/25/2015, 11:25:37 PM1 votes

They should just make it based off of percentage... Such as:

Top 10% Highest K/D/A Ratio Highest Win-Loss Ratio

etc...

Thumpin5/24/2015, 11:40:31 PM1 votes

Just saying, when an enemy champion kills one of your teammates you can see a banner under their icon if they have level 5 mastery. So yeah, your enemies CAN see that you have worked on a champion.

Having said that, I feel like it's too easy to get "champion mastery". All you have to do is spam games, you don't necessarily need to perform well in them. I've seen so many Zyras with level 5 mastery who've just been... useless. In the future when more levels are added I'd like to see them require A or S performance on average to achieve.

Another beef I have is that the criteria for performance ratings seems off. A while ago I had a game as Lee Sin that I literally carried, and only got an A-, while my support Lulu got S+ with roughly 2/3rds the kill contribution I had. It seems to put emphasis on maintaining good CS unless you are a support, which is funny because junglers might get very little cs depending on how often they are ganking, and some junglers simply are better if they're constantly ganking over farming, such as Lee (in contrast to Udyr or Yi).

I like the champion mastery system, I just feel like it needs a lot more than just a little polish.

Rinky Dinky5/24/2015, 10:13:00 AM1 votes

You can see the badge of an enemy if they get a kill or something ingame. That's about it tho lol

KazeNekochan5/25/2015, 12:43:35 AM1 votes

the mastery system is meant to show you how good you do on a champ compared to others and they have also alraedy stated the level is going to increase and have more rewards

plot armor5/25/2015, 4:01:50 AM1 votes

I'm pretty sure riot is working on upper tiers of this system and that the current system is basically the unranked grind. All the current tiers would be the bronze/unranked equivalent later on as a larger system is rolled out, and there would be silver/gold/plat/etc tiers to represent masteries on each champ

Zzest5/25/2015, 7:33:34 AM1 votes

The only complaint I have about the champion mastery system is that your grade means almost nothing compared to whether you win the game or not. For example you could get an S+ and still get only 1/4 of the points an opponent with a D- because you lost for what ever reason.

Mandang05/24/2015, 4:29:09 PM1 votes

It's the same reason the other team can't see your ranked borders on the loading screen - Riot doesn't want that knowledge affecting how the enemy team plays against you.

Superdum5/24/2015, 2:39:08 PM1 votes

I believe riot doesn't let the opponents see the emote for the same reason people can't see the opponents rank on the champion loading screen. It's is so that people don't feel that they already lost the game when they just started playing.