Boards›[ARCHIVED] Miscellaneous

Why League is not dying, per se (that'll take a loooonggg time), but peaking

BeatinWarDrumz·4/8/2016, 8:20:32 PM·8 votes·968 views

As we know, since about mid season 3 the boards community has grown more and more angry about the changes that Rito has been making. However, this is not why I say this game has peaked.

First, let's look at the numbers (these statistics are taken from Jeremy GC's video, as was the inspiration for this post). In 2014, Riot announced that Leauge had 67 million players. Since then, they have not released new numbers. Now, if the game were growing, why wouldn't they? After all, it's good for investors, makes people want to jump in on the fun, and creates publicity. The reason is that the game is no longer growing. Not only has Riot not announced new numbers, but we know for a fact that esports vi has gone down, and recently, a figure in Chinese esports said that LoL had 64 million - a slight decrease. It is clear that at the very least, their growth has stagnated, if not stopped all together.

To diagnose this problem, let's look at how a game gets players - advertising, hooking the player in, and retention. In terms of advertising, esports is the big way LoL does this. However, now, it's not the only big shark in the ocean - other titans of the game industry are jumping in, especially blizzard, with HoTS, Hearthstone, and now Overwatch (which I'm hyped AF for). In other words, League has lost its status as the onl/one of the only big esports games along with Dota.

Hooking the player in is new player experience. As we all know... LoL's tutorial is complete shit. I bet if they spent a few months updating it and figuring out ways to better explain the meta, this negative trend will stop. The thing is, there are a limited amount of gamers who will put in the time to be in the "retention" category. And these players sometimes get bored, and eventually stop playing all together. Riot needs to reach out to the casual audience who aren't in this category in order to "make up" for the inevitable slow loss of the more dedicated audience, which is limited. Additionally,Riot NEEDS to make the ranked system become more easily accessed. Playing normals feels rather pointless and many players probably like the game but quit leveling from 1-30 which usually takes 300-400 games.

Now, retention. This is important once a player has seen/heard of the game (advertising), have been hooked/start playing for real (ranked.) This is also a big issue for riot. Let's face it - the recent changes have been... underwhelming. In an effort to make the higher ranks of the game more "shiny", when it's really the new player experience that needs touching up, Riot has alienated a lot of players (cough cough retcon still not finished cough cough. ) Not only do these changes fail to attract new players (they don't really care), but make older players quit. The other big problem with the retention of the game is that the ranked system is fucked. Dynamic queue has its pros and cons, but even before that, the community is toxic and it ALWAYS feels like you team drags you down. I don't know how to fix it, but Riot better now how to.

3 Comments

Penguin Êmperor4/8/2016, 10:26:07 PM1 votes

If it lost 3 million people wouldnt that be in the already peaked and now its starting to die category?

ModKnightsKemplar4/8/2016, 10:43:13 PM1 votes

Eh. We shall see. I think the game is always going in a good direction, and I honestly feel like the negative echo chamber of boards is responsible, in large part, for the perception that the game is getting worse.

Game balance is getting better. I think the REAL reason that League isn't growing is that other companies with more experience are starting to compete in their space. You are right about Heroes of the Storm, in other words. I know some players that League is losing to that game.

Really, these class overhauls are the thing that will save league, if anything. Now that they have a handle on their goals and on this style of game, I think they have a much better idea of how to balance classes with the game itself. As they continue to do that, the game will improve.

As far as the lore and art, I feel league is only losing to its own potential. No other game has made this much original, tantalizing lore for 100+ champions, all of them interacting with each other. Blizzard is cobbling together their heroes from different games, and DotA doesn't have nearly the depth on lore and art, as far as I can tell. That is what propelled league in the first place, in my opinion, and you are right that they need to finish up the retcon. They are emphasizing quality over quantity, and I wonder if that strategy will pay off in the long run. They have SO MANY CHAMPS. And those champs need stories to go with them. Now. That is the biggest thing I am disappointed with. It only took them a couple of years to get this many champs in the game with lore, but it's taking them 10 times as long to clean it up. I don't get it.

I like the quality of the writing coming out of the retcon, but the quantity is not enough, imo.

Anyway, bit of a ramble, but I don't think League is super threatened. I would word it a little differently than you, even if we seem to share, mostly, the same viewpoint; I think their growth spurt is probably over. I think there will be a big revival of league at some point in the future, when Riot hits on some particularly good, expansive changes. The next preseason needs to really nail it, and in my opinion, they need to work faster on a lot of these changes if they want to start growing again.

But even if they don't, they'll continue to get revenue and update the game for some time, and those of us who enjoy it should get the most we can out of it while it's happening. Yes, eventually, people will move on. That's inevitable. But if World of Warcraft has shown us anything, it's that a truly engaging game can survive for a VERY long time if the company continues to support it. It may not always be the biggest thing out there, but it will be here for a long while yet.