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Why I'm losing interest in League after more than 5 years of playing

Auroramancer·7/6/2015, 1:43:43 PM·317 votes·17,243 views

The point of this thread is because I saw a Rioter post on the forums, saying "I'm interested to know what causes long-time players to lose interest in the game", so this post is an answer to that. It is purely a feedback post for Riot, and maybe some other players can attest to the things I'm seeing here.

Some background for myself, I started in late January 2010, right around when Mordekaiser was the newest champion, and I've been playing pretty religiously since then, except for the past 2 months. I placed in Silver tier in Season 1 when we were still on the ELO system, and I've hit Diamond for Seasons 4 and 5.

I want to start off with some things that Riot has been good at: -Identifying good in-game balance issues and concepts -In--game clarity+art is awesome, better than all the other MOBAs I've tried -I've seen the company grow and learn from its mistakes -eSports scene is great

Here are some of the things that are causing me to lose interest in League right now (here is your TL;DR): -Lack of lore development -Lack of company transparency and adequate player interaction -Lack of/slow relaunch of Tribunal; Player Behavior feedback issues -Poor Player Support communications -Lack of compensation for unfair ranked matches -Lack of item diversity -Slow champion release cadence

Lack of lore development I greatly enjoyed the lore of League. When I first started on the game, I would immerse myself into the lore of the existing champions. I got to learn what the champion was about, and learn about their background; that was awesome. The Journal of Justice and League Judgments were great supplements that gave the champions even more depth and kept me hooked on their story.

Then the massive retcon happened. Let me be clear, I don't mind the retcon. What I do mind though, is the void that's now left. What am I to believe about the champions now? Now that the Institute of War is no more, what are my champions like? WHO ARE THEY? I am starving to know more about the champions that I play. It feels strange to play them without them having the backstory that I learned while meeting them

So with that said, there hasn't been on-going lore development for champions beyond their release lore as a follow-up. I've read posts from the lore team saying "we have a lot of things ready, and we're so excited to show them to you guys! But we're also waiting on some specific tech in order to get started". I sort of understand that, but not really. How come the lore department didn't make sure that the tech was ready to go BEFORE retconning everything?

Why was the lore retconned and changed so drastically BEFORE the replacement/upgrade was ready to go out? It's been way too long for the Foundations Team to get stuff out to us players. I feel a bit cheated in this way, that I've lost the identities of the champions that I'm playing. I feel like I'm just playing with hollow bodies now.

Lack of company transparency and adequate player interaction Riot has been kind of on-and-off with player interaction and how transparent the company is on certain things. I remember one instance of good transparency was with the Fnatic scandal not too long ago, involving the coding of Recall and Homeguard enchanted Boots. The published article addressed what was at hand, Riot took accountability for the issue, and didn't beat around the bush. Excellent!

What's been bothering me lately has been transparency issues on terms of Game/Champion Balance and forum posting. When Riot says that the company goal is "to be the most player-oriented/focused company in the world", I expect frequent interaction with players on the forums that is meaningful. It's great to see Rioters have fun with players on the forums.But it grieves me to see players have some outcry on the forums, and have it go unanswered.

There is a difference between responding to players in a generic way, and responding to players in a meaningful way that directly acknowledges and addresses their concerns. It's one thing to say "we are aware of what you are saying, even if we aren't posting". It's another thing to actually post frequently, acknowledge the particular outcry/problem DIRECTLY (not vaguely or in a general way), and communicate what is being done, beyond just "_we are working on this as best as we can :)))) _" Players WANT to know what you're going to do about things, not just that "we're working on it". And there is a way to go about that, without divulging company secrets/spoilers.

An example: some threads about Sightstone enchantments. Even if the Gameplay Team has zero plans for Sightstone enchants, at least send a Rioter in to say exactly that, "we don't have any plans for Sightstone enchants, but we do feel there is room for specializing the item in the future". However, if you you aren't able to adequately respond to the issue, then at least acknowledge the concern with something like "Hey, we are aware of how you guys feel about this issue, and we feel the same way. We have several ideas floating up in the air, but we haven't decided on one yet. I can't reveal exactly what ideas we have in store, but I can assure you that we'll eventually arrive at something". THAT would be great communication and transparency on something that can't be spoiled!

Another grievance I had was the lack of communication on the Veigar/Cassiopeia changes compared to the rejected Lee Sin changes. Lee Sin changes were put on the PBE quite a while ago, and great community backlash was stirred, and SO THE CHANGES WERE PULLED. But when Veigar/Cassiopeia changes were put up, and the community lashed against it, Riot was silent to respond to players about it, and the silence rang this sort of "we're going through with this whether you like it or not. We'll only discuss with you players within the scope of what we are reworking here, not whether the rework should happen or not. Deal with it. Read up in the future patch notes". Such a poor time of player communication.

Lack of/slow relaunch of Tribunal; Player Behavior feedback issues Again, this comes back to the idea of pulling down a system BEFORE a replacement/upgrade is ready. I don't understand why the Tribunal had to be taken down, as opposed to developing the upgrade on the side (ahem, transparency). I like that some of the systems are now automatic, and I understand that there has been a lot of "machine-learning" for these Player Behavior Systems, but again, transparency on progress has been minimal. Would love to see a checklist of things that are going into the new Tribunal, something akin to "Automatic LeaverBuster/chat banning: Completed! Team Builder Draft: In Progress", etc.

Player Behavior feedback progress has been very slow. Seemed like the gap between the release of the Tribunal and having in-client feedback telling a player that their reports got a player banned, was TOO LONG. It's taken so long to get things going for this, given the supposed resources that Riot has accumulated over the last 5 years. I'd like to be able to view a history of the players that have been banned by my reports, such as looking back at the particular report I sent in, and seeing chat logs of the game involved, just to jar my memory and to remember how toxic that individual was.

But also, as the forums have shown over time, that feedback for punished players has been poor, which leads into my next point...

Poor Player Support communications My biggest grievance with Player Support is that punished players do not automatically receive chat logs for their punishments. Instead, they have to send in a ticket through Player Support, where they are greeted by uniquely named bots that send out generic messages.

I was punished at some point, I believe about a year ago, and I had to send in a Player Support ticket for my chat logs. I was met with the bot SlumberJack, and was given the same generic copy-paste response to Player Punishment tickets, SEVEN TIMES OVER SEVEN DIFFERENT TICKETS. My two-week ban has ended by the time a real Player Support Specialist got to me to give me my chat logs.

It was deplorable that it took over two weeks and seven different support tickets to be able to talk to a real person and get my chat logs. And that is one of the biggest slaps in the face to a player. The company that claims to want to be the most player-oriented/focused company in the world, has Player Support primarily operated by bots, who give out generic copy/paste responses, instead of consistently having actual Player Support Specialists writing out unique responses to address the various kinds of tickets from the playerbase. It really makes a player feel bad, and I totally sympathize with the rage threads on the forums where players say "Player Support is useless, they're just bots", because it really does happen.

And then this tackles something of product-consistency across the company. I understand that generic ticket responses from bots helps to "blanket-answer" many tickets that are sent in, but it's not a perfect solution. Tribunal wasn't a perfect solution either, and it's being upgraded now. So we have cases of Riot implementing products that are not perfect solutions, but then failing to release any solution at all for other issues. Which leads me to the next point...

Lack of compensation for unfair ranked matches This topic is very important; not only is it a whole new topic on its own, but it also touches on company transparency. There have been countless suggestions for compensation in ranked games in which a player disconnects: Mercy, Leaver LP loss, LP loss reductions, etc.

What I fail to wrap my head around is, when players are making hot forum threads about these topics, why is there radio silence from Riot in those threads? What is so hard for a Rioter to say "This is a great idea, but there are several ramifications that we don't enjoy, and thus, are preventing us from fully implementing something like this"? Like, at least acknowledge your player base! Acknowledge that they are trying to help solve a problem, and give a meaningful response on the matter.

I know many things aren't going to be a perfect solution to the issue of ranked leavers either. And that's okay, we don't need a perfect solution. Sometimes a temporary band-aid will suffice until a better solution comes around, like how the first Tribunal was imperfect and is being upgraded to something better. Your playerbase doesn't need perfect solutions, but what matters is an effort of transparency on these issues, trying a good (but maybe imperfect) solution, and communicating what you think would be a better solution and how you're working towards it.

Lack of item diversity I see a lot of threads on the forums about "why does 'X' item have to be reworked? Why not keep BOTH?". I have to partially agree with them too. I understand that some items are just obsolete or don't fulfill the intended fantasy for the target champions, but I believe there is too much time spent on reworking/removing items instead of creating new items.

And it's true, we have had more items reworked/removed than added. The item pool feels stale.

What if I want a Health+Armor item? Only TWO options: Randuin's Omen and Sunfire Cape... What if I want a Health+MR item? Only THREE options: Banshee's Veil, Spirit Visage, and Aegis of the Legion (not counting Locket of the Iron Solari as unique, because it's nearly a required upgrade for Aegis anyhow)

Let's just admit it, item diversity is stale for non-supports/junglers. The options for certain stat combos is sorrowfully low, and it makes for repetitious games and item builds. The replay value of the game decreases substantially when item diversity is stagnant.

And while we're on the topic of in-game products, how about tooltip consistency?! One of my greatest pet peeves is insufficient explanatory information. Other MOBAs suffer from this as well, so when clarity is one of Riot's primary company philosophies, I hold League to a higher standard than other MOBAs. What I mean by tooltip consistency is, when you look at different champions' spells and kits, the formatting for their tooltip varies even though some should convey similar information. One example is Syndra, whose Q and W tooltip explicitly states "can be cast while moving". Other champions have spells that can be cast while moving, but I haven't seen that in their tooltips! Little features like those.

Standardize your tooltip formatting for in-game things, clean them up, and take a player suggestion that was popular on the forums: toggle advanced tooltips. Yeah, if you standardize all tooltips, they may get a bit overcrowded, so implement "toggle advanced tooltips" and see how well it works. Detail-oriented players like me sure will enjoy that!

Slow champion release cadence I can appreciate a slower champion release cadence, contrasting the period of Talon/Riven where a new champion came out every 2 weeks, and they had such stale features for their kits. But after that time, the cadence has slowed down a LOT.

The releases that really stuck out to me, as far as cadence goes, was Jinx->Yasuo->Vel'koz->Braum->Gnar, who had nearly 3 month gaps between them, and Rek'Sai->Bard, which was over a 3 month gap. A LONG time to wait for new champions. And I'll be honest, I feel very unsatisfied with how long we waited for Ekko: 2.5 months. I liked the Seconds trailer a lot, but Ekko in-game is honestly just a mobile gadgeteer...BORING. Out of the last 10 champions released, Ekko is by far my least favorite, but the other 9 are fantastically made. I'm glad that Champion Design is taking their time to make great champions, but I think a bit TOO much time is being spent on them.

And since we touched on the topics of champion release cadence and company transparency, let's go to champion relaunches. Lemme just say, most of the champion relaunches have been successful and great. You know what would be really cool though? Having a timeline/progress bar for champions being relaunched. Identify key things for a champion like "Ideation", "Backstory", "Gameplay Kit design", "Art assets", and "Bugfixing", then show on the progress bar what has been finished and what hasn't. This gives older players something nice to look forward to, seeing older champions getting updated/relaunched and we know EXACTLY where they are at presently while getting excited over new progress!

Hopefully, Riot, you take these thoughts of mine to heart, as I have been a loyal player/consumer through the years. Maybe we can have a discussion about this. Thanks for reading though.

209 Comments

Simplicate7/6/2015, 5:42:28 PM29 votes

Day 24: No Rioter in sight.....figures.

TheLegendDylan7/6/2015, 5:21:54 PM26 votes

I agree with all of these, except for your last point. I think having a champion release every 3 months is more than enough. I don't know if its just me but I fear sooner or later the new champs released will completely overrun the older, basic champions. This is already happening, and if champs were to be released more frequently, this would become even worse. But other than that, all of your points are true and need focus from Riot.

5512027/6/2015, 4:42:07 PM21 votes

**Here is my only reason why im losing interest in league: **

  • Extremely, EXTREMELY slow champion rework/relaunch/visual update cadence

Amumu Chogath Corki Fiddlesticks Jax Malphite Morgana Nunu Poppy Rammus Teemo Udyr Warwick ZileanRyze Ryze Ryze DrMundo <- Will those last outdated champs (from 2009, so 6 years OLD now) ever be updated (reworks, visual update or full relaunch) ... Poppy relaunch was announced last year, and still nothing yet...

Otherwise everything else is "fine"

Drunk Rummate7/6/2015, 1:56:01 PM19 votes

Hello there friend. I haven't been playing for nearly as long as you and still enjoy this game quite a bit. I actually started playing Starcraft II around the time you started playing League and went through a similar experience to your own in early 2014, which was when I started up League. I got sick of the SC2 developers in particular, noted their lack of community interaction and unwillingness to fix the obvious and major problems with the game. Just lost all faith in Blizzard completely, tbh. I won't even touch a Blizzard game anymore and that holds true today.

I think part of your issue is that when you get really involved in a game and start to love it, play it super competitively, and follow it daily you start to hold higher expectations for it. As a casual league player I can step back and note all the issues with the game, but I'm able to overlook the shortcomings because I recognize that it's just a fun hobby for me. In SC2 I sort of went off the deep end competitively, was highly ranked master league and just got way too immersed in the game and it backfired because I started to realize that I couldn't put up with all the shortcomings for the game and its developers.

Since then I've been able to take a step back and appreciate games in general for what they offer, rather than what they're lacking. Though I still think Blizzard is an overhyped company that has insulted the intelligence of gamers with their releases since 2008, and it's only getting worse if you look at Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch compared to LoL/DoTA and CS:GO. And then there's Diablo 3.... blech.

Anyways don't want to derail your thread with my own rants. I do agree that a lot of things you've pointed out are issues I see in the game (though I'd disagree with you on developer communication which I think is quite good relative to competitors in the industry). I'd tell you that the secret is to just let go and enjoy the game for what it is, but I know that's impossible because I've been in your shoes before. I'd say you should give other games a shot and maybe come back to LoL later. You may just be getting burned out because you've invested so much into the game with little variety for such a long time.

Terchio7/6/2015, 7:05:07 PM12 votes

My problem with the balance team is that they hold some champions to different standards than others, particularly their champions on release compared to the rest, but some older mobile champions evade work as well.

LeeSin Lucian Kalista Leblanc Zed Azir Riven Ekko all took too long to get addressed, most of which still are toxic in their gameplay.

Cassiopeia Skarner MissFortune Veigar Zilean sat in the trenches seemingly forever before even getting tweaked, at which point it was decided an overhaul was necessary.

Yorick Zac Urgot Galio Poppy Elise had abusive gameplay (to their own degrees, and which could be balanced) which kept them from meaning anything realistic in the League, and therefore kept in stalemate for extended periods of time.

And I've not even gotten to the issues of old, which shows how little progress really gets made in the game:

Gragas Kassadin Kayle Nidalee Sion Soraka Sona Ahri Jax Lulu

I don't see why champions can't get mere tweaks when their kit seems out of whack. When a champion is OP/UP, the kit fantasy is there, it just has some areas where the kit effectiveness is either too high or too low. Riot needs to actually address the problem areas instead of throwing their arms up and throwing out an entirely new champion: Rengar Viktor Xerath KogMaw Karma

I really hope it doesn't take another 5 seasons to fix this group of champions... I don't think I can wait that long, either.

FOODFOOD7/6/2015, 3:22:12 PM11 votes

I feel like I should comment on this, since I started around the same time as you (Feb '10).

  • Company interaction and transparency isn't a huge deal to me, as I don't come to the forums very often (same with most players).
  • I really miss good lore. I remember when I started, I got engrossed in it, and it was mega fun reading about Amumu and him being sad and Kennen and his spunky background (as with the other ninjas).
  • Tribunal - get this stuff together. I feel like my reports do not matter at all. On that note, I feel like honoring does not matter as well. I see maybe 1 honor ribbon per 200 games.
  • Unfair ranked matches - these happen and they're very annoying. I don't play much ranked anymore because it's just too intense and there's no forgiveness for unfair games.
  • Item Diversity - I miss certain items :( I really like Zekes. I miss Malady. I understand the reasoning behind some things, though. There's big picture stuff I'm not getting.
  • I really wish there was more focus on alternative map modes. For long-time players like myself, I get bored playing SR alllll the time. I love Dominion, but it's so janky right now. I'm at an MMR where I don't have bots in my games, but it still needs some work. Get rid of that dang point system.

Anyways, League is a "comes and goes" game for me. I'll go 3 months without playing a game, and then I'll come back strong for a couple months, then light, then strong, then nothing. But it's always been there.

Avios17/6/2015, 3:47:02 PM11 votes

Yes, started in s2, and this is EXACTLY how I feel now. Bravo, good sir. you have explained my feelings of this game all in one thread.

S H A Y C 07/6/2015, 1:55:04 PM9 votes

I was willing to entertain you for a minute...then i saw how frigging long it was, did you really think people were gonna read all that about your big "i quit league" cry fest? Holy crap, if you've lost that much interest in league, go play something else instead of attention seeking.

item 3070Amumu item 3070

Sorceress Soleil7/7/2015, 8:16:19 AM9 votes

You gotta give them a break for the champion releases, at least. Eventually they'll have to stop; they can't realistically pump out new champions forever. (I don't want them to hit 200, personally. At some point there becomes too many variables.) While League has the potential to last a very long time in the gaming industry, that means at least a few more years of it... which means more champions... more people asking for more champions... eventually they'll have to stop.

What are the players going to do when Riot decides they have enough champions and stop making them? Or does everyone particularly want two hundred, three hundred total individuals to consistently balance and keep track of? It's simply not realistic.

Celosar7/6/2015, 9:03:39 PM9 votes

Well said sir/ma'am.

To add my own two cents:

Every time I log in and play a few games I will at some point probably have my sexual orientation question, my mother's honor impugned, play a 4v5, be berated for my lack of mechanics/tactics, or my personal favorite, be the victim of a threesome/foursome that thinks they can force me into a lane or try to play the whole match as though I didn't exist then all four report me for something at the end of the game. This has made me toxic enough in several games to get 3-4 chat restrictions over the last few months. I've since gotten less toxic in my responses to things like this but they make me want to play less and less.

This isn't to say that every game I play is this way, but to be honest, the amount of really cool helpful people are not enough to make up for the number of people that are complete tools. I've been playing online games for about fifteen years and I've never found such a large concentration of assholes in my life. I'm pretty sure it's even condoned by RIOT because every time I watch an LCS match I get to see some pro dance on someone's corpse or spam laugh after a failed gank. The commentators even point it out and giggle on occasion.

The important thing is that I tell some kid to get fucked after he tells me he's going to dig up and ass rape my dead mother and I get a chat restriction so I guess the system works.

Nothing frustrating there at all.

Xeynid7/6/2015, 5:52:43 PM8 votes

Riot, admit you don't care about the lore, and bring back Slay Belle Katarina's pole dance.

Daniy7/6/2015, 4:22:21 PM6 votes

i feel the same about tranparency. so many forum posts with over 300 upvotes dont get commented by riot. they just stay silent and we dont even know what is going on. i would really wish they would at least acknowledge us like you said.

Eleshakai7/6/2015, 6:11:32 PM6 votes

-Lack of lore development -Lack of company transparency and adequate player interaction -Lack of/slow relaunch of Tribunal; Player Behavior feedback issues -Poor Player Support communications -Lack of compensation for unfair ranked matches -Lack of item diversity -Slow champion release cadence

  • Lack of Lore Development

Understandable. I still stand by the fact that I'd rather have the blank slate we have now than the dead end we had before, but I do wish they'd work a bit faster on this. We don't need perfection, we need content.

  • Lack of communication/transparency

When compared to some companies, I disagree with this. Blizzard is probably their closest competition and they are miles worse. Look at the Legacy of the Void beta. For months now people have been telling blizzard how bad some of their decisions are - EVERYONE, not just the people playing the race affected - and they aren't even commenting.

Riot is doing very well in terms of communication and transparency. It's not perfect, but they're NOT bad on this front. The scale of the company has just grown to the point where regular meaningful 1 on 1 interactions are no longer faesible.

  • Player Behaviour

This is a touchy issue for me as the PB team is the reason I quit LoL. Not that I was punished or warned or anything, but I just disagree with some of their decisions on a fundamental, moral level and no longer have any desire to play as a result of that.

But they HAVE said that they are working on reform cards being automatic and including sample transcripts of the problems.... so that should be soon. And the scale of the problem they're tackling is unbelievable so I can understand why things are taking time.

  • Player Support

Riot's player support is probably the second best of any company I've dealt with. Way better than Ubisoft or EA, miles ahead of SquareEnix, light years ahead of Valve... they're only really beaten by Blizzard, whose customer support is just the best there is.

I've never been unsatisfied witha response time or a response from Riot(except in their first year of business, but the company's changed a lot since then)

  • Unfair ranked matches

This point is just people trying to scapegoat, and is something Riot can't change. The system CANNOT SUPPORT a method of making it so that people do not lose LP for leavers - well not without making unintentional leaves too punishing(how would you feel if you lost a full ranked division because your ISP had an outage because that's what it would take to act as a balance). It would completely destroy the ranked system because it means that everyone gradually floats towards Master. There is no solution. None. Not unless they want to remove the zero-sum nature of the ladder system and make it inflate in an absurd way.

The only edge case that needs to be dealt with is if someone doesn't connect to the game AT ALL the game should simply not count and the person who didn't connect should receive a dodge penalty.

  • Item Diversity

This is a tough issue. I don't think it's that bad really, but I can see the issue. The problem is solving it is an almost insurmountable task without completely breaking the game to a point where they WOULD suffer financially. The game is relatively balanced as it is, so destroying it in order to make it SLIGHTLY better is probably not a good business decision. So while I agree item diversity is a noteworthy issue, and it's something that I'm sure Riot's aware of. It's not really solvable... so I see why it is like it is.

  • Slow Champion Cadence

I stopped playing sort of about halfway into the slow release cadence... but I loved the slower release schedule. It felt good to not have to learn to deal with an entirely new champ every 2 weeks and it was awesome that the champs were becoming more distinct and special. From my perspective, I think the ideal would've been for them to have two release periods per year(pre-season and between LCS splits) and release 2-4 champs at once during each one. I don't necessarily like the 'one champ at a time at random intervals'... but I think I may be in the minority here.

bunny11027/7/2015, 7:37:45 AM5 votes

One of the points i'd like to piggy back on in this thread is how slow community problems are solved by riot.

I can't speak for all gaming companies but generally speaking it seems that if something is an issue to the players, it should be a priority to game makers (riot in this instance).

When I first started playing this (fizz was the first new champion I experienced to date myself). I remember a "priority" in the community was a replay system. We are still waiting on that. With literally zero response.

Another big one was the removal of the tribunal system. One of the big ironies about the tribunal was there was an article by riot "explaining why they felt a community based approach to player punishment was ideal talking about crowd sourcing etc". Then you guys trash can it. How is the community in anyway supposed to be happy about that.

The last big ticket has been leavers, disconnects, and all the general trolls in ranked. Literally weekly we get a thread that has meaningful dialogue on possible solutions. It's all over reddit, all over the boards, and the only thing we've heard from riot about ranked is that you will be releasing a team builder version of ranked. Which does not respond to ANY of the complaints listed.

That's 3 clearly illustrated reasons why I am frustrated with riot over the company's "priorities".

Trídent7/7/2015, 3:53:43 AM5 votes

Extremely long OP, but worth reading. Hopefully a Rioter responds soon >.<

disregardable7/6/2015, 1:54:29 PM5 votes

What I don't really understand is how any of that would make the game itself less interesting to you. Riot has a lot of problems in managing this game, not all of which are even listed here, but they don't change the game itself. It really sounds like you're just getting bored and can't stay invested anymore.

Sire Hippington7/7/2015, 6:23:46 PM4 votes

As someone who played the game just as long(started in May 2010), i feel like i should comment on this great thread.

Lack of lore development

Totally agree here, i think lore is a weak spot of lol right now. Events like the Freljord event were awsome, but there is to little going on besides those rar big events, and the champion lores are quite lackluster aswell. I also really would to get more information not about the champion background, but also the world background, more information about the different regions, cultures and races, what are those little animals in Summoners Rift? What are the jungle monsters exactly? Some encyclopedia style entries about the runtera and it's creatures with some concept arts would be awsome(the diabolo games are great examples for what i mean) I also really miss the Jurnal of Justice, and removing the insitiute off war still was one off the darkest days in league's history so far...

Lack of company transparency and adequate player interaction

Sadly, i have to agree again. Riot still has a good transparency and comunication compared to many other companies, but it was better in the past and still has alot room to improve, especially when Riot says that the company goal is "to be the most player-oriented/focused company in the world"

There is often a lack of clearity in terms of patchnotes, and the responses to forum users are very rar and often to generic with ittle to no valuable information. The upcoming patch is a great example. Many probably don't keep track off PBE changes, so a brief update on two things: Xins W-heal ap-ratio gets nerfed and Runeglaive won't proc spelleffeckts any more. So whats the problem here? No one does know why Xin's ap-ratio is nefed, there is not a single reason stated form riot for why this is done, even though many players have that question both on the PBE forums as well as on the normal boards.

And for Runeglaive: The claim that the change is a bugfix. However, there were multiple posts on the PBE forums concerning Runeglaive procing spell effects at the very day it was first releast on the PBE. So if it really wasn't intended to do so, why didn't they fix it back on the PBE befor reeasing it on live? By releasing it the way it was despite knowing that it did proc spell effects, the aknowledged that as a feature. Now claiming it was a bug afterwards as it is abused by Runeglaive EZ(still don't think he'S a big issue though) is flat out lieing to the players, unless they actually dind't know about it befor it hit live, in which case it means that they didn't read any PBE feedback, which would be really poor player-interaction from them.

My main problem with their comuunication however concerns champion aswell as Item reworks as well as removed items. I feel like there is a very onesided flow of information, if any at all. In the past, atleast for eu-players, you usually did find out about reworks oficially in the patchnotes, or a couple of days befor that( I'd still like to get an real explanation on why my beloved madret's bloodrazor and force of nature were removed) . That has changed for the better, especially with the arival of the boards that are accesible for EU and NA alike. Now we usually get informations about reworks, lately even with some reasoning for why the rework is done and whats the aim of it. We even often have big threads with a huge discussion about the rework, includeing rioters. However, and this is a massive problem, it never feels like those discussions ever lead to anything. it mostly feels like riot throws in their rework concept with some reasoning statement, then even commits to an discssion, but in the end the push through theit initial concept no matter what. The whole discussion feels like a farce, as it doesn't seem like riot actually listens to the players and actually takes their ideas and opinions into consideration, and that really is bad for an company that claims to be player-focused. I can undertstand why they don't really listen to player feedback concerning new contend as they have little experience here to base their opinion on, but it's totally differnt when old content is reworked or even gets removed. Many player's have alot of experience with old content by playeing the game, especially the 'mains' of reworked champions. They do have competent knowledge to base their opinion on. I'm not talking about balanceing or powerlevel, I'm talking about the feel of a champion. There is a reason beyond the powerlevel for why people deside to main a champ, ther is something apealing in the character and playstyle, the core identity of a champion. On a rework, that core should be preserved as good as possible, while flawed mechanics around that need to be removed/reworked. It's on riot to figure out the flawed parts of the kit and comuunicate that to the community, but ideally, the would listen to the comunity in order to preserve the identy and the specific feeling of the champ. The players might not give very usefull feedback for balance, but they can tell how a champion feels, how the kit feels, why they like it, and they also can tell why they don't like a rework, why it doesn't feel good, and therefor riot really should listen to their feedback.

One of the more recent examples of a massivly failed rework: Cassiopia. Ever since the rework, the majority of the old cassio players complained that the passive feels bad, it feels like shackles that constrain you and have to be broken rather than a growth of power. They also complained that she lost her identity as a cunning poison mage and instead became a lategame-machinegun that soley is focused on her E.

In many discussions, Riot actually did respond, did aknowledge that her passive feels bad, they nailed down the reasons why it feels bad together with the comunity, they said they would try to solve the issue, and they also wanted to put back a bit more focus on her poison identity rather than the twinfang spam. However, those just there hollow words. Nothing changed to the cassio rework, they just shifted some numbers to fix her powerlevel, but the passive still feels bad and her poison-identity still isn't their, it'S all about the E spam. So all the discussion with the cassio playerbase, the promisses that were made, are void... This isn't a specific cassio issue, it's the epitome of the core problem. Nearly all reworks have had similar issues in a smaller scale. Veigar for example, everyone complained that his W feels bad in his kit, it didn't feel great befor the rework, and with a less reliable stun it's even worse. At some point riot did agree on the W problem and said they would keep an eye on it and think of posible solutions. Nothing changed about veigars W since he was released other than numbers, they did the same as with cassio, buff something on him till his powerlevel is ok rather than working to gether with the comunity till his kit 'feels right'.

Another problem with many reworks is that they actually don't help with any of the identifyed issues of the previous kit and thus change little about how healthy/toxic those champs are. This is a differn't issue though, but still a problem.

**Lack of/slow relaunch of Tribunal; Player Behavior feedback issues **

I never put much though on this, so not much to say on that matter, but your thoughts seem very reasnoable.

** Poor Player Support communications**

This is the first time i catually disagree on you based on my exerience. I did send in support tickets 2 times so far, both times i got an response from an rioter that directly helped me with my issue.

However, it was a more specific problem both times, and chances are that i kinda was lucky, so you might still be right here.

Lack of compensation for unfair ranked matches

This is a important point. I just recently had a 3v3 rankedwhich we dominated, but after we took their first inhibitor, we had a big lack, followed by a disconnect from both my teammates, whil i and all 3 enemies remained in the game. Aparently, it was an server issue and many other players disconnected as well, so there was a massive login que, so my mates couldn't join the game(thy actually couldn't log in for the rest of the game)

We lost the game and with that LP, no loss prevented...games like that really hurt, and even if my mates would have been able to login in again, we wouldn't have played another ranked match that day cause of that very frustraiting experience.

I'd like to add thetechincal issues here even though it has nothing to do with sompensation for unfair rankeds. I think it's un bearable that you disconnect dureing a match and then end up in a login que while the match still is going. If you are in a running match, you should bypass the login que. Another problem is how bad the client deals even with short disconnects. If my internet goes down for just 1-2 sec, which sometimes happens, i need 2+ min to reconnect as i have to go in the taskmanager, kill all LOL-processes and restart the client till i can reconnect, followed by quite some time in the loading screen. And the worst of all is that if i loose a game cause of a disco and can't reconnect in time, I get flamed by the damn leaver-buster afterwards. That usually massively pisses me off to the point there i quite playing lol for atleast the rest of the day... i can imagine(and understand) that some people quit playing lol at all if something like this happens to them more often in a short time frame.

-,- why is ther still a limit to the post length...

Doctor Dyment7/6/2015, 8:19:58 PM4 votes

Now, here's my way of dealing with this. I had the same problem you did: after five years of playing, I just kind of wanted to stop. Now, my reason was different, as I was just kind of getting bored of it. So here is my idea on how to get back into League with a new spirit if you really want to:

Stop playing. Completely drop the game for about one to two months. And I mean, completely. Look around, and play some other MOBA's. Play some Dota 2, Smite, and uh... I guess Heroes of the Storm. Also play other games, such as shooters and some real time strategy games. (I play Total War: Shogun 2.) Then, after a two-ish month period, start to slowly introduce yourself back into League. And I do mean extremely slowly. Do about a game or two a week if you can help yourself. Then, begin to play more and more until you reach a frequency of play that you are happy with. If you did this correctly, there is a good chance you might have gotten a new spirit for playing League. You probably won't play at the same frequency as before, but you can still play at a reasonable rate. Split your League time among a wide variety of games, so you can learn to respect each game type for it's own uniqueness. Now am I saying that what worked for me will work for you? No. But I'm saying that if you really feel that you are at a breaking point with League, then try what I have suggested. If you really feel like you don't miss League that much then don't play it again. But if you really did miss League, like I know you probably did, then start playing it again.

This way worked for me, and I really do hope it works for you if you are feeling up to doing it. Thanks.

Seekêr7/9/2015, 12:55:21 AM3 votes

I agree with the majority of this post but there are three things I want to add.

  1. Riot is not a company for the community, they are now a company for the pros. They care more about the LCS and forgets that it is the rest of the community that made it possible. For the love of god, the pros care more about their viewers and followers than Riot does for the <Diamond community. It may just be an illusion since Riot never comments or interacts with any players unless a pro has said something regarding the same topic or it is during an AMA, which is a bunch of lore/thematic questions and not questions regarding in-game issues.

  2. Riot has no interest in improving the ranked system. I just started climbing and I'm not having a particularly difficult time, but the fact that I can be 9/5 and be losing a 13-30 game and still lose a substantial amount of MMR and LP tells me that Riot expects you to be completely pro and carry your games to climb. There needs to be some sort of performance attribution to soften the lp and mmr losses. Also, all 3 promos I completed, S4, S3, and S2 I had full silver teams going against gold 4 or gold 3 teams. Ya, I managed to push objectives and win, but I still don't understand why I'm proving I can compete with Gold players in order to get into Silver 3?

  3. Riot is getting better at this; Riot has ignored a lot of core issues with game such as broken champion kits, unloved <40% win rate champs, and overall poor thematic context in champions in favor of pumping out tons of new champions and nerfing champions that the pros said were OP. They are really getting on top of this, started in season 4 and seems to be picking up speed, but I still think there are obvious things that need to be taken priority over. A quarter of the champion pool is sitting below 45% win rate, which I consider to be the "there is a problem with this champion" point.

PS: I'm not crying because ranked is too hard to climb, it isn't. You just have to play the objectives and not the kills. But there are very obvious issues with the mmr system and division system. Having to spike your winrate to 66% to climb a division makes no sense...(2 out of 3 games for promos).

RainbowIcee7/6/2015, 4:16:29 PM3 votes

We truly need more item diversity, and more champion diversity would be great too. I feel champions are following a trend of gapcloser + meet certain requirements = stun and AOE damage. They're making champions that are jack of all trades in a sense with hard cc and gap closer. Champions should specialize in certain roles such as burst damage dealer... a lot of peels...movement or heavy CC. Champions like Ekko make me sick because he has everything in 1 overloaded kit. Look at blitz, it's simple, pull CC them < cc champion.

ADC's are the most balanced role we have, other roles have some champions that are just jacked up. I think last well balanced champion they made that i saw was Darius, a Damage dealer with a very weak CC and a pull.

KillerKoala7/6/2015, 5:23:36 PM3 votes

Lore Development alone would draw in new players and keep around more older players.We alll love league, and its like a movie or comic for us. League Lore could be absolutely amazing. Maybe one day a movie

iMaB3AST7/6/2015, 7:29:12 PM3 votes

Here's my thought on league in a nutshell: I begin to think league is getting worse and then a play a game of league. I enjoy the game i had played and the cycle begins again...

Joe Dredd7/6/2015, 8:24:15 PM3 votes

Lack of compensation for unfair ranked matches This topic is very important; not only is it a whole new topic on its own, but it also touches on company transparency. There have been countless suggestions for compensation in ranked games in which a player disconnects: Mercy, Leaver LP loss, LP loss reductions, etc.

What I fail to wrap my head around is, when players are making hot forum threads about these topics, why is there radio silence from Riot in those threads? What is so hard for a Rioter to say "This is a great idea, but there are several ramifications that we don't enjoy, and thus, are preventing us from fully implementing something like this"? Like, at least acknowledge your player base! Acknowledge that they are trying to help solve a problem, and give a meaningful response on the matter.

Riot has gone quiet on this because they've stated their reasons for not going through with it so many times. You think every time a person cries on a thread here it's a whole new suggestion? No. It's not. It's the exact same thing they've talked about so many times before, and after a certain point you don't want to keep repeating yourself, so you stop addressing them.

DirkTarTar7/6/2015, 11:02:02 PM3 votes

Thank you Lordnewb the community is my biggest turn off to LoL... it makes me literally want to rage quit life some times.

Beertaster7/7/2015, 1:44:51 AM3 votes

Or you finally are ready to move on to something else. Your whole life isn't going to be league is it? There are plenty of other game companies that can hold your attention.

Cosnirak7/7/2015, 11:07:46 AM3 votes

I think champions are released too often and there are more than enough items. The rest I mostly agree with.

Trias0007/7/2015, 11:18:01 AM3 votes

The lore is a very unimportant part of game such as LoL. In RPGs it is everything - it influences every occurence, every player's decision, every character. But here? Ashe and Lissandra can be on the same team, and Lux can try to kill Ezreal. A guy with a sword can kill a girl with a minigun. Satan can become an astronaut. Lore is just something you read on the website, more like fan fiction than actual game story. No matter how expanded it would be, you still wouldn't feel it in the actual game.

TNHA Baritone7/7/2015, 12:43:47 PM3 votes

This game's very fun. The community upsets me but.... I love this game.

The Blue Rajah7/7/2015, 5:56:26 PM3 votes

Regarding the Health + Armor items, you missed one.

There's also Ohmwrecker, which is a much better item than people give it credit for. (I f**king love that movespeed near turrets. Greatly increases map mobility).

Sarutobi7/6/2015, 2:01:26 PM2 votes

I really appreciate topics like this. As apart of the community we as players should try and help the people at riot make a better game not only for ourselves but for them working on the game as well. With that I will say about the support for this game is lacking, but to be fair you can't expect someone to look through probably hundreds of thousands of support tickets because then you'll complain about how slow it would be to get a reply. I think while someone should be reading the support ticket with common problems I feel a bit should reply especially when key phrases are put into the report. That way it's out and replied quickly.

One thing I don't really understand with rank competition is how it would be given out. If people leave a rank match should everyone be compensated? What if it was friend who left so their buddie can get compensation? There is just too many factors that goes into something like this. To be fair they have talked about compensation granted it been awhile, but they are there. They just can't response to everyone complaining about it with the same answer!