[Poll] Leagues - Do Players Care?

Daen·Sep 2, 2014·10 votes·1,949 views

Hi everyone,

This will be an uncharacteristically short post as I don't have data (sorry), but I'm curious as to your opinions.

To clarify, I am referring to the groups players are randomly placed into such as Karma's Redeemers, Amumu's Friendless, Vladimir's Bloodsuckers, etc. Not Tiers and Divisions.

Do you actively involve yourself in Leagues, and what about the system do you like/dislike?

Results are located here, as well as a new poll if anyone's interested!

25 Comments

AbiwonKenabiSep 2, 201411 votes

It seems cool, but really doesn't mean much in practice. They were all like "YEAH you and all your friends are gonna be in a league, constantly competing against one another and it'll be AWESOME" but really one or two friends in the same league (and not usually the same tier) is all it ends up being.

So then I said to myself "oh it would be cool if I played with the people in my league the most frequently." I had always liked how higher level streamers all knew each other and recognized a lot of players. It would be really cool to be able to be like "oh its AbiwonKenabi again. Watch out for her Nami" and consistently compete and work together with the same group of people. That level of familiarity could be fun, make us feel like pros. It doesn't have to be every game: just enough to where we start to recognize people in our own league. Alas, this isn't the case.

Instead, all it really turns out to be is an arbitrary way to organize players further. No one asks you what specific league you are in ("Are you in Nasus's Urfriders?"), they only care about your league rank ("Are you in Gold IV?") and couldn't care less about Nasus's Urfriders.

Also, does anyone else not care for the names? Some of them are so random. I didn't make Nasus's Urfriders up, that's a real thing. Also, Alitstar's Tricksters. Why would Alistar have Tricksters? Some are ok (Corki's Scouts, Karthus's Blightlords) but a lot are just weird.

XenohazSep 2, 20143 votes

I gotta agree with that last one. I think they literally are randomly named, it's just "[random champion]'s [combat-related thing]". I got put in Renekton's Snipers. Although to be honset, the mental image that creates is too funny for me to be very annoyed.

DaenSep 3, 20142 votes

I don't want to add my opinion to the thread, but +1 for the effort in your post!

SummonerRPSep 3, 20144 votes

They shud make Darius 's DUNKSTERS!

What do you think?

AbiwonKenabiSep 3, 20141 votes

This is a good example of a silly league name that still makes sense. I'd totally want to be in Darius's Dunksters!

DecritSep 3, 20142 votes

The EUWstigma does not allow me to +1 but only to vote, so feel a +1 from this commenti.

FEEL IT

TenSlashTenSep 2, 20144 votes

They're useless, if anything I'd like to see a huge list of all the players in X league at any given time. Not 50-200 players. Definately needs improving. I know it helps riot with moving around data though. But still. Then again I haven't played ranked in like 6 months unless I was specifically asked to by my friend at work/irl friend that lives a few hours north of me. ADC meta really makes me sour.

DaenSep 2, 20142 votes

What sorts of improvements would make you no longer consider them useless? In that same vein, what would make you consider them a great feature?

TenSlashTenSep 3, 20141 votes

I like stats, they're cool things to check and compare. Riot still isn't really offering that many easy to view stats. For example just to see this new stat thing they have you have to open your web browser isntead of looking at it right on the client. Maybe like instead of just displaying the top three played champs by X player, show their best recent game with that champ and maybe some life time stats like.. KDA.. or average warding per game on this champion... Average gold per game.. average cs per game. you know...? Simple stuff that should already be there.

Its cool to find someone who's mastered your champion and want to try and match their stats and maybe even surpass them in some way (maybe better at csing.. better at warding... better gold gain per game.. etc)

For example, I'm a tank eve player with pretty good per game KDA/gold gain... I'm good at picking lanes to gank and that gank be a successful gank 8 times out of 10 meaning I hardly waste time and get the ball rolling nice and quick for my side of the board. I'm the guy that invented tank eve way back in s1 when she came out(good ol' stun eve rofl) and have been playing her that way religiously since that day. Sometimes I do rylias/liandries eve but I much prefer full tank eve. I haven't played her that way for about 6 months(because thats the last time I played ranked...op.gg Jungle.. look me up)because tank items got nerfed really hard and LW/VS (penetration items) are still top tier items that do alot for a cheap cost of 2.4k~ gold.

Also a replay system so you can view their most recent game on XXX champion and see how they played the match up they played. ^ this one is probably the biggest out of all. Riot still has no real replay system and no information about it.

PeacemakerSep 4, 20141 votes

I think the ability to see pick/ban rates in my league would be pretty cool.

AvariceSynSep 2, 20142 votes

I would like to see those statistics as well, though I can't say I care too much to have to view every single person in that league.

WasaboSep 2, 20143 votes

What does it do when you are in one?

DaenSep 3, 20141 votes

Good question.

LogicknotSep 2, 20143 votes

Why can't I vote that i just don't care. Why does my opinion have to confirm with your poll.

DaenSep 3, 20145 votes

Two reasons:

An opinion of "No opinion" isn't exactly valuable for what I'm looking for
I may have...forgotten to add it

LogicknotSep 4, 20141 votes

It is very valid data though. With it riot could determine their random names could be replaced by a more significant ranking systems in the different brackets. So we could have bronze 200 compared to people in bronze 1 division.

GibbiusSep 3, 20142 votes

I'd like to actually play with and compete with people that are in my league, like Abiwon Kenabi said. But it's not what happens.

DaenSep 3, 20141 votes

Do you feel that a system where the League is more insular (a la Challenger) could potentially foster a better community? Or could it make things worse by forcing people to play with similar people consistently?

GibbiusSep 4, 20141 votes

I think that getting matched with a couple people above you would definitely help. You can improve by getting better than people at your same level, but having somebody in the match that was way better could really help you to learn something new and see how you need to adjust more.

PryotraSep 3, 20142 votes

I believe that being in a certain League means diddly right now, but I have some Ideas how it could be better:

Allow us to choose between leagues at our level, and allow us to switch every so often.

This allows for a bit more customization, and allows for dumb things like Shaco's Redeemers to be chosen if you want the amusement factor.
There could be a cool down of a week or so, if you want to prevent abuse.

Have a League chat for each league.

This would give each league more personality, as some may be more dog-eat-dog, and others could be more newb friendly.

Have MM attempt to side you with people in your league on your team.

This is meant more for a sense of a team, as you could be matched with people you meet through your League's Chat.
This might end up impacting Queue times slightly. As I see it, MM really would just attempt to match similar MMR's like normal, and from that pool, attempt to match players in the same league to the same team if possible. If not possible, it would just try to make a match for a game.

The hope here is that you could have a bit of control with who you are matched with. Notice I specifically left out MM trying to pit you against teams a certain way, as I feel that could be abused. While some could say the same for matching 1 team together, note that it won't exclude you from being matched against someone in the same league as you. So if you join a league with some really good players, there is still a chance you play against them.

DaenSep 3, 20141 votes

Have MM attempt to side you with people in your league on your team.

I'm going to copypasta a comment I wrote to Gibbius, as I'm curious as to your response here too.

PryotraSep 4, 20141 votes

Honestly, it really depends.

If you have no way out of a league, then I could see it as a bad thing. Obviously, a league with an inactive or hostile playerbase is not one most would want to be with, and if you had no way out, promotions aside, then I could see this as a very bad thing. Also, I don't think it would mean too much if they didn't have a way to really communicate outside the gameplay.

If you could change leagues, even with a cooldown, I think that the system has merit being insular. I like the idea that sub-communities can exist inside a game. For example, I like how Dark Souls has a thriving Sun Bro community, or for a league related example, I like how players of a certain class or champion come together on the forum to discuss and enjoy various aspects of the game, and have different ideas on how to make it better. They may not always have nice things to say, but I like how they can come together to have an understanding with one another.

So to sum up my answer, if the League system was more flexible, then yes.

Tapu FiniSep 2, 20141 votes

The best thing I can really say about it is that some of the names are cool. That being said it doesn't really seem to serve any real purpose to the user, other than cutting the amount of data they have to look at.

DaenSep 2, 20141 votes

Do you view Leagues as more of an amusement or a legitimate feature?

What would you like to see to make it something you would use more often or consider valuable to the user?

DudermenSep 2, 20142 votes

I view them as an amusement feature, but it would be even more fun to be able to choose the league you are placed in so that you can either play with your friends, or just choose champs you like. Or choose Amumu's Friendless because you want to be his friend :3