Boards›Player Behavior

How do we improve new player experience?

Mama Soraka··11 votes·1,309 views

I made a new account to diagnose a problem my PC was having that only cropped up reliably in LoL and found my experience so far has been the opposite of what people here on the boards are saying. A lot of the toxicity at low levels is actually coming from the new players themselves rather than smurf accounts. I know there is no "secret handshake" or anything but having played as many matches as I have since this game came out, its not hard to guess when somebody has played the game more than a level 3 account should have. I took notice of other smurfs and them of me, and the only ones flaming were the new players calling other new players smurfs or repeating things they'd heard in professional LoL videos without any understanding.

One of the biggest points of contention among the new players was who SHOULD be getting kills. Often I see a player complaining the aren't winning lane because their lane partner is taking all the kills. A smurf wouldn't care about that, us veterans actually know how to farm, so kills aren't our only income, but to a new player a kill can mean 5 minutes less farming to get an item because of how poorly they farm.

In conclusion: "Smurfs" are for all appearances just a low-level players boogieman: Something to blame the loss on so they don't have to grow. A lot of new players have strange conceptions of how the game is played and butt heads with other new players over it, when in reality there is no way the game SHOULD be played. There isn't enough focus on just fun and experimentation. Locking PVP until level 3 is a pretty good idea that wasn't present when I first leveled my acct, but as many people have pointed out, the game doesn't do ENOUGH to educate players on the basic concepts of a MOBA to expect them to have fun through the initial slog of leveling an account. The "tutorials" on offer including intro bots are not enough, or in the case of the thornmail Ashe tutorial, actually building bad habits.

Suggestion: A more in-depth single player tutorial and removal of the Thornmail Ashe tutorial. The ground covered in this tutorial would be staying out of tower range, moving your champion, and the importance of CSing. Advanced courses could include the difference between AD and AP champs at a basic level. I recall seeing some players buying AP items on anyone with scaling because they didn't understand how Auto-attack champions work. (Imagine Cait rushing a needless)

26 Comments

Serevas5 votes

I second this one big time.

League was my first MOBA and it took me a very long time to become what I'd consider an okay player in my elo.

All the jokes about ghosting to get to lane faster, I actually did that shit.

I had no real idea for the value of summoner spells for combat purposes, no idea when to take what for a very long time. I used to run ignite on Xerath for god's sake.

Furthermore the recommended items at the time were a complete mess, very few champions built even half of what was in the recommended items tab.

The concept of warding was so foreign to me that I didn't even take my trinket in half of the games, yes the free trinket with it's own dedicated item slot, that you lose nothing for picking up.

I built purely damage on basically every champion in the game.

I build the highest AP value items in the game on every champion in succession, which at the time ended up being Deathcap, Zhonyas, Deathfire Grasp, etc. I had no idea what a real item build even looked like. The only thing that was salvageable about these builds was that at least Void Staff was on of the higher AP items so I was accidentally building magic penetration. I didn't build boots in a lot of these games either because I'd have less damage. Duplicating items seemed like a good idea, unique passives be damned.

The tutorials pretty much said, here's the basic functions of the game, go do the rest yourself. The equivalency of "Hey in order to swim move your legs and arms in the water." Then throwing you into the deep end of the pool and hoping you don't sink.

Dukues1 votes

haha yea honestly the tutorial does nothing. God I have played this game waaaayyy tooo long and I still have a lot to learn. But damn I swear the first two years I played I knew nothing. After having a few hundred normal wins I jumped into ranked and then was hit with "wtf is this shit... supp??? jungle???" (granted this was a few years ago).

As much as I hate tutorials in games Riot really needs to work on their tutorials. The fact tutorials have not changed since I assume when the game came out???? is pretty freaking ridiculous.

LF Annie5 votes

i'm sure after all the times that i've taken the player survey and said i don't bring my friends into league because it's too hard to teach them with the tools at hand, that they are aware, and prob have a small team working on it, but it's probably_** soonTM**_ rather than anywhere in the near future.

Mama Soraka2 votes

You're right. I'm just frustrated how poor the tutorials are in the game. Compare the Thornmail Ashe tutorial in the client to Smite's training mode, or DOTA2's tutorials. My leveling experience was actually not that bad because in S1 literally nobody knew how to play the game. Back then Miss Fortune's recommended items included chalice and merc treads, OLD chalice btw, the one that doesn't build into anything.

Alleo2 votes

As much as I didn't like the DOTA2 tutorial because it made me want to pull my hair out due to how long it was, it goes so in depth that it feels more like a marathon than a tutorial but it teaches you almost everything you need to know about the game.

League of Potato2 votes

Long tutorials can be annoying, especially if you think you don't need to know some of the information but those in-depth tutorials really help people who are new and have no idea what is going on.

It should be Riot's goal to make a tutorial where they can take someone who has never played a video game like league before and after the tutorial, know all the basic mechanics of the game. If they could ever make this a reality, they'd have a much stronger player base since new players will actually have the knowledge and the resources to be successful in the future.

Retillin1 votes

Didn't Riot Ghostcrawler say (on his ask.fm) that Riot is more worried about retaining players than adding them? When asked about the new player experience.

LF Annie2 votes

idk, i just know when the survey asks me, i answer.

but realistically, retaining customers without focusing on growth equally means you will have the same players playing the game, but none of them willing to enjoy it with the people they are around because the lack of tools to teach them without investing large amounts of time into each person.

this makes my exp worse because my friends come over and ask me "why are you still playing that stupid game" even though league is awesome and i know they would love it if they could just get over the curve of "WTF IS ALL THIS SHIT, SO STUPID WHY DOES X do X" that i hear every time i try to teach a friend. they don't understand, and since i don't have the time to teach them, they just assume i have weird tastes.

in the long run, not making the game more accessible is going to drive the fanbase away, or at least people like me.

Mama Soraka1 votes

I completely feel this. My long-time friend who had been playing this game with me since beta, finally gave in and quit playing about 6 months ago. It was just too hard to keep our other friends invested, and there's only so far you can go with just the two (or sometimes three) of us.

I've known the guy for almost 2 decades and League is what used to keep us together through moving all the way across the country, marriage and divorce. League was our thing man :[

LF Annie1 votes

thats how it goes, getting people good enough that they have fun consistently enough to keep playing with you is hard -,- i just wish riot put more effort in developing good play habits in beginners so it wasn't something so hard for people to enjoy.

Myrmiron3 votes

I have another suggestion. Why not hand out puppies with every new account once per player?

Mama Soraka2 votes

I would use proxies to acquire more and more puppies, so I fully support the New Player Puppy Initiative.

xReadyPlayerOnex3 votes

The single biggest problem with the "New Player Experience" is their complete lack of understanding of the game.

There's no RIOT tutorials on how to CS, how to trade, why gold and xp matters more than kills. How your deaths matter and why giving up 300 gold every minute to the enemy team is impossible to recover from.. When to dragon, how to tower dive and how to counter dives. There's nothing to show them the proper execution of a jungle path. On top of that half the "suggested" builds are absolutely terrible. Most junglers have the wrong jungle item by default. There are sites like mobafire that help with all of this but newcomers won't know about them.

Mostly, they need to learn and they need to learn that raging isn't effective and isn't tolerated. I find that most raging and toxicity is a matter of being unable to quickly and adequately communicate frustration. There's things we can do to limit it and police it but it's not going to be eliminated. The most effective way to help limit this is to teach them the game and how to get better.

Mama Soraka2 votes

I agree, the recommended items can be really wonky. I find trying to give advice to new players doesn't work if its unsolicited so my favorite way to help them is to play intro/beginner bots and support the weakest player and help them have fun. Its not going to heal the wounds that the poor tutorial system creates, but at least I can put a bandage over them. If they are having fun they might stick around through the leveling slog. Its great getting friend requests from level 3 accounts and playing a few bots with them and finally having them ask questions.

Heimerdinger Why yes I DO just happen to have a few opinions on the build path for your favorite champ, how kind of you to ask, my new friend.

Then a while later I see they made it to 30 ;_; they grow up so fast.

Vorhaut2 votes

The closest thing we get to a guide for the jungle is in the tutorial Summoner's Rift they tell you at some point (regardless of who you picked) to go into the jungle at kill the wolves. I think if the game progresses they tell you to go kill other things as well.

The jungle itself is a problem. When I first started (not too long ago) I figured I'd try some jungle champions and try a jungle path in my vs beginner bots games and it didn't end well. At low summoner levels without runes and masteries as most people have said in the past the jungle camps are pretty rough. Even with a sustain friendly champion you get pretty low, so coming up with a tutorial on it would almost have to be locked until.. 15-ish? I just hit 15 not too long ago and my clears are getting easier. I still can't with some champions, but I've had success with the initial clears on a few.

Vorhaut3 votes

As a new player myself I've been paired with a ton of these smurfs. They rage or laugh at the rest of us and spend most of the game telling us how terrible we are and that we should just uninstall the game right now. Then I tab at 20 to see stats and they're at 40 cs and feeding like crazy as Zed in midlane. But don't worry, they're only feeding because the rest of us are terrible. They're actually diamond smurfs who are only creating a new account because their main account was sabotaged in their placements and they got put in Bronze 5 due to everyone on their team being scrubs and always being matched against TSM. gg rito amirite?

The AP and AD item thing was mildly confusing to me at first, I'll admit. I was one of those scrubs who figured that AP affected my abilities and AD affected my auto damage. Maybe for champions that don't really benefit from a stat (like AP on Garen) have the irrelevant stat greyed out when mousing over the item?

Mama Soraka2 votes

In the case of mana, it IS greyed out when the champion is manaless. The problem with greying out based on whether the champion benefits from it is that we have cases like Poppy, who can only use AP on her W, but the scaling is so bad and the enemy needs to dash inside your zone to trigger it that AP on Poppy is functionally worthless, what do we do in her case? We'd also need to think about will this cause more confusion than it adds in clarity. Since all champions can theoretically benefit from AD, we can't grey it out on casters to help people figure out what they should buy, but many ADs cannot use AP at all so it may lead to confusion about when its appropriate to build AD on casters.

I like your idea, overall. But there are edge cases we'd need to sort out first.

Vorhaut2 votes

True. Maybe when you mouse over an icon have the abilities it effects glow, or have smaller icons of the abilities appear show in a little bar at the bottom of the item description. It would take up more screen real estate, but they could make it an easy feature to toggle on and off for players who already know the deal.

Maybe redo the tutorials to have gated unlocking?

Such as a new player who marks himself as a new player (if I remember I think it asks you your experience level when you first sign in) gets a very basic tutorial and has bot games to level 5. At 5 he gets a more in-depth tutorial on CSing, item builds, and primary roles of champions while unlocking blind pick PvP. At 10 when he gets smite he gets a tutorial on the jungle and the primary objectives of that role unlocking draft pick. At 15 they get an in-depth tutorial on masteries. At 20 an in-depth tutorial on runes. I know a lot of players would probably ignore them, but maybe it could give an IP boost for completing the tutorial, or even just give a flat 100 IP or something.

And for veterans returning as new accounts, they could just mark themselves as an expert already and instead of getting the boost/flat bonus for completing the tutorials just get the bonus when reaching that summoner level.

That could also alleviate some of the smurf rage in the beginning towards new players as the people who mark themselves in the opt out of tutorial veteran option would all be auto tagged as smurfs and thrown in together while newer players would be able to learn the game at a similar pace with people of their own understanding.

But I'm level 15 and thinking this up as I type. I'm sure there's a million flaws, but hey.. every little helps.

Mama Soraka2 votes

You got some nice ideas, slick. The idea about highlighting which abilities are effected by a given item is particularly interesting.

Who Fed Ahri2 votes

ashe running a thornmail? I've never watched the tutorial but wtf?

Mama Soraka2 votes

Ya know, I'm not even sure if the Thornmail Ashe tutorial is still in the game, brb double-checking

Edit: Yup its still there, and I'm playing through it now. Its "Basic Training" under the tutorials tab in the client. Its extremely non-helpful and actually detrimental in some areas.

WarlordTim1 votes

I've heard the idea was that with thornmail, you'd avoid taking too much minion damage and would accidentally push to the win.

Mama Soraka1 votes

In the Ashe tutorial you can't die, your minions have more HP than enemy turrets and since you have to buy only thornmail (I managed to buy 3 of them before the match ended) the enemy Trundle Bot (formerly Yi) will always kill themselves on you before you would die anyway. I don't understand the point of either tutorial right now, they don't do anything and they add confusing item choices and bad advice into the mix.

For example, in the Ashe tutorial the player is told they should hold their fingers on the QWER keys as shown in an image, but while that is on screen the voice over tells us to click volley and then mouse over our target and click again to use it. We're never verbally instructed that the QWER keys are shortcuts to abilities, and the image shown doesn't actually say it either, just that we should hold our hand on the keyboard that way. I knew somebody that used their mouse to cast skills for ages, and this might just be why. On top of that I've actually SEEN people buy thornmail on Ashe in intro bots :/ Its so much harder to help people that have been taught strange things.

WykiLoki2 votes

For me, I started off bot lane and intuitively got the ad/ap scaling things by looking up random guides online (was lucky cuz I played tristana, who could go both ap and ad back then).

I started understanding the csing meta-mechanic by learning supp (since nobody wanted that position) as well as warding.

I'd love it if they had tutorials on build path, supporting, and maybe one on clearing jungle; they never, ever mention what a "gank" is in any of the tutorials, and I had to google it to understand it.

With that said, they do have a section on csing in the basic tutorial on the abyss. However, it's clearly not emphasized enough. Warding could also be taught on the first battle on the rift, but there's really no need there with the AI being what it is.

League of Potato2 votes

From what I've gathered from most of the posts about this subject and rito's opinion on it, most if not all rioters know that the new player experience is shit (especially the damn tutorials) but they have no idea if/when it will ever be "upgraded." I already know a bunch of things they could implement to make it better overall:

  • Fix the damn tutorials. Let's not teach new players to build thornmail on ashe please
  • Give tutorials on builds for different roles/champion types i.e. adcs, mages, ad assassins, ap assassins, tanks, etc
  • Make a video for in-client (for new players) that thoroughly describes each item in the game so they know what it does, maybe show examples with champions
  • Since this isn't closed beta anymore and there actually is a meta to the game, have tutorials for each role (explain basic mechanics/strategies for

adcs: last-hitting, kiting, leashes, WARDING (yes adcs get free wards too) etc

Supports: not farming during lane phase, leashes, warding, warding, WARDING (seriously new players usually have no idea what warding is especially if they're not getting outside help from a friend), poke/positioning

Mid lane: strategies and basic champions they can use that will give them success, 1v1 tactics, leashes, WARDING

Jungle: take them through every camp, tell them what each buff does, take them through smite and its item compatibilities, importance of leashes, ganks

Top lane: meta top laners, farming techniques/last hitting, leashing, WARDING

  • put the champion spotlights in the client when viewing champions, (the videos of their abilities only go so far)
  • Explain turrets and their targeting mechanics
  • Maybe have a queue in bots where new players can be matched up with one or two lvl 30 accounts so they can help teach them the basics of the game (inb4 "but no one would ever want to do that," I can honestly say if this were a thing I'd play it frequently, it's actually kind of fun teaching new players once you learn to have patience for their lvl 1 tower dives and horrible mechanics)
  • describe the different gamemodes: pvp, bots, custom matches, twisted treeline, summoners rift, howling abyss, crystal scar
  • Put the summoners code somewhere decently visible in the client maybe make a tl;dr version of it so players actually read it (possibly prevent future toxicity)
  • put notes in the client or pop ups after a defeat telling players it's a video game, and you won't win every game. EVERYONE has bad games (yes even the pros)
  • Explain the different runes/masteries in detail and why it's beneficial to use them (there are current players at level 30 in ranked that don't even have runes and that just reflects onto riot's clarity on this issue
  • explain the shop, refunds, rp vs ip, etc

These are just off the top of my head, I could probably go on for a while. The thing is Riot already has a lot of these things on their main website, all it would take is to transfer it to the in-game client (it may seem pointless but I can almost guarantee that most players, especially new players, spend more time in the game client than they do on your website. (I know this would take a lot of time, but if they want to claim that they actually care about new players, they should be implementing this).

Mama Soraka2 votes

I can't add anything to this. You did a good job, here.

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