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Popular claim: "League is dying". Let's talk if and why.

Snowman Arc·5/20/2018, 3:01:59 PM·2 votes·2,226 views

Anyone using these boards has occasionally seen the classic thread: "League is dying", and it's usually after a big patch. Some new thing comes out that shakes up the meta, everyone just believes it's the end of League. Everyone thinks that it's the worst change ever and people will quit and League will die. Yet, so many bad patches after, the game is still running and pulling good numbers.

So, let's talk about it. Is League really dying? We don't know, it's a 50-50 at best. And I don't like to place my hat on maybes, I like facts, 100% truths. Truth is, compared to other games, League is indeed losing popularity. 3 years ago, League was by far the most watched game on Twitch, it's not anymore. There's an indication. Quite a lot of my friends that played the game do not play anymore, or play much much less. There's another indication. Yet, both of these facts are not solid proof. Maybe it only happens to me, and Twitch viewership is not something concrete.

So, League dying is still a 50-50, I'll even say it's 60-40, for the sake of the following argument as to why that is. So, why is League supposedly dying, or, even more precisely, if League is gonna die, what will really lead to it?

I read that people blame it on Riot's gameplay decision making. "Oh, the scuttle crab changes are horrible, I quit." "Oh, ADCs are OP, I quit". "Oh, top laners are useless, I quit." People seem to think that the main reason people quit the game is some horrible game play change. And that's where I tend to disagree. It's not that. It's the toxicity.

I started in season 5, because some friends talked me into starting League. I was playing quite a lot of normal games with a lot of premades, even 5 people quite often. Sometimes, even, we'd play custom 5v5s. That's how many friends I could play the game with 3 years ago. Do you know how many real life friends I can play the game with now? 0. Most of them quit, and a handful of them just play once a week, at best. I talked to every single one of them about why they quit. Some of them got a job, which was the reason they couldn't play. Too many hours a day wouldn't allow them to. That'a fine. Most of them, though, quit, or stopped playing as much, because of the toxicity.

People need to understand that the playerbase is huge, and there is only a very small percentage that uses these forums. What is said here doesn't really reflect what the casual player base thinks. Casual players just play 3-4 games a day, just to have fun, relax, and fill up time. That's the truth. Not everyone is competitive, not everyone watch streams or esports. And that's why you see a lot of the player base being in silver; because they don't really care about climbing and all that. And hey, more power to them, sometimes I wish I didn't care and only had fun in the game with all its flaws. Do you know what drives those players away? It's not the game play. It's not because of some scuttler change, or because ADCs are OP. No, because casuals do not know anything about that. Some of them don't even read patch notes. They don't know, they don't care. They just pop in, play some games and leave.

I'm talking about the biggest majority of the player base here, and the thing that drives them away is toxicity. A flamer, a feeder, and inter, a troll, an AFKer will tilt EVERYONE, casual and non-casual. It's a fact that toxicity in the game has increased WAY too much during season 7 and 8, especially season 8, even I have become toxic myself. Most of my friends quit because of it. We would go on a game, somebody would flame, it would create negativity, suck all the fun out of the game. One, two, three, ten, a hundred times, eventually they only put up with it for so long, to the point the quit. They just couldn't have fun in the game anymore, when someone would constantly flame, or someone would troll them. It wasn't because their favorite champion got nerfed, or that they couldn't climb because of the game updates. It was purely because of toxicity. Immature players ruined any fun they had in the game.

This happened to my friends. I think it's safe to assume that it happened to a lot of your friends as well. Therefore, if the game is indeed dying, it's not because of some petty game play change. No, it's because of the huge amounts to toxicity plaguing the game. Because, at the end of the day, having fun in the game is not about if you can claim a scuttle crab; it's about if you can play into a friendly environment, where all players try their best and the better team wins. Gameplay is just secondary and was never a huge problem. Every huge problem was eventually fixed. Toxicity is only increasing, and it's sad that it's the biggest reason why it drives players away.

17 Comments

Mordepool5/20/2018, 4:08:49 PM5 votes

The league I fell in love with in Season 2 is long dead. Doesn't mean that the game we have now isn't good. It has its problems but it has its charm. I

ModThe Djinn5/20/2018, 5:06:47 PM3 votes

I think it's a little silly to say League is dying.

Basically, it's super uncommon for any game to manage to stay top of the pack over a long time, given the pace of big game releases and the tendency for something to pop up as the "new hot thing." See Overwatch, Fortnight, Player Unknown: Battlegrounds, etc. League might not be top of the top of the pack any more, but that doesn't mean it's anywhere CLOSE to dying.

In fact, as a 8+ year old game, it would be really impressive if it were still top of the pack. A game that old that's still popular tends to fall more into the realms of World of Warcraft -- still big, still not really in danger of dying, but rarely the player's hot new thing. It's instead a good, comfortable, fallback game that you pick up again when you've tired of the hot new trend and want something familiar and reliable. League may be closer to this state now than the #1 game in streams and media, but that doesn't mean it's dying -- or even anything close to dying. League, at its height, was big enough that shedding a few million players doesn't really impact it hugely at all, and it could lose about half its playerbase and STILL be one of the biggest games in the world -- maybe not top 5, but still well in the top 20, which is more than enough to keep going strong.

YerroFever5/20/2018, 5:58:15 PM2 votes

The people who claim league is dying are the ones who get punished for their toxic behavior and claim Riot is killing its own game with punishing toxic behavior and permabanning people.

The "league is dying" cry isn't something people should believe from people who say it because they've been punished. There was this streamer who went on a rant about how league was dying and how he had irrefutable proof that league was dying and league is still here. League has a huge presence. Every year when League is at Pax, the lines get longer and longer.

What the toxic people say is that they are the average player and that if riot permabans the average player, they won't have a player base left... instead of looking it as "if we permaban 1 toxic person, it's more likely that the non-toxic players will stay." Riot says by its numbers the hyper toxic players are in the minority which means they're spraying the proverbial medicine on the diseased parts of the plant with punishments and then pruning the rotten un-savable parts by permabanning the hypertoxic players who don't reform, to make sure that the rest of the plant stays alive.

Gall5/20/2018, 3:08:57 PM1 votes

Toxicity is a good topic to talk about, but it's almost futile to discuss since Riot can't have a strong control over it. It's kind of like saying bullying is bad, but there's nothing humanity can do to fully stop it from occurring. Though toxicity exists, I don't think League is dying and it probably never will unless a fresh new MOBA takes its place. It may have peaked at one point, but the MOBA genre is too unique to have a loyal chunk of players never come back to it (and League is quite different from DoTa, HotS, Smite, etc.).

afmghost5/20/2018, 5:57:14 PM1 votes

League is waning in popularity. I think it has a few more years before it starts to die, though.

DeloricVI5/21/2018, 4:24:37 AM1 votes

Personally, I have a few reasons why I quit on a consistent basis.

  1. Balance Problems

There is simply no way to keep League of Legends in a balanced state for all of the game's audience. Just because Zed is balanced in professional play where everyone has the reflexes of a god and the predictive skills of see previous, doesn't mean that in Bronze he's not going to just shit-stomp everyone. You know, bronze. Where everyone has the map awareness of a blind cartographer, and the reflexes of a dead sloth. And, of course, as the mid laner, it's your fault because you didn't follow them, despite the fact that you pinged bot lane 17 times before he showed up.

And that's not to mention that it's been eons since AP mages have gotten any good new items, where it seems like Riot is constantly adding new tank and AD items. And, I mean... would it kill them to give us at least make Seeker's Armguard not a horrible waste of gold against assassins? Please?

Not to mention, seasons go from Season 7 to where games last far too long and are super frustrating, to season 8 where the end in 12 minutes and are also somehow just as frustrating.

I'm not saying that Riot needs to chuck out everything about eSports, but roughly 90% of their playerbase is contained within unranked accounts, and people in bronze. So, it's understandable that some people in bronze might be really frustrated and they might leave. This is why we see such a disconnect on the forums - from what I can tell, the forums have a much more even ratio of bronze to higher level players, so threads asking about balance or ranting about changes in the balance of the game get smacked down very quickly by higher level players, and there's a lot of fighting about it.

  1. Alternative Options

Most people started league of legends like you did, with real life friends. Now, the gaming landscape has changed. It's just not as easy to assemble the 5 teammates you want, especially if the team started years ago, when the members had nothing better to do. But, life goes on. In the span of 3 years, your friend group may have people graduating from college, or joining the work force. They might be starting med school or law school or something, for all I know. These are things that happen that end up breaking up full teams in league of legends.

And, when teams dissolve, there isn't as much of an incentive to keep playing, and, sometimes, people float to other games that their friends who moved on play, or that they can play with a different group of friends.

Not to mention that people are really discounting how popular Fortnite is - it's single-handedly killing a long list of games that are either in beta, or are relatively new.

  1. The eSports Focus

By and large, I think this is one of the biggest, if not the biggest issues, a lot of people have. It kind of overlaps with the balance problems that lower level players are going to experience, but combined with them pushing eSports, and having players tell them they are just bad at the game because they aren't as good as Faker or BoxBox or some other popular player, they feel like the game isn't a place for them. They start to feel like this game isn't meant for people of their skill level, and that they aren't welcome.

And, really, it's very hard to play at a high level, because of the sheer amount of information that you need to memorize to be a good player, and all the matchups you have to study.... and, even if you're really good at one role, if you don't at least have a good idea of what the majority of champions do in the game, you can get utterly destroyed by some oddball pick like Sion support, or Lulu top. I've seen it happen - I mean, most people know the Lulu top was and still (kind of) is a thing, but they're not usually prepared for it, and will often lose to it because they don't have the game knowledge to know how to handle the situation. And that's just a small facet of what you need to know.

This game is incredibly complex, and there are several things that you might not even know to do, because it just never crossed your mind, and no one ever told you to do it.

In the end, I personally feel like the ranked queue is kind of a playground until you hit like... plat or diamond. Because, really, from bronze to even gold, you can just see wacky things happen, that you either aren't prepared for, or just don't understand how to deal with.

And eSports have gotten boring. No one makes any plays anymore. You don't have like... crazy aggressive things happening in mid these days. It's because they know that farming is key, and they could risk it all and get a huge lead... but inching ahead by slowly and surely denying CS and grinding down your opponent slowly but surely is the safest and most often taken option. I just don't watch eSports, but Riot is constantly pushing it.

  1. The stupid paywall

Seriously, Riot has gotten more and more out of line with their payment system. Now that they've combined runes and masteries, you need to buy rune pages to play the game, unlike mastery pages were you could have a rather large number for free. At the very least, back then runes weren't that influential. But now, you can't just play with no runes.

Oh sure, you can buy them with BE... or, because they're ludicrously expensive and it will take you literal months to accumulate 6,300 BE unless you play constantly for hours per day, you better be happy with changing your runes on the fly. And since you can do that, it makes it pointless to have us pay for rune pages in the first place. It's not like you're locked into the two pages you're allotted, with a few boilerplate standard ones and that's it. You can change the runes at champion select - rune pages are a scam that just make things slightly more convenient.

Not to mention that they keep saying it's easier to get new champions with the new level-up rewards, but I think it made things markedly worse.

Let's say, for argument's sake, you want to unlock Pyke on launch when he comes out in a few weeks or whatever. You're going to need 7200 Blue Essence. Let's say you have 1200 Blue essence. How long will it take for you to grind up to enough blue essence? Well, the only way you can obtain blue essence by itself is your daily win bonus of FIFTY BLUE ESSENCE. So, if we were to assume that there are no other missions that grant blue essence, and that you don't level up or have any champion shards to disenchant, that means you'd be grinding for a grand total of 6000 blue essence, and that means it will take you 120 days, or 4 months.

But, let's be realistic. Let's say you level up once every two days, and you get the minimum amount of loot every time, 810 Blue essence. But, since no one is a machine and no one is going to crush all of their champion shards indescriminantly, let's say you level up twice per week instead of once every two days to account for chests that contain shards for champions that you want. So, that leaves us with 350 BE off first win of the day, and round it out to about 1600 blue essence just to make the math easy. That means, you'd be grinding for over a month to get enough essence to buy this new champion, and you'll have spent ALL of your essence. That means you have nothing to fall back on if you wanted to fully craft a new champion out of shards you get later.

And, finally, the Blue Essence cost is too damn high on champion mastery. I spend months saving up the 8000 Blue Essence that I currently have - I don't want to blow over half of it on upgrading my mastery emote to a shinier new one, so I'm going to stubbornly wait for a champion shard of the champion whose mastery I want to increase. I had to wait 6 months for a final Veigar shard to drop - not kidding. I had 3 mastery tokens for Veigar for 6 months before I saw the shard I needed.

Now combine the fact that you have a 1/130 (possibly less) chance of you finding the champion that you want to try out next, and that champions are absurdly expensive to not only get mastery for, and absurdly expensive to buy without a champion shard, and you have a crafting system that I absolutely hate. Should I crush my Urgot shards? Well, no, because I just started playing him, and I like him enough that I want to get his mastery completely decked out for when I wipe the floor with some top lane scrubs, so I'm not going to get that Blue Essence, I'm going to sit on that champion shard for a few months while I grind out some Urgot mastery tokens. Should I disenchant those Nidalee shards? Well, I have no desire to play her now... but what about later?

This indecision is just a killer of my spending power, so I'm sitting on like... 60 shards, and I'm afraid to disenchant them in case they'd be useful later.

And, hextech crafting is BS now that they've added emotes - just saying. I barely get skin shards anymore out of chests. It feels so super cheap to get a summoner icon, and 2 emotes in a row.

  1. Champion Neglect

There are some champions that Riot hasn't tried to make viable for years who have their die-hard fans. And when you're a die-hard Teemo player, no Teemo builds are viable, that hurts. And, I've felt this. I can't play Veigar anymore. Everyone's playing Katarina, or Ekko, or Zed, and they're just too agile. Your stun is too slow to catch them, 99.9% of the time, and your mana issues early make for an easy lane for assassins. Not to mention that Electrocute does WAY too much damage early on, something that Veigar can't handle. He hasn't been changed to reflect the current state of the game, and I can't deal with this new mid lane setup.

Not to mention that, when they change runes and not the champions affected, they can end up super weak and unplayable.

Hell, I feel really sorry for Amumu players. He hasn't been super viable over another pick for an awful long time, and is in desperate need of a rework. Like, seriously, I wonder how people even still play this champion in the state he's in.

But, hey, that's just my 2 cents' worth.