Ask Riot: Summoner spells, 4K support, and Reddit

lol have u thought about smurfs

For gamers familiar with this type of game it's probably best to give them everything up front. True newbs, though, benefit from the simplicity of only dealing with the lanes before figuring out the jungle afterward. But maybe that gradation of complexity should be handled with tutorials only.

I agree with you, and to clarify: When you just make another account because ranked too hard, and you have to waste your time leveling up to 10 just to get smite, and up to 8 for flash, leveling up to lvl 10 takes too much time for people with tight schedules, which is many people, Riot should have tutorials to show how to use summoner spells for beginners, with videos also, this will teach beginners how to use the spells and not get tilted, and to add on, they can (with the community's help) make tutorials on each champion. This will effectively bring many good players who just started, which causes more competition, more champions, new updates because there so many people that one dissatisfaction can be spotted immediately , using this method, people get all summoner spells accessed at level 1, so beginners and pro players opening new accounts would not waste as much time getting all the spells.

simple issue with that is theres now over 110 champs, and it's hard enough for new players to keep those champs apart, i personally appreciated having only a few summoner spells available when i started just so i didn't get overloaded

It seems like you agree for the most part in regards to lower level players being able to jungle. The fact that I was restricted from jungling made the task seem daunting and really complex so I didn't put the time in to learn it until I had been level 30 for quite a while. I missed out on the opportunity to play what is now my favorite role because the current system overemphasized the difficulty of jungling. In retrospect, learning to jungle wasn't that hard. I wish I had known that when I first unlocked smite. I wish I had known that from before I unlocked smite. That's why smite needs to be available from level 1 (or level 5). This applies to runes and rune pages, too. I'm glad they intend to fix these things, but I don't understand why it takes so long. They should just lower the costs of runes and give everyone 3 (maybe 4) rune pages instead of just 2.

The high costs of runes themselves is ridiculous. It doesn't incentivize players to experiment, and just feels like a way for Riot to drain our IP and push us to purchase RP. I can understand that Riot may want to profit off of rune pages, but additional rune pages should be for people that want to have many champion-specific rune pages. Two rune pages doesn't allow a player to have enough runes to cover the standard AP, ADC, Tank, and Support setups. It takes money to have enough rune pages, and it takes too much time to fill them.

While it is inhibiting from the level 30 perspective, the perspective of the new player is that a fresh account with 1 mastery point, a couple spells, and no runes is the base of the game and the new toys unlocked through progression are bonuses. If you dump people with everything from the beginning they will not know what to pick and will get overwhelmed with all the information. Someone else suggested that Riot make tutorial videos on how to use all the variables in the game, that is not a good way to teach players. Tutorials should be presented a little bit of information at a time, and players should learn by doing, not by watching an information dump before going into your first game.

Unlocking summoner spells, rune slots, and mastery points allows new players to focus on one thing at a time and provides a streamline for learning. The incentive to level up is also important. Rewarding players with icons or other meaningless trinkets that do not affect gameplay are not good rewards. While a sum of IP or IP boosts are incentivizing, they create a situation where players may be overwhelmed even further, ironically by their own purchases. You might ask why buying things with RP is allowed then for new players, and that is less of an issue because most new players do not buy RP and even if they do, they will most likely not spend it all on champions, runes, and rune pages. Therefore a very small minority of new players in the current system overwhelm themselves based on their RP purchases. In the system you are suggesting, EVERY new player would have access to all the customization options before they even play one game. This is not acceptable as it would greatly overwhelm most players and hinder progression incentives. Even though the current system is not perfect and could use reformation, unlocking everything at level 1 is not a good idea.

They need to remove the IP cost of Runes. simply make all of them available from lvl 1, and have runes scale with summoner level. so the runes would be weak at lvl 1, and full power at lvl 30.

Or just get rid of rental skins :^) rip tpa nunu.... but srsly need to add it to hex-tech crafting for refunds that is. [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

edit: im just agreeing with 0Kiritokun0

What's with the 4k? I mean I got 3440x1440 monitors and it looks beautiful.

Yeah really. I've had 4K for over a year now and it's really frustrating that League is one of the ONLY games I can't play at this resolution. I have to scale down the resolution to even be able play the game (and this itself causes problems from time to time) and it's very frustrating seeing Riot ignore this for so long.

I get bots about half the time I play on Twisted Treeline as a level 30.

On a side note, once myself and two friends went into a TT game and pretended to all be bots. For whatever reason, the enemy team didn't buy the act, but it was still hilarious. xD

The only reason I'm playing League at all now is because 2 years ago a friend took the time to teach me how to play, the tutorial is useless and the first time I tried playing the game I was getting flamed by other players constantly for feeding. Furthermore, the way bots behave in lanes is very misleading because there's always a duo top instead of a jungler. Anyone that's brand new to the game won't even know junglers exist unless either A.) A friend tells them, B.) They watch some youtube videos where the jungler is brought up, or C.) The hard way, by having an enemy jungler come out of nowhere and kill you. I truly hope that Riot makes a useful tutorial after the client update so that people can go into the game knowing more than "Keep your fingers on QWER and right click things to kill them"

The best way for new players to learn is by doing, not by watching. If tutorials were presented systematically at a little bit at a time over a long time, and were completely interactive, they could work. But an information dump of videos or written tutorials would not be effective for new players. Given the resources it would take to develop an interactive tutorial internal to bot and pvp games, it is not worth it for Riot to invest in it presently. I have played other MOBAs and it is almost the same tutorial system as League: a couple basic tutorials at the beginning, and then relying on the player exploring and discovering the best ways to play themselves. There are many guides written independently from Riot and that is the best way to do things for now. There is a real joy to the discovery of mechanics, strategies, and metas for new players to experience and that would be compromised if Riot spoon-fed players with instructions on how to play the game. That is the thing: League is a very open game, the goal is to destroy the enemy nexus but there are many ways to achieve that goal and many tools available to help. If Riot tried to cover all of that information in tutorials, they would have an immense, bordering on impossible task in front of them. Additionally, League is a dynamic game, with strategies, champions, and items growing and changing all the time. As with champion spotlights, many of the tutorials produced by Riot would become outdated every season, maybe even sooner. It is not worth it for Riot to cover all this material in tutorials, it is much better to let players discover creative solutions themselves with the aid of the community.