Creating contrast in the learning process, incorporating it in natural ways.

NPX = new player experience.

So to start with, this is about how best to incorporate a new player (1-30, to silver 1) experience in a way that gives players a sense of actual improvement, direction on where they can continue improving, and rewards to continuously reinforce the feeling of progress. Currently, the system (as gone over very briefly and in my opinion, inadequately, by Riot) is very poor, outdated, and in a mindset that other games have learned from and moved away from.

Currently:

Levels 1-3 are spent forced into bot games, this protects a new player from the noise of useless info of a real game, and takes away Ai stigma. (the idea that Ai is for "bad players" so not playing against Ai makes you a good player, even though its just for learning.) Right now, this is the strongest part of Riot's NPX, even though it is still inadequate in comparison to other games.

Levels 4-10 are spent learning about summoner spells, even though it is a simple choice for anyone who has played the game for a month, when you are level 8 and still working on how to best control your champion to attack towers, and still learning the behavior of towers you might not be able to make a good choice. This is the MOST IMPORTANT part of the new player experience, and it should be the BEST part. It simply is the weakest though, you get a rune and mastery point each level, a summoner spell you don't understand every 2 levels. This is from my point of view (not a part of Riot so I don't have the numbers) but I can assume that MOST new players will stop playing at these levels.

Levels 11-20 are spent learning the basic mechanics of minions, items, experience, and trying new things. This is an extremely weak part of Riot's new player experience, and shows no real progress at all from game 2, to game 5, to game 10, to game 30+. This needs to be at least Riot's 2nd strongest part of NPX, it isn't 2nd weakest after 4-10. The reason 4-10 is worse is because it actually provides unusable info, which is worse than no info at all.

Levels 21-30 are spent learning how roles sort of function, at a very very basic level, as well as clearing jungle, learning about correct runes, learning more items, what summoner spells to take, what champions work where, and getting control of your champion. At this point, most people wouldn't consider them "new players" but it is very important to still think of them that way. If you start to think of someone as not a new player, when they still don't understand the game at a level where they can push THEMSELVES to learn about the game, then they will stagnate unless otherwise pushed by players past the wall (silver-gold gate).

This is where Riot stops the new player experience, you earn runes and masteries, but they act as handicaps because the game has evolved so much past launch to the point where level 20 players will DOMINATE, completely CRUSH 1200 elo players from season 1, without a doubt.

This is extremely problematic.

To fix this, you need to take out the idea of levels entirely, they are arbitrary gates to improvement when not everyone learns at the same speed. They give no feedback, they don't adjust to certain players, and provide an optimal way to get to 30, where the only optimal way should just be to play the game. This allows new players that just want 30 to completely circumvent the entire idea of the system. This happens a significant amount of the time, getting lower quality games at the default ranked mmr, causing game quality problems for players at the bronze-silver gate.

Giving an example of a system that gets rid of these problems:

We need to find a way to allow players who need help with something see what they are doing wrong (give them the info in subtle ways, don't shove it down their throat, this helps build an understanding of improvement and gets a player into the process of improvement, without making them feel bad)

Also, we need to contrast each meaningful step from one another, giving a much larger sense of improvement than a new mastery or rune slot.

Another note, we need to adjust the system for certain players that show much faster improvement, and adjust for players who show much slower improvement, helping smurfs get to their desired ranked level quickly without just setting their mmr so ridiculously high they are in diamond 1 normals at level 30, when they were just playing against plats at level 20.

1. Add STARS (or some other token, doesn't matter), that are in different categories, like ECONOMY, COMBAT, SURVIVAL, STRATEGY etc. that allow new players to see what they are doing in a very vague sense and can hover over them and see more specific details, that get more specific as you get higher GAME MASTERY. Some details need to be hidden until proven that they can use that information, otherwise it is overwhelming and they never really bother to ask for the information, and just don't get into the habit of seeking information, and learning it.

2. Game Mastery is a rating that goes up depending on your game mmr, amount of stars you get per game, multiplies with the speed in which you go up (the goal is to have a smurf be at the point of playing ranked games as soon as he hits high gold mmr, or plays a lot of games at silver mmr, or a lot more games at bronze mmr etc.) This is a sidestep to the level system, and is RELATIVELY hidden, you can see your game mastery, and it doesn't show you anything besides the amount of stars you get per game, and a lot of notes and tips and tricks about things you can improve about your play.

3. Book of League is a large repository of information Riot should add into the actual launcher, this gives vague info about every ability in the game, every single possible little bit of anything currently in the game, needs to be in this, with detailed info shown via expanding with a button. The game mastery will give links in its tips to this.

4. Champion Rotation currently is done inadequately for new players. New players should be given 20 tokens a week, and every token is a 1 day rental for a champion they want to play. It shows every champion in the game, gives their new little pretty writeup on what the champion is about, new splash art all the goodies. Now, if a new player sees a video with katarina, they don't have to buy her, they can just rent her for a day, and try her out, if they like her, spend another token to rent her for a day.

5. Bot games will work the same, although now you pick your champion BEFORE you get into the lobby, this is VERY IMPORTANT. This allows every new player to play the champion they want to play, takes out the noise of champion select, gets rid of people flaming about taking a certain champion or role, and gets rid of the pre 30 pros that scream about roles in bot games. You go into the screen for queueing, pick your champion in a little window, then puts you into a game, pings you and highlights a path for you to go to a certain lane depending on what champion you picked. If you get to higher game mastery, it will stop doing some of these things for you.

6. Normal games will show your star count to ONLY YOU. No one else can see anything about how far along you are in your learning process.

7. Summoner spells are available from the start. But now, depending on what champion you picked in that little queue up system, or the normal lobby, it will highlight and dim out other spells (although you can pick them) it will just give you the recommended ones. For instance, if you pick ahri, it will put a gold border around flash and ignite, and other ones will be ever so slightly darker.

Now. Lets analyze the NPX from this small system I came up with (I'm sure Riot can do much better if given time to think and the motivation to think outside the box)

I start league, I choose my name, summoner Icon (please just revamp these, what the fuck are they even supposed to be, just add some cool ones, menacing ones, I have no idea who would want to be a blue vespene geyser.) and It says the normal "play a bot game!" spiel. I press play, it asks me to pick the normal 1-6 free or I can spend a token to get a different one from the whole list. I pick Anivia, spend a token, get her for a day, go into a game, then go 2 3 5, 40 cs, don't spend much gold, item's arent too good. At the end of the game, I see 2/5 stars for most of the stuff, I hover over it, get tips like:

• You didn't use very much, or , next game you should try using them more!
• You killed 40 minions! Minions give a lot of gold, try getting the killing blow to have more gold than your opponent!
• Getting kills is less important than not dying! Try to keep a better eye on your health! It is at the bottom of the screen, and over your champion.
• You spent a lot of time being low health in lane, use [B] to teleport back to base to heal back up and go at it again!
• The recommended Item build is a good way to go! If you aren't sure what to buy, try these instead!

All these show SIGNIFICANTLY more information than the current game does. This is just a very tiny outline of what is possible, and currently, other games do this much better than league does. I'm not sure the current system is viable for long term survival of the game. This is mainly, and I mean like 100% just food for thought, and hopefully lets Riot think outside the box. There is so much more you can do, even a small movie during loading screen that outlines parts of the map to orient players into the game they are learning to play. Like what is a "lane" and what is a "tower", and the camps, dragon, river, buy section, what bushes do etc.

Thanks for reading. Good night.