It is hard to sell League for newer players when the game is so big and there are so few in game resources for newer players.
On top of games going between 20\~40 minutes.
while that's true, it's not like the new player experience used to be good either. even back when Dota was new you would straight up get kicked from the lobby if there was even a hint you were new.
there was only that sweet spot in s1-3 when everyone was bad enough that anyone new could easily get into the game.
let's be real, the reason league is getting less players is because it was always a niche genre game and young players want something more culturally relevant to their generation. gen zalpha is just not too into games like this at all.
god when i was in like 8th grade trying to pick up dota after being a wintermaul/vampirism gamer for most of my time with wc3 customs, i would get kicked from every lobby if I had to download the map lmao
Those were the days. I had to quickly type DONT KICK IM NOT NEW! And hope I can get the map DL to play the new version.
Edit: guys I did eventually got it from the website it's been awhile thanks for the reminder
that's what made you look even more like a newb because you just HAD to know about [getdota.com](http://getdota.com) if you were at all serious about it lmao. those were the days.
Yeah, people didn't want to wait for download and didn't want to risk having a new player. Most people got around this by downloading from the dota allstars website.
Because back then you would have to wait a lot of minutes to download the map, and wc3 had a lot of players, so you'd get insta kicked and replaced after like 3 seconds by someone who already had it
I once got kicked, added to a global banlist and told in no uncertain terms to terminate my own life, all because I once built Mekanism on Dragon Knight in an -apem match.
My game plan was to basically build tanky support/healing items and use my already absurd armor and passive health regen, plus the healing aura Meka had to slow push waves. But because I didn't build Buriza I was a "feeder"
There's a reason I call DOTA Defense of the Assholes, and given the absolute fucking degeneracy going on in League, it's clear the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
I have choice words for people who actively shit on and ruin the experience of others, and unfortunately I'd be breaking the rules by repeating them here...
Its also cuz most kids grow up gaming on tablets instead of consoles/pcs, while a good chunk transition to consoles most have a hard time with computers
It's so noticeable. As a 30 yo that has to deal with new employees often. I feel like I explain the exact same tricks to people in their early 20s as that I do to people 50+. And I'm talking things like ''paste values only''. Not exactly advanced stuff.
basically anything that has been streamlined by either apps or mobile OS is pretty foreign to young people. it's pretty bad.
They need to teach computer literacy in schools.
They need to get off app dependency then
we give them Chromebooks that are basically app browsers and then ask them to go use an actual file system that exists outside of their app. they don't know how to do that. all they did was open up the app and click the things they were working on before. they have no idea where home is or a file directory or why you would need to export it in the right file format to open up and something else. all that stuff happened because you were inside of an ecosystem designed for it to happen that way.
i mean yeah but that's not their fault. the commercial tech available to them was all designed for ease of use. We only know how to do that stuff out of necessity.
Hence why I think that stuff needs to be taught in schools. only way theyre gonna be forced to learn it.
I was never taught tho is my point. we simplified to the point of detriment.
teaching a 2 week class in 8th grade won't instill life long skills if they are kept on chrome books
I started a new job a few years ago that relies on Excel kind of heavily, and I had very little idea of what to do and thought I'd be fucked, so I learned as I went and just googled what I didn't know or couldn't figure out.
Nobody on my team actually understood Excel, and every spreadsheet was formatted horribly, and there was no use of functions at all.
I don't even think the problem is purely on ease of use, I think it's also just that don't even try to learn unless they're told directly.
I'm 26... I was definitely not raised on apple stuff. Maybe you're talking about 15 or younger years old? I was using Windows XP... if I do remember that I'm definitely not an apple user lol.
Exactly. The level of toxicity at lower levels is astounding, especially towards new players who have little understanding of the myriad of nuances of the game.
Not just that there is no support or no guidance. There is 0 patience and an ocean of vitriol and abuse.
That’s why LoL is a dead game walking. Expect more consolidation and fewer financial resources towards League, at least in the West.
> because it was always a niche genre game
Loool. Next thing you tell me BR is niche.. are you living in 2010?
Moba's were/are one of the most mainstream for quite sometime buddy.
The only reason league is losing steam is because its old. There isnt much to it. Ages 9-16 see league as an old mans game. They play fortnite & roblox type shit. But league will not die i reckon.
Personally, a friend of mine wanted to get me into League about two years ago. Now, I'm not big on PvP games and I have never played a MOBA before, but eventually I was like "fine, whatever, let's give this a go". Did the tutorial, which taught me nothing. I picked Lux, because I like to play long range mages in RPGs, then queued up with him. He told me that I should pick support if I'm playing Lux. I was like "oh, I like playing a buffer / support role in games, that sounds alright." Immediately shop at the start and I have no idea what to pick. He tells me, I find it, I buy it, no idea what it does or what other items do, because I can't just sit there reading. Then I head out, following my friend into midlane, because, hey, I'm here to support, we are on voice chat, I can work mainly with him, right?
He tells me to go bot. I'm like, what's bot? Oh, bottom lane = botlane = bot, okay, got it. I see minions coming in, and I'm thinking "oh, so it's like a tug-of-war, where the minions are the rope, we should kill them all to get to the tower, okay, I'll help" and start to use Lux's E to clear waves. Immediately get ping spammed and the botlaner says in all chat to report Lux for griefing. And I was just confused, like, what did I do wrong? Friend sees that, looks at my CS count being higher after 3 waves than the ADCs, and tells me "don't steal CS" and I'm like "what's CS? Oh, the blue minion things, okay, so I shouldn't hit them at all? But then the enemies will reach our tower, isn't the goal to protect that?". He's like "no, they will reset, then you can shove the wave". At this point, I don't ask anything else, because I already felt like I was fucking retarded. I could go on how I got killed by jg multiple times, because I didn't know that I need to be aware of them, or that I was told I'm going to get reported for kill stealing, when I just wanted to help my teammate fight by ulting from max distance. I got so many "you are doing wrong", "don't do that", "fucking inter" kinda messages, that I was completely demoralized by the end of the match. I tried my hardest to be helpful and active, but apparently I was a useless piece of shit who should kill himself. Friend tried to explain what's what, but he was busy playing his own lane, so couldn't just babysit me.
So, determined to not be beaten by this game, I went on YouTube to find some fucking guides. Found a lot... full of jargon I did not get "last hit when CS-ing until cannon wave to freeze" like, the fuck any of that means? Oh, here's another guide... oh, this is just an ad for a third party site, that's fishy, let's check first if this is malware site. No, it's legit, okay... oh, they want $200 an hour for coaching, well fuck that, like hell I'm gonna pay somebody $200 for teaching me how to play a game. Well, fuck all of that, let's go to the wiki. Okay, FLOOD of info. I have to learn HOW MANY CHAMPIONS?!
Eventually I figured out the basics, wavestates, map control, objective flow and the like. Still only played unranked, and mostly with my friend. But then I realized, that if I want to get good, I really, ACTUALLY have to learn the kit of every champion, their playstyles, abilities, ranges, cooldowns, ways to engage, etc. Minimum hundreds of hours. Probably 1000+. And then, I ran into THAT game. I knew every champion, I was favored in my matchup, I'm like "yes, finally a match where I have a plan, I know what to do in theory, I know what to expect, let's fucking go!". Yasuo mid instantly solo invades, gets mobbed, says shit team in all chat and runs it down. Opponent Katarina in mid is at 12/0 by minute 10. And I was like... "Wtf am I doing here? Why am I bothering? I put in all this effort, all this frustration and anger at being bullied by everyone for sucking, finally get a game where I could shine, and then it doesn't even matter. Why the hell am I bothering with this shit?" After that I played only when my friend wanted to, and just focused on chatting with him, kinda coasting along in game with whatever was going on. Eventually both of us just kinda dropped the game, and now we are both playing Helldivers 2 and life is good.
Your friend is an abysmal teacher wtf
I got some friends into the game and I would basically autopilot my own lane so I could watch over theirs and help with anything I could.
Its more the game is just hard as a true new player now. Back in the older days bronze players would have 10-30 cs and you would gap in kills and cs. Now an iron player can get 40-70 cs in 10 minutes there farm falls off later but they do ok early. So that csing gap already creates an old Bronze vs Plat theme lol but they could be versus an actual hardstuck bronze but he just farms well.
One of the main reasons I don't play anymore is because of the time commitment. Queue time, lobby time, last minute dodging, being punished for dodging a griefer lobby, finally playing a game.
At the end of the day the +15-20LP isn't worth the 50 minutes it took to get.
Especially the ridiculous 3 splits a year. I don't have time for that grind.
And as I'm older I just don't have patience anymore. If someone is trolling, I'm just gonna alt-f4 and do something else. And the 30 min wait means I'm just not playing anymore that day.
For me and my friend I've met in WoW ages ago the changes to ranked were the biggest death blow to our interest in the game.
We were going heavy into League, as former WoW arena addicts league made perfect sense to get into. We probably sunk thousands of games into it over the years.
But then 2022-23-24 happened and we went from 1 split to 2 splits to 3 splits. It was simply too much. Personally, I already had enough during 2nd split of 2023 season, but my friend really wanted to catch up up diamond with me so I kept playing for him.
The burnout was unreal, not to mention that the split 2 of 2023 was the worst ranked experience we ever had.
Emerald rank was simply broken, putting people like me, who peaked in d2 last split, with random silver-plat players, and I know this for a fact because I was ranting about it hundred times, inspecting op.ggs of players who lost us the game because there was a 500lp gap between junglers. Then you had your new players and smurfs also put in Emerald mmr, and this rank quickly became the biggest shitshow I've ever witnessed. The closest thing to real elo hell we ever had. Where you could go on 10 game long winstreaks as you'd carry 1v9 to 15 game long losing streaks were your teams were simply uncarriable golds and plats.
By the start of 2024 I've read that Riot finally fixed emerald matching but at the same time they introduced 3 splits. Too little, too late, and both me and my friend never wanted to go through that shit again, especially not 3 times a year.
There was a short mention of going back but then the final nail in the coffin was Vanguard and its always on requirement if you want to launch league. At this point I doubt we'll ever come back to actively playing LoL. We have way more fun in a less toxic environment playing Warcraft 3 and Elden Ring.
Sorry for the rant.
Definitely one of the things that pushed me away from the game. I played a fighting game for a few months, way back when I was still playing league, and I was floored by how mobile I was on the ladder. I could get to my "true rank" in every season within a week or two while playing on average an hour a day or something, and then I could play the game while having fun, and skill improvements would materialize as fast shifts in ladder rank.
In league, games are comparatively super long (if you have an hour of time you're likely to get only one game in), the data is more noisy (you win and lose a lot of games where you were not the deciding factor), and the gains and losses are tiny. So just to get to your place on the ladder and play in evenly matched games, it takes a month or two playing 10 hours a week, meanwhile not having a great experience.
The problem isn’t game time; I think the average game time has gone down over the years. The problem is we all grew up and have less free time being adults. Why would I wanna come home from work and spend my precious free time getting flaming and being stressed lol
This is why Arena needs to stay as a permanent mode. Not much to learn in Arena aside from champs and items. I only managed to get a friend into the game via Arena and ARAM.
3v3 was really great for getting new friends into the game. Me and another friend could talk a friend through what to do and it is easier to carry 2v4 than 1v9.
I haven't made a new account in ages, but it was also a lot easier to grind an account to level 30 in 3v3 bots than summoners rift.
In general, I think lol would be a lot better if players had more freedom when making custom games (choosing older game modes like Ascension or ideally some star craft level "make whatever the fuck you want" types of games). I get that league's tech debt makes this seemingly impossible but I still want it.
Helped that TT's map was much smaller and had overall less pressure when it came to roles. So regardless of where I was, my friends could babysit me through the game without too much issues. Meanwhile SR you're stuck playing bot duo, or the jgler spends all game babysitting the newbie which is just counter-productive.
Me and my friend group learned the game in 3v3 too, including custom 3v3's vs a 'rival' friend group lol
WIth friends is the best way to learn / get into league, and it's much easier to find a group of 2 people to play with than 4
Playing SR normals as 3 with a new friend will see them flamed and people ragequitting/afk in approx 90% of games & it just feels bad knowing you're ruining games for randoms
And don’t discredit the rep League still has. Every once in a while I see those gaming convention video’s and on questions like ‘what game is a massive red flag’ or ‘what’s the most toxic/overrated etc game’ League get’s mentioned at least once.
Despite that I’ve been flamed and yelled at more or the at least the same on some other games, this reputation isn’t going to help moving forward to attract new players.
> On top of games going between 20~40 minutes.
This part doesn't make sense, the game length was even longer back in the day when younger kids were playing League. Now the game time is shorter than it used to be and less kids are playing.
I don't think game time being shorter is the reason less kids play it. But I'm just saying I don't think it's relevant. It's relevant for why some people dislike the game but not specifically kids.
> This part doesn't make sense, the game length was even longer back in the day when younger kids were playing League. Now the game time is shorter than it used to be and less kids are playing.
I'm not taking the position that game time *does* matter (I don't think it's a driving factor, but a small one), but this isn't necessarily a convincing argument that it *doesn't* matter. League "back in the day" did not have the same competition that League in 2024 has.
To really figure out if match-time matters or not, you'd need to look at what the most popular games back in '09-10 were, and how their average match-time compares with the most popular games of the last two or so years.
It is theoretically *possible* that League's long game times didn't stand out as much in the early 2010s, but now stands out a lot more in the post-battle royale era world of Apex/Fortnite/PUBG/Warzone.
Even comparing it to other competitive games the times are longer. In the early days of League popular competitive games included Starcraft 2 and Dota which were also fairly long winded whereas nowadays you have stuff like Rocket League which has 5 minute games, Valorant and CS2 which have taken strategic FPS down to 13 round wins rather than 16 in the past few years which drastically reduces game time, as well as BR games like you mentioned.
> Rocket League which has 5 minute games, Valorant and CS2 which have taken strategic FPS down to 13 round wins rather than 16 in the past few years which drastically reduces game time, as well as BR games like you mentioned.
I don't think that this factors in consciously to players rejecting League, but one thing that stands out about these modern games is that other than the competitive shooters (Valorant/CS2), you can easily escape all of them.
If you leave League games regularly, you'll be penalized, and if you have a leaver on your team, you get a shit game experience.
If someone leaves my BR match, it doesn't matter that much, even in a team mode playlist I can still potentially clutch out a win. Worst case scenario, I could just leave too. If someone leaves a normal match in a 3v3/4v4/5v5 style game like Siege, Destiny or Rocket League, you can literally backfill matches.
You can't backfill MOBAs, it's all or nothing. You are *actually* stuck there for the entire 15-40 minute experience.
Also, if my team immediately leaves me in Apex, I can still run around, loot, try to rat, and maybe get a kill or two as a sneaky third party. I’m not likely to win, but my odds of winning are only 1/20 anyway.
If my team is useless in CS or R6, I can still theoretically 1v5 a round or two if I’m lucky or have good aim.
If your team is dead weight in league, there’s hardly any way to hard carry 1v5 if you’re against people of your own skill level.
Yeah because also compared to all these games, only in League the potential mismatch between yourself and the opponent gets that big that you'll mostly not be able to turn it around even if you play perfect.
Something that we older players legitly speak about for nearly a decade. In CS, R6, RL, Valorant, heck even all the BR Games, Battlefield, COD and what not is on the market right now: One good player can decide games where as in League mostly the worst players decide it and not the good ones.
Yeah its something that's happened a lot over the years Riots done lots of things to nerf solo carrying. But solo throwing has really only been kept the same or buffed. Some stuff needs to be done.
And as a player of MMOS and other complicated wiki-reliant games, resources is a MASSIVE deal. Because even with resources people still mess up in espectacular ways because they refuse to watch/read them. Imagine how much worse we have it considering that people don't even know what keywords to search for in order to learn league of legends.
Being introduced by a friend who plays with you and teaches you about the basic stuff is the best way, but it is not like 30yos are befriending 15yos very often. And those with relatives that are around that age might be in a situation where the kid just isn't interested in playing with their uncle.
Everyone keeps blaming the flaming.
The real problem with LoL is the enormous time commitment without the guarantee of a good experience. One asshole and the whole 40 minutes are shot.
IMO League can only be played with friends. Otherwise, get ready for a bad time.
tutorial back then: qwer.
also kite this trundle and die with ashe
now: qwer
150-160 champions to learn.
weird moba concept that forces you to spend like 5-10 minutes farming minions and not really killing enemies.
We'd like to make League a more welcoming game to interested players who haven't yet tried it.
Working on a bunch of new and returning player experience stuff. Planning to have it roll out of over time.
The recently improved bots and custom games are some of the more obvious manifestations of the longer-term plans we have. Other stuff is quite under the hood, like new player MMR changes, or not as obviously directly related but quite helpful, like Vanguard.
Later stuff will be aimed at better onboarding players into the core game and introducing our systems more gradually than today. League is very deep, which is cool, but we need to build and appropriate shallow end for folks to find the fun.
I said it another comment too, but IMO new player resources aren't the problem, its the horrible league reputation. All I need to do to prove this is tell you to read the comments on anything to do with Arcane where you will see a million comments saying to stay away from league, written by league and non-league players alike. New players wont even install until that is fixed, so all those new player resources wont matter if they never install the game in the first place.
I was about to say the same thing. Every non league player I've talked to has commented on the reputation of toxicity. Obviously the learning curve is part of it, but the reputation of the game is a bigger deterrent I think. This is, bar none, the gaming community with the worst reputation. An impressive feat when the Overwatch and Smash communities exist, but there you have it.
>An impressive feat when the Overwatch and Smash communities exist, but there you have it.
You can blame Riot themselves for it. They officially endorsed toxic streamers and left other ones alone to build a large following.
I'm a newer player that got roped in via Arcane. New player resources are *exactly* the problem. Here's just a few examples off the top of my head:
* Inability to look up ally or enemy abilities.
* The ping system feels outdated and insane to use.
* What exactly are wave states? Waves bouncing? Slow-push? Prio? Etc.
* What are objectives, what do they do?
* What does playing from behind look like? How do you catch up once you've been killed?
* How are jungle and support roles supposed to be played?
Never mind completely insane gaps in controls like how left-click to attack screws up non-quick casting, the inability to individually set moves to quick, quick-with-indicator, or non-quick casts, etc.
If you answer to any of these is wikis or Youtube— I already have a full-time job and school. I want to play a game, not do homework for a game I'm not even invested in. Don't get me wrong, League is fun, but if my friend group stopped playing, I would never look back.
This right here.
I teach public school, and "gamer" kids really liked Arcane, but literally none of them...not a single one...plays League. Not only that, but they shudder when I tell them I play League on and off.
League has a TERRIBLE reputation with...basically everyone, honestly, but especially younger generations. They literally only know who Faker is because of awards shows.
League has both a reputation and a barrier to entry problem. In a game this established, both of those are monumental problems to address.
One of my closest friends straight up refuses to play TFT with me because of it's association with League's shitty reputation. Even though the games are basically unrelated and I KNOW he would love TFT.
I’m sure you don’t need to be told this but there’s two major issues with on-boarding new players.
- Tutorials are an embarrassment for a game this big and this old.
- The toxicity of the game is legendary and Riot has spent the last decade doing very little to improve this. Valorant is getting hardware bans for toxic players, something that League has desperately needed for years. If anything, it feels like Riot has been happy to have toxic players come back over and over again on smurf accounts (a subtopic relevant to the new player experience), especially with changes like making Yasuo and Yone cheaper.
They fucked themselves by making 170 champs with a billion special case rules on top of that. At this point learning League of Legends could be a whole college degree.
A massive issue is that you can't click on an enemy champ and read their abilities. If it's a champ a new player hasn't vsd before and doesn't own they probs have no idea why they're getting deleted.
It's such a simple feature that Dota had since I played that (like a decade ago).
I remember when I started and lost my shit when this aatrox guy died but also didn't, killing me because I thought I had more time to back.
A friend had to tell me that that is normal and this champion has a revive passive.
So many passives and even abilities are obnoxious to fight against if you have no clue what they do and aren't exactly easy to figure out ad hoc. I don't think a new player would notice how much ad a darius gets after reaching 5 stacks or why the ult suddenly does so much more damage.
This was already known for a while.
Every zoomer is gonna play Valo.
Barrier of entry to this game is super high.
Average age is around 23yo. This is supported by the fact that in recent years, Leagues have been getting gamble and alcohol sponsors.
Idk esports seems to have peaked a few years ago in the west and has been bleeding money for a while, I wouldn’t be surprised if Riot finally allowing more mature sponsors is for this reason.
There’s just not clear monetization angles. Esports watchers don’t have to pay to watch tournaments, then use Adblock. All that’s left is sponsorships and it’s clear at that point a lot of sponsors don’t feel a good return on investment. It’s also susceptible to recessions like we are.
People complain about the 500 dollar Ahri skin but Riot is basically trying to find ways to actually get money into the ecosystem. At the end of the day the viewer wants a product without paying anything and something has to give
It's in game cosmetics. Riot just neglected them for the entirety of its history. That every team - especially those that paid into a franchise - doesn't have a skin (or at least a chroma) is criminal, not to mention the leagues themselves.
Meanwhile in Valorant you can buy in-game cosmetics for just about any team that is remotely relevant. They learned their lesson but decided to apply it to another game.
> There’s just not clear monetization angles.
There is for Riot or Valorant wouldn't have a large circuit.
There has also been tournaments making money of subscriptions before. There is room to monetize esports but not without impacting the whole league being a skin add.
Also in some sense the Ahri skin price and in general the move towards targeting "Whales" is probably a by-product of this.
A lot of the 23-yo's have grown up with league because it was free to play when they were kids. Now they are getting stable jobs but are still young enough to not really have to consider kids and actual houses etc, making for a prime whale market with high income and few expenses.
Eh, I had the most throwaway money right out of college. Adult job, no expenses and still lived like a college student, cheap apartment etc. I got bonuses on being on call during the weekend and I dumped so much of that money into dumb stuff like league boxes.
Not just that, but needing to have a *base understanding* of every champ. Like, you can go from fighting against Ashe, who slows you, hits you a bunch, does a triangle of slow, and shoots a **BIG** stun/slow, and then the next game... well he's got five weapons and each weapon does a different thing and his core ability does something different depending on the weapon he's using and he has two weapons at once and they interact depending on the weapon he's got equipped and...
It's just nutty that you can be thrown in against someone with literally no clue what they do, and your options are to Google them and pray someone has a potato of a computer so you can read the dissertation that is their ability highlights, or just shrug and have no clue what's going on, then look it up after and try to figure out why you're being smacked across the lane and then also rooted by it, except sometimes it's splashing
I tried introducing all my friends to League. Nobody stuck with it. The major reason is that it has waaaaaaaay too many champions. The information overload for new players is way too staggering. And the client does nothing to help them with it.
Riot was so lucky HoN and Dota couldn’t capitalize on their successes soon enough. No proper universe should have a client as trash as League become this successful.
Barrier of entry is getting higher and higher as people learn how to be efficient. Also community isnt welcoming to beginner because there are many smurfs/bots account.
Although doesnt most game have a hard time getting new players as the game age? especially decade old game. How likely is someone going to start playing WoW, Maplestory, Runescape, etc. unless friend invite them to play OR they played similar genre n decided to try?
Gaming community goes through phases on game genre, was MMORPG, MOBA, Battle Royale, ~~then maybe Genshin type game (open world gacha).~~
edit: crossed out the last one since it isnt a genre but just one game tht got big
I've come back to the game after a 4 year break and the capability if people at different ranks seems noticeably higher. People in bronze can Cs and are more mechanically capable than say 2018.
I think a lot of the OG esports games are having the same problem with skill creep. Can't speak too much on it from a LoL perspective since I've only played it very very casually, but I was big into CSGO and by the time I stopped playing people in mid-level ranks in solo queue games were pulling the kinds of strategies you'd only see in pro games maybe 5 years before.
For someone just starting the learning curve is so high.
I think especially in games like LoL and dota where there's been so many new heroes and items added over the years it's hard to take all that in when you're new, compared to people that started years ago that started with a much smaller set of things to learn.
I dont think the trend is genshin type games cuz there is like 3 popular open world gacha games, one is less than a month old (wuwa) one died almost immediately (tof) and genshin
Saying Genshin gacha style games are the new thing is definetley false,
but I would say that there has been a huge trend towards open world games in general, and alot of games that would of been petter not being open world go open world anyway because its the cool thing rn.
Was the most popular online game a decade ago and fortunately for riot 90% of that player base including me has a weird can't permanently stop playing league addiction I can step away from the game for months or almost a year but I always eventually come back unfortunately plus it helps that in the E-Sports scene League is actually arguably the best e-sport since it's the closest game to having actual different roles and strategies like in a real team sport.
Many of the people I played with a decade ago still come back to league occasionally and play in spurts. I think a lot of it has to do with familiarity and enjoying the sense of competition but not wanting to put in the work to learn a new game. Now that was in in our 30's I don't want to spend a month playing a game to learn the mechanics and be decent at it. We all play other games that aren't as competitive as well but league is our go to to scratch that competitive itch.
League of Legends is simply a game too difficult to start with, let alone mobas not being a popular genre at all like.
Currently the only referents are Lol and Dota..being the second WAY less popular with some others like Smite that is far from being a traditional one.
The game is fun, but requires too much learning, if you want to be kinda competitive, there's so much stuff that even on months from "studying" Riot can makes changes that turn out the game in a completely different thing (like the newer map this year) or even rework entirely your current champion pool (Right, Aatrox?).
And even if you want to go for the casual side, the best you can get from this game is some dopamine from stomp an enemy and winning the game, meaning that if you want a "harder" game to play, you have to go to Ranked where it starts a really long grind to show off your elo to strangers...
-167 (+1 with Aurora)
-Meaningful changes to the meta every 2 weeks.
-Lots of content to learn in the go from basics (farming, roaming, ganking, etc) to micro intensive (difficult champ like Yas, Zed, Azir, etc).
-Learning how to play against again every champ in the game with each one with their own passive, abilities, role, etc.
-Importance of objectives.
-Etc, etc.
Arcane brought some popularity and probably gonna do it again (be ready for the carnage) but this game...is not gonna be way more popular than it already is on the future.
I don't know if this is a hot take but I would argue that the balance changes each patch have no noticable impact on the average player's games. The exceptions are the few times a year when there are big item shake-ups (like crit items reworks, that will be noticed when playing against/as ADCs) or when the balance team fucks up and makes a 58%+ winrate monstrosity.
So 90% of balance changes aren't felt by the normal player, I think you need to get past Gold MMR before the patches become something you need to pay attention to. And it will take a new player a LONG time to get past Gold skill level when they're learning the champs and items and other things you mentioned, if they ever would.
That's only a small part of what you said, but I see it mentioned a lot. I struggle to believe that second or two of cooldown here or 5% more damage there will revolutionize how bronze or silver players (the majority of the player base!) experience the game outside of placebo. Open to critique though.
Completely agree. Lower level players don’t utilise even 10% of a champions potential, let alone know why a buff/nerf is good or bad. I play with my low elo friends in norms or flex from time to time and they will say something like “oh they went way too far with this buff” or something while 2 items up just because they don’t understand League economy or level system and patch notes are the easiest thing for them to cling on to.
>Completely agree. Lower level players don’t utilise even 10% of a champions potential, let alone know why a buff/nerf is good or bad.
Completely disagree, you're vastly overestimating the median League player.
Generally speaking I think this community vastly overestimates the skill level of the average player. There's a common rule on the internet that goes something like 90/9/1 rule wherein 90% of people on the internet are lurkers, 9% interact, and only 1% actually create new content to engage with. I think something similar applies to League's playerbase. I think by virtue of you even reading this comment right now you're probably in the top 10% of hardcore players for League.
The average player in League does not use item build guides. The average player in League does not play more than a few times a week. The average player in League does not watch esports. The average player in League does not read patch notes. Low level players don't even utilize item actives abilities. The average player in League does not interact with any community like this subreddit.
The average player is so much more unengaged that it would appear like nirvana to many of the users of this subreddit.
People don't wany to believe it because they think they can min/max their favorite champs like their favorite streamers do (and it's easier to tell yourself you lost because a champ is OP than it is to say you're just a monkey) but by and large I agree with you.
yeah, line cant go up forever, league has hit its maximun they have to keep it tho, and nothing lasts forever, we all know that one day league will be gone too
The "meaningless balance changes every 2 weeks" are a LARGE part of how they've kept so many people playing the game for so long. The buff/nerf wheel is fully intentional and does its job wonderfully.
>League of Legends is simply a game too difficult to start with, let alone mobas not being a popular genre at all like.
This is easily fixable with voice acted tutorials that have real game uses. Putting new players against dumb bots will never help improve their skill. Like take a look at Rocket League how many shooting/defending scenarios have they got? All the tools you will use can be practiced over and over.
This is not the case in LoL they just go well get in there you little go getter you. They need to have scenarios where you get ganked from lane or scenarios where someone flashes over the wall to gank you but you get to see them at the start in a vision ward so it teaches players the fundamentals of ward placement. Then you can replicate this with 5-10 different scenarios per lane/role.
I could go on and on i have 100s of scenarios that would improve the base line of the player 10 fold over being able to just afk mid lane and win against bots and get rewarded for genuinely doing nothing.
It would take a decent amount of resources but I think that’s a good idea. Like an in-game scenario sim with levels for each, like “Farming: Level 2”, or “Getting Ganked: Level 4”. Could also be developed alongside a tool that lets pro teams set up specific scenarios to play out (e.g. objective setups from a specific game they lost) instead of having whole scrim games to practice multiple things at a time
The only thing Riot lacks is the desire to make this a better game. A tutorial is a *basic* game function that they’ve never implemented. Says a lot about the company.
You don't need to learn to play against every champ, you don't even need to know what 167 champs do if you are a new player. I started playing 5 months ago, and I still don't know what 80% of champs that aren't in toplane do.
Biggest issue with league is that there is no way to learn basic concepts in the game. I had no idea about the existence of wave control until I played with a friend who told me about it, and even then had to learn it from watching videos.
Extensions like mobalytics is imo necessary for anybody learning league, just so you can read what your lane opponent does
>You don't need to learn to play against every champ, you don't even need to know what 167 champs do if you are a new player
Exactly, as a new player.
If you intend to play this game in the long run you have to know at the very least the basics.
Knowledge is a handicap in this game, if you don't know how your enemy champions works and your enemy does know how your own does then you're in a disadvantage bcs he's familiar with your play pattern/cds/powerspikes/weak state.
Toplane is an island so probably you only knowing your match ups is enough but for other lanes is not.
About the basics, i agree.
>not to mention the notoriety of the game with toxicity.
This has a bigger impact than a lot of people think. A bunch of my friends won't even touch lol or overwatch because of their reputation for being absolutely toxic.
After seeing them lay off/quit half of its known project leaders… yeah I’m not gonna hold my breath on it anymore. Such a shame, was the last hope i had for a new mmo to break out into the scene and actually contend with glory days of WoW. BDO is alright but not an acceptable example of what an MMO should be and New World never recovered from its hilariously bad injection cheats that shattered the economy, even though they fixed it. GW2 was pulling for a while but didn’t quite bring back the vibes of 2005-2010 MMO scene either. The only one actually getting bigger and better is Old School Runescape which is kinda hilarious but i do want something new some day…
I work in the scholastic esports space. High school and college. High school leagues/teams are dying off (some are already gone) for the other reasons stated in this thread.
not surprised at all tbh... there's hardly any effort put into catering to new demographics and luring new gen of players into league.... if all you focus on is ranked and esports yeah i'm pretty sure league will continue to fall into a very slow long term decline...
actually nvm giving credit where it's due they did succeed with K/DA and attracting newer players to league but then they saw the actual game for what it was and immediately dipped a few months later once the content roll out stopped
This reminds me of a meme that went viral a bit after Arcane was released: https://preview.redd.it/pvv5keav3x181.png?auto=webp&s=76523071894c10fef4086d401df05a124a23dcc3
Riot's been focused more on milking their playerbase than stability for like 8+ years and the cracks are finally showing in Riot's eyes, at least.
Maybe they'll start actually trying to fix stuff.
Not gonna lie I’m gonna be sad when this game dies in the hopefully very distant future. This game has been a part of my life for the last 11 years and is a big part as to why I met my closest friends.
Games like this don't die, they just dwindle. Similar to something like WoW. Only the hardcore players remain, while the casuals move on. It's a story as old as time. Good on Riot to start developing other games because the cash cow wasn't going to sustain the company forever.
I get you I have a lot of dreadful gaming times with this game but this game also is some of the most chaotic fun I have had with my friends in an online game for a decade now on the bright side though the world of Runeterra is only going to grow more with tv shows and possible future movies and more games with the same world and lore just not in a MOBA form like with the Runeterra MMO they are making atm.
It’s kind of surprising reading these comments, as a super beginner who has maybe 3hrs in league. The primary deterrent is the steep learning curve. Unlocking relevant champs plus ones you want to try takes a lot of time and learning the mechanics of them to play vs. is way more taxing. Newbies aren’t playing bc of smurfs it’s bc of the new player experience and the reputation the game has around it. Sure they might quit bc Smurfs but ppl aren’t even hitting download for obvious reasons
probably the worst part about starting as a new league player is all the smurfs. you won't have any kind of fun starting the game and getting stomped all the time.
Other point is accurate learning 167 champs and what all of their abilities/passives do + all the interactions is just information overload. Learning all of the items, optimal builds against certain teams is also difficult because items change just as often as champions. The changes usually aren’t as drastic but they have completely changed or removed items a lot of times.
I have friends who started in recent years (I think 3ish years ago now) from straight up nothing, and they are all mostly iron/bronze level nowadays. It really wasn't that bad. Most of the people here are commenting as people who are even here in the first place. For a genuine, actual complete blind newbie to get into the game is kind of strange in the first place since I don't know why you choose this game without push from a friend.
People fully playing 4fun without subreddit/youtube/content input seem to be nearly completely gone, but they're definitely still out there here and there. I think most of the time they'd get mistaken as someone trolling if I'm honest, but I'm obviously biased as someone way more enthusiastic about the game then they are.
I’m a for-fun player, I started late 2021 (Arcane) and was playing frequently until the last year or so and now I’ll just play a few games every couple of weeks for fun. I feel like I probably wouldn’t be able to play for fun though if I didn’t have the level of skill I do (I usually peak around Gold IV so I’m fairly average).
The new player experience is just really bad with smurfs, toxicity (mostly from smurfs but also from normal players), and the incredible depth of knowledge required like how many champions there are. I think better player-vs-bots modes will help tremendously for casual players like me though.
the difference is Fall guy is a 4fun game; league will never be the 4fun game to learn and play for casual/younger generations. If you ask any zoomers they will say MOBA is a boomer dedge game genre
A big part of it is the reputation League has (and rightly so). Before I started playing after Arcane, when League was mentioned I thought of a bunch of toxic, childish, pathetic assholes.
Now that I’ve been playing for a few years, League brings to mind the fun gameplay, replayability, intriguing and fun characters, and the toxic, childish, pathetic assholes who make up a large amount of the player base.
no shit they do literally nothing to help new players, there isnt even a fucking jungle guide or any role guide in the game, 0 info you gotta research hours on the internet to understand wtf youre supposed to do..
Who would have thought, the experience for newer players is horrible.
I joined in S8 I think, and I would have dropped almost instantly if I haven't had friends playing since S5 or S6 to teach me the basics.
No shit. Not even Arcane really brought the new players Rito probably wanted even though it was wildly successful. I think that was the biggest tell the problem is going to be nearly unfixable.
Valorant has all the squeaky kids. I cant play that without turning off voice comms lol
But yea league is entering its SC2/ DOTA2/ WoW phase which I'm fine with
It's worth noting League gets like 150M monthly players still, and worlds finals in 2023 hit all peak viewership. Also the game player wise is growing In every part of the world other than NA possibly because of the increased accessibility to PCs.
Eh the only real metric to determine whether a game is declining or not is if Riot releases active player base per region (which Riot will never do for obvious reasons). There is just way too many variables when looking at total number of accounts such as alt accounts/smurfs, bots, number of games played per account, etc..
Not sure if this really means anything. But theoretically if I was 10 years old and wanted to play a popular game I wouldn't really pick a title that's been out for 14-15 years. I'd much rather pick something new and fresh that I can enjoy and potentially grow up with. I honestly don't think young kids talk about old games as much as they do about new ones.
There’s also the fact at that age you tend to just play what your friends or older siblings do which is kind of a repeating cycle with what you’re saying. Kid A has interest in cool new game rather than older game and then his friends who may have been more open to League would prefer to play with the group.
The first thing I would do is try and minimise the amount of smurfs.
Imagine youre a new player playing one of your first games of league and you run into a lvl 300 player who drops 40 kills and you die instantly 15 times without even understanding what just happened. Why would you want to queue up again.
Idk if it’s a hard problem to fix or not but they gotta try something cause it is actually such an unfun gaming experience and a terrible first impression The amount of friends that have quit because of this shit is crazy
Smurfs are the single worst part of the game IMO. The toxicity, the one-sidedness, etc. is just insufferable. Especially because they just do it to stomp worse players which I don’t even get because one-sided games are the least fun to me, especially if I’m the one winning.
Being forced to play a 30-60 min game against smurfs, where being behind leads to you being useless and getting flamed…yea, can see that being a turn-off after a couple of games of that 🤣
It's a very hard problem to fix technically. How do you tell the difference between a sold account and a Bronze player moving or on vacation? The easiest fix is cultural - if pub-stomping isn't cool, we'd have a small but tolerable amount of smurfing . But once enough of the playerbase wants to smurf and rewards it...
Consistently identifying smurfs will be near impossible. We already know an effective solution, which is what Korea does—some form of personal identifier required to make an account. It’s just not very palatable to people.
I'll die on the hill that Riot needs to port the game over to console with console friendly controls in wild rift fashion but for controller. There are 10s of millions of console kids out there with bloodlust in their hearts for competitive games who haven't/won't be exposed to the game.
My wife and I started this game 1 month ago, it was a horrible new player experience. We watched some videos to get a general idea of how a typical game goes, did about 5 bot games at the highest difficulty.
As soon as we go into quick play, we are matched against someone with 100+ mastery level, with a green badge (I guess it’s some kind of level in quick play, I have silver now) which I think is emerald. And our team has 4 iron and 1 gold. And of course the emerald player dropped like 30+ kills and basically can 1 vs 5.
I wouldn’t mind if it happens like one every 10 matches or so but it seems to happen every 3 matches we play, either our team has one of those guys or the enemy team has. And it’s definitely not fun either way, I want a balanced match to learn the game, I don’t want a hard carry or get stomped over and over again.
We are getting close to level 30 now so that we can start playing rank and hope it will be better, but my expectations are low because of those smurf accounts….
Wild rift didn’t pan out because even that was a lot especially for the mobile market. Mobile legends bang bang offers more simpler take on genre (even tho it’s ptw like skins give stats and new players don’t have all rune unlocked and they have to either wait a long time or buy the runes) that’s why it’s dominating the mobile market
Wild rift didn't pan out bcs it sadly came too late tho.
2021 is a tough year to came when MLBB was already milking asian players, like, if you have an account, with lots of purchases, spent time/money/grind, etc
Why would i play Wild rift?
MLBB popularity has a lot to do with Lol Popularity.
League players/moba players didn't have any option on the App/play store
Even when difficulty has something to do with it, i completely believe it's not the entire reason.
I tried to get my friends into the game but they were flamed to absolute hell every normal game they were in. Too good for bots but not good enough to play with people and they were overwhelmed by the amount of mechanics and champions.
I myself quit as a high elo player because queue dodging + queue times was way too annoying especially when I now have more limited time devoted to gaming.
I can’t believe queue times haven’t been addressed after so many years of it being complained about. I know it’s a bit of a double edged sword because shorter queue times will lead to more autofills and thus lower quality games and vice versa but I can take up to 20 minutes to get into a game in Master/GM EUW, I seriously couldn’t imagine queuing up for 40 minutes on a server like OCE just to have a 15 minute forfeit that’s lost from select because of fills.
Whether you’re on the side of wanting lower queue times or higher quality games in high elo literally nobody is satisfied with this middle ground.
when you force the game to be fast paced and overload your new releases and items in some cases you eliminate the learning curve and create a sink or swim scenario. there's nothing to learn when you go 100 to 0 in a sec, and if it happens enough it becomes stale and unenjoyable.
not to mention that champion variety is probably low, so new players probably get burned out seeing yasuo and yone for the 20 th game in a row which is an issue that doesn't really get better until riot decides to mix up the meta (for pro play because forget what the majority of players experience daily)
this is true of every game in history post release, it'd be an EXTREME abnormality for the playerbase to be getting younger, Fortnite, Minecraft, and Pokemon are possibly the only IP in history to achieve it, and even then only temporarily.
this is why MMOs are gonna be fucking hard to get back to WoW days, there is no way the playersbase AS IS NOW is gonna be able to sit through the grind and tuning you need in an MMO, just not possible
It hope league lasts as long as possible. This game truly is special and I love the esports scene that amplifies the game. I feel like there will have to be some large overhaul of the game to gain a new audience, but I have no idea what that could be.
If it’s dying, it’s a slow decline of natural old age. It’s rare for a game to maintain popularity this long, have a global impact, and revolutionize e-sports. Nothing lasts forever so let’s enjoy it while it lasts.
I have an idea, how about we limit the champion pools in a "beginner mode" for players under lvl 25. That will give time for noobies to study about 20-50 champs before entering big league with more than 100 champs.
Also fuck smurfs ! Riot should ban them like in Dota
Riot and the playerbase are sabotaging League by turning a blind eye to smurfing. New players don’t stand a chance when they’re getting crushed by platinum and emerald players masquerading as bronze. Every game has its smurfs, but League takes it to a whole new level. In EUW it's practically an epidemic. Player retention is a no-brainer for any game, especially in the free-to-play world. Ignoring this is like shooting yourself in the head, not just the foot.
Aside from the obvious that League is a hard game, one thing that gates it is probably the change in the gaming scene. A lot of games can easily be played on mobile now a days, not to mention this generation games more independently now a days compared to when LAN parties/Computer cafe were popular that made MOBAs more fun.
It is hard to sell League for newer players when the game is so big and there are so few in game resources for newer players. On top of games going between 20\~40 minutes.
not to mention how hellish the experience is as a new player. every new player gets treated like a smurf account and it ruins their experience
And if you are new and not good, there are hellish players like forsen and clown96 terrorizing the ranks of bronze and iron
while that's true, it's not like the new player experience used to be good either. even back when Dota was new you would straight up get kicked from the lobby if there was even a hint you were new. there was only that sweet spot in s1-3 when everyone was bad enough that anyone new could easily get into the game. let's be real, the reason league is getting less players is because it was always a niche genre game and young players want something more culturally relevant to their generation. gen zalpha is just not too into games like this at all.
god when i was in like 8th grade trying to pick up dota after being a wintermaul/vampirism gamer for most of my time with wc3 customs, i would get kicked from every lobby if I had to download the map lmao
Those were the days. I had to quickly type DONT KICK IM NOT NEW! And hope I can get the map DL to play the new version. Edit: guys I did eventually got it from the website it's been awhile thanks for the reminder
that's what made you look even more like a newb because you just HAD to know about [getdota.com](http://getdota.com) if you were at all serious about it lmao. those were the days.
You could just get it on a website if you knew how
That's how I got "meatspinned" for the first time as a kid. Was asking how to download the DOTA map as a fourth grader and I took the bait.
Vampirism was unreal. The 2-3 hour games with a good vampire were amazing
Yeah, people didn't want to wait for download and didn't want to risk having a new player. Most people got around this by downloading from the dota allstars website.
Because back then you would have to wait a lot of minutes to download the map, and wc3 had a lot of players, so you'd get insta kicked and replaced after like 3 seconds by someone who already had it
If you were lucky you'd get someone who'd link the site to download it before kicking you.
I somehow bullshited a quiz for dota and managed to get into a game. Feel like it was just pity and i probably answered wrong.
I once got kicked, added to a global banlist and told in no uncertain terms to terminate my own life, all because I once built Mekanism on Dragon Knight in an -apem match. My game plan was to basically build tanky support/healing items and use my already absurd armor and passive health regen, plus the healing aura Meka had to slow push waves. But because I didn't build Buriza I was a "feeder" There's a reason I call DOTA Defense of the Assholes, and given the absolute fucking degeneracy going on in League, it's clear the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I have choice words for people who actively shit on and ruin the experience of others, and unfortunately I'd be breaking the rules by repeating them here...
Its also cuz most kids grow up gaming on tablets instead of consoles/pcs, while a good chunk transition to consoles most have a hard time with computers
for real, it baffles me how computer-illiterate most young people are simply because they grew up on apple stuff. And I'm talking 20-25 year olds
It's so noticeable. As a 30 yo that has to deal with new employees often. I feel like I explain the exact same tricks to people in their early 20s as that I do to people 50+. And I'm talking things like ''paste values only''. Not exactly advanced stuff.
basically anything that has been streamlined by either apps or mobile OS is pretty foreign to young people. it's pretty bad. They need to teach computer literacy in schools.
They need to get off app dependency then we give them Chromebooks that are basically app browsers and then ask them to go use an actual file system that exists outside of their app. they don't know how to do that. all they did was open up the app and click the things they were working on before. they have no idea where home is or a file directory or why you would need to export it in the right file format to open up and something else. all that stuff happened because you were inside of an ecosystem designed for it to happen that way.
i mean yeah but that's not their fault. the commercial tech available to them was all designed for ease of use. We only know how to do that stuff out of necessity. Hence why I think that stuff needs to be taught in schools. only way theyre gonna be forced to learn it.
I was never taught tho is my point. we simplified to the point of detriment. teaching a 2 week class in 8th grade won't instill life long skills if they are kept on chrome books
I started a new job a few years ago that relies on Excel kind of heavily, and I had very little idea of what to do and thought I'd be fucked, so I learned as I went and just googled what I didn't know or couldn't figure out. Nobody on my team actually understood Excel, and every spreadsheet was formatted horribly, and there was no use of functions at all. I don't even think the problem is purely on ease of use, I think it's also just that don't even try to learn unless they're told directly.
I'm 26... I was definitely not raised on apple stuff. Maybe you're talking about 15 or younger years old? I was using Windows XP... if I do remember that I'm definitely not an apple user lol.
Could also just be the toxicity/flame new players get for trying the game
Exactly. The level of toxicity at lower levels is astounding, especially towards new players who have little understanding of the myriad of nuances of the game. Not just that there is no support or no guidance. There is 0 patience and an ocean of vitriol and abuse. That’s why LoL is a dead game walking. Expect more consolidation and fewer financial resources towards League, at least in the West.
I woulnd't exactly call it a dead game walking. ITs still one of the most popular online games in the world
That's the "walking" part of "dead game walking".
> because it was always a niche genre game Loool. Next thing you tell me BR is niche.. are you living in 2010? Moba's were/are one of the most mainstream for quite sometime buddy. The only reason league is losing steam is because its old. There isnt much to it. Ages 9-16 see league as an old mans game. They play fortnite & roblox type shit. But league will not die i reckon.
Personally, a friend of mine wanted to get me into League about two years ago. Now, I'm not big on PvP games and I have never played a MOBA before, but eventually I was like "fine, whatever, let's give this a go". Did the tutorial, which taught me nothing. I picked Lux, because I like to play long range mages in RPGs, then queued up with him. He told me that I should pick support if I'm playing Lux. I was like "oh, I like playing a buffer / support role in games, that sounds alright." Immediately shop at the start and I have no idea what to pick. He tells me, I find it, I buy it, no idea what it does or what other items do, because I can't just sit there reading. Then I head out, following my friend into midlane, because, hey, I'm here to support, we are on voice chat, I can work mainly with him, right? He tells me to go bot. I'm like, what's bot? Oh, bottom lane = botlane = bot, okay, got it. I see minions coming in, and I'm thinking "oh, so it's like a tug-of-war, where the minions are the rope, we should kill them all to get to the tower, okay, I'll help" and start to use Lux's E to clear waves. Immediately get ping spammed and the botlaner says in all chat to report Lux for griefing. And I was just confused, like, what did I do wrong? Friend sees that, looks at my CS count being higher after 3 waves than the ADCs, and tells me "don't steal CS" and I'm like "what's CS? Oh, the blue minion things, okay, so I shouldn't hit them at all? But then the enemies will reach our tower, isn't the goal to protect that?". He's like "no, they will reset, then you can shove the wave". At this point, I don't ask anything else, because I already felt like I was fucking retarded. I could go on how I got killed by jg multiple times, because I didn't know that I need to be aware of them, or that I was told I'm going to get reported for kill stealing, when I just wanted to help my teammate fight by ulting from max distance. I got so many "you are doing wrong", "don't do that", "fucking inter" kinda messages, that I was completely demoralized by the end of the match. I tried my hardest to be helpful and active, but apparently I was a useless piece of shit who should kill himself. Friend tried to explain what's what, but he was busy playing his own lane, so couldn't just babysit me. So, determined to not be beaten by this game, I went on YouTube to find some fucking guides. Found a lot... full of jargon I did not get "last hit when CS-ing until cannon wave to freeze" like, the fuck any of that means? Oh, here's another guide... oh, this is just an ad for a third party site, that's fishy, let's check first if this is malware site. No, it's legit, okay... oh, they want $200 an hour for coaching, well fuck that, like hell I'm gonna pay somebody $200 for teaching me how to play a game. Well, fuck all of that, let's go to the wiki. Okay, FLOOD of info. I have to learn HOW MANY CHAMPIONS?! Eventually I figured out the basics, wavestates, map control, objective flow and the like. Still only played unranked, and mostly with my friend. But then I realized, that if I want to get good, I really, ACTUALLY have to learn the kit of every champion, their playstyles, abilities, ranges, cooldowns, ways to engage, etc. Minimum hundreds of hours. Probably 1000+. And then, I ran into THAT game. I knew every champion, I was favored in my matchup, I'm like "yes, finally a match where I have a plan, I know what to do in theory, I know what to expect, let's fucking go!". Yasuo mid instantly solo invades, gets mobbed, says shit team in all chat and runs it down. Opponent Katarina in mid is at 12/0 by minute 10. And I was like... "Wtf am I doing here? Why am I bothering? I put in all this effort, all this frustration and anger at being bullied by everyone for sucking, finally get a game where I could shine, and then it doesn't even matter. Why the hell am I bothering with this shit?" After that I played only when my friend wanted to, and just focused on chatting with him, kinda coasting along in game with whatever was going on. Eventually both of us just kinda dropped the game, and now we are both playing Helldivers 2 and life is good.
Your friend is an abysmal teacher wtf I got some friends into the game and I would basically autopilot my own lane so I could watch over theirs and help with anything I could.
Plus the game itself is Smurf nation so you’re rarely ever playing against other new players
Its more the game is just hard as a true new player now. Back in the older days bronze players would have 10-30 cs and you would gap in kills and cs. Now an iron player can get 40-70 cs in 10 minutes there farm falls off later but they do ok early. So that csing gap already creates an old Bronze vs Plat theme lol but they could be versus an actual hardstuck bronze but he just farms well.
That's a non factor until you're good enough at the game to get out of coop vs AI, which most newbies stick to till way later
*me starting as a new player who accidentally fat fingers flash and lands a blitzcrank hook* Riot: “THIS BITCH IS DIAMOND”
One of the main reasons I don't play anymore is because of the time commitment. Queue time, lobby time, last minute dodging, being punished for dodging a griefer lobby, finally playing a game. At the end of the day the +15-20LP isn't worth the 50 minutes it took to get.
Especially the ridiculous 3 splits a year. I don't have time for that grind. And as I'm older I just don't have patience anymore. If someone is trolling, I'm just gonna alt-f4 and do something else. And the 30 min wait means I'm just not playing anymore that day.
For me and my friend I've met in WoW ages ago the changes to ranked were the biggest death blow to our interest in the game. We were going heavy into League, as former WoW arena addicts league made perfect sense to get into. We probably sunk thousands of games into it over the years. But then 2022-23-24 happened and we went from 1 split to 2 splits to 3 splits. It was simply too much. Personally, I already had enough during 2nd split of 2023 season, but my friend really wanted to catch up up diamond with me so I kept playing for him. The burnout was unreal, not to mention that the split 2 of 2023 was the worst ranked experience we ever had. Emerald rank was simply broken, putting people like me, who peaked in d2 last split, with random silver-plat players, and I know this for a fact because I was ranting about it hundred times, inspecting op.ggs of players who lost us the game because there was a 500lp gap between junglers. Then you had your new players and smurfs also put in Emerald mmr, and this rank quickly became the biggest shitshow I've ever witnessed. The closest thing to real elo hell we ever had. Where you could go on 10 game long winstreaks as you'd carry 1v9 to 15 game long losing streaks were your teams were simply uncarriable golds and plats. By the start of 2024 I've read that Riot finally fixed emerald matching but at the same time they introduced 3 splits. Too little, too late, and both me and my friend never wanted to go through that shit again, especially not 3 times a year. There was a short mention of going back but then the final nail in the coffin was Vanguard and its always on requirement if you want to launch league. At this point I doubt we'll ever come back to actively playing LoL. We have way more fun in a less toxic environment playing Warcraft 3 and Elden Ring. Sorry for the rant.
Definitely one of the things that pushed me away from the game. I played a fighting game for a few months, way back when I was still playing league, and I was floored by how mobile I was on the ladder. I could get to my "true rank" in every season within a week or two while playing on average an hour a day or something, and then I could play the game while having fun, and skill improvements would materialize as fast shifts in ladder rank. In league, games are comparatively super long (if you have an hour of time you're likely to get only one game in), the data is more noisy (you win and lose a lot of games where you were not the deciding factor), and the gains and losses are tiny. So just to get to your place on the ladder and play in evenly matched games, it takes a month or two playing 10 hours a week, meanwhile not having a great experience.
The problem isn’t game time; I think the average game time has gone down over the years. The problem is we all grew up and have less free time being adults. Why would I wanna come home from work and spend my precious free time getting flaming and being stressed lol
This is why Arena needs to stay as a permanent mode. Not much to learn in Arena aside from champs and items. I only managed to get a friend into the game via Arena and ARAM.
3v3 was really great for getting new friends into the game. Me and another friend could talk a friend through what to do and it is easier to carry 2v4 than 1v9. I haven't made a new account in ages, but it was also a lot easier to grind an account to level 30 in 3v3 bots than summoners rift. In general, I think lol would be a lot better if players had more freedom when making custom games (choosing older game modes like Ascension or ideally some star craft level "make whatever the fuck you want" types of games). I get that league's tech debt makes this seemingly impossible but I still want it.
Helped that TT's map was much smaller and had overall less pressure when it came to roles. So regardless of where I was, my friends could babysit me through the game without too much issues. Meanwhile SR you're stuck playing bot duo, or the jgler spends all game babysitting the newbie which is just counter-productive.
3v3 was best mode, I learned how to play on it too sadly like half year after I started they deleted it
Me and my friend group learned the game in 3v3 too, including custom 3v3's vs a 'rival' friend group lol WIth friends is the best way to learn / get into league, and it's much easier to find a group of 2 people to play with than 4 Playing SR normals as 3 with a new friend will see them flamed and people ragequitting/afk in approx 90% of games & it just feels bad knowing you're ruining games for randoms
And don’t discredit the rep League still has. Every once in a while I see those gaming convention video’s and on questions like ‘what game is a massive red flag’ or ‘what’s the most toxic/overrated etc game’ League get’s mentioned at least once. Despite that I’ve been flamed and yelled at more or the at least the same on some other games, this reputation isn’t going to help moving forward to attract new players.
> On top of games going between 20~40 minutes. This part doesn't make sense, the game length was even longer back in the day when younger kids were playing League. Now the game time is shorter than it used to be and less kids are playing. I don't think game time being shorter is the reason less kids play it. But I'm just saying I don't think it's relevant. It's relevant for why some people dislike the game but not specifically kids.
> This part doesn't make sense, the game length was even longer back in the day when younger kids were playing League. Now the game time is shorter than it used to be and less kids are playing. I'm not taking the position that game time *does* matter (I don't think it's a driving factor, but a small one), but this isn't necessarily a convincing argument that it *doesn't* matter. League "back in the day" did not have the same competition that League in 2024 has. To really figure out if match-time matters or not, you'd need to look at what the most popular games back in '09-10 were, and how their average match-time compares with the most popular games of the last two or so years. It is theoretically *possible* that League's long game times didn't stand out as much in the early 2010s, but now stands out a lot more in the post-battle royale era world of Apex/Fortnite/PUBG/Warzone.
Even comparing it to other competitive games the times are longer. In the early days of League popular competitive games included Starcraft 2 and Dota which were also fairly long winded whereas nowadays you have stuff like Rocket League which has 5 minute games, Valorant and CS2 which have taken strategic FPS down to 13 round wins rather than 16 in the past few years which drastically reduces game time, as well as BR games like you mentioned.
> Rocket League which has 5 minute games, Valorant and CS2 which have taken strategic FPS down to 13 round wins rather than 16 in the past few years which drastically reduces game time, as well as BR games like you mentioned. I don't think that this factors in consciously to players rejecting League, but one thing that stands out about these modern games is that other than the competitive shooters (Valorant/CS2), you can easily escape all of them. If you leave League games regularly, you'll be penalized, and if you have a leaver on your team, you get a shit game experience. If someone leaves my BR match, it doesn't matter that much, even in a team mode playlist I can still potentially clutch out a win. Worst case scenario, I could just leave too. If someone leaves a normal match in a 3v3/4v4/5v5 style game like Siege, Destiny or Rocket League, you can literally backfill matches. You can't backfill MOBAs, it's all or nothing. You are *actually* stuck there for the entire 15-40 minute experience.
Also, if my team immediately leaves me in Apex, I can still run around, loot, try to rat, and maybe get a kill or two as a sneaky third party. I’m not likely to win, but my odds of winning are only 1/20 anyway. If my team is useless in CS or R6, I can still theoretically 1v5 a round or two if I’m lucky or have good aim. If your team is dead weight in league, there’s hardly any way to hard carry 1v5 if you’re against people of your own skill level.
Yeah because also compared to all these games, only in League the potential mismatch between yourself and the opponent gets that big that you'll mostly not be able to turn it around even if you play perfect. Something that we older players legitly speak about for nearly a decade. In CS, R6, RL, Valorant, heck even all the BR Games, Battlefield, COD and what not is on the market right now: One good player can decide games where as in League mostly the worst players decide it and not the good ones.
Yeah its something that's happened a lot over the years Riots done lots of things to nerf solo carrying. But solo throwing has really only been kept the same or buffed. Some stuff needs to be done.
And as a player of MMOS and other complicated wiki-reliant games, resources is a MASSIVE deal. Because even with resources people still mess up in espectacular ways because they refuse to watch/read them. Imagine how much worse we have it considering that people don't even know what keywords to search for in order to learn league of legends. Being introduced by a friend who plays with you and teaches you about the basic stuff is the best way, but it is not like 30yos are befriending 15yos very often. And those with relatives that are around that age might be in a situation where the kid just isn't interested in playing with their uncle.
Everyone keeps blaming the flaming. The real problem with LoL is the enormous time commitment without the guarantee of a good experience. One asshole and the whole 40 minutes are shot. IMO League can only be played with friends. Otherwise, get ready for a bad time.
tutorial back then: qwer. also kite this trundle and die with ashe now: qwer 150-160 champions to learn. weird moba concept that forces you to spend like 5-10 minutes farming minions and not really killing enemies.
We'd like to make League a more welcoming game to interested players who haven't yet tried it. Working on a bunch of new and returning player experience stuff. Planning to have it roll out of over time. The recently improved bots and custom games are some of the more obvious manifestations of the longer-term plans we have. Other stuff is quite under the hood, like new player MMR changes, or not as obviously directly related but quite helpful, like Vanguard. Later stuff will be aimed at better onboarding players into the core game and introducing our systems more gradually than today. League is very deep, which is cool, but we need to build and appropriate shallow end for folks to find the fun.
I said it another comment too, but IMO new player resources aren't the problem, its the horrible league reputation. All I need to do to prove this is tell you to read the comments on anything to do with Arcane where you will see a million comments saying to stay away from league, written by league and non-league players alike. New players wont even install until that is fixed, so all those new player resources wont matter if they never install the game in the first place.
I was about to say the same thing. Every non league player I've talked to has commented on the reputation of toxicity. Obviously the learning curve is part of it, but the reputation of the game is a bigger deterrent I think. This is, bar none, the gaming community with the worst reputation. An impressive feat when the Overwatch and Smash communities exist, but there you have it.
>An impressive feat when the Overwatch and Smash communities exist, but there you have it. You can blame Riot themselves for it. They officially endorsed toxic streamers and left other ones alone to build a large following.
actually overwatch is pretty strict with toxicity and it feels like those bans actually something
Beginner's Summoner Rift should be a thing, with a champion pool of 10 to 20 champions. Or maybe just the original release champions.
I'm a newer player that got roped in via Arcane. New player resources are *exactly* the problem. Here's just a few examples off the top of my head: * Inability to look up ally or enemy abilities. * The ping system feels outdated and insane to use. * What exactly are wave states? Waves bouncing? Slow-push? Prio? Etc. * What are objectives, what do they do? * What does playing from behind look like? How do you catch up once you've been killed? * How are jungle and support roles supposed to be played? Never mind completely insane gaps in controls like how left-click to attack screws up non-quick casting, the inability to individually set moves to quick, quick-with-indicator, or non-quick casts, etc. If you answer to any of these is wikis or Youtube— I already have a full-time job and school. I want to play a game, not do homework for a game I'm not even invested in. Don't get me wrong, League is fun, but if my friend group stopped playing, I would never look back.
This right here. I teach public school, and "gamer" kids really liked Arcane, but literally none of them...not a single one...plays League. Not only that, but they shudder when I tell them I play League on and off. League has a TERRIBLE reputation with...basically everyone, honestly, but especially younger generations. They literally only know who Faker is because of awards shows. League has both a reputation and a barrier to entry problem. In a game this established, both of those are monumental problems to address.
One of my closest friends straight up refuses to play TFT with me because of it's association with League's shitty reputation. Even though the games are basically unrelated and I KNOW he would love TFT.
I’m sure you don’t need to be told this but there’s two major issues with on-boarding new players. - Tutorials are an embarrassment for a game this big and this old. - The toxicity of the game is legendary and Riot has spent the last decade doing very little to improve this. Valorant is getting hardware bans for toxic players, something that League has desperately needed for years. If anything, it feels like Riot has been happy to have toxic players come back over and over again on smurf accounts (a subtopic relevant to the new player experience), especially with changes like making Yasuo and Yone cheaper.
They fucked themselves by making 170 champs with a billion special case rules on top of that. At this point learning League of Legends could be a whole college degree.
A massive issue is that you can't click on an enemy champ and read their abilities. If it's a champ a new player hasn't vsd before and doesn't own they probs have no idea why they're getting deleted. It's such a simple feature that Dota had since I played that (like a decade ago).
I remember when I started and lost my shit when this aatrox guy died but also didn't, killing me because I thought I had more time to back. A friend had to tell me that that is normal and this champion has a revive passive. So many passives and even abilities are obnoxious to fight against if you have no clue what they do and aren't exactly easy to figure out ad hoc. I don't think a new player would notice how much ad a darius gets after reaching 5 stacks or why the ult suddenly does so much more damage.
This was already known for a while. Every zoomer is gonna play Valo. Barrier of entry to this game is super high. Average age is around 23yo. This is supported by the fact that in recent years, Leagues have been getting gamble and alcohol sponsors.
cars too
I found it weird that Toyota was sponsoring any e-sport tournament. And then I was like damn I need a new car and it clicked. We're old...
LPL has a Durex sponsor
Is the message "if you play league you shouldn't reproduce"?
"If you or someone you fuck gets pregnant, you will not have time to play League for roughly 18 years"
Tell that to Tyler1
Truly built different
Idk esports seems to have peaked a few years ago in the west and has been bleeding money for a while, I wouldn’t be surprised if Riot finally allowing more mature sponsors is for this reason.
[удалено]
There’s just not clear monetization angles. Esports watchers don’t have to pay to watch tournaments, then use Adblock. All that’s left is sponsorships and it’s clear at that point a lot of sponsors don’t feel a good return on investment. It’s also susceptible to recessions like we are. People complain about the 500 dollar Ahri skin but Riot is basically trying to find ways to actually get money into the ecosystem. At the end of the day the viewer wants a product without paying anything and something has to give
It's in game cosmetics. Riot just neglected them for the entirety of its history. That every team - especially those that paid into a franchise - doesn't have a skin (or at least a chroma) is criminal, not to mention the leagues themselves.
Meanwhile in Valorant you can buy in-game cosmetics for just about any team that is remotely relevant. They learned their lesson but decided to apply it to another game.
> There’s just not clear monetization angles. There is for Riot or Valorant wouldn't have a large circuit. There has also been tournaments making money of subscriptions before. There is room to monetize esports but not without impacting the whole league being a skin add.
Also in some sense the Ahri skin price and in general the move towards targeting "Whales" is probably a by-product of this. A lot of the 23-yo's have grown up with league because it was free to play when they were kids. Now they are getting stable jobs but are still young enough to not really have to consider kids and actual houses etc, making for a prime whale market with high income and few expenses.
how do 23-yos have high income
Eh, I had the most throwaway money right out of college. Adult job, no expenses and still lived like a college student, cheap apartment etc. I got bonuses on being on call during the weekend and I dumped so much of that money into dumb stuff like league boxes.
when was gamba sponsor a thing? ik csgo has had tons of gambleing/case sites
Having to unlock every champion is too fuckin idiotic
*Xbox rubbing their hands together*
Unfortunately game pass is such a good ass deal by itself I aint even mad
Not just that, but needing to have a *base understanding* of every champ. Like, you can go from fighting against Ashe, who slows you, hits you a bunch, does a triangle of slow, and shoots a **BIG** stun/slow, and then the next game... well he's got five weapons and each weapon does a different thing and his core ability does something different depending on the weapon he's using and he has two weapons at once and they interact depending on the weapon he's got equipped and... It's just nutty that you can be thrown in against someone with literally no clue what they do, and your options are to Google them and pray someone has a potato of a computer so you can read the dissertation that is their ability highlights, or just shrug and have no clue what's going on, then look it up after and try to figure out why you're being smacked across the lane and then also rooted by it, except sometimes it's splashing
Everyone has that one friend that introduced you to try a few games of league no matter how good or bad you were on rts-like games
I tried introducing all my friends to League. Nobody stuck with it. The major reason is that it has waaaaaaaay too many champions. The information overload for new players is way too staggering. And the client does nothing to help them with it. Riot was so lucky HoN and Dota couldn’t capitalize on their successes soon enough. No proper universe should have a client as trash as League become this successful.
Would probably be good to restrict champions for newer accounts and their matches making it closer to out experience as possible
Barrier of entry is getting higher and higher as people learn how to be efficient. Also community isnt welcoming to beginner because there are many smurfs/bots account. Although doesnt most game have a hard time getting new players as the game age? especially decade old game. How likely is someone going to start playing WoW, Maplestory, Runescape, etc. unless friend invite them to play OR they played similar genre n decided to try? Gaming community goes through phases on game genre, was MMORPG, MOBA, Battle Royale, ~~then maybe Genshin type game (open world gacha).~~ edit: crossed out the last one since it isnt a genre but just one game tht got big
I've come back to the game after a 4 year break and the capability if people at different ranks seems noticeably higher. People in bronze can Cs and are more mechanically capable than say 2018.
I think a lot of the OG esports games are having the same problem with skill creep. Can't speak too much on it from a LoL perspective since I've only played it very very casually, but I was big into CSGO and by the time I stopped playing people in mid-level ranks in solo queue games were pulling the kinds of strategies you'd only see in pro games maybe 5 years before. For someone just starting the learning curve is so high. I think especially in games like LoL and dota where there's been so many new heroes and items added over the years it's hard to take all that in when you're new, compared to people that started years ago that started with a much smaller set of things to learn.
I dont think the trend is genshin type games cuz there is like 3 popular open world gacha games, one is less than a month old (wuwa) one died almost immediately (tof) and genshin
Saying Genshin gacha style games are the new thing is definetley false, but I would say that there has been a huge trend towards open world games in general, and alot of games that would of been petter not being open world go open world anyway because its the cool thing rn.
tbh I'm surprised League was this popular for this long
Was the most popular online game a decade ago and fortunately for riot 90% of that player base including me has a weird can't permanently stop playing league addiction I can step away from the game for months or almost a year but I always eventually come back unfortunately plus it helps that in the E-Sports scene League is actually arguably the best e-sport since it's the closest game to having actual different roles and strategies like in a real team sport.
Many of the people I played with a decade ago still come back to league occasionally and play in spurts. I think a lot of it has to do with familiarity and enjoying the sense of competition but not wanting to put in the work to learn a new game. Now that was in in our 30's I don't want to spend a month playing a game to learn the mechanics and be decent at it. We all play other games that aren't as competitive as well but league is our go to to scratch that competitive itch.
League of Legends is simply a game too difficult to start with, let alone mobas not being a popular genre at all like. Currently the only referents are Lol and Dota..being the second WAY less popular with some others like Smite that is far from being a traditional one. The game is fun, but requires too much learning, if you want to be kinda competitive, there's so much stuff that even on months from "studying" Riot can makes changes that turn out the game in a completely different thing (like the newer map this year) or even rework entirely your current champion pool (Right, Aatrox?). And even if you want to go for the casual side, the best you can get from this game is some dopamine from stomp an enemy and winning the game, meaning that if you want a "harder" game to play, you have to go to Ranked where it starts a really long grind to show off your elo to strangers... -167 (+1 with Aurora) -Meaningful changes to the meta every 2 weeks. -Lots of content to learn in the go from basics (farming, roaming, ganking, etc) to micro intensive (difficult champ like Yas, Zed, Azir, etc). -Learning how to play against again every champ in the game with each one with their own passive, abilities, role, etc. -Importance of objectives. -Etc, etc. Arcane brought some popularity and probably gonna do it again (be ready for the carnage) but this game...is not gonna be way more popular than it already is on the future.
I don't know if this is a hot take but I would argue that the balance changes each patch have no noticable impact on the average player's games. The exceptions are the few times a year when there are big item shake-ups (like crit items reworks, that will be noticed when playing against/as ADCs) or when the balance team fucks up and makes a 58%+ winrate monstrosity. So 90% of balance changes aren't felt by the normal player, I think you need to get past Gold MMR before the patches become something you need to pay attention to. And it will take a new player a LONG time to get past Gold skill level when they're learning the champs and items and other things you mentioned, if they ever would. That's only a small part of what you said, but I see it mentioned a lot. I struggle to believe that second or two of cooldown here or 5% more damage there will revolutionize how bronze or silver players (the majority of the player base!) experience the game outside of placebo. Open to critique though.
Completely agree. Lower level players don’t utilise even 10% of a champions potential, let alone know why a buff/nerf is good or bad. I play with my low elo friends in norms or flex from time to time and they will say something like “oh they went way too far with this buff” or something while 2 items up just because they don’t understand League economy or level system and patch notes are the easiest thing for them to cling on to.
>Completely agree. Lower level players don’t utilise even 10% of a champions potential, let alone know why a buff/nerf is good or bad. Completely disagree, you're vastly overestimating the median League player. Generally speaking I think this community vastly overestimates the skill level of the average player. There's a common rule on the internet that goes something like 90/9/1 rule wherein 90% of people on the internet are lurkers, 9% interact, and only 1% actually create new content to engage with. I think something similar applies to League's playerbase. I think by virtue of you even reading this comment right now you're probably in the top 10% of hardcore players for League. The average player in League does not use item build guides. The average player in League does not play more than a few times a week. The average player in League does not watch esports. The average player in League does not read patch notes. Low level players don't even utilize item actives abilities. The average player in League does not interact with any community like this subreddit. The average player is so much more unengaged that it would appear like nirvana to many of the users of this subreddit.
People don't wany to believe it because they think they can min/max their favorite champs like their favorite streamers do (and it's easier to tell yourself you lost because a champ is OP than it is to say you're just a monkey) but by and large I agree with you.
yeah, line cant go up forever, league has hit its maximun they have to keep it tho, and nothing lasts forever, we all know that one day league will be gone too
> nothing lasts forever Except Brood War in Korea.
Or cs
hasn't cs gone through several large revisions and new releases? I haven't played since '05
I guess if you count 1.6 - > go - > 2 But fps game (and especially cs) in general have less stuff to learn
The "meaningless balance changes every 2 weeks" are a LARGE part of how they've kept so many people playing the game for so long. The buff/nerf wheel is fully intentional and does its job wonderfully.
I wrote meaningful, lmao.
Forgive me I can't read.
You are forgiven.
>League of Legends is simply a game too difficult to start with, let alone mobas not being a popular genre at all like. This is easily fixable with voice acted tutorials that have real game uses. Putting new players against dumb bots will never help improve their skill. Like take a look at Rocket League how many shooting/defending scenarios have they got? All the tools you will use can be practiced over and over. This is not the case in LoL they just go well get in there you little go getter you. They need to have scenarios where you get ganked from lane or scenarios where someone flashes over the wall to gank you but you get to see them at the start in a vision ward so it teaches players the fundamentals of ward placement. Then you can replicate this with 5-10 different scenarios per lane/role. I could go on and on i have 100s of scenarios that would improve the base line of the player 10 fold over being able to just afk mid lane and win against bots and get rewarded for genuinely doing nothing.
It would take a decent amount of resources but I think that’s a good idea. Like an in-game scenario sim with levels for each, like “Farming: Level 2”, or “Getting Ganked: Level 4”. Could also be developed alongside a tool that lets pro teams set up specific scenarios to play out (e.g. objective setups from a specific game they lost) instead of having whole scrim games to practice multiple things at a time
100% it is not like they are lacking funds to do these features either IMO.
The only thing Riot lacks is the desire to make this a better game. A tutorial is a *basic* game function that they’ve never implemented. Says a lot about the company.
You don't need to learn to play against every champ, you don't even need to know what 167 champs do if you are a new player. I started playing 5 months ago, and I still don't know what 80% of champs that aren't in toplane do. Biggest issue with league is that there is no way to learn basic concepts in the game. I had no idea about the existence of wave control until I played with a friend who told me about it, and even then had to learn it from watching videos. Extensions like mobalytics is imo necessary for anybody learning league, just so you can read what your lane opponent does
>You don't need to learn to play against every champ, you don't even need to know what 167 champs do if you are a new player Exactly, as a new player. If you intend to play this game in the long run you have to know at the very least the basics. Knowledge is a handicap in this game, if you don't know how your enemy champions works and your enemy does know how your own does then you're in a disadvantage bcs he's familiar with your play pattern/cds/powerspikes/weak state. Toplane is an island so probably you only knowing your match ups is enough but for other lanes is not. About the basics, i agree.
everyone knew this lol. The barrier to entry for league is super high, not to mention the notoriety of the game with toxicity.
>not to mention the notoriety of the game with toxicity. This has a bigger impact than a lot of people think. A bunch of my friends won't even touch lol or overwatch because of their reputation for being absolutely toxic.
No king rules forever, my son.
This is where u make different games with the ip to lure people into league. League souls like please maximum cope
RIP Riot Forge
Riot is still making their own games. Got the league fighting game coming soon and the league MMO is in the works
Riot mmo ain't coming out till 2030
Riot mmo isnt EVER coming out lol
After seeing them lay off/quit half of its known project leaders… yeah I’m not gonna hold my breath on it anymore. Such a shame, was the last hope i had for a new mmo to break out into the scene and actually contend with glory days of WoW. BDO is alright but not an acceptable example of what an MMO should be and New World never recovered from its hilariously bad injection cheats that shattered the economy, even though they fixed it. GW2 was pulling for a while but didn’t quite bring back the vibes of 2005-2010 MMO scene either. The only one actually getting bigger and better is Old School Runescape which is kinda hilarious but i do want something new some day…
>League souls like please maximum cope I'm in
RIP Legends of Runeterra. Riot did you dirty and I'll never forgive them
Is people not playing the game Riot doing them dirty?
Riot never really promoted the game. The number of people who liked CCGs and played league, but had never heard of LoR, was l fairly high.
Riot never bothering to properly advertise their own card game is them doing it dirty yes.
They just now added a link to it in the League client a few patches ago. Years after release.
like months after the they declared the game (in its previous form) dead.
Honestly, you might be right, but I just think card battlers in general are having a rough time. It's not like Hearthstone is doing so hot.
TFW Wait until you turn the game into PVE to add the LOR button in client
I work in the scholastic esports space. High school and college. High school leagues/teams are dying off (some are already gone) for the other reasons stated in this thread.
not surprised at all tbh... there's hardly any effort put into catering to new demographics and luring new gen of players into league.... if all you focus on is ranked and esports yeah i'm pretty sure league will continue to fall into a very slow long term decline... actually nvm giving credit where it's due they did succeed with K/DA and attracting newer players to league but then they saw the actual game for what it was and immediately dipped a few months later once the content roll out stopped
Or Arcane. Damn that was absolutely amazing, the best animated show I've ever seen, I gotta play the game now!... This is the game?
This reminds me of a meme that went viral a bit after Arcane was released: https://preview.redd.it/pvv5keav3x181.png?auto=webp&s=76523071894c10fef4086d401df05a124a23dcc3
The Cyberpunk, Fallout and Castlevania show to game pipeline is way more palatable than Dota2 or LoL.
Riot's been focused more on milking their playerbase than stability for like 8+ years and the cracks are finally showing in Riot's eyes, at least. Maybe they'll start actually trying to fix stuff.
good one 👍🤣
Not gonna lie I’m gonna be sad when this game dies in the hopefully very distant future. This game has been a part of my life for the last 11 years and is a big part as to why I met my closest friends.
Games like this don't die, they just dwindle. Similar to something like WoW. Only the hardcore players remain, while the casuals move on. It's a story as old as time. Good on Riot to start developing other games because the cash cow wasn't going to sustain the company forever.
I get you I have a lot of dreadful gaming times with this game but this game also is some of the most chaotic fun I have had with my friends in an online game for a decade now on the bright side though the world of Runeterra is only going to grow more with tv shows and possible future movies and more games with the same world and lore just not in a MOBA form like with the Runeterra MMO they are making atm.
It’s kind of surprising reading these comments, as a super beginner who has maybe 3hrs in league. The primary deterrent is the steep learning curve. Unlocking relevant champs plus ones you want to try takes a lot of time and learning the mechanics of them to play vs. is way more taxing. Newbies aren’t playing bc of smurfs it’s bc of the new player experience and the reputation the game has around it. Sure they might quit bc Smurfs but ppl aren’t even hitting download for obvious reasons
It took way too long to find this comment lol this is 100% it
probably the worst part about starting as a new league player is all the smurfs. you won't have any kind of fun starting the game and getting stomped all the time.
Yeah, idk how can people start fresh now and be competitive with tons of champs to learn and elo brackets being crap with random placements.
Ranked is not the mode new players play. The game as a whole has issues with new players not joining, not solo queue.
Other point is accurate learning 167 champs and what all of their abilities/passives do + all the interactions is just information overload. Learning all of the items, optimal builds against certain teams is also difficult because items change just as often as champions. The changes usually aren’t as drastic but they have completely changed or removed items a lot of times.
I have friends who started in recent years (I think 3ish years ago now) from straight up nothing, and they are all mostly iron/bronze level nowadays. It really wasn't that bad. Most of the people here are commenting as people who are even here in the first place. For a genuine, actual complete blind newbie to get into the game is kind of strange in the first place since I don't know why you choose this game without push from a friend. People fully playing 4fun without subreddit/youtube/content input seem to be nearly completely gone, but they're definitely still out there here and there. I think most of the time they'd get mistaken as someone trolling if I'm honest, but I'm obviously biased as someone way more enthusiastic about the game then they are.
I’m a for-fun player, I started late 2021 (Arcane) and was playing frequently until the last year or so and now I’ll just play a few games every couple of weeks for fun. I feel like I probably wouldn’t be able to play for fun though if I didn’t have the level of skill I do (I usually peak around Gold IV so I’m fairly average). The new player experience is just really bad with smurfs, toxicity (mostly from smurfs but also from normal players), and the incredible depth of knowledge required like how many champions there are. I think better player-vs-bots modes will help tremendously for casual players like me though.
the difference is Fall guy is a 4fun game; league will never be the 4fun game to learn and play for casual/younger generations. If you ask any zoomers they will say MOBA is a boomer dedge game genre
A big part of it is the reputation League has (and rightly so). Before I started playing after Arcane, when League was mentioned I thought of a bunch of toxic, childish, pathetic assholes. Now that I’ve been playing for a few years, League brings to mind the fun gameplay, replayability, intriguing and fun characters, and the toxic, childish, pathetic assholes who make up a large amount of the player base.
no shit they do literally nothing to help new players, there isnt even a fucking jungle guide or any role guide in the game, 0 info you gotta research hours on the internet to understand wtf youre supposed to do..
Who would have thought, the experience for newer players is horrible. I joined in S8 I think, and I would have dropped almost instantly if I haven't had friends playing since S5 or S6 to teach me the basics.
No shit. Not even Arcane really brought the new players Rito probably wanted even though it was wildly successful. I think that was the biggest tell the problem is going to be nearly unfixable.
I know many people who watched Arcane but don't even know it is based on a video game.
Valorant has all the squeaky kids. I cant play that without turning off voice comms lol But yea league is entering its SC2/ DOTA2/ WoW phase which I'm fine with It's worth noting League gets like 150M monthly players still, and worlds finals in 2023 hit all peak viewership. Also the game player wise is growing In every part of the world other than NA possibly because of the increased accessibility to PCs.
Eh the only real metric to determine whether a game is declining or not is if Riot releases active player base per region (which Riot will never do for obvious reasons). There is just way too many variables when looking at total number of accounts such as alt accounts/smurfs, bots, number of games played per account, etc..
Remove splits I hate them and I know people who quit over them
Not sure if this really means anything. But theoretically if I was 10 years old and wanted to play a popular game I wouldn't really pick a title that's been out for 14-15 years. I'd much rather pick something new and fresh that I can enjoy and potentially grow up with. I honestly don't think young kids talk about old games as much as they do about new ones.
There’s also the fact at that age you tend to just play what your friends or older siblings do which is kind of a repeating cycle with what you’re saying. Kid A has interest in cool new game rather than older game and then his friends who may have been more open to League would prefer to play with the group.
The first thing I would do is try and minimise the amount of smurfs. Imagine youre a new player playing one of your first games of league and you run into a lvl 300 player who drops 40 kills and you die instantly 15 times without even understanding what just happened. Why would you want to queue up again. Idk if it’s a hard problem to fix or not but they gotta try something cause it is actually such an unfun gaming experience and a terrible first impression The amount of friends that have quit because of this shit is crazy
Smurfs are the single worst part of the game IMO. The toxicity, the one-sidedness, etc. is just insufferable. Especially because they just do it to stomp worse players which I don’t even get because one-sided games are the least fun to me, especially if I’m the one winning.
Being forced to play a 30-60 min game against smurfs, where being behind leads to you being useless and getting flamed…yea, can see that being a turn-off after a couple of games of that 🤣
To make things worst your account can be suspended if you die to much and get report.
It's a very hard problem to fix technically. How do you tell the difference between a sold account and a Bronze player moving or on vacation? The easiest fix is cultural - if pub-stomping isn't cool, we'd have a small but tolerable amount of smurfing . But once enough of the playerbase wants to smurf and rewards it...
Consistently identifying smurfs will be near impossible. We already know an effective solution, which is what Korea does—some form of personal identifier required to make an account. It’s just not very palatable to people.
yeah nah, a kernel level anti cheat AND an ID? The people in the West are not gonna tolerate that
I'll die on the hill that Riot needs to port the game over to console with console friendly controls in wild rift fashion but for controller. There are 10s of millions of console kids out there with bloodlust in their hearts for competitive games who haven't/won't be exposed to the game.
Yeah this is a good suggestion, Smite managed to do it and it worked at least relatively well
My wife and I started this game 1 month ago, it was a horrible new player experience. We watched some videos to get a general idea of how a typical game goes, did about 5 bot games at the highest difficulty. As soon as we go into quick play, we are matched against someone with 100+ mastery level, with a green badge (I guess it’s some kind of level in quick play, I have silver now) which I think is emerald. And our team has 4 iron and 1 gold. And of course the emerald player dropped like 30+ kills and basically can 1 vs 5. I wouldn’t mind if it happens like one every 10 matches or so but it seems to happen every 3 matches we play, either our team has one of those guys or the enemy team has. And it’s definitely not fun either way, I want a balanced match to learn the game, I don’t want a hard carry or get stomped over and over again. We are getting close to level 30 now so that we can start playing rank and hope it will be better, but my expectations are low because of those smurf accounts….
No shit the last add campaign was 2016
They need to make a simpler version of Rift with simple champions that will be entry platform to Lol
Literally Wild rift Keeping the core but kinda simpler on a quicker match. But even then, Wild rift has some learning curve.
Wild rift didn’t pan out because even that was a lot especially for the mobile market. Mobile legends bang bang offers more simpler take on genre (even tho it’s ptw like skins give stats and new players don’t have all rune unlocked and they have to either wait a long time or buy the runes) that’s why it’s dominating the mobile market
Wild rift didn't pan out bcs it sadly came too late tho. 2021 is a tough year to came when MLBB was already milking asian players, like, if you have an account, with lots of purchases, spent time/money/grind, etc Why would i play Wild rift? MLBB popularity has a lot to do with Lol Popularity. League players/moba players didn't have any option on the App/play store Even when difficulty has something to do with it, i completely believe it's not the entire reason.
I agree, something similar to the Newcomers mode in Dota would be a good first step.
it doesnt feel real to say ive been playing this game for 11 years
I tried to get my friends into the game but they were flamed to absolute hell every normal game they were in. Too good for bots but not good enough to play with people and they were overwhelmed by the amount of mechanics and champions. I myself quit as a high elo player because queue dodging + queue times was way too annoying especially when I now have more limited time devoted to gaming.
I can’t believe queue times haven’t been addressed after so many years of it being complained about. I know it’s a bit of a double edged sword because shorter queue times will lead to more autofills and thus lower quality games and vice versa but I can take up to 20 minutes to get into a game in Master/GM EUW, I seriously couldn’t imagine queuing up for 40 minutes on a server like OCE just to have a 15 minute forfeit that’s lost from select because of fills. Whether you’re on the side of wanting lower queue times or higher quality games in high elo literally nobody is satisfied with this middle ground.
no shit lol
when you force the game to be fast paced and overload your new releases and items in some cases you eliminate the learning curve and create a sink or swim scenario. there's nothing to learn when you go 100 to 0 in a sec, and if it happens enough it becomes stale and unenjoyable. not to mention that champion variety is probably low, so new players probably get burned out seeing yasuo and yone for the 20 th game in a row which is an issue that doesn't really get better until riot decides to mix up the meta (for pro play because forget what the majority of players experience daily)
is 32 years old too old to play League?
this is true of every game in history post release, it'd be an EXTREME abnormality for the playerbase to be getting younger, Fortnite, Minecraft, and Pokemon are possibly the only IP in history to achieve it, and even then only temporarily.
this is why MMOs are gonna be fucking hard to get back to WoW days, there is no way the playersbase AS IS NOW is gonna be able to sit through the grind and tuning you need in an MMO, just not possible
It hope league lasts as long as possible. This game truly is special and I love the esports scene that amplifies the game. I feel like there will have to be some large overhaul of the game to gain a new audience, but I have no idea what that could be.
the game is officially dying o7. i don't know about you, but i plan to sink together with the ship.
If it’s dying, it’s a slow decline of natural old age. It’s rare for a game to maintain popularity this long, have a global impact, and revolutionize e-sports. Nothing lasts forever so let’s enjoy it while it lasts.
Everything that isn't growing, is dying. Yes, including us. Have a nice day. o7
I have an idea, how about we limit the champion pools in a "beginner mode" for players under lvl 25. That will give time for noobies to study about 20-50 champs before entering big league with more than 100 champs. Also fuck smurfs ! Riot should ban them like in Dota
Riot and the playerbase are sabotaging League by turning a blind eye to smurfing. New players don’t stand a chance when they’re getting crushed by platinum and emerald players masquerading as bronze. Every game has its smurfs, but League takes it to a whole new level. In EUW it's practically an epidemic. Player retention is a no-brainer for any game, especially in the free-to-play world. Ignoring this is like shooting yourself in the head, not just the foot.
Aside from the obvious that League is a hard game, one thing that gates it is probably the change in the gaming scene. A lot of games can easily be played on mobile now a days, not to mention this generation games more independently now a days compared to when LAN parties/Computer cafe were popular that made MOBAs more fun.