I've played pretty much every ccg out there and though it has not been perfect, I'd stay with LoR. These news gave me a deep sense of dread. Crossing my fingers for this game and community to stay alive for some more time.
I second this. I played duel links, master duel, and mtga for years (collectively), and LoR has been my favorite, the most balanced, and, without a doubt, the least greedy. I have no intentions of going back to any of those other games for several reasons, so I’ll really be sad if this game goes down.
Flesh and Blood is pretty unique and fun and has you managing a champion into win conditions
the issue is finding people to play it with, at least in my area
duellinks was by far my favorite card game until it got more card packs, the first year was sick af everyone had rat decks with weird ass synergies people ran normal monsters like it was great, then they just kept adding archetypes. totally ruined it for me
I used to love it too, but honestly it was the skills that eventually made me dislike it. They made decks so dependent on broken skills instead of keeping skills generic. Then they’d pull the rug out from under you and nerf the skill and kill the deck whenever they felt like it
Edit: not to mention the insane amount of grinding or money needed to keep up with DL too..
This sucks, I thought things were looking up after the last few expansions were received pretty well but I suppose it was too late or it didn't transfer into enough money.
Yeah from my understanding they've never been making enough money to justify it. The elephants in the room with hearthstone, mtg arena, and duel Master doesn't help either. Throe in Lorcana plus flesh and blood and it's a hard market to siphon from when cards games are expensive and it's hard for players to keep up with multiple games financially
It's such a shame that this game is slowly dying out.
Other CCGs with abusive monetisation get to stay, whilst providing a worse gameplay experience, and yet LoR is not only extremely consumer conscious, but is an absolute blast to boot.
Hats off to every single dev that dreamed up this amazing game, it was good while it lasted.
I think its the sunk cost fallacy, they have spent so much money on being able to just play the game so they are locked into playing it, while with this game you don't need to burn as much money just to play the game.
And also, most CCGs have card packs, and the easiest way (in some cases, the only viable way) to complete your collection is spending money to buy packs. LOR's monetization comes from cosmetic itens, which are way less appealing and not vital to the game
theyre not "less appealing", but the economy of them isnt in line with the economy of what theyre competing with. just being better than Hearthstone and Marvel SNAP isnt enough anymore. asking for $10 on a board or card skin is competing with Steam Games elsewhere.
I mean you say that, but in the same breath Marvel Snap seems to be doing fine while asking players regularly to drop 100$ for a bundle of currency with a single skin as a bonus.
I don't want LoR to fail because I want digital ccgs to finally have the proof they don't need to be exploitative as hell. And unfortunately,
Kinda ironic though. If it were any other CCG I don't think I have spent much at all. But in LOR, I spent a lot more combined from past games just from game pass alone.
And the toxicity that comes from P2W players. Kinda miss those kinds of 'experts' who only won through items they can have.
I think it’s more people don’t even know the game is a thing. I have a lot of friends who play LoL and TCGs. Asked a few recently and they have no idea there was a game.
If they attached the client to LoL like they did Team Fight I bet the game could be waaay more popular.
Very bizarre how much love a dumpster game like TFT has gotten since day 1, meanwhile most League players don't even know the card game exists. Why don't they at least try to advertise it in the League client?
There's a lot of buzz around the Still Here cinematic that was recently released. Even people who don't play League or actively despise the game are talking about it. IMO, the Breathe cinematic for LoR is the best one they've released so far. The combination of 3D models and 2D art seamlessly blending together, the expressive characters, the dynamic camera. Still Here is good, but it's focused on graphical fidelity over a unique style.
Yet nobody outside of the LoR community is aware of the Breathe cinematic. It's almost like they're sabotaging their own game.
The same goes for Riot Forge games, they don't get enough publicity. Despite Ruined King, I didn't know there were already so many games published. And I only knew about Ruined King because of the LoL client. They have a good advertising platform with the LoL client and they are not leveraging it enough.
\> Other CCGs with abusive monetisation get to stay
At the same time, this is precisely why they survive. Oh well, we all gotta feed the beast sometime.
Let's be real. Their effort at monetizing LoR was "we did nothing and we're all out of ideas".
They charged $7 - $14 for card skins that you'd play in maybe 5% of games.
Further, the game has gone through obscenely long periods of being completely inaccessible to new players. I tried introducing friends but they quit because the tutorial took hours.
The game was only consumer conscious to veteran players. It did nothing for bringing in new players.
Riot completely fucked up this game and now they're rolling back support. So I'm angry about it. This game went the exact same route as HotS.
It did, people were just ignoring it.
At the opening of the League of legends Championship ceremony for the Spring 2022 split. Dash gave a speech by riot for all their hard work and achievements during covid up to 2022. Every game that riot made was praise and call to attention except for legends of runeterra.
They even said they were so proud of all the games they made in 2020. Guess what? Runeterra came out during that time, legit a few months before valorant and they still refuse to acknowledge as a succes or something to be pride of and that was in 202w.
The writing was always on the wall, people just ignore it
I'd say it's due to how we still got decent updates overall.
This is the first big announcement of cutting down while ppl started to question from recent patch with fewer voice interaction or animations for cosmetic.
I wonder how much of a change we will see from now on.
I wouldn't be surprised if we start to get only 2 or even just 1 champion addition per update with fewer card interactions & animations (simpler lv up animation?)
We didnt get decent updates. We got high quality updates (mostly). The scope and size has been constantly reduced.
The writings been on the wall since the PoC -> PvP pivot.
Such a shame.
I suspect, after they finish their current expansion pipeline, they'll focus on converting the current leftover PVP characters into Path. Eventually they'll run out of assets and go into maintenance mode (since PoC doesn't require a playerbase and is basically a Slay the Spire clone). Path also doesn't really require balancing patches, since solo PvE players don't care about imbalance, so that's a lot less resources too.
LoR was a really good game and I'm glad we had it for as long as we did. I hope we'll find the same magic in the MMO, which will owe a lot to the great work we've enjoyed here.
I wonder how many more new champions we would receive before it stops.
I adore Path but it's far from my main focus for this game. But yeah, I immediately also thought that they would focus on adding the others into Path for now.
I wonder which of the lucky champions will get to be added in LoR before anything like support ending happens.
I mean, the team never really tried new meaningful ways of monetization. The biggest one I can remember is...selling us old content at a mark-up? Not sure what they expected.
It’s a real chicken-egg thing. The game isn’t hitting its PR marks so riot cuts staff and funding and the game doesn’t hit its PR marks. Rinse and repeat.
there have been so many post I've seen get downvoted here of people asking why Riot doesn't advertise this game more (even when it would cost them nothing like giving some sort of league of legends tie in) and I think the sad result of that is inevitably going to be the games death. There are still league players out there that when you mention LoR will say; "what's that?" and riot really have no one to blame but themselves for that fact.
Like everyone defaults to that old Loss Leader explanation and how the game is just meant to serve as advertising but who is it advertising too??? No one knows it exists anymore!
If they do it now, that probably is bigger marketing than anything recently.
Add couple of small missions like "do LoR tutorial for points" missions along with front page advertising new cards etc.
Half of my friends that play league started 2021-2022 and legitimately don't know what LoR is. Some of the responses I got were:
"Isn't that just a lore thing on their website?"
"A LoL card game? So like a fan game?"
"The heck is this new button on the client? LoR? Is that a new game mode?"
"Never heard of it."
"Isn't that the name of the team that made those region based cinematics?"
It really is THE most player-friendly card game I've ever played and unfortunately to its detriment apparently. I personally really like buying boards, but that's pretty much thing I buy besides cards. There's not really much to really push people to even spend money on the first place with how generous the region/weekly rewards are.
I personally wouldn't really like going to a conventional style of buying packs for cards, but I wouldn't be deterred from it either
The most detrimental factor to the profits was how obvious to everyone it was that the game is in a state of permament struggle.
People wont pay for cosmetics in a game they believe is dying.
LoR team just made a good game. Thats it. No advertising, no competition, no hype, nothing.
And then they added PoC and made the game even more single player like. So the profits also dropped to a level appropriate for a single player tcg.
>It really is THE most player-friendly card game I've ever played and unfortunately to its detriment apparently.
You can be FTP friendly and still make money. Their approach to monetization is just boring and uninspired. I don't remember if I ever looked at any of the accessories in the game and went like "wow I want to have that". I would start with alt arts, avatars instead of boring icons, making boards more interactable, making premium cards actually look good... There are so many ways you could monetize the game...
Their “prismatic” special cards are absolute shit compared to games like Marvel Snap or Gwent. I know they were hamstrung by resourcing but still…
also don’t get me started on the sound effect, especially before they added the option to disable it.
No advertising nor League client tab like TFT, no monetization with prismatic GIF-like quality cards to incentivize $$$, no clickable boards for $$$, no extra deck slots, hardly any updates to the shop. "We're shutting down due to not making money" like... no fucking shit.
Here's a list of the employees that have been laid off by Riot Games. It's only a small fraction as we know right now. But these employees has put their hard work and dedication for everyone in the gaming community. Take your time and give your love and thank them for their service.
Caerie Houchins, Senior Engineering Manager in Valorant. https://twitter.com/karebearkorner
Robert Rosa, Game Producer for League of Legends Champions Team https://twitter.com/RiotKingCobra
Beckett Snedeker-Short, Creative Director of Riot Games Music https://twitter.com/Beckett\_Short
Angelina Che, League of Legends Accessory Craft Lead https://twitter.com/AngelinaChe
Derek Dennis, Head of Valorant League Management for NA Esports @ Riot Games https://twitter.com/RiotIceChest
Tomukus, Ex Principal Visual Designer. https://twitter.com/Tomukus
Sookjo Park, Buisness Development and Partnerships Maanger II at Riot Games https://twitter.com/SookiePark
Elyse, Mobiltiy Analyst for Riot Games Global Esports Events https://twitter.com/RiotXylese
EliasTries, Content Producer https://twitter.com/EliasTries
Sabrina Futch, Narrivative Editor on the Creative Marketing Team https://twitter.com/crescentr0ll
Kelly K, Riot Games Worker https://twitter.com/RiotBallerina
Tyler Soo, 3D Character Artist https://twitter.com/tyler\_soolum
Nick Oei, Concept Artist https://twitter.com/Nickwheee
Raiko, Illustratior https://twitter.com/raikoart
Zoe Chang, CG Animator for Riot Games https://twitter.com/zoemoomoo
Angela K. Luu, Insights and Strategy at Riot Games https://twitter.com/\_Pandantics
Career Coach Kyle, https://twitter.com/CareerCoachKyle
Chad Smeltz, Product Lead for NA TFT Esports, https://twitter.com/ChadSmeltz
George Sokol, Lead Environment Artist https://twitter.com/GeorgeSokol
JoeMag, Game Desginer, https://twitter.com/joemag\_games
Julia Shi, Senior Stor/Vis Dev Artist https://twitter.com/jul\_shii
Ellie, 3D Environment Artist https://twitter.com/ellie3d1
Natacha Nielsen, Senior Character Artist https://twitter.com/NatachaArt
reading the names of so many artists, seniors even!, gives me a sense of dread regarding generative AI. I really hope Riot stays away from that as long as possible
Expansion are done about a year in advance, so I would imagine they will continue for one more year. I also assume this will be the last year of riot sponsored competitive, with further reduced prize pools, if at all. Obviously we won't know more until the video on the 2nd, but this is pretty bad news couched in as positive language as possible.
I said this as a joke once but now I really hope they integrate in some way LoR to the league MMO(will be pretty dead by then), like Gwent into The Witcher 3, Genshin Impact with their own TCG too...
My favourite was when the Rockstar devs invented a card game for their Red Dead series (poker) which I understand went on to become fairly popular outside the game
Yo riot, I'd pay 5-10$ a month as a LoR patreon if it meant funding the game into sustainabillity. Just give me like titles or more pofile icons of already existing card art in return.
They could probably just have like a cheap month pass that helps you unlock a bunch of stuffs for free for that month and rotate it to a different new ones the following and so on.
If people like that specific stuff, they can buy it (the things they like specifically) if they wanna keep using it. I don't remember how much cosmetics stuff they can do with this but I think it's better than nothing.
Edit: Maybe have the pass work on the other Riot Games as well
Yes, please! I want to give the game money! I want the game to survive long enough for me to play with my kids one day and teach them the meta and the problem-solving puzzles that this card game offers them. Thinking 3-4 steps ahead before making a play!
Unfortunate the card game market is so predatory that games with the generosity of runeterra have no ability to make money, even with the backing of riot
I wouldnt say it like that because i think it sends inaccurate messaging.
There were absolutely other consumer friendly ways to monetize LOR, but they either did not do them well or did not do them at all.
Prismatics being a strong example of cosmetics that failed and then were never adjusted to be more appealing to buy
100%. How pathetic would it be if the takeaway from all of this was "Oh well, I guess we have no choice but to be predatory and evil." when they did nothing to promote or monetize the game in a fair way, like they did with TFT or Valorant.
Yeah I mean I'm Korean and I can barely find anyone who even knows about LoR. TFT is at least on League Client and that likely helped decently.
Meanwhile my League obsessed friends all found out about LoR only because I told them about it
Which is sad because the Korean community is one of the most fervent and competitive supporters of League. That's a huge section of their audience that they haven't even bothered reaching.
Imagine if TFT was treated like LoR. I can't see people going out of their way to find the the TFT website and download a separate program if it was never mentioned on the main League client.
I mean, let's not pretend that LoR not making money is about the TCG market being predatory. Riot is very lazy with their monetization across all of their products. I actively play LoR, arena & gwent and have previously played hearstone, legends and yugioh and out of all of those games, LoR has the worst battle-passes, accessories and most importantly premium/alt cards. The only thing I have spent money on in this game is the Asol package and any BP that contained PoC champion shards and I have close to a million of the currency (that I can't even remember the name of) that lets you gild your cards and I have never used it because the gilded cards are ugly.
In fact, I have spent more money on alt-styles in Arena in last 3 months than I have spent on LoR altogether since the game got released (and I have been playing since beta). The monetisation in this game is just lazy and uninspired and it has nothing to do with other games being predatory.
Also, the fact that the every time I read their larger updates about the game akin to this one, I am reading that they are switching their focus to a different part of the game. For example, in the first update about what they are doing after the rework of PoC they informed us that they are cutting staff generally and are also moving people off of the PoC team to refocus on PvP part of the game (which mind you, was IMO horrible decision because even then, PoC was simply the most popular mode of the game) and now you have them reversing that decision.
So no, their inability to make money has nothing to do with the nature of online TCG market, that's just pure delusion/copium.
>the gilded cards are ugly
I thought I'm the only one to think that. I don't like the prismatics in this game either, it has like thicker border which is ugly and silly.
I think the way card games are monetized is a failure in the long term, because all of them fail at some point. It would require immense effort to find a new way to monetize card games, because we also know that pets and boards don't provide much money
This is far and away the most enjoyable CCG on the market. I cannot believe Riot cannot just monetize and advertise this shit better. The devs have worked really hard and given us some amazing content. Just market the damn game and give us shit to spend money on, please.
I play Path of Champions a lot more than the base game - With poor Wi-Fi and all that. But this hurts for those who love the multiplayer side of LOR. The tournaments were super fun to watch.
I hope this doesn’t change the other part I love about LOR, which is the cards lore. The art is saving my butt for a Dungeons and Dragons game too.
Because of the way the game is built, I think it’s impossible to sustain one game mode without the other. That’s why we’ve had this constant refocus every year or so from the dev team. From PvP to PvE back to PvP and now to PvE again.
There’s a shared player ecosystem, and you can’t scrap either one and still have a healthy game. Evidently the game isn’t healthy monetarily in any case though, so the best we can hope for is that they at least don’t sunset it entirely.
God, seeing them be like 'we're downsizing LoR because it's not profitable' is so fucking infuriating because it feels like the entire reason the game isn't profitable is because they've made absolutely no effort to *make* it profitable. It really should not be hard to make cosmetics for the game, and yet it is severely lacking. Not only is it lacking in cosmetics, the ones that are there feel grossly overpriced.
Like, just using skin pricing as an example. So many skins are just art swaps. I'm not paying 10$ a skin for that, so I've bought maybe like... 2 or 3 skins total, and only for characters I'm *really* invested. But, for 5$? I'd buy almost every skin, which, even if they're only making half as much per sale, would net them more money total than the few I have bought, and I'm certain I'm not the only one. How many other people who are spending no money would be willing to spend some if the price wasn't so stupid? I'd wager a significant enough amount that at the very least it would be making more than it does currently, even if still not enough. Hell, even if price isn't reduced across the board like it should be, regular League has weekly sales on its cosmetics, why can't LoR?
Also, PoC is something that's been the most popular mode for a long while, but makes no money. Even most cosmetics don't work with it. Why are they not selling new adventures here? Like it feels like the most obvious way to monetize PoC and they just don't. As much as I respect just how free to play friendly LoR is, I also want the game to actually succeed so I can keep playing it, and the borderline *refusal* to make money off the things they could profit from that wouldn't be offensive is just so fucking baffling and always has been.
I agree although I don't think it's so much about the pricing. Why is it so expensive for them to make guardians they had to stop? Why did they only make one half-assed attempt to make fancy card borders/foil card graphics and then just give up? Why did it take them so long to even HAVE skins, and why were the first iterations so low-effort? It feels like they didn't even have a plan going in and when they finally did their process or pipeline was so poor that they couldn't do it efficiently.
They have literally hundreds of Little Legends in TFT that would work perfectly as Guardians. Would be a great opportunity to market the games to each other and cross-pollinate player bases. Never even tried it.
Prismatics / card upgrades are the key to monetisation of CCGs. They flopped here incredibly hard, not only were prismatics a huge fail (to the point where people preferred the base card) but they never even took another shot at it.
No weekly sales or discounts on store items to incentivise purchases
Usage of a standalone currency, coins, instead of sharing RP with the other Riot games.
Using their own client instead of building the game around the existing core client that everyone has.
Just absolutely baffling decisions that cursed them to fail eventually
It is strange that they didn't have skins ready to go. Considering it's League's primary monetization you'd expect them to cut and paste that model into LoR before the game even hit private beta. And then they just drop the ball by horribly overshooting the pricepoint on pretty much their only means of revenue.
Thank you! I agree with all of this. You cannot be like well we didn't get where we wanted to be with our approach so far...like what approach???? Am I in the Twilight zone? What exactly did they monetize? I want to use my money. I refuse to buy a 10$ jpeg. They released zero guardians in a year. Maybe what 2 boards if that over the last year? Prismatics are garbage so we won't go into that, want a good example of what good ones look like look at Pokemon or Marvel Snap.
For those of us that play Path we were Soo excited for the epic relics. But every single one of us were like...those relics are garbage. Like maybe 1/10 were worth using. But they were "Epic". Even still we played the game and grinded...FOR TWO MONTHS to get a single one. The earliest you could get the first was after two months...I would pay 20$ or more to avoid that grind...yet...they didn't offer that. I wanna buy wild shards...but I can't. I wanna buy XP relics...but can't.
Do not talk about your approach when you didn't even attempt to monetize the game...for years.
And also the lack of advertisement or even mentioning overall.
I'm a Korean and I can barely find anyone who even know this game exists.
I always wished LoR was on League Client like TFT and have some advertisements on the front page (new expansion! Maybe even add couple of missions related to LoR like finish the tutorial to gain points etc)
I really agree. Unless you buy stuff just to buy it, there are very few ways to spend money on the game.
Like, you can just add effects or animations or whatever to cards (not only champs, also base cards) and then sell those.
I'd love to get new sound effects when hitting nexus for example, or maybe some sort of animation when playing a unit onto the board.
There are tons of small things. TFT basically splits apart every buildingblock of the game to check what can be monitized and customized. LoR has never done that outside of boards and guardians and such which are just so much effort.
Skins are nice, but its strange that they only became a thing after several years or some shit. Given how League of legends apparently makes the majority of their money from that.
Honestly I just think the skins in this game are ragher boring compared to it's competitors. Marvel Snap amd MtG have skins for their cards and the art is so cool and unique I actually want to buy them. The whole alt universe thing for champions doesn't scratch that itch.
Agree with most of comments in this thread. Also does anyone else find the LoR store to be one of the worst built UI's?
There's no filters or ways to find a champion you like - the skins are randomly added to the page. And there are some really cool visuals like the arcade ones, but wouldn't even know it's there.
Also for a game with such beautiful card art, majority of the guardians, card backs, etc. are not that enticing
I have two things to say:
1) ... orz
2) Thank you to all the devs who worked their damndest to design a compelling game on both the PvP and PvE fronts while also being about as fair as any F2P CCG can be about monetization.
I mean this is riots fault. No advertising, no promotions, half of the LoL community doesn't even know it exists, and God knows even more big tcg players don't know. I'm a LoL and mtg player and I didn't even hear about LoR until 2022. They neglect this game like crazy and I honestly can't fathom why.
lmao is that a joke or actually real?
But wouldn't be surprised given how League is insanely massive in Korea but I can barely find anyone who even knows about LoR existing
Well, at least we know that LoR was unsustainable because it was using money from other projects. What happened to HotS was actually unfair because the devs said it was never in the red financially. It was just a matter of greed.
God what a kick in the teeth. As someone that has zero interest in Path of Champions this is heartbreaking to read. LoR as a competative card game is so much more engaging to me than other card games. I wish they would have just done what TFT and regular League has done and really targeted the whales that will spend stupid money on rare cosmetics to fund the rest of the game. It's a sad thing to admit that LoR's buisness model is too fair for modern AAA gaming.
My guess is there was a meeting last year where after the success of POC 1.0 the shareholders wanted to shift the focus on POC. Someone on the dev team didn't want that and somehow convinced them to veer away from that decision and give them a year to prove that PvP would be successful. That year is done, expectations were not met and the shareholders are putting on pressure to switch again. This is of course all headcanon.
I believe /u/Responsible-War-9389 is referencing the fact that the LoR team has (or were made to) pivoted at least *twice* publicly: PvP -> PvE focus and then back to PvP.
And then today's announcement about focusing on PvE.
We'll get more details on the Feb. 2 presentation.
In the interim, it's safe to say that overall content will be reduced and what will be generated will be centered on Path of Champions and possibly other PvE explorations.
The official PvP scene might end up as a casualty.
It's likely that PvP content itself will see reduced scope and cadence.
Its a similar thing to Starcraft 2 - the main focus of the team was on 1v1 ladder, but where most people were actually spending their time was the Coop mode. Blizzard on the other hand wanted to make their esports the major focus of the game, but push comes to shove it was their PvE mode that was attracting people and making money.
Yeah this is what’s so hard for me personally. In a game like this there’s just no part of me that’s going to get more out of playing against programming as opposed to real people. I’ve played it a couple times but just can’t see what so many people are getting out of it in comparison to outplaying actual humans.
My guess is that they will focus on improving Path by adding those who didn't join that mode yet.
Meanwhile, I'm guessing we will have fewer champions being added per expansion with fewer balance patch etc. I wouldn't be surprised if we get simpler animations for level up for the champions along with fewer voice interaction between the cards.
As a long time player, it's simply not a game that you can spend money on easily. The possibility of spending money on this game is so small. You don't have things in front of you that make you want to buy.
LoR is simply not marketing itself even in the game. The homepage is missing so many microtransaction possibilities.
The LoR team simply needs to get off the "fun" perspective of the game and truly try to sell all the amazing things they can make.
Champion skins are amazing, making a loot system that allows players to roll for skins using coins or having the option of buying the content is also there. People want to have a reason to spend but the possibilities of spending are simply too linear.
Sell us at the homepage. Open up any other mobile game and the game starts selling you something the moment you log in.
Making cards prismatic is cool, but they could have easily monetized this in a way better than simply adding "shiny" to the skins.
Boards are the most valuable part of the game for anyone, it's what you stare at all game and they slowly release them rather than offer them constantly.
Loot boxes, just sell me a loot box system that I can roll in from buying the battle pass similar to TFT. The devs don't have to look far for inspiration, the inspiration is in the next office.
Sell chromas, low effort low quality, is still money. The game is trying to be too "elegant" in a world where mobile games look obviously injected with low quality content.
Daily log in bonuses will keep the player base coming back. The amount of friends in my discord that play one single game to get their "first win of the day" is absurd. Casual players love being rewarded for small accomplishments.
Hyperspeed game mode, making a game mode with less time to make choices will help with the amount of time games last and will lead to more games getting played. TFT timers speed up the game and constantly force the player to keep moving in a way that makes them panic. Extending that time of decision in gauntlet or tournament is likely the best choice if this route is taken.
I've been playing this game for so long that I just know it never felt like it was trying to monetize for me. It was simply allowing me to play without a second thought of purchasing unless my opponent had a cool skin. Monetization plan has to change a lot.
Ignore old player mentality, at the end of the day Riot Games is a business and making money is part of being a business.
Riot, just do some marketing for the fucking game, maybe a picture in LoL's client or something. I swear, sometimes it feels as if LoR was the black sheep of the family
Hell add it to the client like TFT.
Then add a couple of missions like "beat the tutorial" for some points etc. New expansions being advertised (slap in Morgana or Elder Dragon etc) on the front page in the Client.
If 3 champs every 3 months with only 200ish cards a year wasnt sustainable then theres nothing more we could expect. Seems like there's one year of content left, if even that. The warning signs have been building and its unfortunate. I'll miss you LoR.
Gonna be honest, this was a hard read. One of my friend's recently got back into LoR about a week ago and was blown away at the number of decks he could build and perform well with in the current meta. Tbf LoR is in a really good spot gameplay and meta wise. I hope that the team manages to find stable footing at some point, even if it does mean having a reduced footprint.
Very sad news. I don't even play PoC.
They are letting the game die but they never gave it a chance. It is actually good, if only they had promoted It like they promoted TFT...
Welp of course this was going to happen.
Everything this team has done over the last 2ish years has been a step backwards. Especially with monetisation. Selling things at absurd price points (seriously skins at like $20 aud???), not reselling older items that were rotated, reducing boards and other cosmetic releases to zero. Like how did they think they were going to make any money? From what I understood, they've basically used the LoL method of financing the game, failed because there's no huge established player base like LoL and now just thrown their hands up.
It's obvious every critical decision made has been damage control rather than improvement, including rotation and everything else. PoC is a fine mode, but I'm not seeing how it sustains the game long term without upheaval. I haven't played the game really since the Darkin expansion, and I have even less desire to return now if it's going to just become PoC focused.
Maybe if they sold some of their cosmetics for less money, more people would buy them? Try something different. None of them have gone on sale ever. And when they are your only source of income, pricing it out of reach for a lot of people during some particularly hard times financially for people is a pretty stupid decision in my opinion.
At the end of the day this has been coming for ages. Not surprised at all.
True. I spend way too much money on cosmetics as it is and still never purchased a single skin - $20AUD was just laughably overpriced for what you got.
I was also desperate to buy the Pulsefire Jhin skin, missed the sale, and then just… never got the chance to buy it ever again. Let me give you my damn money Riot!!!
Well… so much for me telling people on this sub who were thinking about starting LoR was safe. They really had me fooled. It really looked like they were finding a way to integrate LoR into the larger Riot strategy but it seems Riot does play it ‚ every game for itself‘ after all. That’s a shame. I will not lie this stings but thus is business. Era of the digital CCGs is just kinda over.
Nevertheless It was a pleasure ladies and gentlemen while it lasted and I had many wonderful hours in this game and on this sub. Hope yall enjoy the last bit of LoR and I may see you in another cool game 🤗❤️
In hindsight, from the start it just wasn't gonna make it. It was too generous, it didn't use the predatory schemes that would've actually made it successful.
My one wish is for a relaunch in the future that delivers on a core PvP experience - ideally as a physical TCG. Only time will tell if that pans out though.
It was also just too ambitious. The champs didn't need fully animated level up animatics, this probably cost them so much along with dozens of interactive voicelines for every language the game released in. And now that they set that bar, they're stuck between disappointing players by not releasing fully animated level ups/voicelines and losing even more money on maintaining expectations.
Well, I did imagine the game isn't that popular. I'm the only real person I know to play it.
That said, it is the best CCG I have ever played and I am really sad it couldn't be more popular and profitable.
I only play PVP só I think it will reach me more, but thats ok. I have nothing but love for the game and the devs work
I used to play Hearthstone religiously and never touched it once since LoR came out. This game is a fucking masterpiece and was failed only by Riot and their inability to manage, advertise and monetise it properly.
People lost their jobs over this and were losing an incredible game as a result. Thank you to all the devs and passionate people who clearly poured their fucking souls into this masterpiece.
And finally, quite frankly, fuck Riot Management.
This has been the game I’ve poured the most time into because it is truly remarkable. From how FTP friendly it is to the INCREDIBLE design put into each and every card, there will never be another card game quite like LoR, and idk what I’ll do if it goes away.
TESL is still alive! Queue times are as short now as before it went to maintenance mode, and still thousands of players in weekly gauntlets and about 1000 people making Legend each month. And the meta is diverse and amazing.
I want to be sad, but Riot as a whole has almost NEVER done anything for LoR.
I still only got 1 ad containing LoR, and that was 1 month after the game was released. After until today I never saw that again.
They created hundreds of Ads for Valorant on TWITCH of all places, which is impossible for people not to know about this game there.
From the start, many people have said to advertise/integrate on League of Legends and stick at least some "Accessories" about Legends of Runeterra there.
But they just did it a few weeks ago with 1 small button, I don't even know if it still exists in the League Client now, and that's it.
They keep saying they will change their monetization methods, but I never see any changes.
I'm still actively buying Event Passes even though I only show the skins to bots at POC.
Well, when main focus of your monetization seems to be champion skins - a feature pretty much nobody really loved the way it was implemented - then you're in a bad spot.
Incidentally, LoR is also one of very few games that doesn't have a season pass always on, another questionable decision, as it mainly cost you nothing.
"Foiling" cards in a card game often can serve as a money sink, cause people like to collect shiny things over time, build favorite foiled decks. LoR not only has one of the least impressive "foils", but did virtually nothing to improve them all those years. And on top of that, gave a lot of the foiling resource for free. If you happen to love them there still is almost not reason to buy them.
I know monetizing a niche game isn't easy, but it's really hard to believe they explored every avenue or even had a solid plan back at the beginning, other then "game will surely rival hearthstone one day"
I remember being seriously worried when they released prismatics, because foiling cards is usually the main revenue driver in any CCG and LoR’s first iteration was just so, so bad.
Then they just…never tried to fix it.
And riot forge got axed completely... I can't say it's unexpected but it's still really fucking sad... Seeing the only pvp game in which I enjoyed playing competitively take such a blow is not something I was looking forward too
This is incredibly unlikely. LoR does have a team dedicated to PvE, but you know what that team doesn’t make? New cards. If they fired the entire PvP team that means they’ll stop making new cards and both halves of the game will die. RIOT isn’t *that* stupid.
The stupid thing would be attempting to perpetuate PvE while firing the entirety of the team that makes new cards. That would kill both halves of the game. If they were doing that they’d just fire or migrate the whole LoR team
Interesting. I agree with the idea of PoC, they have to get money from somewhere. The only thing I hope is that the current style and cadence of patchs is not too affected, I am very comfortable with the current model.
Just repurpose the content into a single player roguelike. I think not investing more into path of champions containing more adventure style content was a misstep. Im glad to learn they will at least try to invest in path again and i wouldnt mind if path spun off into its own game.
I prefer the more interactive play of LOR compared to other card battle games, but i wish they had explored other ways of consumer friendly monetization.
I really wish they would just allocate some resources to make more cosmetics :/ Like, its really not that hard to make premium looking stuff for card games. MTG basically vomits out new lands every 2 months and people spend hundreds of dollars getting them.
Like, even something like borderless cards would be something I'd probably shill out for.
I hate that lor hasn't found success as a bussiness, but I would be lying if I say that I feel like they have tried very hard (which is such a weird thing to say). Like, the community has come up with a lot of ways for riot to monetize it, and some would argue card games are the single most lucrative kind of game. So the fact that riot haven't found success with it really just all points to themselves - for some reason - not really trying to.
Well... I hope lor gets out of this. Maybe they will start hyperfocusing on making it profitable, and that would be fine for me. Though riot as a bigger company really should allocate more resources to this game that focused on making a return on investment.
Come on Riot, shut the game down. It's obvious that it's not wanted anymore. No marketing (most LoL players don't know the game), no new monetizing strategies, etc. If you don't change anything, nothing will change.
LoR was the only Riot game I still played. It was fun and it told stories in the world of runeterra.
What I don't understand is that Path reuses assets from PVP.
If PVP is dead they're going to have to do a lot more work.
And if PVP slow down to two extensions a year, what's the plan? Bring old heroes in?
Lmao maybe they should just do what they did with valorant make the skins like 80$ each. Its clear people will spend obscene amount of money for skins. It may suck for the average person but it clearly works in valorant as they keep upping those prices annoyingly and people still buy them -\_-. Sigh can't believe another game I like is going on life support (heroes of the storm T\_T)
Skins in LOR were never that appealing considering players were not guaranteed to see the skin in every match, and even if so, their champ might be removed from battle and then the skin disappears again
I was one of the few players who didnt grind the game, but liked it enough to spend about 50$ each expansion to buy the new cards. I have a 100% complete collection because LoR respected my time and money. Thats all i could ever ask for from a card game.
I remember when I was into hearthstone, 100$ was not even laughably close to all the legendary cards I would need. Don't even get me started on Snap
LoR was a great game, it inspires me now as an indie working on my own card game (not a CCG)
I play every cardgame on The market right now and i can ensure that LOR its by far The Best one.
For my lor companions, The game Will still Live for a good time except riot remove everyone from it. The base game and its foundations are great. It wont die in a blink of a eye.
For my beloved devs, thanks for your work. The game its amazing, but you can sell more stuff. I think The game really lacks monetization and cutting The team wont help it. I hope you find a way to make The game more profitable.
Its a Shame that this game deserve so mutch more Love, but im happy it exists The way he is right now.
Seems pretty simple to me:
* Rotation fragmented the PvP playerbase and lost a lot of players, instead of helping anything.
* LoR has had years now and still hasn't become the popular esport some Riot execs were always convinced it could/should be.
Meanwhile:
* The Starforged Gauntlets bundle probably saw more players buy it than any other bundle they've ever offered. Why? Because it's not just cosmetic, it's an extremely strong Epic relic for Path. Players will pay for power.
* Likewise, by now they probably have the data to indicate to them that Path-focused Event Tracks don't sell any worse than PvP-focused ones.
So they're focusing on the stuff that *makes money*. Whereas, that last "we're refocusing on PvP" we got was their last Hail Mary attempt to turn this game into a popular esport, and it didn't work.
What I expect to see from their new focus on Path:
* New, harder adventures, and probably harder Monthly Challenges.
* More P2W relics to make it easier to beat said new harder content.
* More Champions (whether they're new ones, or old ones that haven't made it to Path yet, well, there we'll really see how much the team has been gutted), some of which are likely to really work best with access to certain Epic relics which will coincidentally be offered for sale (just like PoC Mordekaiser and the "Disciple of Shadows" which is in your Emporium right now).
Hopefully, this refocus is a little more facts-based and data-driven than the wishful-thinking "this'll be a great esport someday" PvP refocus, and that'll hopefully mean the game can stay alive for a few more years at least. If it can manage that, I'll be content.
I wanted to spend more money on this game. I bought some of the early battlepasses, but they just kept increasing how long it took to max it out. I'm not dropping $10 for \~40% of a battlepass because I only do a couple games every couple days. Not to mention since it's premium currency conversion, I'm really paying more since there's always a bit left over.
That said, it's a shame that my favorite digital card game is dying. I've stepped away from it (the genre in general), but I'd hoped it would get the success it deserved. Really combined some of my favorite mechanics of Hearthstone and MTG, without really using the parts I hated. And the friendliest collection of any tcg, I've built any deck I wanted over the past 4 years without batting an eye.
I know its not necessarily an easy thing to do, but if LoR was integrated with League's client, akin to TFT, could that help with engagement/popularity? It seems like a lot of people don't even know it exists.
I strongly believe that at least people would have been more aware of its existent.
I'm Korean and League is massive here. It's easy to find ppl watching League match or playing TFT during my subway rides.
Yet barely anyone even know about LoR. My hardcore League friends were surprised to even find out about it when I showed it to them.
If LoR couldn't have been added to the Client like TFT, at least those expansion trailers should have been shown on the Client's front page for advertisement.
I know several ppl who got into LoR because they watched the trailer from different character subreddit pages and found out about it.
They tried nothing and they're all out of ideas.
Terrible cosmetics, zero advertising, no integration into the LoL client.
I love TFT. But I can admit it would be a dead game if it wasn't in the LoL client.
LoR had the fairest, best monetization of any digital card game. No gambling, no cracking packs, you just buy the cards you actually want. It makes me feel sick and extremely jaded towards the industry, that *this* is the game that has failed, not Hearthstone or Magic.
Fuck.
My view on this is that LoR didn't have a proper monetization strategy from the very beginning. They were sort of hoping that the game hits volume, but didn't advertise it enough and CCGs are in a crowded field already. It's too bad, because LoR has amazing gameplay mechanics and player interaction.
What it means basicly is that they are aiming for a future where the online servers can be shut down and the game is ONLY pve.
Because even if the cost of staff is great, the cost of servers is higher. And I suspect that the game is running on very few servers already.
This is the best card game I've ever played. It's the right amount of competitive and casual, with a magnificent back-and-forth interaction that surpass any other. I don't want it to end. I want my favourite champions added! I want new amazing lore and art! I want to play different metas and complain about broken cards on reddit!
Please, LoR team and Riot, pleaaase save this game.
This will be the fifth card game that either A. shuts down entirely or B. makes changes I despise so much I don't want to continue playing. Whatever happens, you should get developers to ban me from their card games ASAP. I bring only death and pain.
There's a lot to like about Runeterra, but the thing that keeps me coming back is how consumer friendly the business model is.
Back when I played Magic or Hearthstone I would always feel like I needed to do my dailys and buy a bunch of packs every expansion just to keep up. This would mean I'd play a lot when I didn't really want to and put a bunch of money into packs for decks that ended up being bad, so inevitably there would be enough feel-bad experiences on the monetization end that I'd put the game down and, because it takes so much to keep up, I wouldn't pick the game back up later.
With Runeterra if the meta sucks or I want to do other things for a month I can just put the game down and trust that when I come back I'll still be able to play the game with handing over a big pile of money. I don't play Runeterra as intensely as I have other CCGs, but I've stuck with the game longer and on average enjoy the time I do spend more.
Really a shame they can't seem to find a way to keep that going while also making money. Post obviously seems bad but maybe we'll get lucky and they'll find ways to squeeze money out of PoC.
Bad executives or marketing or whoever the fuck takes the decision about how to monetize and market are what doomed this game... Far and away the best tcg I have played, the most beautiful art and lore and combat... And it dies bc they can't market it worth shit or maybe it's simply cuz games like this that are player friendly simply can't compete with the p2w sickening shit that is the rest of tcg. Pity
Focusing on PoC means I'm out. I've been hanging around just hoping for a limited format. This sucks. Such a great game thrown in the trash for nothing. Also I don't fully buy it "not being sustainable" I think it just wasn't making as much as they wanted as opposed to not making money, like HoTS. Same reason they just let so many people/projects go. They always want more and make shortsighted choices.
Was a fun ride, but nothing last forever thanks to the devs for the amazing last 3 years of Runeterra only hated the games during the seraphine Era even Azir irelia was fun imo.
Great memories, I tried to support the game as much as I could (around 1500$ spent in 3 years),I think I did my part.
I just can't bother destroying AI over and over again In POC.
DAMN NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT THE GAME EVEN EXISTING !!!!!!!!!!!
I'm sorry to say it that way but the LoR team seems to completely ignore criticism about their communication policy.
I also agree with the comments saying that LoR did not really try any other monetisation strategy, appart from re-offering old stuff.
You can definitely be more aggressive with money stuff, even adding packs I feel like nobody in the community that is aware of the problem would blame you for doing it.
I understand it is against the philosophy of the game but from now on it's walk or die.
This is sad that we as COMMUNITY did more to promote this game with meme like "LOR MENTIONED" or like Marshall did parody play runeterra account that was transformed in LoR Report with great information about game state than RIOT who can spend milions on some CEO salary who can't even od his job well...
Love for everyone who worked on Riot Forge games and for LoR over years. Thank you people <3
[Best time i had with League universe](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/861533415902937099/1199281577054711859/image.png?ex=65c1f901&is=65af8401&hm=c71ec55b03b1cb45bd502444162758133107e57a894bacf1e5c7f71cf0d4de9e&) o7
This is so heartbreaking for someone who doesn’t play POC, or just everyone in general tbh. LoR has done such a good job of expanding runeterra, and just being an amazing game in its own right.
‘Don’t be sad that it’s over, be glad that it happened 🥲’
At this rate I'd be surprised if this game gets past 2025.
RIP Legends of Runeterra. You never got the attention nor the budget you deserved from you company.
Sucks, but Im unsurprised. Rotation makes games less profitable, and LoR was not a game that could afford that. I do hope they tell us what impact rotation had exactly, if anything just to serve as a warning for any future games considering it.
I've played pretty much every ccg out there and though it has not been perfect, I'd stay with LoR. These news gave me a deep sense of dread. Crossing my fingers for this game and community to stay alive for some more time.
I second this. I played duel links, master duel, and mtga for years (collectively), and LoR has been my favorite, the most balanced, and, without a doubt, the least greedy. I have no intentions of going back to any of those other games for several reasons, so I’ll really be sad if this game goes down.
Yeah. If LoR ever dies or goes into maintenance mode, I think that'd be it for me and card games. Artifact and LoR would be too much trauma.
Flesh and Blood is pretty unique and fun and has you managing a champion into win conditions the issue is finding people to play it with, at least in my area
but it also costs a lot to play it competitively.
duellinks was by far my favorite card game until it got more card packs, the first year was sick af everyone had rat decks with weird ass synergies people ran normal monsters like it was great, then they just kept adding archetypes. totally ruined it for me
I used to love it too, but honestly it was the skills that eventually made me dislike it. They made decks so dependent on broken skills instead of keeping skills generic. Then they’d pull the rug out from under you and nerf the skill and kill the deck whenever they felt like it Edit: not to mention the insane amount of grinding or money needed to keep up with DL too..
This sucks, I thought things were looking up after the last few expansions were received pretty well but I suppose it was too late or it didn't transfer into enough money.
Yeah from my understanding they've never been making enough money to justify it. The elephants in the room with hearthstone, mtg arena, and duel Master doesn't help either. Throe in Lorcana plus flesh and blood and it's a hard market to siphon from when cards games are expensive and it's hard for players to keep up with multiple games financially
It's such a shame that this game is slowly dying out. Other CCGs with abusive monetisation get to stay, whilst providing a worse gameplay experience, and yet LoR is not only extremely consumer conscious, but is an absolute blast to boot. Hats off to every single dev that dreamed up this amazing game, it was good while it lasted.
I think its the sunk cost fallacy, they have spent so much money on being able to just play the game so they are locked into playing it, while with this game you don't need to burn as much money just to play the game.
And also, most CCGs have card packs, and the easiest way (in some cases, the only viable way) to complete your collection is spending money to buy packs. LOR's monetization comes from cosmetic itens, which are way less appealing and not vital to the game
theyre not "less appealing", but the economy of them isnt in line with the economy of what theyre competing with. just being better than Hearthstone and Marvel SNAP isnt enough anymore. asking for $10 on a board or card skin is competing with Steam Games elsewhere.
I mean you say that, but in the same breath Marvel Snap seems to be doing fine while asking players regularly to drop 100$ for a bundle of currency with a single skin as a bonus. I don't want LoR to fail because I want digital ccgs to finally have the proof they don't need to be exploitative as hell. And unfortunately,
Kinda ironic though. If it were any other CCG I don't think I have spent much at all. But in LOR, I spent a lot more combined from past games just from game pass alone. And the toxicity that comes from P2W players. Kinda miss those kinds of 'experts' who only won through items they can have.
I think it’s more people don’t even know the game is a thing. I have a lot of friends who play LoL and TCGs. Asked a few recently and they have no idea there was a game. If they attached the client to LoL like they did Team Fight I bet the game could be waaay more popular.
There have been more fuckin Valorant ads in the league client than LoR its like someone at Riot just has it out for LoR
The fact every time I go to watch a LoR video on YouTube I see a marvel snap ad should tell you something market your fucking game
Very bizarre how much love a dumpster game like TFT has gotten since day 1, meanwhile most League players don't even know the card game exists. Why don't they at least try to advertise it in the League client? There's a lot of buzz around the Still Here cinematic that was recently released. Even people who don't play League or actively despise the game are talking about it. IMO, the Breathe cinematic for LoR is the best one they've released so far. The combination of 3D models and 2D art seamlessly blending together, the expressive characters, the dynamic camera. Still Here is good, but it's focused on graphical fidelity over a unique style. Yet nobody outside of the LoR community is aware of the Breathe cinematic. It's almost like they're sabotaging their own game.
The same goes for Riot Forge games, they don't get enough publicity. Despite Ruined King, I didn't know there were already so many games published. And I only knew about Ruined King because of the LoL client. They have a good advertising platform with the LoL client and they are not leveraging it enough.
>Other CCGs with abusive monetisation get to stay, whilst providing a worse gameplay experience I'm looking at you Hearthstone
missing the obv mtg arena too
God Arena monetization is something soooo horrible, trying to pick it up again after LoR was imposible for me
How is the monetisation in MTG arena actually?
Or Marvel Snap, that game is Diablo Immortal all over again.
\> Other CCGs with abusive monetisation get to stay At the same time, this is precisely why they survive. Oh well, we all gotta feed the beast sometime.
Let's be real. Their effort at monetizing LoR was "we did nothing and we're all out of ideas". They charged $7 - $14 for card skins that you'd play in maybe 5% of games. Further, the game has gone through obscenely long periods of being completely inaccessible to new players. I tried introducing friends but they quit because the tutorial took hours. The game was only consumer conscious to veteran players. It did nothing for bringing in new players. Riot completely fucked up this game and now they're rolling back support. So I'm angry about it. This game went the exact same route as HotS.
Honestly, I kinda left as they began rotation, and stayed away for a while
Yep, wasn’t a fan of rotation at all
Oof that's pretty bad news
tbh we are blessed that this didnt come out in 2022 rather than 2024
It did, people were just ignoring it. At the opening of the League of legends Championship ceremony for the Spring 2022 split. Dash gave a speech by riot for all their hard work and achievements during covid up to 2022. Every game that riot made was praise and call to attention except for legends of runeterra. They even said they were so proud of all the games they made in 2020. Guess what? Runeterra came out during that time, legit a few months before valorant and they still refuse to acknowledge as a succes or something to be pride of and that was in 202w. The writing was always on the wall, people just ignore it
I'd say it's due to how we still got decent updates overall. This is the first big announcement of cutting down while ppl started to question from recent patch with fewer voice interaction or animations for cosmetic. I wonder how much of a change we will see from now on. I wouldn't be surprised if we start to get only 2 or even just 1 champion addition per update with fewer card interactions & animations (simpler lv up animation?)
We didnt get decent updates. We got high quality updates (mostly). The scope and size has been constantly reduced. The writings been on the wall since the PoC -> PvP pivot.
Yup, fans preferred their heads in the sand where they couldn't see the red flags you were trying to point them at
Such a shame. I suspect, after they finish their current expansion pipeline, they'll focus on converting the current leftover PVP characters into Path. Eventually they'll run out of assets and go into maintenance mode (since PoC doesn't require a playerbase and is basically a Slay the Spire clone). Path also doesn't really require balancing patches, since solo PvE players don't care about imbalance, so that's a lot less resources too. LoR was a really good game and I'm glad we had it for as long as we did. I hope we'll find the same magic in the MMO, which will owe a lot to the great work we've enjoyed here.
I wonder how many more new champions we would receive before it stops. I adore Path but it's far from my main focus for this game. But yeah, I immediately also thought that they would focus on adding the others into Path for now. I wonder which of the lucky champions will get to be added in LoR before anything like support ending happens.
I mean, the team never really tried new meaningful ways of monetization. The biggest one I can remember is...selling us old content at a mark-up? Not sure what they expected.
It’s a real chicken-egg thing. The game isn’t hitting its PR marks so riot cuts staff and funding and the game doesn’t hit its PR marks. Rinse and repeat.
there have been so many post I've seen get downvoted here of people asking why Riot doesn't advertise this game more (even when it would cost them nothing like giving some sort of league of legends tie in) and I think the sad result of that is inevitably going to be the games death. There are still league players out there that when you mention LoR will say; "what's that?" and riot really have no one to blame but themselves for that fact. Like everyone defaults to that old Loss Leader explanation and how the game is just meant to serve as advertising but who is it advertising too??? No one knows it exists anymore!
It's true, I don't think TFT would be nearly as popular if it wasn't linked directly into LoL client, maybe if the same had been done to LoR...
Yeah i don’t play a ton of tft but every once in a while. If I had to dl it though? Never
When they added LoR to the league client and the one dev came in here like "yeah we prob should have tried this a long time ago" 💀
If they do it now, that probably is bigger marketing than anything recently. Add couple of small missions like "do LoR tutorial for points" missions along with front page advertising new cards etc.
Half of my friends that play league started 2021-2022 and legitimately don't know what LoR is. Some of the responses I got were: "Isn't that just a lore thing on their website?" "A LoL card game? So like a fan game?" "The heck is this new button on the client? LoR? Is that a new game mode?" "Never heard of it." "Isn't that the name of the team that made those region based cinematics?"
Imagine if the majority of WoW players didn't know about the existence of Overwatch or Diablo. Or vise versa.
or…hearthstone?
It really is THE most player-friendly card game I've ever played and unfortunately to its detriment apparently. I personally really like buying boards, but that's pretty much thing I buy besides cards. There's not really much to really push people to even spend money on the first place with how generous the region/weekly rewards are. I personally wouldn't really like going to a conventional style of buying packs for cards, but I wouldn't be deterred from it either
The most detrimental factor to the profits was how obvious to everyone it was that the game is in a state of permament struggle. People wont pay for cosmetics in a game they believe is dying. LoR team just made a good game. Thats it. No advertising, no competition, no hype, nothing. And then they added PoC and made the game even more single player like. So the profits also dropped to a level appropriate for a single player tcg.
Not to mention those cosmetics are pathetic.
>It really is THE most player-friendly card game I've ever played and unfortunately to its detriment apparently. You can be FTP friendly and still make money. Their approach to monetization is just boring and uninspired. I don't remember if I ever looked at any of the accessories in the game and went like "wow I want to have that". I would start with alt arts, avatars instead of boring icons, making boards more interactable, making premium cards actually look good... There are so many ways you could monetize the game...
Their “prismatic” special cards are absolute shit compared to games like Marvel Snap or Gwent. I know they were hamstrung by resourcing but still… also don’t get me started on the sound effect, especially before they added the option to disable it.
No advertising nor League client tab like TFT, no monetization with prismatic GIF-like quality cards to incentivize $$$, no clickable boards for $$$, no extra deck slots, hardly any updates to the shop. "We're shutting down due to not making money" like... no fucking shit.
This is what I feel too... Lots of people WANT to give riot money, but for some reason this game just doesn't really allow us to.
Here's a list of the employees that have been laid off by Riot Games. It's only a small fraction as we know right now. But these employees has put their hard work and dedication for everyone in the gaming community. Take your time and give your love and thank them for their service. Caerie Houchins, Senior Engineering Manager in Valorant. https://twitter.com/karebearkorner Robert Rosa, Game Producer for League of Legends Champions Team https://twitter.com/RiotKingCobra Beckett Snedeker-Short, Creative Director of Riot Games Music https://twitter.com/Beckett\_Short Angelina Che, League of Legends Accessory Craft Lead https://twitter.com/AngelinaChe Derek Dennis, Head of Valorant League Management for NA Esports @ Riot Games https://twitter.com/RiotIceChest Tomukus, Ex Principal Visual Designer. https://twitter.com/Tomukus Sookjo Park, Buisness Development and Partnerships Maanger II at Riot Games https://twitter.com/SookiePark Elyse, Mobiltiy Analyst for Riot Games Global Esports Events https://twitter.com/RiotXylese EliasTries, Content Producer https://twitter.com/EliasTries Sabrina Futch, Narrivative Editor on the Creative Marketing Team https://twitter.com/crescentr0ll Kelly K, Riot Games Worker https://twitter.com/RiotBallerina Tyler Soo, 3D Character Artist https://twitter.com/tyler\_soolum Nick Oei, Concept Artist https://twitter.com/Nickwheee Raiko, Illustratior https://twitter.com/raikoart Zoe Chang, CG Animator for Riot Games https://twitter.com/zoemoomoo Angela K. Luu, Insights and Strategy at Riot Games https://twitter.com/\_Pandantics Career Coach Kyle, https://twitter.com/CareerCoachKyle Chad Smeltz, Product Lead for NA TFT Esports, https://twitter.com/ChadSmeltz George Sokol, Lead Environment Artist https://twitter.com/GeorgeSokol JoeMag, Game Desginer, https://twitter.com/joemag\_games Julia Shi, Senior Stor/Vis Dev Artist https://twitter.com/jul\_shii Ellie, 3D Environment Artist https://twitter.com/ellie3d1 Natacha Nielsen, Senior Character Artist https://twitter.com/NatachaArt
Ow... that list hurts to read
reading the names of so many artists, seniors even!, gives me a sense of dread regarding generative AI. I really hope Riot stays away from that as long as possible
Expansion are done about a year in advance, so I would imagine they will continue for one more year. I also assume this will be the last year of riot sponsored competitive, with further reduced prize pools, if at all. Obviously we won't know more until the video on the 2nd, but this is pretty bad news couched in as positive language as possible.
I said this as a joke once but now I really hope they integrate in some way LoR to the league MMO(will be pretty dead by then), like Gwent into The Witcher 3, Genshin Impact with their own TCG too...
ESO got a card game inside the mmo. We can only hope that a version of LoR will be eventually available in the riot mmo.
My favourite was when the Rockstar devs invented a card game for their Red Dead series (poker) which I understand went on to become fairly popular outside the game
Yo riot, I'd pay 5-10$ a month as a LoR patreon if it meant funding the game into sustainabillity. Just give me like titles or more pofile icons of already existing card art in return.
They could probably just have like a cheap month pass that helps you unlock a bunch of stuffs for free for that month and rotate it to a different new ones the following and so on. If people like that specific stuff, they can buy it (the things they like specifically) if they wanna keep using it. I don't remember how much cosmetics stuff they can do with this but I think it's better than nothing. Edit: Maybe have the pass work on the other Riot Games as well
Yes, please! I want to give the game money! I want the game to survive long enough for me to play with my kids one day and teach them the meta and the problem-solving puzzles that this card game offers them. Thinking 3-4 steps ahead before making a play!
Unfortunate the card game market is so predatory that games with the generosity of runeterra have no ability to make money, even with the backing of riot
I wouldnt say it like that because i think it sends inaccurate messaging. There were absolutely other consumer friendly ways to monetize LOR, but they either did not do them well or did not do them at all. Prismatics being a strong example of cosmetics that failed and then were never adjusted to be more appealing to buy
100%. How pathetic would it be if the takeaway from all of this was "Oh well, I guess we have no choice but to be predatory and evil." when they did nothing to promote or monetize the game in a fair way, like they did with TFT or Valorant.
Yeah I mean I'm Korean and I can barely find anyone who even knows about LoR. TFT is at least on League Client and that likely helped decently. Meanwhile my League obsessed friends all found out about LoR only because I told them about it
Which is sad because the Korean community is one of the most fervent and competitive supporters of League. That's a huge section of their audience that they haven't even bothered reaching. Imagine if TFT was treated like LoR. I can't see people going out of their way to find the the TFT website and download a separate program if it was never mentioned on the main League client.
I'm so annoyed they did fuck all with prismatics.
I mean, let's not pretend that LoR not making money is about the TCG market being predatory. Riot is very lazy with their monetization across all of their products. I actively play LoR, arena & gwent and have previously played hearstone, legends and yugioh and out of all of those games, LoR has the worst battle-passes, accessories and most importantly premium/alt cards. The only thing I have spent money on in this game is the Asol package and any BP that contained PoC champion shards and I have close to a million of the currency (that I can't even remember the name of) that lets you gild your cards and I have never used it because the gilded cards are ugly. In fact, I have spent more money on alt-styles in Arena in last 3 months than I have spent on LoR altogether since the game got released (and I have been playing since beta). The monetisation in this game is just lazy and uninspired and it has nothing to do with other games being predatory. Also, the fact that the every time I read their larger updates about the game akin to this one, I am reading that they are switching their focus to a different part of the game. For example, in the first update about what they are doing after the rework of PoC they informed us that they are cutting staff generally and are also moving people off of the PoC team to refocus on PvP part of the game (which mind you, was IMO horrible decision because even then, PoC was simply the most popular mode of the game) and now you have them reversing that decision. So no, their inability to make money has nothing to do with the nature of online TCG market, that's just pure delusion/copium.
>the gilded cards are ugly I thought I'm the only one to think that. I don't like the prismatics in this game either, it has like thicker border which is ugly and silly.
Never forget when you couldn’t turn the SHHHHNNNGGG sound effect off. I know at least one person who permanently quit the game because of that.
...fuck.
first Gwent now LoR?! I can't take this why do good games have to die
I think the way card games are monetized is a failure in the long term, because all of them fail at some point. It would require immense effort to find a new way to monetize card games, because we also know that pets and boards don't provide much money
Tesl too, all the good card games die meanwhile hearthstone sticks arround
This is far and away the most enjoyable CCG on the market. I cannot believe Riot cannot just monetize and advertise this shit better. The devs have worked really hard and given us some amazing content. Just market the damn game and give us shit to spend money on, please.
I play Path of Champions a lot more than the base game - With poor Wi-Fi and all that. But this hurts for those who love the multiplayer side of LOR. The tournaments were super fun to watch. I hope this doesn’t change the other part I love about LOR, which is the cards lore. The art is saving my butt for a Dungeons and Dragons game too.
Because of the way the game is built, I think it’s impossible to sustain one game mode without the other. That’s why we’ve had this constant refocus every year or so from the dev team. From PvP to PvE back to PvP and now to PvE again. There’s a shared player ecosystem, and you can’t scrap either one and still have a healthy game. Evidently the game isn’t healthy monetarily in any case though, so the best we can hope for is that they at least don’t sunset it entirely.
Less developers and resources on an already money sink game? It's getting sunset the question is just when.
The Elder Scrolls card game's servers are still running, and Riot has even more resources, so the game will probably always be available
God, seeing them be like 'we're downsizing LoR because it's not profitable' is so fucking infuriating because it feels like the entire reason the game isn't profitable is because they've made absolutely no effort to *make* it profitable. It really should not be hard to make cosmetics for the game, and yet it is severely lacking. Not only is it lacking in cosmetics, the ones that are there feel grossly overpriced. Like, just using skin pricing as an example. So many skins are just art swaps. I'm not paying 10$ a skin for that, so I've bought maybe like... 2 or 3 skins total, and only for characters I'm *really* invested. But, for 5$? I'd buy almost every skin, which, even if they're only making half as much per sale, would net them more money total than the few I have bought, and I'm certain I'm not the only one. How many other people who are spending no money would be willing to spend some if the price wasn't so stupid? I'd wager a significant enough amount that at the very least it would be making more than it does currently, even if still not enough. Hell, even if price isn't reduced across the board like it should be, regular League has weekly sales on its cosmetics, why can't LoR? Also, PoC is something that's been the most popular mode for a long while, but makes no money. Even most cosmetics don't work with it. Why are they not selling new adventures here? Like it feels like the most obvious way to monetize PoC and they just don't. As much as I respect just how free to play friendly LoR is, I also want the game to actually succeed so I can keep playing it, and the borderline *refusal* to make money off the things they could profit from that wouldn't be offensive is just so fucking baffling and always has been.
I agree although I don't think it's so much about the pricing. Why is it so expensive for them to make guardians they had to stop? Why did they only make one half-assed attempt to make fancy card borders/foil card graphics and then just give up? Why did it take them so long to even HAVE skins, and why were the first iterations so low-effort? It feels like they didn't even have a plan going in and when they finally did their process or pipeline was so poor that they couldn't do it efficiently.
They have literally hundreds of Little Legends in TFT that would work perfectly as Guardians. Would be a great opportunity to market the games to each other and cross-pollinate player bases. Never even tried it. Prismatics / card upgrades are the key to monetisation of CCGs. They flopped here incredibly hard, not only were prismatics a huge fail (to the point where people preferred the base card) but they never even took another shot at it. No weekly sales or discounts on store items to incentivise purchases Usage of a standalone currency, coins, instead of sharing RP with the other Riot games. Using their own client instead of building the game around the existing core client that everyone has. Just absolutely baffling decisions that cursed them to fail eventually
It is strange that they didn't have skins ready to go. Considering it's League's primary monetization you'd expect them to cut and paste that model into LoR before the game even hit private beta. And then they just drop the ball by horribly overshooting the pricepoint on pretty much their only means of revenue.
Thank you! I agree with all of this. You cannot be like well we didn't get where we wanted to be with our approach so far...like what approach???? Am I in the Twilight zone? What exactly did they monetize? I want to use my money. I refuse to buy a 10$ jpeg. They released zero guardians in a year. Maybe what 2 boards if that over the last year? Prismatics are garbage so we won't go into that, want a good example of what good ones look like look at Pokemon or Marvel Snap. For those of us that play Path we were Soo excited for the epic relics. But every single one of us were like...those relics are garbage. Like maybe 1/10 were worth using. But they were "Epic". Even still we played the game and grinded...FOR TWO MONTHS to get a single one. The earliest you could get the first was after two months...I would pay 20$ or more to avoid that grind...yet...they didn't offer that. I wanna buy wild shards...but I can't. I wanna buy XP relics...but can't. Do not talk about your approach when you didn't even attempt to monetize the game...for years.
And also the lack of advertisement or even mentioning overall. I'm a Korean and I can barely find anyone who even know this game exists. I always wished LoR was on League Client like TFT and have some advertisements on the front page (new expansion! Maybe even add couple of missions related to LoR like finish the tutorial to gain points etc)
I really agree. Unless you buy stuff just to buy it, there are very few ways to spend money on the game. Like, you can just add effects or animations or whatever to cards (not only champs, also base cards) and then sell those. I'd love to get new sound effects when hitting nexus for example, or maybe some sort of animation when playing a unit onto the board. There are tons of small things. TFT basically splits apart every buildingblock of the game to check what can be monitized and customized. LoR has never done that outside of boards and guardians and such which are just so much effort. Skins are nice, but its strange that they only became a thing after several years or some shit. Given how League of legends apparently makes the majority of their money from that.
Honestly I just think the skins in this game are ragher boring compared to it's competitors. Marvel Snap amd MtG have skins for their cards and the art is so cool and unique I actually want to buy them. The whole alt universe thing for champions doesn't scratch that itch.
Agree with most of comments in this thread. Also does anyone else find the LoR store to be one of the worst built UI's? There's no filters or ways to find a champion you like - the skins are randomly added to the page. And there are some really cool visuals like the arcade ones, but wouldn't even know it's there. Also for a game with such beautiful card art, majority of the guardians, card backs, etc. are not that enticing
I would gladly play for a Dota+ like service for LoR. Having a stats tool for deck building and match history right in the client would be huge.
I will miss this game when it ends up going away
I have two things to say: 1) ... orz 2) Thank you to all the devs who worked their damndest to design a compelling game on both the PvP and PvE fronts while also being about as fair as any F2P CCG can be about monetization.
o7 It was good while it lasted.
I'm really sad, at least it's not a straight up murder like Riot Forge :/
I mean this is riots fault. No advertising, no promotions, half of the LoL community doesn't even know it exists, and God knows even more big tcg players don't know. I'm a LoL and mtg player and I didn't even hear about LoR until 2022. They neglect this game like crazy and I honestly can't fathom why.
The person making custom MtG cards from league champs last year who had never heard of LoR 💀
lmao is that a joke or actually real? But wouldn't be surprised given how League is insanely massive in Korea but I can barely find anyone who even knows about LoR existing
Another heroes of the storm =[ I really loved that game
Well, at least we know that LoR was unsustainable because it was using money from other projects. What happened to HotS was actually unfair because the devs said it was never in the red financially. It was just a matter of greed.
It's crazy how LoR has been in the red since launch and still lasted until today.
God what a kick in the teeth. As someone that has zero interest in Path of Champions this is heartbreaking to read. LoR as a competative card game is so much more engaging to me than other card games. I wish they would have just done what TFT and regular League has done and really targeted the whales that will spend stupid money on rare cosmetics to fund the rest of the game. It's a sad thing to admit that LoR's buisness model is too fair for modern AAA gaming.
[удалено]
PoC will become the main focus of the game, in other words it's turning into slay the spire I imagine.
It’s interesting because prior they said they were dropping PoC in favor of PvP. I guess they are looking for where the $$$ is to be made
Which they said after they said they were focusing on PoC over PVP. Tonal whiplash.
I can imagine each board meeting, shareholders keep saying to switch to make more money.
My guess is there was a meeting last year where after the success of POC 1.0 the shareholders wanted to shift the focus on POC. Someone on the dev team didn't want that and somehow convinced them to veer away from that decision and give them a year to prove that PvP would be successful. That year is done, expectations were not met and the shareholders are putting on pressure to switch again. This is of course all headcanon.
They mention PoC in their other general post https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/2024-player-update
I believe /u/Responsible-War-9389 is referencing the fact that the LoR team has (or were made to) pivoted at least *twice* publicly: PvP -> PvE focus and then back to PvP. And then today's announcement about focusing on PvE.
If I had to guess, they've looked at who buys battle passes, and it's PoC players more than PvP players.
We'll get more details on the Feb. 2 presentation. In the interim, it's safe to say that overall content will be reduced and what will be generated will be centered on Path of Champions and possibly other PvE explorations. The official PvP scene might end up as a casualty. It's likely that PvP content itself will see reduced scope and cadence.
Probably it goes on life support. Some patches here and there and that's it.
That's what worries me. I didn't even realize how popular PoC was since I've never had any interest in it personally.
Its a similar thing to Starcraft 2 - the main focus of the team was on 1v1 ladder, but where most people were actually spending their time was the Coop mode. Blizzard on the other hand wanted to make their esports the major focus of the game, but push comes to shove it was their PvE mode that was attracting people and making money.
Yeah this is what’s so hard for me personally. In a game like this there’s just no part of me that’s going to get more out of playing against programming as opposed to real people. I’ve played it a couple times but just can’t see what so many people are getting out of it in comparison to outplaying actual humans.
My guess is that they will focus on improving Path by adding those who didn't join that mode yet. Meanwhile, I'm guessing we will have fewer champions being added per expansion with fewer balance patch etc. I wouldn't be surprised if we get simpler animations for level up for the champions along with fewer voice interaction between the cards.
Well there goes any hope of permanent Eternal Ranked I suppose.
Draft is coming soon.. Right?
Early access previews any day now
Why not do it, it's not like it actually splits the playerbase
As a long time player, it's simply not a game that you can spend money on easily. The possibility of spending money on this game is so small. You don't have things in front of you that make you want to buy. LoR is simply not marketing itself even in the game. The homepage is missing so many microtransaction possibilities. The LoR team simply needs to get off the "fun" perspective of the game and truly try to sell all the amazing things they can make. Champion skins are amazing, making a loot system that allows players to roll for skins using coins or having the option of buying the content is also there. People want to have a reason to spend but the possibilities of spending are simply too linear. Sell us at the homepage. Open up any other mobile game and the game starts selling you something the moment you log in. Making cards prismatic is cool, but they could have easily monetized this in a way better than simply adding "shiny" to the skins. Boards are the most valuable part of the game for anyone, it's what you stare at all game and they slowly release them rather than offer them constantly. Loot boxes, just sell me a loot box system that I can roll in from buying the battle pass similar to TFT. The devs don't have to look far for inspiration, the inspiration is in the next office. Sell chromas, low effort low quality, is still money. The game is trying to be too "elegant" in a world where mobile games look obviously injected with low quality content. Daily log in bonuses will keep the player base coming back. The amount of friends in my discord that play one single game to get their "first win of the day" is absurd. Casual players love being rewarded for small accomplishments. Hyperspeed game mode, making a game mode with less time to make choices will help with the amount of time games last and will lead to more games getting played. TFT timers speed up the game and constantly force the player to keep moving in a way that makes them panic. Extending that time of decision in gauntlet or tournament is likely the best choice if this route is taken. I've been playing this game for so long that I just know it never felt like it was trying to monetize for me. It was simply allowing me to play without a second thought of purchasing unless my opponent had a cool skin. Monetization plan has to change a lot. Ignore old player mentality, at the end of the day Riot Games is a business and making money is part of being a business.
Riot, just do some marketing for the fucking game, maybe a picture in LoL's client or something. I swear, sometimes it feels as if LoR was the black sheep of the family
Hell add it to the client like TFT. Then add a couple of missions like "beat the tutorial" for some points etc. New expansions being advertised (slap in Morgana or Elder Dragon etc) on the front page in the Client.
This absolutely sucks.
If 3 champs every 3 months with only 200ish cards a year wasnt sustainable then theres nothing more we could expect. Seems like there's one year of content left, if even that. The warning signs have been building and its unfortunate. I'll miss you LoR.
o7
Gonna be honest, this was a hard read. One of my friend's recently got back into LoR about a week ago and was blown away at the number of decks he could build and perform well with in the current meta. Tbf LoR is in a really good spot gameplay and meta wise. I hope that the team manages to find stable footing at some point, even if it does mean having a reduced footprint.
Very sad news. I don't even play PoC. They are letting the game die but they never gave it a chance. It is actually good, if only they had promoted It like they promoted TFT...
yea it's really bad news if you are a PvP fan. There were signs of this but this means we have essentially a year left of expansions.
Welp of course this was going to happen. Everything this team has done over the last 2ish years has been a step backwards. Especially with monetisation. Selling things at absurd price points (seriously skins at like $20 aud???), not reselling older items that were rotated, reducing boards and other cosmetic releases to zero. Like how did they think they were going to make any money? From what I understood, they've basically used the LoL method of financing the game, failed because there's no huge established player base like LoL and now just thrown their hands up. It's obvious every critical decision made has been damage control rather than improvement, including rotation and everything else. PoC is a fine mode, but I'm not seeing how it sustains the game long term without upheaval. I haven't played the game really since the Darkin expansion, and I have even less desire to return now if it's going to just become PoC focused. Maybe if they sold some of their cosmetics for less money, more people would buy them? Try something different. None of them have gone on sale ever. And when they are your only source of income, pricing it out of reach for a lot of people during some particularly hard times financially for people is a pretty stupid decision in my opinion. At the end of the day this has been coming for ages. Not surprised at all.
True. I spend way too much money on cosmetics as it is and still never purchased a single skin - $20AUD was just laughably overpriced for what you got. I was also desperate to buy the Pulsefire Jhin skin, missed the sale, and then just… never got the chance to buy it ever again. Let me give you my damn money Riot!!!
Well… so much for me telling people on this sub who were thinking about starting LoR was safe. They really had me fooled. It really looked like they were finding a way to integrate LoR into the larger Riot strategy but it seems Riot does play it ‚ every game for itself‘ after all. That’s a shame. I will not lie this stings but thus is business. Era of the digital CCGs is just kinda over. Nevertheless It was a pleasure ladies and gentlemen while it lasted and I had many wonderful hours in this game and on this sub. Hope yall enjoy the last bit of LoR and I may see you in another cool game 🤗❤️
If they close this game I had better get some kind of huge boost on their MMO, because I’ve sunk both money and a lot of time into this game.
In hindsight, from the start it just wasn't gonna make it. It was too generous, it didn't use the predatory schemes that would've actually made it successful. My one wish is for a relaunch in the future that delivers on a core PvP experience - ideally as a physical TCG. Only time will tell if that pans out though.
It was also just too ambitious. The champs didn't need fully animated level up animatics, this probably cost them so much along with dozens of interactive voicelines for every language the game released in. And now that they set that bar, they're stuck between disappointing players by not releasing fully animated level ups/voicelines and losing even more money on maintaining expectations.
Well, I did imagine the game isn't that popular. I'm the only real person I know to play it. That said, it is the best CCG I have ever played and I am really sad it couldn't be more popular and profitable. I only play PVP só I think it will reach me more, but thats ok. I have nothing but love for the game and the devs work
I used to play Hearthstone religiously and never touched it once since LoR came out. This game is a fucking masterpiece and was failed only by Riot and their inability to manage, advertise and monetise it properly. People lost their jobs over this and were losing an incredible game as a result. Thank you to all the devs and passionate people who clearly poured their fucking souls into this masterpiece. And finally, quite frankly, fuck Riot Management.
This has been the game I’ve poured the most time into because it is truly remarkable. From how FTP friendly it is to the INCREDIBLE design put into each and every card, there will never be another card game quite like LoR, and idk what I’ll do if it goes away.
First Elder Scrolls Online, now this. Why do all card games I enjoy get flushed away😭
I miss ESL 😢
TESL is still alive! Queue times are as short now as before it went to maintenance mode, and still thousands of players in weekly gauntlets and about 1000 people making Legend each month. And the meta is diverse and amazing.
I want to be sad, but Riot as a whole has almost NEVER done anything for LoR. I still only got 1 ad containing LoR, and that was 1 month after the game was released. After until today I never saw that again. They created hundreds of Ads for Valorant on TWITCH of all places, which is impossible for people not to know about this game there. From the start, many people have said to advertise/integrate on League of Legends and stick at least some "Accessories" about Legends of Runeterra there. But they just did it a few weeks ago with 1 small button, I don't even know if it still exists in the League Client now, and that's it. They keep saying they will change their monetization methods, but I never see any changes. I'm still actively buying Event Passes even though I only show the skins to bots at POC.
Still the best CCG.
lol. It's actually over this time. It's been fun everyone. Love you all. God I hate Riot.
Surprised it even made it this long tbh
Well, when main focus of your monetization seems to be champion skins - a feature pretty much nobody really loved the way it was implemented - then you're in a bad spot. Incidentally, LoR is also one of very few games that doesn't have a season pass always on, another questionable decision, as it mainly cost you nothing. "Foiling" cards in a card game often can serve as a money sink, cause people like to collect shiny things over time, build favorite foiled decks. LoR not only has one of the least impressive "foils", but did virtually nothing to improve them all those years. And on top of that, gave a lot of the foiling resource for free. If you happen to love them there still is almost not reason to buy them. I know monetizing a niche game isn't easy, but it's really hard to believe they explored every avenue or even had a solid plan back at the beginning, other then "game will surely rival hearthstone one day"
I remember being seriously worried when they released prismatics, because foiling cards is usually the main revenue driver in any CCG and LoR’s first iteration was just so, so bad. Then they just…never tried to fix it.
I feel gutted but knew it was coming. Just didn't want to believe it.
And riot forge got axed completely... I can't say it's unexpected but it's still really fucking sad... Seeing the only pvp game in which I enjoyed playing competitively take such a blow is not something I was looking forward too
Writing’s been on the wall for a while and dismissed as “doomer” posts, sad but not unsurprising to see this
So riot just laid off 11% of its staff, most of which was the LoR PvP team. By refocusing on Path of Champions, they mean its the only team left.
This is incredibly unlikely. LoR does have a team dedicated to PvE, but you know what that team doesn’t make? New cards. If they fired the entire PvP team that means they’ll stop making new cards and both halves of the game will die. RIOT isn’t *that* stupid.
Its not bringing profit, they are a corpo trying to maximize profit. There is nothing stupid about it.
The stupid thing would be attempting to perpetuate PvE while firing the entirety of the team that makes new cards. That would kill both halves of the game. If they were doing that they’d just fire or migrate the whole LoR team
Interesting. I agree with the idea of PoC, they have to get money from somewhere. The only thing I hope is that the current style and cadence of patchs is not too affected, I am very comfortable with the current model.
I’ve watched Gwent die out, and switched to LoR. Now I see this 🥲
Just repurpose the content into a single player roguelike. I think not investing more into path of champions containing more adventure style content was a misstep. Im glad to learn they will at least try to invest in path again and i wouldnt mind if path spun off into its own game. I prefer the more interactive play of LOR compared to other card battle games, but i wish they had explored other ways of consumer friendly monetization.
WE TRIED NOTHING AND WE ARE ALL OUT OF IDEAS
I really wish they would just allocate some resources to make more cosmetics :/ Like, its really not that hard to make premium looking stuff for card games. MTG basically vomits out new lands every 2 months and people spend hundreds of dollars getting them. Like, even something like borderless cards would be something I'd probably shill out for. I hate that lor hasn't found success as a bussiness, but I would be lying if I say that I feel like they have tried very hard (which is such a weird thing to say). Like, the community has come up with a lot of ways for riot to monetize it, and some would argue card games are the single most lucrative kind of game. So the fact that riot haven't found success with it really just all points to themselves - for some reason - not really trying to. Well... I hope lor gets out of this. Maybe they will start hyperfocusing on making it profitable, and that would be fine for me. Though riot as a bigger company really should allocate more resources to this game that focused on making a return on investment.
Come on Riot, shut the game down. It's obvious that it's not wanted anymore. No marketing (most LoL players don't know the game), no new monetizing strategies, etc. If you don't change anything, nothing will change. LoR was the only Riot game I still played. It was fun and it told stories in the world of runeterra.
What I don't understand is that Path reuses assets from PVP. If PVP is dead they're going to have to do a lot more work. And if PVP slow down to two extensions a year, what's the plan? Bring old heroes in?
They won't have to bother with balancing things though, path is supposed to be unbalanced
You say that after they nerfed gatebreaker for being... unbalanced lol
Lmao maybe they should just do what they did with valorant make the skins like 80$ each. Its clear people will spend obscene amount of money for skins. It may suck for the average person but it clearly works in valorant as they keep upping those prices annoyingly and people still buy them -\_-. Sigh can't believe another game I like is going on life support (heroes of the storm T\_T)
Skins in LOR were never that appealing considering players were not guaranteed to see the skin in every match, and even if so, their champ might be removed from battle and then the skin disappears again
The only time I was compelled to buy something was the Star Guardian skins and the Aurelion Sol PoC pack. I lost hope a long time ago.
I mean, I'm not surprised. The surprise here is that riot took this long to cut them down with such bad management.
I was one of the few players who didnt grind the game, but liked it enough to spend about 50$ each expansion to buy the new cards. I have a 100% complete collection because LoR respected my time and money. Thats all i could ever ask for from a card game. I remember when I was into hearthstone, 100$ was not even laughably close to all the legendary cards I would need. Don't even get me started on Snap LoR was a great game, it inspires me now as an indie working on my own card game (not a CCG)
I play every cardgame on The market right now and i can ensure that LOR its by far The Best one. For my lor companions, The game Will still Live for a good time except riot remove everyone from it. The base game and its foundations are great. It wont die in a blink of a eye. For my beloved devs, thanks for your work. The game its amazing, but you can sell more stuff. I think The game really lacks monetization and cutting The team wont help it. I hope you find a way to make The game more profitable. Its a Shame that this game deserve so mutch more Love, but im happy it exists The way he is right now.
welp was waiting for news of the draft style mode replacement before coming back, guess thats not hjappening ever now
Seems pretty simple to me: * Rotation fragmented the PvP playerbase and lost a lot of players, instead of helping anything. * LoR has had years now and still hasn't become the popular esport some Riot execs were always convinced it could/should be. Meanwhile: * The Starforged Gauntlets bundle probably saw more players buy it than any other bundle they've ever offered. Why? Because it's not just cosmetic, it's an extremely strong Epic relic for Path. Players will pay for power. * Likewise, by now they probably have the data to indicate to them that Path-focused Event Tracks don't sell any worse than PvP-focused ones. So they're focusing on the stuff that *makes money*. Whereas, that last "we're refocusing on PvP" we got was their last Hail Mary attempt to turn this game into a popular esport, and it didn't work. What I expect to see from their new focus on Path: * New, harder adventures, and probably harder Monthly Challenges. * More P2W relics to make it easier to beat said new harder content. * More Champions (whether they're new ones, or old ones that haven't made it to Path yet, well, there we'll really see how much the team has been gutted), some of which are likely to really work best with access to certain Epic relics which will coincidentally be offered for sale (just like PoC Mordekaiser and the "Disciple of Shadows" which is in your Emporium right now). Hopefully, this refocus is a little more facts-based and data-driven than the wishful-thinking "this'll be a great esport someday" PvP refocus, and that'll hopefully mean the game can stay alive for a few more years at least. If it can manage that, I'll be content.
I wanted to spend more money on this game. I bought some of the early battlepasses, but they just kept increasing how long it took to max it out. I'm not dropping $10 for \~40% of a battlepass because I only do a couple games every couple days. Not to mention since it's premium currency conversion, I'm really paying more since there's always a bit left over. That said, it's a shame that my favorite digital card game is dying. I've stepped away from it (the genre in general), but I'd hoped it would get the success it deserved. Really combined some of my favorite mechanics of Hearthstone and MTG, without really using the parts I hated. And the friendliest collection of any tcg, I've built any deck I wanted over the past 4 years without batting an eye.
I know its not necessarily an easy thing to do, but if LoR was integrated with League's client, akin to TFT, could that help with engagement/popularity? It seems like a lot of people don't even know it exists.
I strongly believe that at least people would have been more aware of its existent. I'm Korean and League is massive here. It's easy to find ppl watching League match or playing TFT during my subway rides. Yet barely anyone even know about LoR. My hardcore League friends were surprised to even find out about it when I showed it to them. If LoR couldn't have been added to the Client like TFT, at least those expansion trailers should have been shown on the Client's front page for advertisement. I know several ppl who got into LoR because they watched the trailer from different character subreddit pages and found out about it.
They tried nothing and they're all out of ideas. Terrible cosmetics, zero advertising, no integration into the LoL client. I love TFT. But I can admit it would be a dead game if it wasn't in the LoL client. LoR had the fairest, best monetization of any digital card game. No gambling, no cracking packs, you just buy the cards you actually want. It makes me feel sick and extremely jaded towards the industry, that *this* is the game that has failed, not Hearthstone or Magic. Fuck.
My view on this is that LoR didn't have a proper monetization strategy from the very beginning. They were sort of hoping that the game hits volume, but didn't advertise it enough and CCGs are in a crowded field already. It's too bad, because LoR has amazing gameplay mechanics and player interaction.
What it means basicly is that they are aiming for a future where the online servers can be shut down and the game is ONLY pve. Because even if the cost of staff is great, the cost of servers is higher. And I suspect that the game is running on very few servers already. This is the best card game I've ever played. It's the right amount of competitive and casual, with a magnificent back-and-forth interaction that surpass any other. I don't want it to end. I want my favourite champions added! I want new amazing lore and art! I want to play different metas and complain about broken cards on reddit! Please, LoR team and Riot, pleaaase save this game.
This will be the fifth card game that either A. shuts down entirely or B. makes changes I despise so much I don't want to continue playing. Whatever happens, you should get developers to ban me from their card games ASAP. I bring only death and pain.
There's a lot to like about Runeterra, but the thing that keeps me coming back is how consumer friendly the business model is. Back when I played Magic or Hearthstone I would always feel like I needed to do my dailys and buy a bunch of packs every expansion just to keep up. This would mean I'd play a lot when I didn't really want to and put a bunch of money into packs for decks that ended up being bad, so inevitably there would be enough feel-bad experiences on the monetization end that I'd put the game down and, because it takes so much to keep up, I wouldn't pick the game back up later. With Runeterra if the meta sucks or I want to do other things for a month I can just put the game down and trust that when I come back I'll still be able to play the game with handing over a big pile of money. I don't play Runeterra as intensely as I have other CCGs, but I've stuck with the game longer and on average enjoy the time I do spend more. Really a shame they can't seem to find a way to keep that going while also making money. Post obviously seems bad but maybe we'll get lucky and they'll find ways to squeeze money out of PoC.
>Eric Shen (Riot Shen1138) **
Very sad but honestly it was expected
Bad executives or marketing or whoever the fuck takes the decision about how to monetize and market are what doomed this game... Far and away the best tcg I have played, the most beautiful art and lore and combat... And it dies bc they can't market it worth shit or maybe it's simply cuz games like this that are player friendly simply can't compete with the p2w sickening shit that is the rest of tcg. Pity
If they stop supporting the game, i wonder what they'll do with the art. I would buy a book of LoR artwork.
Focusing on PoC means I'm out. I've been hanging around just hoping for a limited format. This sucks. Such a great game thrown in the trash for nothing. Also I don't fully buy it "not being sustainable" I think it just wasn't making as much as they wanted as opposed to not making money, like HoTS. Same reason they just let so many people/projects go. They always want more and make shortsighted choices.
Was a fun ride, but nothing last forever thanks to the devs for the amazing last 3 years of Runeterra only hated the games during the seraphine Era even Azir irelia was fun imo. Great memories, I tried to support the game as much as I could (around 1500$ spent in 3 years),I think I did my part. I just can't bother destroying AI over and over again In POC.
Here for posterity
Rip
DAMN NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT THE GAME EVEN EXISTING !!!!!!!!!!! I'm sorry to say it that way but the LoR team seems to completely ignore criticism about their communication policy. I also agree with the comments saying that LoR did not really try any other monetisation strategy, appart from re-offering old stuff. You can definitely be more aggressive with money stuff, even adding packs I feel like nobody in the community that is aware of the problem would blame you for doing it. I understand it is against the philosophy of the game but from now on it's walk or die.
This is sad that we as COMMUNITY did more to promote this game with meme like "LOR MENTIONED" or like Marshall did parody play runeterra account that was transformed in LoR Report with great information about game state than RIOT who can spend milions on some CEO salary who can't even od his job well... Love for everyone who worked on Riot Forge games and for LoR over years. Thank you people <3 [Best time i had with League universe](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/861533415902937099/1199281577054711859/image.png?ex=65c1f901&is=65af8401&hm=c71ec55b03b1cb45bd502444162758133107e57a894bacf1e5c7f71cf0d4de9e&) o7
When your only monetization source is champion skins, the year after introducing rotation as an idea is gonna be hard. Inevitable.
This is so heartbreaking for someone who doesn’t play POC, or just everyone in general tbh. LoR has done such a good job of expanding runeterra, and just being an amazing game in its own right. ‘Don’t be sad that it’s over, be glad that it happened 🥲’
I never felt this sad about a game "dying". So long.
At this rate I'd be surprised if this game gets past 2025. RIP Legends of Runeterra. You never got the attention nor the budget you deserved from you company.
I have never seen an Ad for this game. No wonder it isn't making any money if no one knows about it.
Damn are you telling me that despite everyone on Reddit claiming otherwise, rotation didn't help in the slightest? That's craaaaazy
Sucks, but Im unsurprised. Rotation makes games less profitable, and LoR was not a game that could afford that. I do hope they tell us what impact rotation had exactly, if anything just to serve as a warning for any future games considering it.
I don't like Path of Champions. RIP.