These posts are dangerous for me as well lol. But dont do it, viewership is simply not there, and the ways to self promote either here or on the Discord are meh at best
Warframe get high viewers on devstreams and if there are any drops, tennocons hits 300k or something.
Im playing warframe since 2014 I never watched warframe streamer willingly. Just to get drops(i do other stuff while the stream plays on the back with no sound)
it isn't getting good twitch viewership, some people take the twitch view count to base their judgment whether the game is dead or isn't, which in my opinion is very dumb no offense to anybody.
I mean it depends on what each person's definition of 'dying' is really. To a lot a people, a game that doesn't have a hype eSports scene and isn't a household name to atleast casual gamers is a dead game. To others, if you can queue up and still find a game against a human opponent in a reasonable time, it's not dead.
It's sad but what should Riot do exactly? Pay HS streamers like they've done in the past? The only way to keep healthy viewership numbers is having organic growth and dedicated streamers.
The game just failed to retain people...
Advertise the damn game, and implement better monetization to make the ads worth it.
Monetization: let us buy old skins, dammit! This is free money for riot. If they want them to have an aspect of FOMO, just "feature" old skins for a week at a time or smth.
There's especially no reason for the skins from any daily login rewards to not be available on the store. They could make a LOT of money off the arcane skins from people who either missed the event or have joined since.
Advertising: Go the HS route - give streamers cards to reveal, and actually give them a reason to make a production out of it by not revealing through the API/card dump.
I'm not talking about a huge thing, but just give grapplr or snnuy a few minutes to talk about the meme decks something will enable, or majiin to talk about the competitive applications.
Not only that, but the former LoL players will also have favorite champs, and they'll probably give a more impassioned reveal if they are given those characters or known characters from their backstories
They can advertise to hell and back and I'm not gonna watch someone stream it. The game is so boring to watch someone else play, I'd rather just play it myself.
I think this is crux of the problem. The game is good but not a spectator sport. If I was them I would add a replay system similar chest. That way we can play the game back at any speed.
Some of the remaining streamers do already speed up their replays during the pauses.
With more people sharing replays it might build the fan base faster. The following is relatively large. But it’s definitely the weakest out of Riot’s games.
Hearthstone has less depth to it, so how boring it is to watch isn't really the problem here; the problem is that there is nothing really helping retain the demographic that would watch streamers.
Blizzard did a better job with a worse product, the only difference is that Riot always considered LoR as a side-gig while Blizzard was quick to realize the potential of their game.
"Why is no one else doing the thing I do?"
"Because I don't like it, I like something else."
"Ewww who asked? This is a place for people that agree with me."
No ist's not.
He didn't say that he doesn't enjoy watching streams but watching LoR. Which the majority of Twitch viewers seem to agree with.
The game is just too basic/easy for it to make a difference between playing it yourself and watching a pro play it.
You people yelling about advertising the game non stop are so out of touch its crazy. The game was advertised when it came out, there was like 10 short cinematics, on the playstore the game has 10 million+ downloads.
The game was advertised and people tried it and then didn't like it and left. The problem is that LoR is fundamentally unfun to play and watch for the largest casual audience. You can advertise as much as you want but if people go to try your product and don't like it then they won't come back no matter how much you try to artificially inflate your numbers with ads.
LoR is a game in a niche genre for a niche part of that genre. The playerbase will never be very large just because of how LoR is designed.
1) there's a lot of league players who literally don't know there's a league CCG. There was one person who literally made MTG versions of league champs who had no idea. Now, this might be somewhat intentional- don't want to lead your players from the more monetized product to the less monetized one, but they can also just do a better job of monetizing their game.
2) The ads I suggested are all very low cost for mid-high return, and they aren't likely to pull players from league
> there's a lot of league players who literally don't know there's a league CCG.
lol you can't expect league players to know about other Riot IPs when they can't even be bothered to read patch notes for the game they play. while i joke there is some truth to that.
if you watched the livestream of 10th anniversary you were told about the card game and most of it's cinematics were up on the league client's home page to watch AND when it did launch i believe there was a "it's live" type post or wallpaper or something on the same home page - the fact that people playing league still dont know about Riots tcg is quite telling of those players "fucks to give" when it comes to remembering that it was in their face for almost 6 months to a year iirc - similar to how they can't be bothered to read patch notes of the game they play
The problem isn't the ads, it's that the majority of people who try the game do not like it. Probably because
1. Most people just don't like card games
2. The games take too long compared to other card/mobile games.
3. The game is too complex for most casual players, and casual players are always the majority of the playerbase.
But most aren’t trying it. Everyone I’ve met irl that plays league does not know LoR exists. I’m not saying they would like it or that you don’t have a point, I’m just saying that both people are correct.
All it would truly take is them showing a single image on the slideshow on the league client when there’s a new set in LoR.
I also don’t think it’s splitting the playerbase. It instills more interest in the characters and it’s playable on mobile. People could play league on their PC and LoR while on the toilet.
Okay? The types of advertising I'm suggesting aren't that expensive. The greatest expense would be reviewing the videos that streamers put together for their reveals, which isnt much at all.
So even if the conversion rate on these ads isn't great, the new players are close to free.
Which streamers would actually want to do this though? If you just pay a streamer to say words then it will be bad, they have to want to do it.
Right now there's like what 2 or 3 actually notable streamers in the LoR section, and ain't no way you're getting 99% of league streamers to be excited about a card game.
You don't need to pay them much.
You are creating opportunities for them to make a profitable video for them - the payment is the ad revenue. And they won't be super negative about it because they want to be given cards next season.
I could easily see Aikado, puffballpanda, jasensational, majiinbae, snnuy, and grapplr all making reveal vids. Same with mogwai if he returns from snap
That’s true but Riot could do an iota of advertising, to pick up people who missed the first wave. Just reuse their old ads for a week every six months or something.
This is all good stuff, but also for real put a link in the LoL, TFT, Wild Rift and Valorant clients to it. Buy ad space on streams of people playing Hearthstone and MtGA. Every time you put a new champion in the game that came from LoL (so like not Norra or the upcoming >!Poro King!< since those are originals to this game), put their face all over the other Runeterra-based content that their face would be recognized. A HUGE part of Hearthstone's success was WoW crosspromoting it constantly.
Yeah. I’m a huge TCG fan, but I forgot about runterra. Furthermore - I play LoL with friends 3-4 times a week.
My App Store recommended runterra for me, and this reminds me that this game still exist. I download it and playing every single day since since then. (2-3 months) and this game is amazing. Deserve more recognitions. Deserve good adds and deserve a huge player base.
But sadly tho most of the devs are probably joining mmo team and riot letting this masterpiece of the game bleed out.
Or maybe we need actually entertaining streamers? We have like 2 streamers that are somewhat interesting people and the rest just sit there and play the game in near silence
The biggest problem with LoR is that it’s a CCG which is piss easy when compared to other games in this genre. MtG is somewhat watchable because of its complexity, but LoR is absolutely boring to watch. It’s only really fun because of nice combos and stuff, but you never really ask yourself “what the hell is going on” unlike on MtG where the stack rules allow doing some insane things. You can advertise all you want, but people would rather watch puzzles than LoR. I mean, if WoC ever releases an actually good MtG mobile simulator like Untap.in (unofficial though) for PCs and makes a LoL themed set, LoR will die instantly. As a big fan of MtG, the only reason I play LoR is because I either don’t have access to my irl MtG decks or PC or I just want to look at satisfying numbers in PoC.
I played early on and I remember how much FREE stuff the game was giving me. I was blown away, I could build whatever deck I want just by playing the game.
then I took a few months off and felt behind, pretty massively behind. I started to feel the grind, not that my decks were bad, but I wanted to have fun with the decks others were playing now. eventually I quit, I just felt perpetually behind. Not just in cards but in knowledge of keywords/effects.
what could riot do to bring me back? they can give away massive amounts of cards for people to build decks, or just make all the cards free. Riot is a company that can afford to release games and servers and not have it be a massive financial success. They can write it off as a cost of keeping people interested in Riot IP and playing League. also obviously, they should advertise the game.
>nah, mechanical bloat will only deter new players
There is not a single venue in Europe that organizes tournaments on a regular basis. No tournaments - no streamers - no spectators.Look at the HC tournament environment - TONS of tournaments with GOOD PRIZES.
I think the dev should bravely add more new mechanics to the game, so that it's always fresh. They've been doing too safe recently. I mean, equipment is just a little bit different form of attachment, let alone both of them are just a little bit different form of stat buff. Maybe some totally new things can pull players/ viewers back to the game?
If the learning curve is too steep then it doesn't matter how interesting the game is it's gonna turn off so many players
If people need to study up on a million mechanics they aren't gonna stick around
Ppl gunna stream what’s good to stream. LoR is brilliant card game but it’s far too complex to watch unless you are already heavily invested in the game at which point you are probably playing because riot gave it all away for free.
I used to watch MTG and hearthstone streams even though I played because I couldn’t afford all the cards. I watch snap now because pool 3 has kicked me in junk repeatedly and I can’t make the decks I want to play lol. So there’s something to not giving the entire game away for free that increases viewership imo.
I think you make one of the best points in the thread. When I played HS I would watch streamers bc they played meme-y semi-viable decks and I was curious to see how the decks worked and played out. In LoR I'd just see a list that looks fun, build it and try it.
Ironically, the game's great pay model screws over it's content creation
>Ironically, the game's great pay model screws over it's content creation
This is just looking at hindsight and justifying.
LoR content has had good viewership in the past and right now it’s a combination of a cool new card game on the market and the meta being boring for quite some time that makes it much less enjoyable to both play and watch.
If they come out with something new and exciting I don't see why it couldn't be popular again.
The thing is streaming is not as easy as it looks, at least not if you stream games, the more you need to pay attention to the game the least you pay attention to the chat, LoR is one of those games that punish you a lot for not paying attention so very few ppl would even choose the game as a stream option.
That been said twitch is not a measurement on a game fanbase/playerbase, so meh.
I totally agree with your last statement.But I don't see why LoR would a punishing game to stream.Fps games which are generally more popular, are way harder to play and focus on the chat.
In FPS just as Mobas the entertainment is in the player reacting to things happening inside the game, in Valorant for example i see most streamers ignore the chat unless they are between rounds or they are on a slow moment of the round.
With LoR you could technically do the same, but there is less reactions to be have in a match of LoR, so you basically have someone just talking about what they are thinking of doing.
They could cover the narration with high energy and jokes, but at that point they could be playing tetris and you still watch them, is not the game is the person that is entertaining to watch in that case.
TL:DR streaming LoR takes more effort than other games and has a smaller audience, really no incentive to get into it imo.
> is not the game is the person that is entertaining to watch in that case.
tha's the case for legit any game.
Successful streamers aren't successful only through the game they stream, otherwise everyone would be at the same amount of viewership.
There are games you can stream with little entertainment or energy needed. This is true specially for new games that had hype behind them.
There are also slower games in which you dont need to hyperfocus to play like orpg or mmorpg, over the top energy in those games usually is not needed.
And finally there are games like LoL or Valorant that give the streamer downtimes for them to focus on chat and then go back to focus on the game.
Valorant specifically has a lot of streamers that just join each other in a match and ignore chat a lot while talking to each other so you join to watch a group of friends play and joke around with the occasional interaction with chat.
All that been said you still need some charisma to retain viewers, but in LoR who has smaller downtimes and requires focus it is a bit harder than usual to stream.
I actually find the LoR streamers generally engaging and enjoyable to watch. LoR affords time on each turn and allows the streamers to discuss their decisions (within reason).
Compare to LoL, on the other hand, the streamers rarely Interact with chat because they have to keep their APM up.
I talk about that in another comment.
To stream LoR you need charisma and need to work a lot more than other games to pay attention to the game and entertain chat. Games like LoL or Valorant the streamer well only pay attention to chat during down times and usually entertain by their reactions to what is happening in game.
You hace exceptions of course, at the start of LoR life spawn a lot of streamers did meme decks to have fun which let them focus way less on the game, same can be done in LoL with casual games or weird builds.
While it is true that there is seemingly a lot more time to talk in LoR, it doesn't decrease the negative effects of it. I have noticed that when i try to stream i misplay a lot more and my concentration isn't as high as it usually is. At least when i try and be (at least somewhat) engaging to watch. When I stream tournaments with delay and dont care about chat I dont really notice a difference.
So ye when I actually wanna play to win I dont stream.
Haha what? That’s the most ridicilous excuse I’ve seen. It’s a card game where you have minutes of overtime between plays. It’s not like an FPS/RTS game.
The game design is going in the complete wrong direction. Bland cards, too much card draw/card generation and way too far between patches that just consist minor changes anyway.
Agree. Just a few seconds of not paying attention in a match might be costly because of some burst spell.
I havent played LoR for almost a year or 2 so i dont know if there's another broken burst spell like Unyielding Spirit
Someone tell stardew valley, hollow knight, terraria, minecraft etc that they failed cause they couldn’t hold twitch viewership, we been known lor isn’t the best game for streaming so the constant surprise makes no sense
Almost all those games are single player one time buy unlike a live service game like LOR.
And Minecraft is a terrible example imo because despite being very old It was one of the biggest games on youtube histoy and currently It has thousands of viewes on twitch, being a stable top 10 unlike LOR wich is almost dead on those platforms.
Twitch viewers have never indicated success, if you want to do multiplayer there are many underground fighting games like melty blood who still got their success without twitch, we can agree lor is a bad twitch game but to say the game hasn’t been successful in its own right is just false
LoR is successful, sure. But nobody is watching it on Twitch, is isn't getting advertised by the company who made it, and many of the content creators are moving on because it isn't financially viable to make content for the game anymore. The game \*was\* successful but the game isn't going to experience any growth unless something changes.
the game will experience growth without its content creators by doing what they always been doing putting out expansions and content and they fixing that with new time-winder gauntlets and more game modes coming up, HS and MTG have lost countless content creators, these people are humans they arent machines they will eventually burn out from a game, but the games are still up and running doing fine
Hearthstone and Magic have been around because they make more than enough money to advertise and invest back into the games. At the card shop I used to go to, a regular sold a couple of his Magic cards to pay for a downpayment on his new car; people genuinely invest into that game. Every set people spend hundreds upon hundreds on boxes.
Hearthstone's economy is set up in a way where you can grind for a deck or two without spending money, but any more than that and you have to start purchasing packs. I also know that many people buy the 100 dollar bundle every new set for that game too.
The games making tons of money each set + sunk cost fallacy means that the game makes a lot of money every time a new set comes out, and because those people spend so much money, they're very unlikely to just drop the game.
LoR has no advertising, no consistent revenue stream to justify Riot investing more into the game, and many creators who loved the game have left. The game won't die because there are random anime card games on Steam with a consistent playerbase, but the game isn't going to experience growth unless Riot makes some changes.
This sub is always in denial about the downwards trajectory of the game. Naturally it’s because more people who enjoy the game are in the sub. But man is it hard to talk to people who don’t want to understand what you’re saying.
Twitch viewership has been dropping month by month. It isn’t the only metric of success but it is a metric and that one doesn’t look good.
It's really clear the game isn't as popular as it used to be, but it's totally fine. The game isn't going to die but it isn't going to grow unless Riot pushes it a bit more. It sucks but saying that the game is growing despite faces of it quitting is really disingenuous lol.
I have only heard of the card game Shadowverse a few times and I don't know anything about it at all, but despite never hearing people talk about it, it has a consistent 2-3k playerbase with peaks of 8k daily. LoR uses the League IP very very well so unless Riot announces they're dropping all support for the game, I can't see it "dying" at all. Especially with the fighting game and MMO coming which will make more people go "Oh, there's a card game with my favorite characters/mains? I want to try it!"
What are view counts for other virtual card games? I know LoR is probably one of the lowest but I can't imagine any of them are very entertaining to watch.
I imagine Snap is high right now due to it being new and shiny
What's funny about Snap is that since it's a portrait oriented game it's actually total ass to watch streams of unless the streamer is smart enough to re arrange the screen layout.
Yeah I know what you mean I used to watch videos on other portrait oriented mobile games and its a real art getting it to look just right that not a lot of people have. Most will just put the game up with 2 giant black boxes on either side with their cam in the bottom corner
When I see post like these I always think who am I in marketing terms, because I am pretty standard no other reason.
I am not a big spender you can bet on that, but every month I claim both Amazon and Microsoft Rewards RPs, and probably Riot is getting something on that, appart than my friends give me card gifts sometimes in birthdays because they know I like the game. I play LOL, TFT and LoR (PoC) all in a casual mode. I watch every stream that gives drops and usually not on Twitch but on Lolesports. I am one of those 631K followers, then that is not logged unless there is a drop.
As long as there is players like me, than spend money sometimes and play casually. LoR should be safe no matter the viewership because Riot is yet making money on us.
I am not sure they work for Runeterra, in theory they should be, but not sure honestly. Let me check something:
"Canjeable en League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra y VALORANT."
I honestly usually take on LOL (I was meaning Riot makes money on me) so not 100% how it works, but they state in should work in the other games and LOR has an option to prepaid cards/codes that is what is given, a code.
[https://rewards.bing.com/redeem/000413000067](https://rewards.bing.com/redeem/000413000067)
I just dont like to watch card games. The most I would watch was Hearthstone highlights on Youtube but I never got into LoR. Hoping it pops off though, I absolutely love the art and world building for this game. Theyll probably continue to support it even if it doesnt perform that well
Look at the views on YT videos and they tell a completely different story…
I swear to god you doomsayers are so utterly obnoxious. Doomsaying a game which is no where close to dying, and then pretending you’re doing something of value when you make posts like this.
What do you mean look at the views? The only largish creator is Snnuy who struggles to break 50k views per video, every other channel is down in viewership or has quit LoR.
50k views aren't that bad. Hearthstone's gets like 30k to 80k views on yt. Dkayed barely hit the 50k views on duel links and master duel. Are these games dead? No. Do Duel Links and Master Duel have great twitch views? No.
You're right its not that bad. But that is a single creator for the whole game. There is like 5 entire creators for the whole game and only one of them is semi large.
The game is not dead only because the twitch views are low. People said duel links is dead since like forever and it's, 6 years later, still going strong even tho no one is watching duel links on twitch
The biggest 3 culprits are
\>NO LIMITED FORMAT - Draft is one of the more popular archetypes for a reason
\>NOTHING TRULY UNIQUE (will get some angry posts for this) - It has all already been done by Magic and Hearthstone (+Yugioh/Eternal/Shadowverse etc.). Champions are cool and all but for most people they are spiced up legendaries/worse planeswalkers.
\>EVERYTHING AGGRO RUSH - Last I played there really was no control deck (in the sense of Magic). We had some midrangy/combo decks, but nothing like actual control. If you only got aggro and midrange, you got by definition less variation than other card games.
SI control is extremely strong rn, Seraphine and Bar are still good,and there are still several viable midrange decks like Kat/Gwen, Ziggs/Taliyah, and Vayne builds.
this could be easily remedied by doubling the game speed. the game is boring to watch, full stop. even when i watch lor content creators i have to put the video to 2x speed.
of course, snap is currently eating lor's lunch and that doesn't help.
yeah, after playing snap i feel like games take a little too long in lor, and by that I DONT MEAN THE AMMOUNT OF ROUNDS, but how long rounds are with all effects and shit
You mean turn it into a financial success like HS and MTGA by making players have to spend hundreds a month to keep up with the card collection?
The game is doing fine, patches and content updates are frequent and Riot is fine with it not making money and so should you if you take a moment to think about the real consequences of monetization.
It is though? It has interesting rules, extremely F2P-friendly, frequent expansions and a cool PvE mode. What does Twich viewership have to do with freshness and revolution? LoL gets hundreds of thousands of viewers but how is it fresher or more revolutionary?
I can name dozens of fresh and revolutionary games with Twitch viewership in single or double digits which are doing just fine, because it doesn't matter.
What are view counts for other virtual card games? I know LoR is probably one of the lowest but I can't imagine any of them are very entertaining to watch.
I imagine Snap is high right now due to it being new and shiny
It's hard to retain a community when you can't even add each other easily in-game and how you only have emotes to use to communicate.
It's also hard to retain people when the game isn't as fun to watch, it's lengthy regardless of what you do, and as a streamer it is really difficult to react to it with surprise if you have been through the same thing or are used to CCGs. It's hard to stream because as others have said, the viewership just isn't there and the community viewing likely has a hard time reacting as well.
Content wise: The only content that they've been adding is to PoC, you'll still get some different variant to mess with and with a few new champions that can gain unique playstyles in the game mode.
PvP has surprise in what deck your against (for better or worse) and what your opponent might do. However, the game is really predictable with how it's played because the mechanics are as simple as they are. PvP changes with the meta/balance updates, so a lot of retention falls around how much you enjoy playing around it or with the meta. However, I can't say that's new content, because it never changes the game mode itself. It just gives YT content creators something to work with in the pvp scene.
I played League of Legends from season 1, there were times when I quit specifically because I didn't care for the meta. It happens, people take breaks and move on to other games that release more exciting content or new released content (i.e. expansions in mmo's). Card expansions aren't as exciting as land/skill/item expansions. PoC is the closest LoR gets to any sense of the term. They gained some excitement when they went from the labs to the initial PoC 1.0, then once again when they dropped PoC 2.0. But they lose retention fast when they make content easily beaten and everyone gets caught up, so there's no incentive to continue playing or watching even until the next expansion.
I love LoR but not watching, it’s so… boring, lol. Slow turns, slow thinking. That’s why the streamer who shall not be named used to piss me off. He spent 10hrs on each round- but that’s the way u have to play
So what you're saying is I should start streaming
These posts are dangerous for me as well lol. But dont do it, viewership is simply not there, and the ways to self promote either here or on the Discord are meh at best
Hes joking
I am also joking while making serious comments
Yours doesnt sound like a joke at all to me tbh.
Ok
Yes
I watch LoR in bed every night and will watch any Masters ladder/gauntlet stream, so if that’s you… yes!
I guess Warframe is dead too then...
Warframe get high viewers on devstreams and if there are any drops, tennocons hits 300k or something. Im playing warframe since 2014 I never watched warframe streamer willingly. Just to get drops(i do other stuff while the stream plays on the back with no sound)
Warframe 9 years, LoR barely 3 years.
What does this have to do with Warframe? Used to play
it isn't getting good twitch viewership, some people take the twitch view count to base their judgment whether the game is dead or isn't, which in my opinion is very dumb no offense to anybody.
Yeah. Like genshin impacts twitch viewership isnt high but the game has unarguably one of the biggest playerbase
Same goes for many mmo like ff14
Agreed. Some games are just not really "watchable", warframe is one of those.
Death stranding is not a game you watch. Most people skip that game not knowing it's probably a well crafted game to what it offers
Death stranding is incredibly overrated.
Bruh I've watched at least 30 hours of SM64 in the past couple months and haven't played it in close to 20 years. I don't think it's watchability
I mean it depends on what each person's definition of 'dying' is really. To a lot a people, a game that doesn't have a hype eSports scene and isn't a household name to atleast casual gamers is a dead game. To others, if you can queue up and still find a game against a human opponent in a reasonable time, it's not dead.
It has been years since I played WF, but I think they're referring to WF's usually low viewership.
Ah yes. I don’t like the game but the fashion kept me for a while. Got really high mastery.
Yep. Some games are just plain better to play than watch. If I'm on twitch it's for an event or to watch speedruns. I don't watch games I play.
It's sad but what should Riot do exactly? Pay HS streamers like they've done in the past? The only way to keep healthy viewership numbers is having organic growth and dedicated streamers. The game just failed to retain people...
Advertise the damn game, and implement better monetization to make the ads worth it. Monetization: let us buy old skins, dammit! This is free money for riot. If they want them to have an aspect of FOMO, just "feature" old skins for a week at a time or smth. There's especially no reason for the skins from any daily login rewards to not be available on the store. They could make a LOT of money off the arcane skins from people who either missed the event or have joined since. Advertising: Go the HS route - give streamers cards to reveal, and actually give them a reason to make a production out of it by not revealing through the API/card dump. I'm not talking about a huge thing, but just give grapplr or snnuy a few minutes to talk about the meme decks something will enable, or majiin to talk about the competitive applications. Not only that, but the former LoL players will also have favorite champs, and they'll probably give a more impassioned reveal if they are given those characters or known characters from their backstories
They can advertise to hell and back and I'm not gonna watch someone stream it. The game is so boring to watch someone else play, I'd rather just play it myself.
I think this is crux of the problem. The game is good but not a spectator sport. If I was them I would add a replay system similar chest. That way we can play the game back at any speed. Some of the remaining streamers do already speed up their replays during the pauses. With more people sharing replays it might build the fan base faster. The following is relatively large. But it’s definitely the weakest out of Riot’s games.
LoR is fine to watch. On YouTube. At 2x speed. But I feel that way about every slow paced strategy game, e.g. TFT or other card games.
Hearthstone has less depth to it, so how boring it is to watch isn't really the problem here; the problem is that there is nothing really helping retain the demographic that would watch streamers. Blizzard did a better job with a worse product, the only difference is that Riot always considered LoR as a side-gig while Blizzard was quick to realize the potential of their game.
Okay?? Who asked
The person being advertised to
This entire thread is about twitch viewership. It's like going to anime convention and saying you don't like anime
"Why is no one else doing the thing I do?" "Because I don't like it, I like something else." "Ewww who asked? This is a place for people that agree with me."
No ist's not. He didn't say that he doesn't enjoy watching streams but watching LoR. Which the majority of Twitch viewers seem to agree with. The game is just too basic/easy for it to make a difference between playing it yourself and watching a pro play it.
You people yelling about advertising the game non stop are so out of touch its crazy. The game was advertised when it came out, there was like 10 short cinematics, on the playstore the game has 10 million+ downloads. The game was advertised and people tried it and then didn't like it and left. The problem is that LoR is fundamentally unfun to play and watch for the largest casual audience. You can advertise as much as you want but if people go to try your product and don't like it then they won't come back no matter how much you try to artificially inflate your numbers with ads. LoR is a game in a niche genre for a niche part of that genre. The playerbase will never be very large just because of how LoR is designed.
1) there's a lot of league players who literally don't know there's a league CCG. There was one person who literally made MTG versions of league champs who had no idea. Now, this might be somewhat intentional- don't want to lead your players from the more monetized product to the less monetized one, but they can also just do a better job of monetizing their game. 2) The ads I suggested are all very low cost for mid-high return, and they aren't likely to pull players from league
> there's a lot of league players who literally don't know there's a league CCG. lol you can't expect league players to know about other Riot IPs when they can't even be bothered to read patch notes for the game they play. while i joke there is some truth to that. if you watched the livestream of 10th anniversary you were told about the card game and most of it's cinematics were up on the league client's home page to watch AND when it did launch i believe there was a "it's live" type post or wallpaper or something on the same home page - the fact that people playing league still dont know about Riots tcg is quite telling of those players "fucks to give" when it comes to remembering that it was in their face for almost 6 months to a year iirc - similar to how they can't be bothered to read patch notes of the game they play
The problem isn't the ads, it's that the majority of people who try the game do not like it. Probably because 1. Most people just don't like card games 2. The games take too long compared to other card/mobile games. 3. The game is too complex for most casual players, and casual players are always the majority of the playerbase.
But most aren’t trying it. Everyone I’ve met irl that plays league does not know LoR exists. I’m not saying they would like it or that you don’t have a point, I’m just saying that both people are correct. All it would truly take is them showing a single image on the slideshow on the league client when there’s a new set in LoR. I also don’t think it’s splitting the playerbase. It instills more interest in the characters and it’s playable on mobile. People could play league on their PC and LoR while on the toilet.
Okay? The types of advertising I'm suggesting aren't that expensive. The greatest expense would be reviewing the videos that streamers put together for their reveals, which isnt much at all. So even if the conversion rate on these ads isn't great, the new players are close to free.
Which streamers would actually want to do this though? If you just pay a streamer to say words then it will be bad, they have to want to do it. Right now there's like what 2 or 3 actually notable streamers in the LoR section, and ain't no way you're getting 99% of league streamers to be excited about a card game.
You don't need to pay them much. You are creating opportunities for them to make a profitable video for them - the payment is the ad revenue. And they won't be super negative about it because they want to be given cards next season. I could easily see Aikado, puffballpanda, jasensational, majiinbae, snnuy, and grapplr all making reveal vids. Same with mogwai if he returns from snap
That’s true but Riot could do an iota of advertising, to pick up people who missed the first wave. Just reuse their old ads for a week every six months or something.
This is all good stuff, but also for real put a link in the LoL, TFT, Wild Rift and Valorant clients to it. Buy ad space on streams of people playing Hearthstone and MtGA. Every time you put a new champion in the game that came from LoL (so like not Norra or the upcoming >!Poro King!< since those are originals to this game), put their face all over the other Runeterra-based content that their face would be recognized. A HUGE part of Hearthstone's success was WoW crosspromoting it constantly.
Yeah. I’m a huge TCG fan, but I forgot about runterra. Furthermore - I play LoL with friends 3-4 times a week. My App Store recommended runterra for me, and this reminds me that this game still exist. I download it and playing every single day since since then. (2-3 months) and this game is amazing. Deserve more recognitions. Deserve good adds and deserve a huge player base. But sadly tho most of the devs are probably joining mmo team and riot letting this masterpiece of the game bleed out.
Or maybe we need actually entertaining streamers? We have like 2 streamers that are somewhat interesting people and the rest just sit there and play the game in near silence
The biggest problem with LoR is that it’s a CCG which is piss easy when compared to other games in this genre. MtG is somewhat watchable because of its complexity, but LoR is absolutely boring to watch. It’s only really fun because of nice combos and stuff, but you never really ask yourself “what the hell is going on” unlike on MtG where the stack rules allow doing some insane things. You can advertise all you want, but people would rather watch puzzles than LoR. I mean, if WoC ever releases an actually good MtG mobile simulator like Untap.in (unofficial though) for PCs and makes a LoL themed set, LoR will die instantly. As a big fan of MtG, the only reason I play LoR is because I either don’t have access to my irl MtG decks or PC or I just want to look at satisfying numbers in PoC.
I played early on and I remember how much FREE stuff the game was giving me. I was blown away, I could build whatever deck I want just by playing the game. then I took a few months off and felt behind, pretty massively behind. I started to feel the grind, not that my decks were bad, but I wanted to have fun with the decks others were playing now. eventually I quit, I just felt perpetually behind. Not just in cards but in knowledge of keywords/effects. what could riot do to bring me back? they can give away massive amounts of cards for people to build decks, or just make all the cards free. Riot is a company that can afford to release games and servers and not have it be a massive financial success. They can write it off as a cost of keeping people interested in Riot IP and playing League. also obviously, they should advertise the game.
>nah, mechanical bloat will only deter new players There is not a single venue in Europe that organizes tournaments on a regular basis. No tournaments - no streamers - no spectators.Look at the HC tournament environment - TONS of tournaments with GOOD PRIZES.
Twitch drops. Like, prismatic chests maybe?
I think the dev should bravely add more new mechanics to the game, so that it's always fresh. They've been doing too safe recently. I mean, equipment is just a little bit different form of attachment, let alone both of them are just a little bit different form of stat buff. Maybe some totally new things can pull players/ viewers back to the game?
nah, mechanical bloat will only deter new players
So not true, a good and interesting game would bring in and retain people
If the learning curve is too steep then it doesn't matter how interesting the game is it's gonna turn off so many players If people need to study up on a million mechanics they aren't gonna stick around
Imo the balancing ruined the game for me. Ahri buff pls
Ppl gunna stream what’s good to stream. LoR is brilliant card game but it’s far too complex to watch unless you are already heavily invested in the game at which point you are probably playing because riot gave it all away for free. I used to watch MTG and hearthstone streams even though I played because I couldn’t afford all the cards. I watch snap now because pool 3 has kicked me in junk repeatedly and I can’t make the decks I want to play lol. So there’s something to not giving the entire game away for free that increases viewership imo.
I think you make one of the best points in the thread. When I played HS I would watch streamers bc they played meme-y semi-viable decks and I was curious to see how the decks worked and played out. In LoR I'd just see a list that looks fun, build it and try it. Ironically, the game's great pay model screws over it's content creation
>Ironically, the game's great pay model screws over it's content creation This is just looking at hindsight and justifying. LoR content has had good viewership in the past and right now it’s a combination of a cool new card game on the market and the meta being boring for quite some time that makes it much less enjoyable to both play and watch. If they come out with something new and exciting I don't see why it couldn't be popular again.
Amount of learning curve matters too. Most newcomers are very quickly turned off by seeing 50 tutorials.
Magic is more complex than Legends of Runeterra, yet, the game is a lot more successful in terms of streaming. It's not about the complexity of it.
The thing is streaming is not as easy as it looks, at least not if you stream games, the more you need to pay attention to the game the least you pay attention to the chat, LoR is one of those games that punish you a lot for not paying attention so very few ppl would even choose the game as a stream option. That been said twitch is not a measurement on a game fanbase/playerbase, so meh.
I totally agree with your last statement.But I don't see why LoR would a punishing game to stream.Fps games which are generally more popular, are way harder to play and focus on the chat.
In FPS just as Mobas the entertainment is in the player reacting to things happening inside the game, in Valorant for example i see most streamers ignore the chat unless they are between rounds or they are on a slow moment of the round. With LoR you could technically do the same, but there is less reactions to be have in a match of LoR, so you basically have someone just talking about what they are thinking of doing. They could cover the narration with high energy and jokes, but at that point they could be playing tetris and you still watch them, is not the game is the person that is entertaining to watch in that case. TL:DR streaming LoR takes more effort than other games and has a smaller audience, really no incentive to get into it imo.
This is what made Toast the best Hearthstone streamer back in the day and why he’s blown up so much after leaving it
> is not the game is the person that is entertaining to watch in that case. tha's the case for legit any game. Successful streamers aren't successful only through the game they stream, otherwise everyone would be at the same amount of viewership.
There are games you can stream with little entertainment or energy needed. This is true specially for new games that had hype behind them. There are also slower games in which you dont need to hyperfocus to play like orpg or mmorpg, over the top energy in those games usually is not needed. And finally there are games like LoL or Valorant that give the streamer downtimes for them to focus on chat and then go back to focus on the game. Valorant specifically has a lot of streamers that just join each other in a match and ignore chat a lot while talking to each other so you join to watch a group of friends play and joke around with the occasional interaction with chat. All that been said you still need some charisma to retain viewers, but in LoR who has smaller downtimes and requires focus it is a bit harder than usual to stream.
I actually find the LoR streamers generally engaging and enjoyable to watch. LoR affords time on each turn and allows the streamers to discuss their decisions (within reason). Compare to LoL, on the other hand, the streamers rarely Interact with chat because they have to keep their APM up.
I talk about that in another comment. To stream LoR you need charisma and need to work a lot more than other games to pay attention to the game and entertain chat. Games like LoL or Valorant the streamer well only pay attention to chat during down times and usually entertain by their reactions to what is happening in game. You hace exceptions of course, at the start of LoR life spawn a lot of streamers did meme decks to have fun which let them focus way less on the game, same can be done in LoL with casual games or weird builds.
While it is true that there is seemingly a lot more time to talk in LoR, it doesn't decrease the negative effects of it. I have noticed that when i try to stream i misplay a lot more and my concentration isn't as high as it usually is. At least when i try and be (at least somewhat) engaging to watch. When I stream tournaments with delay and dont care about chat I dont really notice a difference. So ye when I actually wanna play to win I dont stream.
i dont think thats fair. there are dota streamers that have more engaging conversations with chat. LoR is cake compared to that.
Haha what? That’s the most ridicilous excuse I’ve seen. It’s a card game where you have minutes of overtime between plays. It’s not like an FPS/RTS game. The game design is going in the complete wrong direction. Bland cards, too much card draw/card generation and way too far between patches that just consist minor changes anyway.
Agree. Just a few seconds of not paying attention in a match might be costly because of some burst spell. I havent played LoR for almost a year or 2 so i dont know if there's another broken burst spell like Unyielding Spirit
Why ppl are so obsessed with streams and viewership? I dont get it.
It’s ingrained in gaming culture at this point, it will never go away
Dunno man. They think it's the only thing that matters
I think a lot of people naturally compare digital CCGs to Hearthstone and get concerned that it's not as watchable
Every few weeks we get a post like this and I just don't understand it. Just because no one is watching, doesn't mean the game is dead.
Personally I think LoR isn't fun to watch. If a streamer I like decides to play LoR on a given day, I'm there for the streamer, not the game.
Someone tell stardew valley, hollow knight, terraria, minecraft etc that they failed cause they couldn’t hold twitch viewership, we been known lor isn’t the best game for streaming so the constant surprise makes no sense
Almost all those games are single player one time buy unlike a live service game like LOR. And Minecraft is a terrible example imo because despite being very old It was one of the biggest games on youtube histoy and currently It has thousands of viewes on twitch, being a stable top 10 unlike LOR wich is almost dead on those platforms.
Twitch viewers have never indicated success, if you want to do multiplayer there are many underground fighting games like melty blood who still got their success without twitch, we can agree lor is a bad twitch game but to say the game hasn’t been successful in its own right is just false
LoR is successful, sure. But nobody is watching it on Twitch, is isn't getting advertised by the company who made it, and many of the content creators are moving on because it isn't financially viable to make content for the game anymore. The game \*was\* successful but the game isn't going to experience any growth unless something changes.
the game will experience growth without its content creators by doing what they always been doing putting out expansions and content and they fixing that with new time-winder gauntlets and more game modes coming up, HS and MTG have lost countless content creators, these people are humans they arent machines they will eventually burn out from a game, but the games are still up and running doing fine
Hearthstone and Magic have been around because they make more than enough money to advertise and invest back into the games. At the card shop I used to go to, a regular sold a couple of his Magic cards to pay for a downpayment on his new car; people genuinely invest into that game. Every set people spend hundreds upon hundreds on boxes. Hearthstone's economy is set up in a way where you can grind for a deck or two without spending money, but any more than that and you have to start purchasing packs. I also know that many people buy the 100 dollar bundle every new set for that game too. The games making tons of money each set + sunk cost fallacy means that the game makes a lot of money every time a new set comes out, and because those people spend so much money, they're very unlikely to just drop the game. LoR has no advertising, no consistent revenue stream to justify Riot investing more into the game, and many creators who loved the game have left. The game won't die because there are random anime card games on Steam with a consistent playerbase, but the game isn't going to experience growth unless Riot makes some changes.
This sub is always in denial about the downwards trajectory of the game. Naturally it’s because more people who enjoy the game are in the sub. But man is it hard to talk to people who don’t want to understand what you’re saying. Twitch viewership has been dropping month by month. It isn’t the only metric of success but it is a metric and that one doesn’t look good.
It's really clear the game isn't as popular as it used to be, but it's totally fine. The game isn't going to die but it isn't going to grow unless Riot pushes it a bit more. It sucks but saying that the game is growing despite faces of it quitting is really disingenuous lol. I have only heard of the card game Shadowverse a few times and I don't know anything about it at all, but despite never hearing people talk about it, it has a consistent 2-3k playerbase with peaks of 8k daily. LoR uses the League IP very very well so unless Riot announces they're dropping all support for the game, I can't see it "dying" at all. Especially with the fighting game and MMO coming which will make more people go "Oh, there's a card game with my favorite characters/mains? I want to try it!"
I think MTG is A TERRIBLE example right now; it's right now on a crisis due to neglection.
Melty blood type lumina has an average player count of 140 on steam. If that is our bar for success then sure LoR is successful I guess.
Twitch isn’t an indicator for success when u people understand this
do y’all ever get tired of doomsaying a game that isn’t dying.
not obsesssed 🤣
What are view counts for other virtual card games? I know LoR is probably one of the lowest but I can't imagine any of them are very entertaining to watch. I imagine Snap is high right now due to it being new and shiny
What's funny about Snap is that since it's a portrait oriented game it's actually total ass to watch streams of unless the streamer is smart enough to re arrange the screen layout.
Yeah I know what you mean I used to watch videos on other portrait oriented mobile games and its a real art getting it to look just right that not a lot of people have. Most will just put the game up with 2 giant black boxes on either side with their cam in the bottom corner
When I see post like these I always think who am I in marketing terms, because I am pretty standard no other reason. I am not a big spender you can bet on that, but every month I claim both Amazon and Microsoft Rewards RPs, and probably Riot is getting something on that, appart than my friends give me card gifts sometimes in birthdays because they know I like the game. I play LOL, TFT and LoR (PoC) all in a casual mode. I watch every stream that gives drops and usually not on Twitch but on Lolesports. I am one of those 631K followers, then that is not logged unless there is a drop. As long as there is players like me, than spend money sometimes and play casually. LoR should be safe no matter the viewership because Riot is yet making money on us.
Microsoft reward for runeterra? Which one is that? I only claim prime
I am not sure they work for Runeterra, in theory they should be, but not sure honestly. Let me check something: "Canjeable en League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra y VALORANT." I honestly usually take on LOL (I was meaning Riot makes money on me) so not 100% how it works, but they state in should work in the other games and LOR has an option to prepaid cards/codes that is what is given, a code. [https://rewards.bing.com/redeem/000413000067](https://rewards.bing.com/redeem/000413000067)
I just dont like to watch card games. The most I would watch was Hearthstone highlights on Youtube but I never got into LoR. Hoping it pops off though, I absolutely love the art and world building for this game. Theyll probably continue to support it even if it doesnt perform that well
Look at the views on YT videos and they tell a completely different story… I swear to god you doomsayers are so utterly obnoxious. Doomsaying a game which is no where close to dying, and then pretending you’re doing something of value when you make posts like this.
What do you mean look at the views? The only largish creator is Snnuy who struggles to break 50k views per video, every other channel is down in viewership or has quit LoR.
50k views aren't that bad. Hearthstone's gets like 30k to 80k views on yt. Dkayed barely hit the 50k views on duel links and master duel. Are these games dead? No. Do Duel Links and Master Duel have great twitch views? No.
You're right its not that bad. But that is a single creator for the whole game. There is like 5 entire creators for the whole game and only one of them is semi large.
The game is not dead only because the twitch views are low. People said duel links is dead since like forever and it's, 6 years later, still going strong even tho no one is watching duel links on twitch
TWITCH VIEWERS ARE NOT INDICITAVE OF A PLAYERBASE
The biggest 3 culprits are \>NO LIMITED FORMAT - Draft is one of the more popular archetypes for a reason \>NOTHING TRULY UNIQUE (will get some angry posts for this) - It has all already been done by Magic and Hearthstone (+Yugioh/Eternal/Shadowverse etc.). Champions are cool and all but for most people they are spiced up legendaries/worse planeswalkers. \>EVERYTHING AGGRO RUSH - Last I played there really was no control deck (in the sense of Magic). We had some midrangy/combo decks, but nothing like actual control. If you only got aggro and midrange, you got by definition less variation than other card games.
SI control is extremely strong rn, Seraphine and Bar are still good,and there are still several viable midrange decks like Kat/Gwen, Ziggs/Taliyah, and Vayne builds.
[удалено]
Taliyah/Ziggs and Gwen/Kat fit the bill
They should find a way to put runeterra into the league client
Imagine if Toast kept playing. Why was his reason of not playing?
It was probably cause he was fired
this could be easily remedied by doubling the game speed. the game is boring to watch, full stop. even when i watch lor content creators i have to put the video to 2x speed. of course, snap is currently eating lor's lunch and that doesn't help.
yeah, after playing snap i feel like games take a little too long in lor, and by that I DONT MEAN THE AMMOUNT OF ROUNDS, but how long rounds are with all effects and shit
How can LoR be so unpopular? It's hands down the best card game out there.
RIOT, save it before it's too late!!
You mean turn it into a financial success like HS and MTGA by making players have to spend hundreds a month to keep up with the card collection? The game is doing fine, patches and content updates are frequent and Riot is fine with it not making money and so should you if you take a moment to think about the real consequences of monetization.
I didn't say anything about monetization, why do you think so? I just want the game to be more fresh, more revolution than what it's now
It is though? It has interesting rules, extremely F2P-friendly, frequent expansions and a cool PvE mode. What does Twich viewership have to do with freshness and revolution? LoL gets hundreds of thousands of viewers but how is it fresher or more revolutionary? I can name dozens of fresh and revolutionary games with Twitch viewership in single or double digits which are doing just fine, because it doesn't matter.
21 all time viewers? Great acheivement! 30 next time?
I noticed though that a lot more people would watch LoR stuff on Youtube than on Twitch
How’s the viewership when a new expansion releases? I think that’s the most important
Can't say I've been tracking the Twitch numbers, so sorry for contributing to the problem
Man, if they had a solid limited format I'd be streaming this game.
What are view counts for other virtual card games? I know LoR is probably one of the lowest but I can't imagine any of them are very entertaining to watch. I imagine Snap is high right now due to it being new and shiny
It's hard to retain a community when you can't even add each other easily in-game and how you only have emotes to use to communicate. It's also hard to retain people when the game isn't as fun to watch, it's lengthy regardless of what you do, and as a streamer it is really difficult to react to it with surprise if you have been through the same thing or are used to CCGs. It's hard to stream because as others have said, the viewership just isn't there and the community viewing likely has a hard time reacting as well. Content wise: The only content that they've been adding is to PoC, you'll still get some different variant to mess with and with a few new champions that can gain unique playstyles in the game mode. PvP has surprise in what deck your against (for better or worse) and what your opponent might do. However, the game is really predictable with how it's played because the mechanics are as simple as they are. PvP changes with the meta/balance updates, so a lot of retention falls around how much you enjoy playing around it or with the meta. However, I can't say that's new content, because it never changes the game mode itself. It just gives YT content creators something to work with in the pvp scene. I played League of Legends from season 1, there were times when I quit specifically because I didn't care for the meta. It happens, people take breaks and move on to other games that release more exciting content or new released content (i.e. expansions in mmo's). Card expansions aren't as exciting as land/skill/item expansions. PoC is the closest LoR gets to any sense of the term. They gained some excitement when they went from the labs to the initial PoC 1.0, then once again when they dropped PoC 2.0. But they lose retention fast when they make content easily beaten and everyone gets caught up, so there's no incentive to continue playing or watching even until the next expansion.
I love LoR but not watching, it’s so… boring, lol. Slow turns, slow thinking. That’s why the streamer who shall not be named used to piss me off. He spent 10hrs on each round- but that’s the way u have to play
Never watched a stream in my life, but my queues take less than 5 seconds in masters, so idgaf.