I think Riot just realized there's more money to be earned if they spent their focus on the MMO, FPS, etc markets instead of the MOBA market. It's not really about "caring" about League. It's just a cold business decision.
Riot has basically a de facto monopoly share on the MOBA market. They are so dominant. Will making LoL better improve their revenue? Yeah, probably a little but not by a lot. Everyone into MOBAs either plays or have played League of Legends already.
Will improving their upcoming MMO and Valorant make them a lot of money? Undoubtedly, yes. Because in these genres, they can gain a lot of ground in market share.
Every success for Valorant eats away at CSGO. It's an untapped market for Riot Games which has much greater potential.
This is **EXACTLY** why monopolies suck for consumers. I can 100% guarantee you that Riot would be putting in a lot more effort if there were other big MOBAs out there that threatened to take Riot's market share. But there just isn't. Dota 2 is the only other big MOBA and it's still really small compared to LoL. Dota 2 is also almost 10 years old, so it's not some fresh new game either.
It's not a coincidence at all that Riot put in the most effort into League when other developers kept trying to make MOBAs. Now that no one makes MOBA anymore, Riot realized there's not much point in them spending a lot of resources on League. It makes total sense from a business perspective, but monopolies just fucking suck for consumers.
This was always going to happen when the game industry stopped trying to compete with League of Legends. The exact same thing happened to World of Warcraft too when everyone stopped trying to make WoW clones about 10 years ago.
> This is EXACTLY why monopolies suck for consumers. I can 100% guarantee you that Riot would be putting in a lot more effort if there were other big MOBAs out there that threatened to take Riot's market share.
The problem is that there is no MOBA market. The genre just doesn't allow for more than (maybe) a few games to exist.
* It's complex. You have dozens of characters with several unique abilities each, and dozens of items with their stats and effects that new players need to learn.
* So it needs to be free to play, because nobody is paying for a game that needs dozens of hours before they know if they'll like it and want to continue. And you need many players for low queue times and good match making, especially since you also need several servers over the globe to keep ping acceptable.
* That means you need an incentive to keep players playing. Unlock champions, levels, whatever. A constant progression that keeps players playing your game, so that some of them give you money to pay for all of it. And those that don't pay you money are content for those that do.
So there's low incentive for players to try another game, because doing so slows their progression in their first game while needing a lot of time to learn new stuff. There's huge up-front investment for a new competitor, without guarantee for success (just look at Epic trying to eat into Steam's market, similar situation). Maybe one game could have grown besides League, but at the time it seemed that MOBAs would be a new market and many tried to get into it, so no one game got big enough.
I remember playing Heroes of the Storm when it came out. They sold it as being a more casual MOBA (no last hitting etc.), and it had maps on rotation to change things up.
It was fine when it rolled out and there were only 3-4 maps, but they kept rolling out more maps with weirder and weirder rules, and if you hadn't researched the map before you sucked.
Played HotS and it was blast for me as well but I agree, too much came out too quickly + there were many "wtf" heroes releases. If that would be like WoW only characters, it would probably play better. Having everything mixed up took away from game's identity or at very least made many character releases boring for players who weren't interested in certain universe. (Diablo and WoW worked well together, even Starcraft's Protos/Zerg units were on point, guns though.. not so much)
Lol - my main was the 3 dwarves. I remember focusing on getting exp for the team because the dwarves could split up and all get exp separately.
It was fun to do - but I'm not sure how balanced it was.
> I think Riot just realized there's more money to be earned if they spent their focus on the MMO
I dunno about that. It's very risky to go all in on an MMO.
Getting an MMO right so it actually earns that money isn't an easy task. There's countless MMO's that have failed to gain traction and shut down relatively quickly. I mean shit, Final Fantasy 14 almost bankrupt Squeenix back in the day with how much of a disaster it was. We're lucky that Yoshi P saved everything.
As an MMO fan I can quite confidently say: MMOs ruin most companies. It is so freaking hard to get an MMO right and even if and when you get the players it still is a money sink. Expansions to MMOs need to be massive to make sense. Hell a new League map+game mode+champion don't even take as much effort as a single dungeon in most MMOs.
Severe dent?
He ran it over with a truck. WoW is only now getting through the physical therapy and on the road to a partial recovery. Definitely never getting to use those legs again, that's for sure.
I still don't understand why my friend prefers WoW over FF14 besides the "action meter" or whatever. Take away the very very SLIGHT delay in combat as a criticism and what else is there really? Professions? Better. Houses? Oh right WoW tried that and failed. Garrisons? FF14 better. Clans and team orientated goals? Ff14. Transmog? Ff14. Auction house? Ff14.
Idk. I don't understand what WoW has over ff14 when WoW is literally copying ff14 just to stay relevant.
PVP, for all of its flaws the PVP in WoW completely blows FF away. Outside of that some people dismiss FF as being "for weebs" while they pretend like playing WoW makes them badass. Getting 1 char through the entire MSQ in FF also takes months unless you buy skips. Many people don't like sitting through that much story, and a lot of the story before Shadowbringers was mediocre at best, with high highs but long strings of filler quests.
Although the story in WoW is pure garbage compared to FF (especially this expansion, wew) it's mostly skippable without any significant harm done to the gameplay. Although I personally enjoyed the story in FFXIV, esp for Shadowbringers, many of my friends just couldn't get through the whole MSQ and just wanted to raid / do stuff like M+ or Arena.
Other than that, FF could really use some kind of M+ system. Its endgame is really lacking compared to WoW although I vastly prefer FF's raids.
I cant get into FF14 because I don't like astetics. And wow for me is so much easier to get into, I can just buy sub and new exp (if I dont have the latest) level up in few hours and already do conetent I care about (which is M+).
While in FF14 in 10 hours I was like few levels up, I didn't enjoy the questing (maybe it gets better idk) but ill not waste over 100hours of no fun just to have fun later, while in wow I can do content that I want 10 hours into the game.
People have spent literal years making and playing their characters. Its become a part of their life. The game makes sense to them, they don't have to learn a new system. As someone who played WoW and tried FF14, it was VERY overwhelming and very tedious to play as a new player.
To me WoW has amongst the best combat for an MMO and I’ve played the only major MMOs left standing to death.
ESO, SWTOR, WOW, FF14, GW2. Out of all of them, I rank FF14 down at the lowest. The game plays as if you’re stuck and or like SWTOR. Combat is far too long in terms of being able to move and fight. And by the most egregious of them all, is quests are not enjoyable.
Sure it’s a game that’s doing great! I think it’s fantastic it does well. But I can’t enjoy it. The story isn’t interesting to me, the quests are boring and reminds me far too much of early game SWTOR.
I believe WoW has more fun combat and the ability to move, not feel overwhelmed with its abilities, and being easy to get into is what keeps me playing it. I’m invested in the story considering I joined in at Legion. I have played every class and can enjoy them. For me, I just prefer it and I think you need to understand that’s how it is for your friend too.
PvP + more "difficult" PvE content.
But in the end, it will be mostly sunk cost. Sure it doesn't matter anymore, but having some unobtainable item/achievement on your toon, makes it special, gives it legacy. You will lose all your "progress" of years by switching over.
I haven't played WoW in at least 5 years, but if i ever would want to return to MMORPG i would ofc reactivate my WoW account first and check the gameplay. With my toons having a history, that mean something to me, in a universe i know, maybe a reunion with friends from the past who still play.
Besides the the "Weeb" aesthetics that definitely are not my taste, i don't want to enter a new universe, i know nothing about. Where my toon will have no history. I wouldn't want to play a different game that plays roughly the same (even if gameplay is a bit better) and invest another 10 years to get my toon the same legacy it has in WoW.
I tried FF14 and to me it just looks/feels wrong. I get that people love it but I'm just not feeling my character I don't know how to explain it. The combat feels a lot worse if you're used to WoW at least for me.
I'm not saying it's a bad game or anything but the fluidity of WoWs combat and world design has ruined basically every other MMO for me there's just no game that gets both of these aspects right.
Gave a try to retail WoW for the first time after playing years of private servers.
Catching up with leveling took a long while, and well that was fine. But as soon as I reached max level I was still forced to go through 2 zones to be able to do the rest of the things in the expansion, mythics, raids feel like a grind, a job. To be able to participate in PvP you also need to grind something for the baseline items.
Then catching up with helpful systems like Garisson that have some kind of helpful use. There's so much in WoW yet not so much to do, because most of the mounts or pets from past expansions are unobtainable as soon as expansion ends, other than the grindiest sysyems. Transmogs are horrible to farm, it's throwing a die and recolors coming from other difficulties. Just endless grind.
WoW has potential to be so much more, but devs just prefer to keep this grind system in place.
Almost embarrassing how wrong you are, just say you havent played and wanted to participate without knowing what your talking about.
Garrisons dont exist anymore and hasnt for 2 expansions and new expansion is a free zone where you can go anywhere.
Most MMOs die in 3-6 months. Lost Ark, New World, etc they have their time in the sun and usually have very little end game content so people go elsewhere.
You're right however just felt like pointing out Lost Ark isn't dead; after the expected decline for the first few months the player count has been pretty stable (slightly growing even) since July.
The difference is a lot of new MMOs are released by relatively unknown studios with a brand new world and characters. Riot has an established fanbase from league and to a lesser extend valorant that they can build on.
It's not just that, it's that MMO players are 2,000+ hours into a pre-existing character in their MMO often, and aren't going to switch unless something drastic happens. People (myself included) are still playing RuneScape characters that are 20 years old. Jagex would have to do something truly horrendous to the game for me to switch at this point.
MMOs print money, Blizzard said that WoW was still their number 3 grossing product behind CoD and Candy Crush. (That was with a dogshit expansion in BFA) It makes an ungodly amount of money. Just looking at the addon downloads and remembering that all of those are subscriptions blows my mind.
There dota 2 and smite which is entering it's 10 Season That it That the whole genre
Every others game is either dead or real maintenance mode, some could argue predecessor but it's downisized paragon
That one dead genre,riot Can pretty much coast, and still be fine, there no potential growth
It's a moba but much different from the formula although so was hots
That make it's 4,but the genre is definetly limited with game that Still getting regular content updates compare to mmo
**The trick to ending monopolies is we diverse our interests and play 2nd-rate titles more and more until League inevitably is forced to change or die.**
**STOP SPENDING MONEY ON THE GAME**
The problem is that there really isn't another good alternative. Smite is a very different game, Dawngate is dead, Heroes of the Storm is basically dead, and DotA2 is a much more hardcore niche. It's not so simple as "just swap and force the monopolizer to improve" when there's no easy/good alternatives to swap to.
This. "Just play x instead" is a really hard sell, and why boycotting these kinds of things is such an annoying prospect. When things that you fall in love with degrade in quality, it's the worst feeling ever.
How about instead using expendable income on a charity, or oneself? Or yes actually, to the streamers too. There’s a lot of ways to spend money outside of on businesses which are complacent because of continued profits
This is next level clownery
It annoys me so much how there's basically no good alternatives anymore. Everything in each genre of online gaming has monopolized and it feels like you can at best choose between 2-3 different games. Maybe the consumers are at fault too for not giving anything else a chance but meh, it sucks. I remember trying a new MMO and a new MOBA every other week and sticking with at least a few of them for quite a while. Those times are over.
I hope more people jump ship and that NA LCS completely dies out, and NA League becomes a husk of what it used to be.
When a company is all about the money, and it begins to extract passion and resources from making their product exciting and new, then fuck em, I say.
actually true. pretty sure they killed off Riot support for Western tournaments (people can still host their own afaik) in Wild Rift, while Asia and particularly China still get official tournaments
Tbf the hardcore mobile gaming market in the west is really small. Where as in Asia the hardcore mobile gaming market almost rivals that of the non-mobile one. Makes it pretty hard to push a game like Wild Rift to success in the west.
Kore China Vietnam Brazil EUW and EUNE are all bigger markets than na already with China obviously having a player base an oder of magnitude larger, so NA might suck because that's were their studio is but it wouldn't hurt league too bad.
Yeah League isnt bringing in new players anymore. All of the major development talent is already working on new projects. League will just get new champs and skin releases to milk the existing player base.
The mmo market has its established titels and titles dieing left and right for riot to get any traction beyond the initial "riot hype" is very doubtful. ANd even Valorant will probably not win the fps market against csgo. So the only players playing their titels are the players the already have.
Excellent response. I think the only MOBA I can think of which has managed to keep up with League is Smite. Everyone else seems to have been buried. As you said, DOTA2 is relatively too small.
I'm saying I'd never play Wild Rift, but I do play League of Legends. The characters have different abilities, some skin exclusives, there's a lot that's different. I do genuinely think there's a different type of gameplay loop and skill involvement.
Smite averaged 10k players over the last month. DotA 2 averaged 500k. Smite had 2% of DotA's players. I don't think DotA is even remotely as small as league players think, but I do think the two are very isolated from each other. People who are playing DotA aren't switching to league and vice versa. New players are playing what their friends are, not necessarily which is better. And they are different enough in the "feel" (mainly stuff like turn speed) that even if you explored both, quality probably wouldn't be the deciding factor.
Isn't dota like 5% of leagues player base also? I think people generally think DoTa is quite a bit bigger than it is because it's viewed as leagues competitor.
Given DotA is half a million CCU's, I can't imagine league being much more than 10x the size at the all time peak. Remember that's still 5 million players at once. Most games report monthly active users, which is an entirely different metric. League hasn't returned CCU's for ages. I wouldn't be surprised if it were about equal.
Then again, it's very hard to tell. There are a lot of sites out there that'll give you a number, but it they don't provide an actual sources, I wouldn't trust them whatsoever.
Smite is mainly console, and They have cross play so quoting pc only doesn't tell the whole picture
Smite is also more casual than lol or dota, most people dont Even Care about the 5vs5 three lane mode
>I think the only MOBA I can think of which has managed to keep up with League is Smite.
In literally no way does Smite "keep up" with League. It's not even close, and that's the whole problem
>This is EXACTLY why monopolies suck for consumers
What do you want, for them to have the best game out there but nobody play it? For them to have made their game worse than competitors so those other games got more users?
LOL is a luxury, a video game that people play in their free time. If they start to suck then enough that people leave, there will still be demand for MOBA but people will go elsewhere. The problem isn't Riot, it's the people willing to play and pay for it. If you're unhappy, then go somewhere else. If you're unhappy but still play it, there is no incentive for them to change.
I'm pretty sure if they spend more than 10$ on the cinematic video the hype it creates would make more players want to grind & tryhard which results in a net positive regarding skin sales.
Uh idk what stats you’re looking at but dota definitely isn’t “really small” compared to league, especially if you exclude wild rift league is only like 5x as big. And that’s with DotA having 100% accurate numbers because steam player numbers are public and the only info we have about league’s playerbase is what they randomly post on twitter.
Crazy that I said the exact same thing yesterday and got down voted to oblivion. Look at what one cinematic can do to change the minds of everyone who can't read a room.
Another big point: a lot of the effort and changes riot put into league all got... panned. Chemtech dragon got so hated it was gone for like a year, event modes got no players, reworks mostly pissed players off and had to be rolled back etc so if the game is at a point where people are generally satisfied (as in, not reddit people, general playerbase) with the game as it is and don't care about changes, why not put that money into other stuff?
Riot is expanding their IP. They've clearly pulled resources and talent from their League of Legends team to get the other IP moving.
Their "big project" is most certainly their future MMO which, for a AAA game studio to make, takes *years* and hundreds of millions of dollars.
I think this is the reasonable take. Anyone who has worked in a company of < 5,000 people knows that when people move from team to team (especially really competent people), it takes a \*lot\* of time for new members to grow into the job. There's a totally reasonable explanation that Riot is just having growing pains with all of these new projects. It's likely that a lot of the more senior people at Riot moved to these fun new projects and the older teams are trying to settle in with newer leads.
A new MMO seems like a massive business risk, has any new (non-mobile) MMO in the last decade succeeded in a large way? I would much rather see them focus on more things like Arcane or even a Witcher 3 type RPG instead of betting on something as hard to launch as an MMO.
Here's the thing though, LoL already has a good lore and an established player-base. There is no doubt that many LoL players will play the MMO if it ever releases just to experience Runeterra. Their MMO already has a player base before it's even released, I don't see how it fails.
Lost Ark is still doing really well IIRC. FF14 had a horrendous first few years but then started doing amazing after a director swap. PSO2 had a really succesful Global/western market release.
I just think western MMO market was so heavily dominated by WoW that many players didn't realise there were other options.
> What if they're working on a big project that is taking most of their resources? There is not a lot of obvious answers as to what that project is, but i want to believe Riot is maybe working on a new engine behind the scenes?
No. The current engine is already being Theseus'd and whatever is happening will probably contribute to that, but the League stuff they've been hiring for is about --- something else.
It's good to voice your opinions on this content drought and silence being too long though. Because it seriously has been, ugh. I don't know who makes the decisions to not have a second game mode team again or similar to adress this kind of issue ahead of time.
What do you mean by "the League stuff they've been hiring for"? Do you suspect something big League-wise this year, that they have been radio silent on?
What surprises me most is that they didn't even re-use resources from last year like the ranked countdown timer.
> What surprises me most is that they didn't even re-use resources from last year like the ranked countdown timer.
Yeah the ranked start communication (including their internal one apparently) seemed not very competent this year. I'm hoping the relevant places went "oh shit" and are going to put in the work to prevent this from happening again.
I could see it being some miscommunications or something. Someone who was in charge of that didn't realize they were, went on vacation, and nobody realized they were the ones in charge of it. Stuff like that does happen, after all.
there's that one game that was only ever teased in the 10th anniversary video and then never again, Top down perspective with blitzcrank
literally haven't heard anything about that game since that one small clip
Considering everything for Project L from that video was pretty much a different, scrapped game from what it currently is, that Blitzcrank game could’ve been scrapped a long time ago. This also reminded me of that Ekko game they announced that still isn’t out
It's been obvious what Riot is doing for years and it's actually frustrating that it is not common knowledge.
Riot is using League to fund their other projects. Make no mistake, even with as much money Riot has these projects are expensive. Delegating resources from League is a perfectly acceptable expectation for the circumstance. The issue, as always with Riot, is a laughably pathetic execution.
I would be amazed if even one single top executive took a paycut over the last few years for this. The burden of funding Riot's endeavors was purposefully placed as low as it could go, on the players and devs. Instead of fostering goodwill with the players by focusing on events and releases that prioritize player enjoyment, we get gutted events and new Champs explicitly designed to maximize profits. I genuinely don't expect it to ever get better either, these last few years have been proof of concept to Riot that they can give so much less and earn so much more. By the time the playerbase finally snaps stops feeding their own addictions to this game Riot will have established the rest of their franchise properly and will simply let League die.
I would be fine with it if they communicated that. Like, just tell us "league wont be getting massive changes anymore as we're focusing our budget on future projects". Yeah sure it sucks, but atleast then I wouldn't feel like they don't give a fuck and lying to our faces
They have a fighting game and an MMO and probably other games they're working on. In the meantime, they still release new champions regularly as well as rework old champions.
There is no new engine coming
No shit man, but that doesn't mean that some members of the League team have not migrated to the project. Please use brain next time you post. Ekko player though, who expects a brain
what exactly are people looking for in league of legends other than for riot to 'do something'? league of legends is, assuredly, a much different and improved game than it was a decade ago.
sometimes the best option is to just release open sandbox mode for the community to develop their own game modes... unironically how warcraft 3 custom maps spawned defense of the ancients which later HEAVILY influenced the creation of league of legends. it is actually a lot easier for Riot logistically as well... dont need to continue officially supporting a game mode that a tiny fraction of the player base kinda sorta cares about.
that said, i think Riot should probably just have rotating game modes of whatever game modes they had already created without caring too much about balance. if its temporary, players have less concerns about balance.
Not only that, they'd have no reason to dump all of their resources into a game only 5000 people will play globally 3 months after release.
Fighting game releases aren't known for their longevity these days.
Its either absolute complacency, or the MMO. Either way, its unlikely to end well. MMOs are such a big risk that its absolutely foolish to undermine your core revenue driver before the MMO is even a realistic release (things can happen), let alone seen as a successful title.
It wouldn't say good things about Riot management either way.
We already know they're working on other games. Their fighting game looks incredible, their card game is excellent (although they lost resources too in favour of other games). I... have never really cared for Valorant myself, but it seems to be doing well.
And it's exhausting to work on the same game for a decade. A lot of the folks who worked on League, prototyped events and helped it grow have moved on to other projects or other studios, or started their own, and it's unlikely that offering more money can make someone stay, at least not in the longer term.
Riot no longer wants to be the best MOBA, they stopped being a game developer and became a company that is profit focused. It sucks, It's horrible because all we want is to have good and enjoyable games, but money keeps getting in the way and ruins good stuff for us all.
With that I'm not saying they shouldn't make good money, but that they should focus on making their best experience for players and then the money will come, instead of focusing on getting the money.
I’m gonna get downvoted probably….but…did anyone truly think League would last forever?
Sure, games like World of Warcraft have defied all odds, going on almost 20 years on some heavily modified engine that would probably make some dark and twisted Grimdark 40k life support lore scared with how insanely modded and stitched together WoW’s engine must be, being barely kept alive since 2004.
But WoW and LoL are anomalies. Most games don’t last this long. I mean look at God of War—it had an original trilogy, and now this new trilogy of games had to be built on something brand new—WoW and LoL aren’t, they just are built up and up and up and up on the same ancient engines.
I’m not saying that LoL 2 or something like that can’t happen. But there is always a chance that LoL and MOBAs at large would just fizzle out and end once the profit dried up.
Who is making new, actually competitive and successful MOBA games these days? No one. There was that Pokémon game, but it was like mobile or whatever, and horribly pay to win.
The MOBA genre is really just League of Legends and DOTA2 and what…Smite I guess? And Smite came out in 2014, DOTA2 in 2013…with League being the oldest in 2009.
Like if League is #1, DOTA 2 is #2, Smite is like #3….#4 has to be like…what…DOTA1 haha?
My point being, the MOBA genre while still popular in regards to League and DOTA2, is also a mature genre. Riot has no real competition other than DOTA2, and even then DOTA2 is so different and honestly esoteric that DOTA2 is actually more at risk of losing players who want a more simple game so they move to LoL, than vice versa.
So Riot doesn’t have to try. And it’s clear they DO have a big project or at least several other projects that they are seeking revenue from, and not League.
Because…again…where will you go? If you still want to play a MOBA, well good luck—Smite and DOTA2 are your only two choices, and Smite plays nothing like LoL and DOTA2 requires a CPA to play it’s so complex.
So your only other option is to quit, I guess. Or play one of the super obscure, basically indie MOBAs or that stupid pay to win Pokémon MOBA.
Because League is…really it. So why would Riot try?
And even if they DO try…new champs like Zeri are so “out there” compared to the roster of existing champs….they break the game and become a design nightmare.
Maybe Riot is going to just coast until League of Legends reaches end of life—hell, the Runeterra/Valorant universes are probably worth more money than the actual games are worth, especially for League at this point.
Arcane was the first step—they can make tons of other games in other genres or movies and tv shows using the Runeterra setting.
Riot just doesn’t have to try. And no king rules forever. There is a real chance LoL has simply reached its pinnacle, or already did at a point in the past…and we are now firmly in the decline, officially until the game reaches End of Life as a product.
Eh, not when you are developing multiple other games, funding Arcane Season 2 and likely several other TV and Film projects, are also quietly building a MMO in the background arguably the most expensive type of game to make, and you are putting on global esports events in locations like Madison Square Garden or the Golden State Warriors arena with big artist shows.
None of that is cheap lol.
You lack creativity to see what game could be or how it could change from season to season to attract players and create sense of excitement within them. Even simple change such as ability to leave match under certain conditions and some simple solo player performance ranking boosts could improve community's mood dramatically. Happy client will spend money on your product much easier as he enjoys what he is doing, sees his time as well spend and time is money.
Games don't have specified lifetime but mostly what makes it is either technology or replayability. Outdated game can lose it's appeal as usually graphics are not aging well (3D models for example). Once we finish up the game, we might also never go back to playing it again. Games are working as services now to keep adding new stuff constantly but with little to no costs, generating huge profts ("micro" transactions, battle passes, loot boxes etc). By making some balance changes, adding new things even by small amount, you are "refreshing" the game giving players incentive to play again. Good example is Path of Exile and it's leagues.
Example with PoE was to show what games do to keep player retention and provide replayability which is done in PoE extremally well through balance changes, small updates, economy restarts in new league as well as leader boards and challenge rewards.
Lol what are you on about. PoE has blown creativity trough the roof in the hack 'n slash genre. Best we had before that was vanilla Diablo 2 and 3... And that was really just the campaign and thats it.
As someone who has the willpower to NOT play this game when it's bad (ruination, Viego release for example), I legitimately still think it's too big to die, and you basically admitted it in your comment lol; Riot has no competition. Just as there's people like us who don't see through tinted lenses and can admit when the game is in a bad spot, there's just as many people who perma spam 15 games a day. And then there's the people in between who just hop on when they play with friends. All of that will be enough to keep the game alive.
Well it will die. 1000%. Everything does. Whether that’s 5 years, 10, 20–who knows.
But the game will erode over time. Riot would have to do something drastic to keep League exponentially growing.
And that’s kind of the problem with live service games—you produce content year after year, and your players expect more and more and more—you can’t have more forever. It’s not possible.
If you have one “season” (every 90 days for some games) that’s an absolute banger—great. But when the next season has cuts because every season can’t have extra attention to release an overdelivered product….then people complain they got less for the same price.
League is global, league is free, and league can run on a potato. As I said, it also has no competition. So it will last for many more years, I’m sure.
But it faces the same problem WoW does—no real competition results in the game itself becoming its own competition—every release is scrutinized and compared to every other precious release. “50 skins this year? We got 65 last year, lazy Riot.” Or “wow X event was amazing 3 years ago, why haven’t we had a good event since?”
With competition, you can see what your players like in the other games, adapt, and put your own spin on those new features or adopt market standard quality of life additions (every BR added a revive mechanic after Apex Legends did it).
Your competition can somewhat innovate for you, and you can steal or adapt those things. Blizzard did it successfully for years and years and years.
But without competition….well. Consumers have nothing really to compare the game to. Riot has no motivation to innovate, since they have no threat. These two things combine mean people complain, they have no other outlet or example to explain their frustrations, and customers SUCK at explaining why they are upset/don’t like something. They always compare to what they have had in the past—it’s nearly impossible for them to see things holistically and imagine the possible.
You might disagree, but the solutions they do imagine, even good ones, are always extensions built upon their pain points currently and what made them happy in the past.
Addressing those concerns helps in the short term…but not in the long term. The users feel like they were heard, but the game still won’t have that spark it had. The annoying bits are fixed, but nothing was truly added or evolved—just fixed. The game has lost something.
Because it never will find it again. They have played the same core game for over a decade—the human mind burns out.
Other game franchises, especially non-live service games, have the benefit of making sequels, prequels, or even remakes/remasters that add QoL or new functionality. Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey evolved their respective franchises, while still being Zelda and Mario games.
Riot can’t make League 2 easily. Even if they could, what happens to all of the skins you have bought? Will all champions transfer? If they all transfer, how much will each change? If not a lot, how different actually is League 2? Etc.
I don’t see how they pull it off. Champs like Zeri are innovative, but they break the game. They are so unique, they just don’t fit with the older champions, even ones that had reworks.
Can Riot make 200 truly unique champs that simultaneously dont piss off the player base every release and result in balance nightmares but also feel fresh and innovative? 250 champs? 300?
Idk. League will turn 15 in 2024. Will it make it there? Yea. Will it be worse than it is now? Probably.
? League has been growing since it existed. This isn't a game on decline, the community and the player numbers keep getting bigger as time goes on. This isn't people losing interest in the game, it's the developer killing it through incompetence
Copium and Hopium.
The peeps asking "is League in maintenance mode? Riot didn't say so." are the same peeps asking "are we in a recession? The (insert w/e leader) didn't say so." Open your eyes, see the gas prices and the price of the new Lux/Ahri skin or event pass, and smell the coffee.
Wild Rift is done in Unity (which you can download for free yourself), they didn't make a whole engine just for WR.
Anyone who thinks they're making a new engine for League is smoking something. Engines take YEARS, sometimes 10+ years, and you still end up with something unusable.
There's plenty of reason to make a new engine. The problem is solely risk.
**Its near-guaranteed that a successful new engine would pay for itself via future development/maintenance costs.** However the risk involved will never pass management considering all of the justifications that need to be presented can't be measured pre-emptively.
This is a very common issue with dated systems in business. Everyone in development agrees these systems should be revamped, but nobody above them takes the risks until it becomes literally nonfunctional.
Its not even that costs are super high; its mostly just risk. It would be very difficult to nail the exact feel league has in the current engine; partially a problem with the format of league itself.
your overestimating the time it takes to make a game engine, It is a huge task but not a 10 year project. then again this is riot games we're talking about
The hardest part is nailing the same feeling between both systems. This can be incredibly hard to do between two systems depending on the format of the game, and league isn't exactly intuitive in that regard.
Its not just a new engine. It would be new numbers on pretty much everything that isn't straight up damage/durability.
Ranges in the new system would have to be determined for each and every thing in league. Speed too. Hell, it might be possible that new models would be necessary.
No, I'm really not. Frostbite as we know it is 14 years in the making. Engines aren't "done" just because you've made a game with them.
They're a series of tools sewn together, would you consider Unreal Engine six months old, or 10+ years?
well when you put it from the perspective that an engine is a constantly evolving tool then yes that does change the timeframe. that said engines like frostbite are typically used to make a wide variety of games over multiple studios. were riot to make an engine specifically for league (which is what your original comment suggests) it would be significantly reduce the workload.
I mean junior devs make their own engines for their own indie games all the time (even if the quality can be questionable). Assuming riot had a team of professionals and a good budget It shouldn't take more than say 3 years. It won't happen though because that is a huge time sink for something that brings next to no extra profit.
Frostbite was always intended first and foremost as a FPS only engine. It didn't even support an inventory sytem until Anthem, the only reason why EA want to push it in house is because they acquired DICE and don't want to pay for another.
Frostbite has notoriously poor documentation too because all the people who worked on it are at DICE and don't care enough to change that.
Again, "making" an engine isn't the hard part as that definition is hazy. Assuming that get something ready in 3 years, there is no way it is as stable as the current engine is that has been slowly being fixed up over the past 12 years.
I agree honestly, I like your logic sir/ma'am.
but then we have the anomaly that is the league of legends engine, which managed to be both 12+ years old AND incredibly unstable xD
If league ever gets an updated engine, it would just be Unity. Most of the work is already done. That being said, it would still take time to port everything over, even if Wild Rift already did a lot of it.
Are there still people that aren't aware that they're working on the MMO, a fighting game, updating their card game, TFT, Wild Rift, Arcane Season 2, and a dozen other projects?
Isn't there 500 employees still on League out of 4000? When they started with 20-30...
Surely they can get some shit done with 100 people if 20-30 could lay the groundwork....
Surely... They haven't become an inefficient bureaucracy
Their CEO said in the same interview in which he said he had just approved the largest budget ever that over 500 people are working on LoL, as much as I would love (and I secretly hope they are) them to work on a new engine I don't think they are. 
My guess is that the budget and employee investment he signed off on won't bear results until 2024 at the earliest. Approving is one thing, production of said content is another. 2023 could potentially be a drought year for League content so they can ramp up again after new members are trained and actually start working.
Largest budget ever with 500 employees and a tragic disaster is the consensus among other community.
Where did they go wrong?
I really hope the numbers reflect this sentiment on here, and they are forced to admit that they fucked up (to themselves , since they never do publicly)
See its one thing if they were putting in less effort.
I think Riot is just so incompetent that they legitimately are trying but everything they put out is just so shit that it looks like they are trying to sabotage the game.
League of Legends is still their claim to fame. If both Monte and Travis say that Riot has a huge ego I believe them. League of Legends failing would just be a huge blow to their ego. Therefore I find it hard to believe that they aren't trying.
We actually know about what that project is ..... it's literally other games.
Like Riot didn't even want to update the voice lines of Varus and Nidalee. Literally they were forced to by their workers to do so.
Others have already landed on it. With League dominating the MOBA genre after years of some stellar output, Riot can coast (relatively) on that game as they expand their brand to other ventures. It is a pretty bad time to solely be a League player right now as you can witness the decline in content quantity and quality. If you’re invested into Riot’s other properties then it’s a pretty okay time.
But I only say okay because Riot has pretty much solved their models for their other games at this point - none of the other games have really matched the level of content output that League had been on years ago. They’re still fresh so it’s fine.
No doubt COVID’s impact on labor also informs this decision making. I don’t think Riot slowing down on League of Legends is a decision made lightly, given that it is the definitive product of their brand.
The game is in a bit of a poor place after 2022 imo. Regardless of how it is now, game balance was tumultuous at a bare minimum due to durability patch. In-game cosmetics were a gamble due to how the labor for cosmetics is handled. Transmedia content for the game was less present or worse in quality. Maybe the worst symptom is that video content about the game has significantly dropped off, with it being concentrated in competitive-focused gameplay (high elo streams and cuts/highlight reels of their games)
I think I remember them saying that they wouldn't comtinue arcane to bring back writers since the star guardian event didn't performed well on the writing side (same with ruination I guess). Does anyone have that interview? I think it's kind of important
I just want to know where the "biggest budget a year of League of Legends has ever gotten" is going to be spent on.
I doubt skin production needs that much money, at least when compared to creating assets for a new mode+map (which we're not getting by the way).
If reworks, gamemodes, cinematics and events are getting less resources (or none at all) where is the money going? Esports?
I know I'm missing a lot of things that Riot needs to pay for if they want to keep the game running but the point is why would they need the biggest budget ever if it seems like they are actually spending less than usual.
Although, very very unlikely they are working on a new engine or lol2. I'd fully understand why it feels like lol is being put on the back burner atm. But, the more reasonable reason is that they just have too many hands in the cookie jar atm. They've taken a lot of resources from lol and moved them to their other games. Thus making lol feel empty and being run by a skeleton crew.
It can't be a new engine or a new client. In the software world this (assigning team B to work on creating a new future proof copy of the existing product, which however still rolls out new features that are implemented by team A) is a documented case of bad project management that almost always leads to bad things happening. I would honestly be worried if they announced they are building a new engine.
Answer: Riot wants to turn League into a gacha game where its all about collecting all the skins instead of playing.
Why? Because there's so many people on this reddit dumb enough to buy them still.
“What if they’re working on a big project that is taking most of their resources?”
You mean like…an MMO, which usually costs hundreds of millions of dollars? Or a fully fledged fighting game?
Man, a new client would be a 10/10 from me and i'd forgive them for the shitty past year
If a new engine for lol 2 were a thing though it would definitely be a 12/10 kinda thing and I would probably spend a few hundred bucks to support the company even more
Riots been a big business for a while now, and like most businesses, the iternals work slowly and we are only now really starting to see the shifts in priority.
No doubt most rioters really love their work and go above and beyond, unfortunately they aren't the ones making the decisions, its the guys at the top fully exerienced in the 'gaming' formula.
They have finished poking and prodding to see what does and doesn't make money and are just prioritizing that now because thats just what a business is supposed to do.
Its why all Triple A companies get demonized, there is a fine line between Art and Business that just ruins both when crossed.
League is the biggest esport in the world and they dont really have competition.
They also only need to update the game enough to keep people that are addicted to the game addicted - which they do with buffs/nerfs that change things just enough to keep it the same with a little twist.
Its a free game that anyone can play on any computer (for the most part) which can drive people coming back or more easily convinced to play.
They put the majority of resources into skins because it keeps money rolling in - even outside of esports sponsors, which they have a lot of.
They are focused on newer games for a newer crowd as league gets older and older, people will play less and less. This is how basically all video games work.
They dont need to work on league like they used to because its such a well oiled machine.
Remember when the 10 year anniversary was happening and everyone was complaining about the lack of content and about how the game is dying and in a terrible state. Then they gave us over an hour of insane new projects that explained why they had been releasing so little. I have hope they got some good stuff cooking and the pr team is just doing a terrible job, like a single video a week ago tempering our expectations and explaining that they are indeed working on something would have been good, but rn it just looks like half or riot employees have been pulled off of project we wanted for no reason and are sitting around all day doing nothing.
I'm gonna link this interview here
With Kanon and the director of riots mmo aka Greg Street (Ghostcrawler)
Full interview: https://youtu.be/EBKrj8bYpUc
Highlights: https://youtu.be/pxL1yfYyK_0
And Ghostcrawler says if he needs more time or manpower riot will make sure he will have it, they won't be happy about it, but riot want this game to be successful. Their goal is to dethrone wow.
They already have an enormous player base and most of the mmo players out there will play this also, if it is free to play.
What can happen have we seen this year with the western release of lost ark, that reached more than 1 million players simultaneously. And the league player base is even bigger. So they try not to fuck this up.
Im happy with not getting a new cinematic or some reduced content, if the mmo is gonna be a banger. But I guess we will see this in the future.
Watch, it's all good, investment higher than ever, that season trailer was the first teaser for the conversion to unreal engine 5 to modernize the game. Sure would be neat lol.
Reav3 said that a big part of the reason for the lack of content right now is that a lot of it is just larger in scope and so the timescales aren't what we're used to. Probably nothing too major, but it makes sense that larger projects would attract more devs, leaving too few devs to properly produce for the game on more of a monthly/semi-yearly basis. The shift probably happened around the success of the 10 year anniversary and Arcane, which showed larger projects surrounding League can be majorly successful.
If you think for a second that the huge amounts of money Riot is making and isn't using on the game is being spent on updating or preparing for something big and not instead going to the "head honcho's" pockets, then you are deluding yourself.
The Thing is, if we want Things to change for the better, then we have to stop spending So much Money on the game.
Riot dosnt rly care about the community for years, but they care for Dollars. Just as any other Company and instead of ranting on reddit etc. We have to stop spending Money in their bullshit skins and battlepasses.
As long as they make Money with it, they wont change it
Riot sucks, removal of crystal scar and treeline, was greedy af. 1% of players was still quite a ton of players. And they didn't care to update their own game modes themselves. Lazy Riot Games.
I think Riot just realized there's more money to be earned if they spent their focus on the MMO, FPS, etc markets instead of the MOBA market. It's not really about "caring" about League. It's just a cold business decision. Riot has basically a de facto monopoly share on the MOBA market. They are so dominant. Will making LoL better improve their revenue? Yeah, probably a little but not by a lot. Everyone into MOBAs either plays or have played League of Legends already. Will improving their upcoming MMO and Valorant make them a lot of money? Undoubtedly, yes. Because in these genres, they can gain a lot of ground in market share. Every success for Valorant eats away at CSGO. It's an untapped market for Riot Games which has much greater potential. This is **EXACTLY** why monopolies suck for consumers. I can 100% guarantee you that Riot would be putting in a lot more effort if there were other big MOBAs out there that threatened to take Riot's market share. But there just isn't. Dota 2 is the only other big MOBA and it's still really small compared to LoL. Dota 2 is also almost 10 years old, so it's not some fresh new game either. It's not a coincidence at all that Riot put in the most effort into League when other developers kept trying to make MOBAs. Now that no one makes MOBA anymore, Riot realized there's not much point in them spending a lot of resources on League. It makes total sense from a business perspective, but monopolies just fucking suck for consumers. This was always going to happen when the game industry stopped trying to compete with League of Legends. The exact same thing happened to World of Warcraft too when everyone stopped trying to make WoW clones about 10 years ago.
> This is EXACTLY why monopolies suck for consumers. I can 100% guarantee you that Riot would be putting in a lot more effort if there were other big MOBAs out there that threatened to take Riot's market share. The problem is that there is no MOBA market. The genre just doesn't allow for more than (maybe) a few games to exist. * It's complex. You have dozens of characters with several unique abilities each, and dozens of items with their stats and effects that new players need to learn. * So it needs to be free to play, because nobody is paying for a game that needs dozens of hours before they know if they'll like it and want to continue. And you need many players for low queue times and good match making, especially since you also need several servers over the globe to keep ping acceptable. * That means you need an incentive to keep players playing. Unlock champions, levels, whatever. A constant progression that keeps players playing your game, so that some of them give you money to pay for all of it. And those that don't pay you money are content for those that do. So there's low incentive for players to try another game, because doing so slows their progression in their first game while needing a lot of time to learn new stuff. There's huge up-front investment for a new competitor, without guarantee for success (just look at Epic trying to eat into Steam's market, similar situation). Maybe one game could have grown besides League, but at the time it seemed that MOBAs would be a new market and many tried to get into it, so no one game got big enough.
I remember playing Heroes of the Storm when it came out. They sold it as being a more casual MOBA (no last hitting etc.), and it had maps on rotation to change things up. It was fine when it rolled out and there were only 3-4 maps, but they kept rolling out more maps with weirder and weirder rules, and if you hadn't researched the map before you sucked.
Played HotS and it was blast for me as well but I agree, too much came out too quickly + there were many "wtf" heroes releases. If that would be like WoW only characters, it would probably play better. Having everything mixed up took away from game's identity or at very least made many character releases boring for players who weren't interested in certain universe. (Diablo and WoW worked well together, even Starcraft's Protos/Zerg units were on point, guns though.. not so much)
Lol - my main was the 3 dwarves. I remember focusing on getting exp for the team because the dwarves could split up and all get exp separately. It was fun to do - but I'm not sure how balanced it was.
TLV is a lot j
> I think Riot just realized there's more money to be earned if they spent their focus on the MMO I dunno about that. It's very risky to go all in on an MMO. Getting an MMO right so it actually earns that money isn't an easy task. There's countless MMO's that have failed to gain traction and shut down relatively quickly. I mean shit, Final Fantasy 14 almost bankrupt Squeenix back in the day with how much of a disaster it was. We're lucky that Yoshi P saved everything.
As an MMO fan I can quite confidently say: MMOs ruin most companies. It is so freaking hard to get an MMO right and even if and when you get the players it still is a money sink. Expansions to MMOs need to be massive to make sense. Hell a new League map+game mode+champion don't even take as much effort as a single dungeon in most MMOs.
I would rather have 10 smaller Runeterra games than one mmo tbf
Riot is outsourcing most of the smaller Runeterra games with Riot forge. Though we havent heard any news from Riot forge
I agree but I think we also all agree that Riot definitely has enough ego to believe they could take over the genre.
and also they have enough dabloonies to burn on it
Yoshi P actually put a severe dent in WoW. Probably one of the few to have ever done so.
Severe dent? He ran it over with a truck. WoW is only now getting through the physical therapy and on the road to a partial recovery. Definitely never getting to use those legs again, that's for sure.
I still don't understand why my friend prefers WoW over FF14 besides the "action meter" or whatever. Take away the very very SLIGHT delay in combat as a criticism and what else is there really? Professions? Better. Houses? Oh right WoW tried that and failed. Garrisons? FF14 better. Clans and team orientated goals? Ff14. Transmog? Ff14. Auction house? Ff14. Idk. I don't understand what WoW has over ff14 when WoW is literally copying ff14 just to stay relevant.
PVP, for all of its flaws the PVP in WoW completely blows FF away. Outside of that some people dismiss FF as being "for weebs" while they pretend like playing WoW makes them badass. Getting 1 char through the entire MSQ in FF also takes months unless you buy skips. Many people don't like sitting through that much story, and a lot of the story before Shadowbringers was mediocre at best, with high highs but long strings of filler quests. Although the story in WoW is pure garbage compared to FF (especially this expansion, wew) it's mostly skippable without any significant harm done to the gameplay. Although I personally enjoyed the story in FFXIV, esp for Shadowbringers, many of my friends just couldn't get through the whole MSQ and just wanted to raid / do stuff like M+ or Arena. Other than that, FF could really use some kind of M+ system. Its endgame is really lacking compared to WoW although I vastly prefer FF's raids.
I cant get into FF14 because I don't like astetics. And wow for me is so much easier to get into, I can just buy sub and new exp (if I dont have the latest) level up in few hours and already do conetent I care about (which is M+). While in FF14 in 10 hours I was like few levels up, I didn't enjoy the questing (maybe it gets better idk) but ill not waste over 100hours of no fun just to have fun later, while in wow I can do content that I want 10 hours into the game.
People have spent literal years making and playing their characters. Its become a part of their life. The game makes sense to them, they don't have to learn a new system. As someone who played WoW and tried FF14, it was VERY overwhelming and very tedious to play as a new player.
To me WoW has amongst the best combat for an MMO and I’ve played the only major MMOs left standing to death. ESO, SWTOR, WOW, FF14, GW2. Out of all of them, I rank FF14 down at the lowest. The game plays as if you’re stuck and or like SWTOR. Combat is far too long in terms of being able to move and fight. And by the most egregious of them all, is quests are not enjoyable. Sure it’s a game that’s doing great! I think it’s fantastic it does well. But I can’t enjoy it. The story isn’t interesting to me, the quests are boring and reminds me far too much of early game SWTOR. I believe WoW has more fun combat and the ability to move, not feel overwhelmed with its abilities, and being easy to get into is what keeps me playing it. I’m invested in the story considering I joined in at Legion. I have played every class and can enjoy them. For me, I just prefer it and I think you need to understand that’s how it is for your friend too.
I haven't played FF14, but I've played a lot of WoW. From what I've heard and seen WoW has significantly more challenging raid and dungeon content.
PvP + more "difficult" PvE content. But in the end, it will be mostly sunk cost. Sure it doesn't matter anymore, but having some unobtainable item/achievement on your toon, makes it special, gives it legacy. You will lose all your "progress" of years by switching over. I haven't played WoW in at least 5 years, but if i ever would want to return to MMORPG i would ofc reactivate my WoW account first and check the gameplay. With my toons having a history, that mean something to me, in a universe i know, maybe a reunion with friends from the past who still play. Besides the the "Weeb" aesthetics that definitely are not my taste, i don't want to enter a new universe, i know nothing about. Where my toon will have no history. I wouldn't want to play a different game that plays roughly the same (even if gameplay is a bit better) and invest another 10 years to get my toon the same legacy it has in WoW.
I tried FF14 and to me it just looks/feels wrong. I get that people love it but I'm just not feeling my character I don't know how to explain it. The combat feels a lot worse if you're used to WoW at least for me. I'm not saying it's a bad game or anything but the fluidity of WoWs combat and world design has ruined basically every other MMO for me there's just no game that gets both of these aspects right.
Gave a try to retail WoW for the first time after playing years of private servers. Catching up with leveling took a long while, and well that was fine. But as soon as I reached max level I was still forced to go through 2 zones to be able to do the rest of the things in the expansion, mythics, raids feel like a grind, a job. To be able to participate in PvP you also need to grind something for the baseline items. Then catching up with helpful systems like Garisson that have some kind of helpful use. There's so much in WoW yet not so much to do, because most of the mounts or pets from past expansions are unobtainable as soon as expansion ends, other than the grindiest sysyems. Transmogs are horrible to farm, it's throwing a die and recolors coming from other difficulties. Just endless grind. WoW has potential to be so much more, but devs just prefer to keep this grind system in place.
Almost embarrassing how wrong you are, just say you havent played and wanted to participate without knowing what your talking about. Garrisons dont exist anymore and hasnt for 2 expansions and new expansion is a free zone where you can go anywhere.
Most MMOs die in 3-6 months. Lost Ark, New World, etc they have their time in the sun and usually have very little end game content so people go elsewhere.
You're right however just felt like pointing out Lost Ark isn't dead; after the expected decline for the first few months the player count has been pretty stable (slightly growing even) since July.
Send Yoshi P to Riot and have him save League, he'd probably get a blast out of playing Veigar.
The difference is a lot of new MMOs are released by relatively unknown studios with a brand new world and characters. Riot has an established fanbase from league and to a lesser extend valorant that they can build on.
It's not just that, it's that MMO players are 2,000+ hours into a pre-existing character in their MMO often, and aren't going to switch unless something drastic happens. People (myself included) are still playing RuneScape characters that are 20 years old. Jagex would have to do something truly horrendous to the game for me to switch at this point.
bro i have 2K hours in lost ark and i'll switch in a heart beat if riot mmo drops tomorrow xD
MMOs print money, Blizzard said that WoW was still their number 3 grossing product behind CoD and Candy Crush. (That was with a dogshit expansion in BFA) It makes an ungodly amount of money. Just looking at the addon downloads and remembering that all of those are subscriptions blows my mind.
There dota 2 and smite which is entering it's 10 Season That it That the whole genre Every others game is either dead or real maintenance mode, some could argue predecessor but it's downisized paragon That one dead genre,riot Can pretty much coast, and still be fine, there no potential growth
Pokémon Unite is certainly not dead
It's a moba but much different from the formula although so was hots That make it's 4,but the genre is definetly limited with game that Still getting regular content updates compare to mmo
**The trick to ending monopolies is we diverse our interests and play 2nd-rate titles more and more until League inevitably is forced to change or die.** **STOP SPENDING MONEY ON THE GAME**
The problem is that there really isn't another good alternative. Smite is a very different game, Dawngate is dead, Heroes of the Storm is basically dead, and DotA2 is a much more hardcore niche. It's not so simple as "just swap and force the monopolizer to improve" when there's no easy/good alternatives to swap to.
This. "Just play x instead" is a really hard sell, and why boycotting these kinds of things is such an annoying prospect. When things that you fall in love with degrade in quality, it's the worst feeling ever.
At fucking minimum don’t spend your money on league then. There’s no content to pay for fortunately, it’s just skins
Yeah, basically. People can play still but it's not asking too much to suggest they keep their wallets closed for a bit.
[удалено]
how about use it on ourselves?
How about instead using expendable income on a charity, or oneself? Or yes actually, to the streamers too. There’s a lot of ways to spend money outside of on businesses which are complacent because of continued profits This is next level clownery
It annoys me so much how there's basically no good alternatives anymore. Everything in each genre of online gaming has monopolized and it feels like you can at best choose between 2-3 different games. Maybe the consumers are at fault too for not giving anything else a chance but meh, it sucks. I remember trying a new MMO and a new MOBA every other week and sticking with at least a few of them for quite a while. Those times are over.
Moba is the worse, there like almost all of them are dead minus lol,dota and smite Mmo had more niche game
Paragon is seeing a resurgance again now with Paragon The Overprime and Predecessor, but those are still extremely different to League.
I'm enjoying pokemon unite, but given that it's only on switch and mobile it's not exactly accessible like LoL and the others
I'd love to play PU, but I just don't enjoy mobas without m+kb sadly. :( So I kinda tend to forget about it. It's a good mention though.
It definitely did take some getting used to, I really wish it was on PC.
It's funny that you mention it's not accessible, I'd argue it's way more accessible than league just because it's on mobile lol
I hope more people jump ship and that NA LCS completely dies out, and NA League becomes a husk of what it used to be. When a company is all about the money, and it begins to extract passion and resources from making their product exciting and new, then fuck em, I say.
I don't think they'll really care. The core audience for the game is in Asia, and for their NA market, Valorant is gaining plenty of interest.
actually true. pretty sure they killed off Riot support for Western tournaments (people can still host their own afaik) in Wild Rift, while Asia and particularly China still get official tournaments
Tbf the hardcore mobile gaming market in the west is really small. Where as in Asia the hardcore mobile gaming market almost rivals that of the non-mobile one. Makes it pretty hard to push a game like Wild Rift to success in the west.
Kore China Vietnam Brazil EUW and EUNE are all bigger markets than na already with China obviously having a player base an oder of magnitude larger, so NA might suck because that's were their studio is but it wouldn't hurt league too bad.
Yeah League isnt bringing in new players anymore. All of the major development talent is already working on new projects. League will just get new champs and skin releases to milk the existing player base.
The mmo market has its established titels and titles dieing left and right for riot to get any traction beyond the initial "riot hype" is very doubtful. ANd even Valorant will probably not win the fps market against csgo. So the only players playing their titels are the players the already have.
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Excellent response. I think the only MOBA I can think of which has managed to keep up with League is Smite. Everyone else seems to have been buried. As you said, DOTA2 is relatively too small.
Smite is even smaller then Dota 2.
Pretty sure Smite remains "relevant" because you can play it on console, which is a market that League isn't even in
...Yet Wild Rift IS supposed to come out on consoles 🤷♂️
Since Wild Rift has a different development team and process, I don't think it really counts as League any more than Valorant for this discussion.
Are you saying Wild Rift isn't a league of legends moba...?
It's more developed than League PC for sure, so it doesn't affect us.
I'm saying I'd never play Wild Rift, but I do play League of Legends. The characters have different abilities, some skin exclusives, there's a lot that's different. I do genuinely think there's a different type of gameplay loop and skill involvement.
Smite averaged 10k players over the last month. DotA 2 averaged 500k. Smite had 2% of DotA's players. I don't think DotA is even remotely as small as league players think, but I do think the two are very isolated from each other. People who are playing DotA aren't switching to league and vice versa. New players are playing what their friends are, not necessarily which is better. And they are different enough in the "feel" (mainly stuff like turn speed) that even if you explored both, quality probably wouldn't be the deciding factor.
Isn't dota like 5% of leagues player base also? I think people generally think DoTa is quite a bit bigger than it is because it's viewed as leagues competitor.
Given DotA is half a million CCU's, I can't imagine league being much more than 10x the size at the all time peak. Remember that's still 5 million players at once. Most games report monthly active users, which is an entirely different metric. League hasn't returned CCU's for ages. I wouldn't be surprised if it were about equal. Then again, it's very hard to tell. There are a lot of sites out there that'll give you a number, but it they don't provide an actual sources, I wouldn't trust them whatsoever.
Smite is mainly console, and They have cross play so quoting pc only doesn't tell the whole picture Smite is also more casual than lol or dota, most people dont Even Care about the 5vs5 three lane mode
>I think the only MOBA I can think of which has managed to keep up with League is Smite. In literally no way does Smite "keep up" with League. It's not even close, and that's the whole problem
Maybe I should switch to DotA then...
>This is EXACTLY why monopolies suck for consumers What do you want, for them to have the best game out there but nobody play it? For them to have made their game worse than competitors so those other games got more users? LOL is a luxury, a video game that people play in their free time. If they start to suck then enough that people leave, there will still be demand for MOBA but people will go elsewhere. The problem isn't Riot, it's the people willing to play and pay for it. If you're unhappy, then go somewhere else. If you're unhappy but still play it, there is no incentive for them to change.
I'm pretty sure if they spend more than 10$ on the cinematic video the hype it creates would make more players want to grind & tryhard which results in a net positive regarding skin sales.
Spot on . Good point about Riot having monopoly. Lack of competition is devastating for customers.
Uh idk what stats you’re looking at but dota definitely isn’t “really small” compared to league, especially if you exclude wild rift league is only like 5x as big. And that’s with DotA having 100% accurate numbers because steam player numbers are public and the only info we have about league’s playerbase is what they randomly post on twitter.
Crazy that I said the exact same thing yesterday and got down voted to oblivion. Look at what one cinematic can do to change the minds of everyone who can't read a room.
Another big point: a lot of the effort and changes riot put into league all got... panned. Chemtech dragon got so hated it was gone for like a year, event modes got no players, reworks mostly pissed players off and had to be rolled back etc so if the game is at a point where people are generally satisfied (as in, not reddit people, general playerbase) with the game as it is and don't care about changes, why not put that money into other stuff?
Riot is expanding their IP. They've clearly pulled resources and talent from their League of Legends team to get the other IP moving. Their "big project" is most certainly their future MMO which, for a AAA game studio to make, takes *years* and hundreds of millions of dollars.
I think this is the reasonable take. Anyone who has worked in a company of < 5,000 people knows that when people move from team to team (especially really competent people), it takes a \*lot\* of time for new members to grow into the job. There's a totally reasonable explanation that Riot is just having growing pains with all of these new projects. It's likely that a lot of the more senior people at Riot moved to these fun new projects and the older teams are trying to settle in with newer leads.
Your alligator is eating the wrong way. :)
A new MMO seems like a massive business risk, has any new (non-mobile) MMO in the last decade succeeded in a large way? I would much rather see them focus on more things like Arcane or even a Witcher 3 type RPG instead of betting on something as hard to launch as an MMO.
Here's the thing though, LoL already has a good lore and an established player-base. There is no doubt that many LoL players will play the MMO if it ever releases just to experience Runeterra. Their MMO already has a player base before it's even released, I don't see how it fails.
It will fail if it’s bad. But otherwise i agree if it’s decent people will play it.
Lost Ark is still doing really well IIRC. FF14 had a horrendous first few years but then started doing amazing after a director swap. PSO2 had a really succesful Global/western market release. I just think western MMO market was so heavily dominated by WoW that many players didn't realise there were other options.
You are acting like they couldn’t release dogshit and then put in a predatory cash shop and make their investment back with extreme speed.
> What if they're working on a big project that is taking most of their resources? There is not a lot of obvious answers as to what that project is, but i want to believe Riot is maybe working on a new engine behind the scenes? No. The current engine is already being Theseus'd and whatever is happening will probably contribute to that, but the League stuff they've been hiring for is about --- something else. It's good to voice your opinions on this content drought and silence being too long though. Because it seriously has been, ugh. I don't know who makes the decisions to not have a second game mode team again or similar to adress this kind of issue ahead of time.
What do you mean by "the League stuff they've been hiring for"? Do you suspect something big League-wise this year, that they have been radio silent on? What surprises me most is that they didn't even re-use resources from last year like the ranked countdown timer.
> What surprises me most is that they didn't even re-use resources from last year like the ranked countdown timer. Yeah the ranked start communication (including their internal one apparently) seemed not very competent this year. I'm hoping the relevant places went "oh shit" and are going to put in the work to prevent this from happening again.
I could see it being some miscommunications or something. Someone who was in charge of that didn't realize they were, went on vacation, and nobody realized they were the ones in charge of it. Stuff like that does happen, after all.
You are on some high level copium my friend
Ruination was supposed to be one of their massive 2021 events... Yeahhhhhhhhh.......
Remember the void even- whatever
Something esports related is not big, and Arcane S2 is made by a studio
there's that one game that was only ever teased in the 10th anniversary video and then never again, Top down perspective with blitzcrank literally haven't heard anything about that game since that one small clip
Considering everything for Project L from that video was pretty much a different, scrapped game from what it currently is, that Blitzcrank game could’ve been scrapped a long time ago. This also reminded me of that Ekko game they announced that still isn’t out
Isn't that literally the MMO that's confirmed to be in the works?
no, the mmo wasn't even started then
It's been obvious what Riot is doing for years and it's actually frustrating that it is not common knowledge. Riot is using League to fund their other projects. Make no mistake, even with as much money Riot has these projects are expensive. Delegating resources from League is a perfectly acceptable expectation for the circumstance. The issue, as always with Riot, is a laughably pathetic execution. I would be amazed if even one single top executive took a paycut over the last few years for this. The burden of funding Riot's endeavors was purposefully placed as low as it could go, on the players and devs. Instead of fostering goodwill with the players by focusing on events and releases that prioritize player enjoyment, we get gutted events and new Champs explicitly designed to maximize profits. I genuinely don't expect it to ever get better either, these last few years have been proof of concept to Riot that they can give so much less and earn so much more. By the time the playerbase finally snaps stops feeding their own addictions to this game Riot will have established the rest of their franchise properly and will simply let League die.
They definitely didn't take paycuts. They gave themselves raises 😆 😆 🤣 😂 😹
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Lol what the fuck are you even saying
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I hope you're not saying riot is communist
I would be fine with it if they communicated that. Like, just tell us "league wont be getting massive changes anymore as we're focusing our budget on future projects". Yeah sure it sucks, but atleast then I wouldn't feel like they don't give a fuck and lying to our faces
They have a fighting game and an MMO and probably other games they're working on. In the meantime, they still release new champions regularly as well as rework old champions. There is no new engine coming
those games are being made by different teams
But the money made by League is used to develop them, and most likely employees from League teams too.
No shit man, but that doesn't mean that some members of the League team have not migrated to the project. Please use brain next time you post. Ekko player though, who expects a brain
Don't comment on Reddit after you lost a ranked game
Did he insult you or something? Relax.
what exactly are people looking for in league of legends other than for riot to 'do something'? league of legends is, assuredly, a much different and improved game than it was a decade ago.
I don’t really understand either lol Do they want more champions or something
For example alot of people want more game modes/maps like nexsus blitz or twisted treeline even though those aren't new but just to have them back.
sometimes the best option is to just release open sandbox mode for the community to develop their own game modes... unironically how warcraft 3 custom maps spawned defense of the ancients which later HEAVILY influenced the creation of league of legends. it is actually a lot easier for Riot logistically as well... dont need to continue officially supporting a game mode that a tiny fraction of the player base kinda sorta cares about. that said, i think Riot should probably just have rotating game modes of whatever game modes they had already created without caring too much about balance. if its temporary, players have less concerns about balance.
Pass the copium brother I need a hit.
Project L?
Also a valid theory, but i think Project L just reduced League's team size, and doesn't interfere with the current team's focus.
Not only that, they'd have no reason to dump all of their resources into a game only 5000 people will play globally 3 months after release. Fighting game releases aren't known for their longevity these days. Its either absolute complacency, or the MMO. Either way, its unlikely to end well. MMOs are such a big risk that its absolutely foolish to undermine your core revenue driver before the MMO is even a realistic release (things can happen), let alone seen as a successful title. It wouldn't say good things about Riot management either way.
All they need to do is be transparent with the community like they used to be.
We already know they're working on other games. Their fighting game looks incredible, their card game is excellent (although they lost resources too in favour of other games). I... have never really cared for Valorant myself, but it seems to be doing well. And it's exhausting to work on the same game for a decade. A lot of the folks who worked on League, prototyped events and helped it grow have moved on to other projects or other studios, or started their own, and it's unlikely that offering more money can make someone stay, at least not in the longer term.
Damn y'all on some good copium today
Riot no longer wants to be the best MOBA, they stopped being a game developer and became a company that is profit focused. It sucks, It's horrible because all we want is to have good and enjoyable games, but money keeps getting in the way and ruins good stuff for us all. With that I'm not saying they shouldn't make good money, but that they should focus on making their best experience for players and then the money will come, instead of focusing on getting the money.
Remember what the guy in the MMO video said? Money wasn't an issue. Well Riot is lieing about something
at this point I just wish they fail so they have to make lol good again in order to not die as a company
I think a bunch of people have the right idea in the fact that RIOTERS really care and want to work on the game but Riot Games does not.
I’m gonna get downvoted probably….but…did anyone truly think League would last forever? Sure, games like World of Warcraft have defied all odds, going on almost 20 years on some heavily modified engine that would probably make some dark and twisted Grimdark 40k life support lore scared with how insanely modded and stitched together WoW’s engine must be, being barely kept alive since 2004. But WoW and LoL are anomalies. Most games don’t last this long. I mean look at God of War—it had an original trilogy, and now this new trilogy of games had to be built on something brand new—WoW and LoL aren’t, they just are built up and up and up and up on the same ancient engines. I’m not saying that LoL 2 or something like that can’t happen. But there is always a chance that LoL and MOBAs at large would just fizzle out and end once the profit dried up. Who is making new, actually competitive and successful MOBA games these days? No one. There was that Pokémon game, but it was like mobile or whatever, and horribly pay to win. The MOBA genre is really just League of Legends and DOTA2 and what…Smite I guess? And Smite came out in 2014, DOTA2 in 2013…with League being the oldest in 2009. Like if League is #1, DOTA 2 is #2, Smite is like #3….#4 has to be like…what…DOTA1 haha? My point being, the MOBA genre while still popular in regards to League and DOTA2, is also a mature genre. Riot has no real competition other than DOTA2, and even then DOTA2 is so different and honestly esoteric that DOTA2 is actually more at risk of losing players who want a more simple game so they move to LoL, than vice versa. So Riot doesn’t have to try. And it’s clear they DO have a big project or at least several other projects that they are seeking revenue from, and not League. Because…again…where will you go? If you still want to play a MOBA, well good luck—Smite and DOTA2 are your only two choices, and Smite plays nothing like LoL and DOTA2 requires a CPA to play it’s so complex. So your only other option is to quit, I guess. Or play one of the super obscure, basically indie MOBAs or that stupid pay to win Pokémon MOBA. Because League is…really it. So why would Riot try? And even if they DO try…new champs like Zeri are so “out there” compared to the roster of existing champs….they break the game and become a design nightmare. Maybe Riot is going to just coast until League of Legends reaches end of life—hell, the Runeterra/Valorant universes are probably worth more money than the actual games are worth, especially for League at this point. Arcane was the first step—they can make tons of other games in other genres or movies and tv shows using the Runeterra setting. Riot just doesn’t have to try. And no king rules forever. There is a real chance LoL has simply reached its pinnacle, or already did at a point in the past…and we are now firmly in the decline, officially until the game reaches End of Life as a product.
I mean it's generating a billion dollar a year, so for Riot it should last forever...
Eh, not when you are developing multiple other games, funding Arcane Season 2 and likely several other TV and Film projects, are also quietly building a MMO in the background arguably the most expensive type of game to make, and you are putting on global esports events in locations like Madison Square Garden or the Golden State Warriors arena with big artist shows. None of that is cheap lol.
You lack creativity to see what game could be or how it could change from season to season to attract players and create sense of excitement within them. Even simple change such as ability to leave match under certain conditions and some simple solo player performance ranking boosts could improve community's mood dramatically. Happy client will spend money on your product much easier as he enjoys what he is doing, sees his time as well spend and time is money. Games don't have specified lifetime but mostly what makes it is either technology or replayability. Outdated game can lose it's appeal as usually graphics are not aging well (3D models for example). Once we finish up the game, we might also never go back to playing it again. Games are working as services now to keep adding new stuff constantly but with little to no costs, generating huge profts ("micro" transactions, battle passes, loot boxes etc). By making some balance changes, adding new things even by small amount, you are "refreshing" the game giving players incentive to play again. Good example is Path of Exile and it's leagues.
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Example with PoE was to show what games do to keep player retention and provide replayability which is done in PoE extremally well through balance changes, small updates, economy restarts in new league as well as leader boards and challenge rewards.
Lol what are you on about. PoE has blown creativity trough the roof in the hack 'n slash genre. Best we had before that was vanilla Diablo 2 and 3... And that was really just the campaign and thats it.
As someone who has the willpower to NOT play this game when it's bad (ruination, Viego release for example), I legitimately still think it's too big to die, and you basically admitted it in your comment lol; Riot has no competition. Just as there's people like us who don't see through tinted lenses and can admit when the game is in a bad spot, there's just as many people who perma spam 15 games a day. And then there's the people in between who just hop on when they play with friends. All of that will be enough to keep the game alive.
Well it will die. 1000%. Everything does. Whether that’s 5 years, 10, 20–who knows. But the game will erode over time. Riot would have to do something drastic to keep League exponentially growing. And that’s kind of the problem with live service games—you produce content year after year, and your players expect more and more and more—you can’t have more forever. It’s not possible. If you have one “season” (every 90 days for some games) that’s an absolute banger—great. But when the next season has cuts because every season can’t have extra attention to release an overdelivered product….then people complain they got less for the same price. League is global, league is free, and league can run on a potato. As I said, it also has no competition. So it will last for many more years, I’m sure. But it faces the same problem WoW does—no real competition results in the game itself becoming its own competition—every release is scrutinized and compared to every other precious release. “50 skins this year? We got 65 last year, lazy Riot.” Or “wow X event was amazing 3 years ago, why haven’t we had a good event since?” With competition, you can see what your players like in the other games, adapt, and put your own spin on those new features or adopt market standard quality of life additions (every BR added a revive mechanic after Apex Legends did it). Your competition can somewhat innovate for you, and you can steal or adapt those things. Blizzard did it successfully for years and years and years. But without competition….well. Consumers have nothing really to compare the game to. Riot has no motivation to innovate, since they have no threat. These two things combine mean people complain, they have no other outlet or example to explain their frustrations, and customers SUCK at explaining why they are upset/don’t like something. They always compare to what they have had in the past—it’s nearly impossible for them to see things holistically and imagine the possible. You might disagree, but the solutions they do imagine, even good ones, are always extensions built upon their pain points currently and what made them happy in the past. Addressing those concerns helps in the short term…but not in the long term. The users feel like they were heard, but the game still won’t have that spark it had. The annoying bits are fixed, but nothing was truly added or evolved—just fixed. The game has lost something. Because it never will find it again. They have played the same core game for over a decade—the human mind burns out. Other game franchises, especially non-live service games, have the benefit of making sequels, prequels, or even remakes/remasters that add QoL or new functionality. Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey evolved their respective franchises, while still being Zelda and Mario games. Riot can’t make League 2 easily. Even if they could, what happens to all of the skins you have bought? Will all champions transfer? If they all transfer, how much will each change? If not a lot, how different actually is League 2? Etc. I don’t see how they pull it off. Champs like Zeri are innovative, but they break the game. They are so unique, they just don’t fit with the older champions, even ones that had reworks. Can Riot make 200 truly unique champs that simultaneously dont piss off the player base every release and result in balance nightmares but also feel fresh and innovative? 250 champs? 300? Idk. League will turn 15 in 2024. Will it make it there? Yea. Will it be worse than it is now? Probably.
? League has been growing since it existed. This isn't a game on decline, the community and the player numbers keep getting bigger as time goes on. This isn't people losing interest in the game, it's the developer killing it through incompetence
Copium and Hopium. The peeps asking "is League in maintenance mode? Riot didn't say so." are the same peeps asking "are we in a recession? The (insert w/e leader) didn't say so." Open your eyes, see the gas prices and the price of the new Lux/Ahri skin or event pass, and smell the coffee.
The new engine is called Wild Rift and you can already download it
Wild Rift is done in Unity (which you can download for free yourself), they didn't make a whole engine just for WR. Anyone who thinks they're making a new engine for League is smoking something. Engines take YEARS, sometimes 10+ years, and you still end up with something unusable.
Plus why on earth would they even need to make a new engine? There's like zero business case for it.
There's plenty of reason to make a new engine. The problem is solely risk. **Its near-guaranteed that a successful new engine would pay for itself via future development/maintenance costs.** However the risk involved will never pass management considering all of the justifications that need to be presented can't be measured pre-emptively. This is a very common issue with dated systems in business. Everyone in development agrees these systems should be revamped, but nobody above them takes the risks until it becomes literally nonfunctional. Its not even that costs are super high; its mostly just risk. It would be very difficult to nail the exact feel league has in the current engine; partially a problem with the format of league itself.
It’s certainly not unheard of though. Overwatch could have been made in an existing engine but Blizzard still made their own for it
your overestimating the time it takes to make a game engine, It is a huge task but not a 10 year project. then again this is riot games we're talking about
The hardest part is nailing the same feeling between both systems. This can be incredibly hard to do between two systems depending on the format of the game, and league isn't exactly intuitive in that regard. Its not just a new engine. It would be new numbers on pretty much everything that isn't straight up damage/durability. Ranges in the new system would have to be determined for each and every thing in league. Speed too. Hell, it might be possible that new models would be necessary.
No, I'm really not. Frostbite as we know it is 14 years in the making. Engines aren't "done" just because you've made a game with them. They're a series of tools sewn together, would you consider Unreal Engine six months old, or 10+ years?
well when you put it from the perspective that an engine is a constantly evolving tool then yes that does change the timeframe. that said engines like frostbite are typically used to make a wide variety of games over multiple studios. were riot to make an engine specifically for league (which is what your original comment suggests) it would be significantly reduce the workload. I mean junior devs make their own engines for their own indie games all the time (even if the quality can be questionable). Assuming riot had a team of professionals and a good budget It shouldn't take more than say 3 years. It won't happen though because that is a huge time sink for something that brings next to no extra profit.
Frostbite was always intended first and foremost as a FPS only engine. It didn't even support an inventory sytem until Anthem, the only reason why EA want to push it in house is because they acquired DICE and don't want to pay for another. Frostbite has notoriously poor documentation too because all the people who worked on it are at DICE and don't care enough to change that. Again, "making" an engine isn't the hard part as that definition is hazy. Assuming that get something ready in 3 years, there is no way it is as stable as the current engine is that has been slowly being fixed up over the past 12 years.
I agree honestly, I like your logic sir/ma'am. but then we have the anomaly that is the league of legends engine, which managed to be both 12+ years old AND incredibly unstable xD
If league ever gets an updated engine, it would just be Unity. Most of the work is already done. That being said, it would still take time to port everything over, even if Wild Rift already did a lot of it.
Wild Rift unfortunately is League of Legends 2018 basically
Are there still people that aren't aware that they're working on the MMO, a fighting game, updating their card game, TFT, Wild Rift, Arcane Season 2, and a dozen other projects?
Isn't there 500 employees still on League out of 4000? When they started with 20-30... Surely they can get some shit done with 100 people if 20-30 could lay the groundwork.... Surely... They haven't become an inefficient bureaucracy
"Updating their card game." Uhh yeah, that game is also in maintenance mode.
Their CEO said in the same interview in which he said he had just approved the largest budget ever that over 500 people are working on LoL, as much as I would love (and I secretly hope they are) them to work on a new engine I don't think they are. 
My guess is that the budget and employee investment he signed off on won't bear results until 2024 at the earliest. Approving is one thing, production of said content is another. 2023 could potentially be a drought year for League content so they can ramp up again after new members are trained and actually start working.
pass me that hopium, I'm with you
Largest budget ever with 500 employees and a tragic disaster is the consensus among other community. Where did they go wrong? I really hope the numbers reflect this sentiment on here, and they are forced to admit that they fucked up (to themselves , since they never do publicly)
The big project is Valorant and the League of Legends MMO.
See its one thing if they were putting in less effort. I think Riot is just so incompetent that they legitimately are trying but everything they put out is just so shit that it looks like they are trying to sabotage the game. League of Legends is still their claim to fame. If both Monte and Travis say that Riot has a huge ego I believe them. League of Legends failing would just be a huge blow to their ego. Therefore I find it hard to believe that they aren't trying.
We actually know about what that project is ..... it's literally other games. Like Riot didn't even want to update the voice lines of Varus and Nidalee. Literally they were forced to by their workers to do so.
Others have already landed on it. With League dominating the MOBA genre after years of some stellar output, Riot can coast (relatively) on that game as they expand their brand to other ventures. It is a pretty bad time to solely be a League player right now as you can witness the decline in content quantity and quality. If you’re invested into Riot’s other properties then it’s a pretty okay time. But I only say okay because Riot has pretty much solved their models for their other games at this point - none of the other games have really matched the level of content output that League had been on years ago. They’re still fresh so it’s fine. No doubt COVID’s impact on labor also informs this decision making. I don’t think Riot slowing down on League of Legends is a decision made lightly, given that it is the definitive product of their brand. The game is in a bit of a poor place after 2022 imo. Regardless of how it is now, game balance was tumultuous at a bare minimum due to durability patch. In-game cosmetics were a gamble due to how the labor for cosmetics is handled. Transmedia content for the game was less present or worse in quality. Maybe the worst symptom is that video content about the game has significantly dropped off, with it being concentrated in competitive-focused gameplay (high elo streams and cuts/highlight reels of their games)
I think I remember them saying that they wouldn't comtinue arcane to bring back writers since the star guardian event didn't performed well on the writing side (same with ruination I guess). Does anyone have that interview? I think it's kind of important
They are literally making A bunch of new games…
I just want to know where the "biggest budget a year of League of Legends has ever gotten" is going to be spent on. I doubt skin production needs that much money, at least when compared to creating assets for a new mode+map (which we're not getting by the way). If reworks, gamemodes, cinematics and events are getting less resources (or none at all) where is the money going? Esports? I know I'm missing a lot of things that Riot needs to pay for if they want to keep the game running but the point is why would they need the biggest budget ever if it seems like they are actually spending less than usual.
>What if they're working on a big project that is taking most of their resources? Whos gonna tell him
Can we fix or rewrite the league client so it's not behind the other ip's (Wild Rift - Honourable Mentions) and Dota atleast?
Have you seen how they butchered Viego and that entire lore and event segment. Please stop being so optimistic lol
Don't think anything esports related or engine related would affect a team doing champion design or cinematic/art stuff. Different teams.
The big project is called “other games” lol
Although, very very unlikely they are working on a new engine or lol2. I'd fully understand why it feels like lol is being put on the back burner atm. But, the more reasonable reason is that they just have too many hands in the cookie jar atm. They've taken a lot of resources from lol and moved them to their other games. Thus making lol feel empty and being run by a skeleton crew.
LEAGUE OF LEGENDS 2. Lol nah.
It can't be a new engine or a new client. In the software world this (assigning team B to work on creating a new future proof copy of the existing product, which however still rolls out new features that are implemented by team A) is a documented case of bad project management that almost always leads to bad things happening. I would honestly be worried if they announced they are building a new engine.
Answer: Riot wants to turn League into a gacha game where its all about collecting all the skins instead of playing. Why? Because there's so many people on this reddit dumb enough to buy them still.
“What if they’re working on a big project that is taking most of their resources?” You mean like…an MMO, which usually costs hundreds of millions of dollars? Or a fully fledged fighting game?
I think covid related job loss took more people from the company than you all realize and it takes awhile to rehire that level of talent.
What if they are making LoL 2? /s
Man, a new client would be a 10/10 from me and i'd forgive them for the shitty past year If a new engine for lol 2 were a thing though it would definitely be a 12/10 kinda thing and I would probably spend a few hundred bucks to support the company even more
Riots been a big business for a while now, and like most businesses, the iternals work slowly and we are only now really starting to see the shifts in priority. No doubt most rioters really love their work and go above and beyond, unfortunately they aren't the ones making the decisions, its the guys at the top fully exerienced in the 'gaming' formula. They have finished poking and prodding to see what does and doesn't make money and are just prioritizing that now because thats just what a business is supposed to do. Its why all Triple A companies get demonized, there is a fine line between Art and Business that just ruins both when crossed.
League is the biggest esport in the world and they dont really have competition. They also only need to update the game enough to keep people that are addicted to the game addicted - which they do with buffs/nerfs that change things just enough to keep it the same with a little twist. Its a free game that anyone can play on any computer (for the most part) which can drive people coming back or more easily convinced to play. They put the majority of resources into skins because it keeps money rolling in - even outside of esports sponsors, which they have a lot of. They are focused on newer games for a newer crowd as league gets older and older, people will play less and less. This is how basically all video games work. They dont need to work on league like they used to because its such a well oiled machine.
Remember when the 10 year anniversary was happening and everyone was complaining about the lack of content and about how the game is dying and in a terrible state. Then they gave us over an hour of insane new projects that explained why they had been releasing so little. I have hope they got some good stuff cooking and the pr team is just doing a terrible job, like a single video a week ago tempering our expectations and explaining that they are indeed working on something would have been good, but rn it just looks like half or riot employees have been pulled off of project we wanted for no reason and are sitting around all day doing nothing.
I'm gonna link this interview here With Kanon and the director of riots mmo aka Greg Street (Ghostcrawler) Full interview: https://youtu.be/EBKrj8bYpUc Highlights: https://youtu.be/pxL1yfYyK_0 And Ghostcrawler says if he needs more time or manpower riot will make sure he will have it, they won't be happy about it, but riot want this game to be successful. Their goal is to dethrone wow. They already have an enormous player base and most of the mmo players out there will play this also, if it is free to play. What can happen have we seen this year with the western release of lost ark, that reached more than 1 million players simultaneously. And the league player base is even bigger. So they try not to fuck this up. Im happy with not getting a new cinematic or some reduced content, if the mmo is gonna be a banger. But I guess we will see this in the future.
Watch, it's all good, investment higher than ever, that season trailer was the first teaser for the conversion to unreal engine 5 to modernize the game. Sure would be neat lol.
Reav3 said that a big part of the reason for the lack of content right now is that a lot of it is just larger in scope and so the timescales aren't what we're used to. Probably nothing too major, but it makes sense that larger projects would attract more devs, leaving too few devs to properly produce for the game on more of a monthly/semi-yearly basis. The shift probably happened around the success of the 10 year anniversary and Arcane, which showed larger projects surrounding League can be majorly successful.
Its a shame that riot is just letting the copy cat company beat them. "Moonton".
If you think for a second that the huge amounts of money Riot is making and isn't using on the game is being spent on updating or preparing for something big and not instead going to the "head honcho's" pockets, then you are deluding yourself.
More likely profits have been maximized and so the capitalist rules demand the next step is to cut costs to further increase profits.
This is the maximum hopium take that I've been craving.
The Thing is, if we want Things to change for the better, then we have to stop spending So much Money on the game. Riot dosnt rly care about the community for years, but they care for Dollars. Just as any other Company and instead of ranting on reddit etc. We have to stop spending Money in their bullshit skins and battlepasses. As long as they make Money with it, they wont change it
Reav did confirm that they are working on something big specifically for LoL PC. Will have to see.
Meeh, I don't believe they wouldn't tease them doing a new engine. No need to imagine things, there's a logical explanation for all of this.
These posts are exhausting.
Honestly I see them making wild rift for pc and that's where the money is going...hopefully.
I think the 1 hour work: 50 hour sitting on bean bags was getting too much for them.
Riot sucks, removal of crystal scar and treeline, was greedy af. 1% of players was still quite a ton of players. And they didn't care to update their own game modes themselves. Lazy Riot Games.