League of Legends is one of the most profound games in it’s genre with DOTA 2 and Heroes of Newerth coming in right behind. League of Legends is an absolutely amazing MOBA which allows players to have different experiences even if they pick the same champ over and over again. The reason for this is you’re surrounded by nine other people who all play the game differently then the previous players in the last game. This means that every game comes with it’s own unique gameplay an experiences.
Although LoL has been increasing in it’s overall player base a friend purge has shown that many of the old players have stopped playing. It’s important to understand that old players no longer feel the need to play the addicting game and its crucial to know why. Many people have been long-time players even since the release of the game; however, a lot of the old-timers are also feeling a bit disappointed from the game in recent years. Let’s get into what League of Legends can do to curb the bad experiences players have with the game.
Step 1: League Rewards
The leveling system has been changed from the old level 30 system into an unlimited leveling method. Now players who have played the game for years or players who simply play the game a lot more can show off their high levels with some ranging from the 300’s to 700’s and more. It’s an interesting system that gives players the satisfaction of showing off their experience with the game. The only thing lacking from this leveling system is obtaining rewards from leveling. You simply get capsules that give you more champions, but this isn’t very interesting if you can already buy all the champions with blue essence. So, what could RIOT games do with the League of Legends leveling system that may benefit players and keep them more engaged:
- Additional Rewards: As the game only gives more leveling capsules that simply give more champions it doesn’t really incentive players to continue leveling other than having a high level to show off. League of Legends should add additional rewards to their capsules or provide boxes every ten levels or so on. It won’t really allow players to amass too many skins and will still cause people to buy the current loot boxes or masterwork chests. Giving players additional boxes, icons, skins, emotes, orange essence, or wards will make leveling more fulfilling.
- Buying Skins with Blue Essence: Many players already own all of the champions or they have the champions they already want with their blue essence. Allowing players to turn every 10,000 blue essence into skins will help keep players engaged instead of simply amassing up to 100,000 or more blue essence in their reserves. This causes players to dislike the systems in League of Legends and causes them to be overall unhappy with the rewards they get for leveling as it only adds to something they don’t care about.
- Reward Daily Players: Riot Games should create a method for logging players who engage with League of Legends everyday. For example, create a random wheel system with multiple rewards on the wheel from blue essence, orange essence, boxes, orbs, emotes, icons, skins, wards, and event experience. For people who play everyday allow them at the end of every week to take a spin on the wheel which can give them rewards for simply playing the game. It will help incentive players to keep coming back to the game.
All three of these can help players feel more rewarded for simply playing the game they love. Even though League of Legends has been around for over a decade now their hype might have faded, but the love for the game still exists. Many times over people may feel like their time in the game feels wasted as they don’t really get to enjoy any rewards for playing, but these few methods listed above can be expanded on and help players feel more engaged without feeling like they are wasting their time.
Step 2: Casual Gameplay
Back in the day when League of Legends began the pro scene was non-existent and the majority of the gameplay was sporadic. There were Sion players who maxed the long forgotten stun move and went full ability power who would delete anyone with a stun/shield-break combo. In the early days meta was definitely around, but people would think of meta breaking champions who they would change in order to do ridiculous damage that nobody even imagined with some of the champions.
Today meta is a large part of the League of Legends community and if you’re playing ranked then you ultimately have to pick meta related champions in order to win the game. Of course this isn’t always the case as some pro-level players can pick any champion and dominate with their strategies. If you know how to play the game, focus on the little things, and maximize output you can make any champion a good one. However, it’s not a hidden fact that many champions just don’t do well in the seasonal meta as they might be nerfed to all-hell in a single patch.
Ranked and Normal queues are definitely still playable for casual gamers, but there are a bunch of professional level players who litter the battlefield. This makes it somewhat difficult to try out new champions and enjoy playing them in a fair method. Elo, MMR, and Rank play a huge role in getting selected with opponents, so even if you play well in general trying out a new champ might cause you to get deleted over and over again.
ARAM’s or All Random All Mid was the casual players wet dream come true as it allowed them to enjoy the game with their friends in a casual aspect. The only problem with this is that it was a community made game mode which League of Legends and Riot were a bit hesitant to integrate into the main game. They were mostly created by community members in the custom game mode which everyone hoped all the players would follow the rules on Summoner’s Rift. As Riot grew weary of trying to suppress the game mode they decided to finally integrate it into the game.
The only issue with the above named aspects of the game is that ARAM’s aren’t really enough to allow casual players to enjoy the game anymore. They’ve most likely played it thousands of times and probably still enjoy it today. However, the new game modes added to the game get choked out once League of Legends notices a smaller player count in the new game modes. So far URF was the most successful giving players a joyful experience, but even that has slowly waned amongst the player base.
League of Legends needs to actively think about how to allow casual players to enjoy the game again without having to feel sweaty. Ultimately it comes down to maybe losing fractions of their player base due to the inability for them to implement a more enjoyable causal experience. Everyone understands that the professional scene can help the game monetarily and with notoriety, but the reality of the situation is people want to be able to enjoy the game without dedicating hours on end to the game mechanics.
People now have lives in the real world including girlfriends, work, and responsibilities like their children which doesn’t allow them to dedicate endless hours to the game. Finding a method to keep those people happy will help the game continue onwards. The current token and challenges system they added doesn’t really provide too much incentive to the casual player and the new method of their battle passes is lackluster for a free-to-play gamer. Even the paid battle pass rewards are lackluster and make people disappointed with the rewards system in the game.
Step 3: New Arrivals, Noobs, and Newbs
New players who start off playing League of Legends find it difficult to fully integrate themselves with the game. It’s definitely not an easy game to get into as there are so many different aspects of the game that aren’t mentioned too heavily at the introduction to the game. For example, lets take a quick look at everything one player has to deal with in League of Legends. Map control, wards, minion farming, denying minions, towers, dragons, baron, ganks, one-to-one combat in lanes, meta, counter picks, clicks per second (CPS), helping jungle, helping other lanes, teleports, dodging skill shots, understanding all the champions and their abilities, and moving as team.
There’s much more than what was mentioned, but the overall idea is that new players need a lot of time to integrate themselves with all of the different mechanics League of Legends has to offer. This alienates many players who are starting to learn or want to learn to play with their friends. Although friends and coaches do help it’s sometimes not enough and causes people to leave the game. Added on to that smurfs, banned players with new accounts, and coaches can potentially ruin the game for a new player. Starting off a game and being constantly destroyed by another level 1 who has the abilities of a gold, platinum, diamond, master, grandmaster, or challenger player doesn’t really feel too good.
To really help people get into League of Legends there needs to be a game mode which allows them to slowly integrate into the game mechanics allowing them to slowly start enjoying League for what it is. This new game mode needs to focus on removing and eliminating smurfs or banned players as their expertise guarantees a horrible experience if you’re versing this players as a noob. Essentially the new game mode needs to completely include new players and needs to find a way to educate the newbs on the methods which are going to be used in actual gameplay in the future. Some state that playing against bots is exactly the type of game mode, but bots do not replace the methods real gamers are going to use in battle on the summoner’s rift. On top of it all League of Legends bots are too abnormal and don’t properly simulate the gameplay experience people are going to have as they’re too robotic.
Step 4: Toxic Players, Meta, and New Champions
Some aspects of the game that really turned players off from it was the toxic experiences they had in games. League of Legends is somewhat known for it’s toxic player base, but it’s heavily encouraged not to focus on the worst aspects of people. As they remain anonymous it gives them the ability to be their worst selves and League of Legends and RIOT tried a few attempts to try to combat this bad behavior practices by removing chat in some instances and forcing players to turn it on manually.
The attempts by League of Legends have been halfway implemented with many feeling that they aren’t trying to remove the bad behavior, but trying to eliminate behavior amongst League of Legend players entirely. Which really comes off negatively toward the League fanbase as many people had some wonderful interactions in the chat that weren’t toxic. Sometimes people talk about their lives, politics, or simply other games that they genuinely enjoy playing with the other nine people in the game.
Although toxic player behavior has been negative to the overall aspect in the game other things also contribute to the negative feelings. Many players complain in ranked games when somebody picks a champ who isn’t Meta. Sometimes these toxic players go onto negative behavior such as feeding, leaving the game after the first couple of minutes, or simply flaming the player throughout gameplay with pings, chat, or not helping in team fights. It’s definitely a huge issue in the gaming culture right now as some people take the game very seriously and sometimes to the point where their real life health has impacts from their gameplay. It’s definitely going to need a massive amount of resources for League of Legends to try to modify this type of behavior.
The last aspect of this toxic mentality would be that many champions in League feel extremely outdated. As new arrivals in the selection have three to four of other champions abilities put into their passive or one move. For example, Cho Gath has a True Damage Ultimate, a knock up, a silence, and an empowered auto attack. Sounds like a great character, but the reality of the situation is that new champions often have the same abilities with additional ones simply attached to their passives. In reference, Akshan and Bel’Veth are newer champions in League of Legends and they have additional capabilities that can outplay Cho Gath in a heartbeat. As they also have true damage abilities, but they also have dashes that allow you to get away. In a 1v1 scenario they would most likely obliterate the older champions out of the water. Again League needs to rethink their strategy and whether overhauling older champions will be a plus or maybe creating newer champions with much less in their kit.
Step 5: Community and Balance
Communities help bring people together to help talk about what they enjoy, love, and hate. Having communities can help foster love for a game and help create a better game through constructive criticism. This is one thing the League of Legends community is currently lacking as the old forums have become obsolete and abandoned by RIOT games. Some people consider this a good thing as the previous forums were toxic in their own way, but the reality of the situation is that players had somewhere to go which allowed them to be with their peers. Currently there is a few places to go to talk about League such as the Reddit community and some Discord servers that allow players to build a community as well.
Balance is the final issue with the League as there always seems to be something unbalanced. In theory it would be impossible to completely optimize bruisers, supports, mages, assassins, tanks, and junglers as there will always be a blind spot amongst the matchups. Certain counter picks can also be infuriating as they will completely dominate the first pick in the game. League of Legends also has a bad reputation for releasing a new champion who is completely overpowered for the sake of getting the champion picked more often among players. For example, Zoe a mage assassin was completely overpowered during her release and for several patches before she was minorly nerfed in future patches.
Items also play a major role in how well someone can play their champion in League. A great example would be blue Ezreal and full lethality assassins who can completely wipe two to three champs off the screen in a matter of seconds. As the game becomes more complicated over the years and will continue to become more complex with certain items being more optimized than others, League of Legends has a massive task of trying to balance champions with items to try and make it more fair. These days certain tanks feel completely useless if they don’t have the proper amount of crowd control abilities and certain healers feel completely underwhelming compared to newer healers added to the game.
Conclusion
At the end of the day League of Legends is becoming more popular than ever before, but if RIOT games doesn’t find solutions for the five areas the game will most likely result in an untimely death. Focusing more on cosmetics than actual gameplay is going to destroy the game as people will always buy skins. Another area not mentioned above is the fact that they increased the amount of Riot Points it costs to buy the new bundles as your $100 dollars no longer can buy the best bundle. It’s frankly extremely annoying that they made a cosmetic aspect of the game so pricey as people just want to gamble with their money on orbs and skins they can potentially get.
As League continues to grow it has a massive undertaking in making rewards more valuable for players who play the game. Increasing the rewards will not harm the game overall as there are so many skins people can purchase. However, they treat it as if giving people some skins over time will harm the revenue. Helping causal players enjoy the game and introducing new players in the game is also a challenge as League has been a golden boy for the Esports genre. Trying to find the middle ground between an Esports oriented game and something people can enjoy with their friends has definitely been a struggle they must overcome. Finally, trying to rid the game of toxic players and finding a perfect balance between the numerous champions/items in the game has been another struggle League of Legends must work on.
People love League and want to continue playing the game for the rest of their life if it’s possible. League of Legends continues to earn money for the company as it was the first baby of Riot Games, so trying to help make it more inclusive to newer audiences will surely make it more enjoyable for the rest of the fan base. Creating and growing the community through an official channel where people can go to will also benefit the game. Hopefully they can figure out the best ways to make League more enjoyable for everyone who genuinely loves the game.