Why League Of Legends Is Losing Popularity

A bit of a different video this time around. I wanted to make a discussion on why League feels like it hasn't been really getting anywhere ever since the 2020's

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#LoL #LeagueofLegends

[kaiseryim]

League can be summed up as: We are so back! Its over... We are so back! Its over... We are so back! Every patch.

[Arob]

To me, League is like a traditional sport. Like basketball. Does interest wane? Sure. But it can always be picked up and played. Depending on the day or friend group, maybe you get into it more or less

[cabbagebutterfly]

such unlucky timing when Dumbs just released 15 hours ago a video talking about all the things that's bright for the future of League

[Icagel]

Well it's kinda easy when we see how it grew.

- At it's release we didn't have massive platforms like Epic, GoG, Steam was at it's infancy. It was much more common to have to download a client per online game. Now it's a tedium for a casual player.
- The freemium model was also revolutionary (most online games like WoW or FF11 were subscription or P2W). You couldn't properly play most games (especially online) for free, you could with League.
- Cyber cafés were at their peak coming off grassroots DotA. League was an ideal per hour for the setting.
- People were used to RTS/MobA managing due to Warcraft, Starcraft, Age 2, etc.
- Mobas were fresh and a peaking genre
- eSports were this total novel thing skyrocketing at breakneck speed.
- There were enough champions for variety, but not that many to overwhelm a new player

These factors made League incredibly appealing to download and play for any casual. Growth only snowballed until it became the massive sensation. Almost all of these factors have died or become more tedious. Cyber cafés have all but died, people aren't as familiar with RTS controls now, the knowledge barrier to entry has risen exponentially, there's a lot of F2P games of high quality, and people got used to just getting games on one platform.

The loss of the casual playerbase to these variety of factors got Riot into a catch 22, either they make the game more straightforward in an attempt to make it more casual friendly (see: current season's pace, midgame is almost nonexistant) while risking losing the existing playerbase or they go back and revert these changes, making it more appealing to the league base but still alienating outsiders.

The game is not dying, but each year it's harder to get newcomers on, and the current base is not bringing them at the speed they used to. (See: the Arcane peak interest and the base telling their friends to NOT play the game)

[ibrahim]

I do not think that league became stagnant as much as riot accidentally forced it to be stagnant, years of a repeating the same formila is causing stagnation, 14 days patch cycle and repetitive events are getting worse and worse and i think this is why they bushing the new 4 season thematic next year

[poetrymanbutchicken]

I think lol aint dying soon, it got to the point that its well known for outsiders and it got the Money to cater to them so it can allways be Financial viable

[Arejen]

damn i realize how old i am, i started playing league when i was 19 now im 33 xD. I think league is not growing anymore, there are not many new players, the learning curve is huuge so its more like maintaining the playerbase, if you look how many games have risen and fallen during the lifetime of league, i myself made breaks with league and played other new mainstream games, but i always came back. There was no other game in my lifetime that hooked me as much as league, and a part of the relationship with the game is the same like with Marvel movies, many people grew up with Iron Man since 2008, as well as many grew up with League

[Nartanek]

Honestly when most of your community stays not because the game is good but because of habit, your time is counted. Lol has a terrible reputation now and i think unless they make a 180 to become a more casual game, they have more time in their past than their future.

[CassieTheMagicWolf]

One of the biggest reasons that's contributing to it's declining popularity is just how much of a time sink it is just to get DECENT, not good, DECENT at the game. On top of that, most of the playerbase that's been around for years are growing older and have responsibilities outside of League, so it's harder to find the time to invest in learning the game improve.

[growtocycle]

I think they just need to add a multi tier difficulty AI, and advanced PvE challenges (eg. Win, while other team starts at level 2, or with enemy team jungler starting at level 5, etc ..).

[helixheart]

Honestly it is somewhat rare for me to see true toxicity from other players. In my 300 + games for season 14 a majority of them have been mostly neutral to positive. I do agree that this game needs a better tutorials to help guide new players. It need things like "THE SKILL SHOT GALLERY", "SKILL SHOT DODGE" " LAST HIT THE MINION", "LEARNING TO KITE", "LANE MANAGMENT WITH CORPORATE MUNDO" and "LEARN YOUR CHAMPS COMBO"

[TPweisengame]

Great timing! I literally posted a video yesterday of me discussing why I'm quitting after playing League for over 10 years.

[jinnyplays]

I haven't finished yet, but I find it funny as someone who just got into league a year ago. The game changes faster then I can keep up with sometimes it feels like the items and champs are changing constantly.

[Akanan]

to add another point,

RIOT has been ignoring the flaws of the multiplayer experience for 10 years and only started to care for the health of the game when it started to lose in popularity. Too little too late.

[shacolin]

While it is debatable whether or not this is THE biggest responsible for league's stagnation, I think everyone agrees few games are as hostile to beginners as league is, and having a low influx of new players isn't the best for the game's longevity. The causes for it are many, and I feel like elaborating on the most obvious ones: the toxic community, the awful tutorial and the ever increasing cummulative knowledge, to be unnecessary, so I will instead talk about those I have the impression fall under the radar.

- League's balancing is suffocatingly conservative.
At one point in the past, "play your own way" was League's slogan. Nowadays, it feels like League's balance team is just trying too hard to make sure games stays the same on multiple fronts. An early game where all players play in their own isolated bubble with a transition to teamfights around objectives that dictate the outcome of the game. In of itself, this is not a bad thing, the problem is when players try to do something different. If a jungler isn't interacting with camps for 80% of the time, if a mid laner leaves lane and its play is not pixel perfect, they get punished extremmely harshly and all the opponent must do to perform said punish is getting a farm lead. That makes league's early game (a) extremmely monotonous and (b) if there's only one viable playstyle, then the winner is just the more experienced player. Thinking outside the box isn't just not encouraged. It is actively suppressed. TheBauffs probably being the most infamous example of that.

When was the last time a champion changed its role for good and replaced its initial role altogether? I can remember Karthus and Nidalee going from mid to jungle, Maokai and Nautilus ceasing to be junglers altogether and Gragas changing roles every so often, but outside that, what happens when a champion finds a new role 99% of the time? Riot will give that champion changes to actively force it the role it was before. Camille jungle, Camille support, Sett and Panthoen support, Lucian and Tristana mid, Swain, Heimerdinger and Cassiopeia bot. Even Brand, who became a support for nearly 10 years, Riot tried forcing back mid lane. If the meta stay with tanks and bruisers top, mages and assassins mid, marksmen bot and mages and tanks bot for all its existence, existing players will never have to relearn the game and the knowledge gap between old and new players will keep increasing. We never had the chance to play a game with double mage kill lanes bot, marksmen mid and no farming junglers like Camille for more than a few months and see how the game would adapt around it. Riot always nerf hammer everything to fold the game back to the previous status quo.

- League's new content has became increasingly convoluted.
Though convoluted designs are usually more complex than simple designs, convoluted doesn't necessarily translates into complexity. When you make a convoluted champion, even when in practice it is actually fairly simple, there's so much information going it can be intimidating for new players. Meanwhile, you can have complex champions without them being convoluted. The best examples being Zed, LeBlanc, Shaco, Heimerdinger, Orianna, Singed, and Draven. Most of these champions' abilities can be described in a single paragraph, yet nobody would argue against them not being complex champions. A new player is capable of understanding these champions on a basic level right away and see the potential in them. Meanwhile, when facing these champions, you never get the "what the fuck just happened?" you get when you're up against Aphelios or something.

I like to use Camille as an example here. Not because she is the worst offender, but because she makes the point really easy to understand. Camille's Q gives two auto-attack resets, the second of which converts your damage to true damage. Her W deals damage and has a sweet spot which deals bonus damage and slows. Her E is a long range dash that stuns on contact. Her R creates an unpassable zone around a target and knocks back all opponents around it. None of these abilities feel underwhelming or incomplete based on these descriptions, yet all of them have effects which I didn't mention. Camille's Q is also a movement speed steroid. Camille's W also heals her. Camille's E is also an attack speed steroid. Camille's R also makes her untargettable and gives her on-hit damage.

If you are reading this, you're probably familiar enough with the game to know the things I described above, but a new player facing Camille might wonder why is Camille so fast despite having a basic understanding of her abilities whereas against Master Yi that's easier to understand because he has an ability that's about making him fast. Convoluted abilities like this increase the barrier of entry for new players, not to mention the power creep, but that's whole other beast of its own.

It feels like League is balanced around the players that are still around since 2013 while thinking the game will feel fresh enough just by cramming more stuff into new champions' abilities.

[darkumineru]

i feel LoL is in the spot of CS where its never changing but unlike CS it does change sometimes (the current patch is a good showing) where while both are the same one is CS with big new player friendliness and LoL struggles with it both get a good amount of "friend list players" where you might start playing due to another game another player on your friends list invites u to it and while some quit its not fully swinging the new vs quitting player swing kind of like how the deathrate and birth rate is always favouring the birthrate and when it does not that the time the game starts to die and i feel league is going to keep there new players up with new changes for new players kinda like how CS 2 made the game easier to get into League can do so too

[jonsmith]

I had a friend ask me if he should start playing league literally last week and I said, “It’s literally worse than hard drugs, don’t play that game if you value yourself.” I reinstalled the game that same night 😂

[sweethistortea]

I can't play League because my computer is blocking Vanguard. It's a hassle to get the game to even work. If I'm in a MOBA mood, I just play Pokemon Unite with my friends.

[estebangomezllata]

I did not leave League. League left me. RIP league of linux. Is it a perfect game with a very supportive community? No. But it's still fun, and I'd definitely rather be able to play it than not.

[GuardianGrarl]

*When League gets old, you call Braum*