Man, I really liked LoL once, around what they dubbed S2 and maybe still in S3. But then the pace of changes got too much, and also the types of changes. Every now and then I’d think about checking out where it’s at, but now they bundle that awful anticheat malware of theirs that’ll never happen again.
I love everything about League of Legends except for actually playing League of Legends.
The lore, character design and art style, Riot’s community engagement and approach to balance - all of it top tier.
But spending 40 minutes losing a game because your top lane got washed 0 and 6 and your shako support just keeps doing the worm in duo fucking sucks.
The community is toxic partly because the game design is infuriating. There’s like a thousand ways to lose - the draft, vision control, last hits on minions, objectives, items, team mates, technical skill, etc.
It all compounds into a really shitty, rage inducing, experience.
League has been and always will be bad. They don’t allow mods like in DotA 2, barely change the map, don’t make huge “WTF is going on???” patches, won’t mainline URF, don’t allow the game to change (if you’re playing a support hero, it may not be used as a carry otherwise it will be nerfed), the game is just in general stale af. Seasoned players and eSports watchers can call nearly all picks and bans ahead of time.
The game is also grindy as hell. You don’t start out with access to all your champs and can’t just drop into a 10-20 minute match that doesn’t count and is a fun place to experiment. There aren’t tournaments for noobs and the lack of custom games also makes that less possible.
The toxic community is only beaten by DotA’s community. The only thing going for league is that it makes money and has a dedicated team on it. Valve has maybe 5 staff working on DotA, does no marketing, no ads, no widespread press releases, … The only new players it got where simps for new heroes from their awful anime.
you’re spot on. I mean they depend on word of mouth for their marketing but when you have such a toxic community why would anyone in their right mind want to jump into that? I’d only say play it IF and ONLY IF you already have game pass and ONLY if you use said game pass for other shit simply because you get all the characters in League if you play with your game pass sub. I did that for a bit and honestly I spent most of the time just playing co-op against bots cause you didn’t have to deal with any toxic players.
DotA 2, while free with all the characters unlocked, has an even worse community full of edge lords. and the ONE moba that was accessible to new players, easy to pick up, had great map variety, and not nearly as toxic a community is all but dead with Heroes of the Storm. In typical Blizzard fashion they dropped the ball with that one.
I wanted to try Heroes of the Storm to play with Kerrigan and Doom, but they never made it cross platform, and I don’t think it was ever released on Steam. The idea of everybody levelling together instead of individually seemed like a great idea, but IMO that should’ve been a game mode instead of the main one.
Anyway, no MOBAs for me anymore. Hopefully OpenChamp will become something great!
It’s a shame more non-blizzard companies didn’t try out some of the mechanics of HoTS. It’s the only MOBA I played and actually enjoyed. My favorite part was that there was no item shop to overcomplicate matchups and expected stats.
that’s one of the reasons I loved it. no items and different maps that had different objectives. Also having mounts was great to quickly navigate the map.
I still play hots almost everyday. I do play with new players once in a while. Also the community is holding on to that game like crazy. I never wait to play and I rarely see the same names. They even deployed a couple new patches in the last 6 months.
I think they should still put this game in Steam, maybe it could revive it.
It’s almost as if having one of the worst reputations of any video game ever is damaging to your long-term health…
Still, I can’t really roast them. League of Legends genuinely did clean up their act when it comes to toxicity, and as hard as I tried to kick the habit, I still find myself going back and playing the occasional match of Heroes of the Storm, which is owned by a much scummier company that deserves to crash and burn.
And really, the MOBA genre isn’t as dominant as it once was in general either. It’s been a gradual decline, there’s been no big disaster that crashes everything. Just there are other genres in style right now. All things considered, I think LoL is doing totally fine given the circumstances. Nothing to worry about, so don’t be disheartened if it’s a game you enjoy.
I had a load of friends that played back in the day, and they always wanted me to play with them, I tried 4 or 5 times to get into it, but getting harassment off the smurfs turned me off it. I wasn’t able to play long enough to get up to speed.
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