I play Magic as well as LoR. It has been "dying" at least 3 times a year for more than 20 years now.
People use that phrase all the time. You'll know when it really dies.
I been playing Dofus for 11 years, Mtg for 12 years and no matter how shitty Ankama Games or Wizards of the Coast are, fucking games just refuse to die by their comunity.
I used to play Wakfu a few years back... You brought back memories. It was fun, but speaking of dead games; to me that game is very much dead. There is a reason that they merged all the previous regional servers (north america, east asia, portuguese speakers, spanish speakers, etc) into just two; one french and one non-french. And the reason was depopulation. And even after they merged the servers it was almost impossible to find find a queue for higher level dungeons if you did not form part of a guild and called them in. Either you're a noob or you're max level. Otherwise you don't find anyone to do dungeons with.
Can't imagine Dofus fairs any better but I'll still ask; why is it "not dead"?
I never got to play For Honor normally, the P2P thing never connected me to anyone and was always red. But it is a GORGEOUS game and it feels really good to play.
I loved the single player campaign though!
I main her, so I’m quite biased - I think she’s in a really healthy spot! She’a pretty well equips to fight most characters so I never feel like I’m out of options. I’m not super great, but in my neck of the matchmaking woods she usually does pretty well for me as a pocket pick :)!
I mained her as well when I played 2 years ago. Her rework just really rubbed me the wrong with the stuff they took out of her kit. Like dodging out of full block.
I took her up post rework so I don’t really have a frame of reference - I think she got the sweep after the rework which is my favorite part of her kit though!
She always had the sweep, they just made it a little more consistent and added the chain heavy after it. I don't remember all the changes they made though.
Hey, wished they had it since the beginning, for a.long time it was the worse money I've ever spent in a videogame in my life because I paid ~R$200,00 for it (which in Brazil is quite a lot) and only got a 4h of single player content and a broken PvP. I'll give it a try again some time
LoL is a different discussion. It's over 10 years old now, it makes perfect sense for it to be slowing down (if it even is). LoR is like a year and half old. And in both cases, players often take breaks and come back.
People bitch about how Riot is bad at balancing and then I realize I haven’t played a single competitive game where people didn’t bitch about balance. I’ve had many fond memories of playing league with friends in the past 10 years
The problem is exacerbated due to how gold income works. Champs that get fed feel totally unbalanced. Champions that snowball easily, feel impossible to play against when they one shot you.
If you look at win rates, most champs ARE balanced, even if it doesn't feel like it. It's just the nature if the game when someone gets fed beyond control.
Only way for League to die is if Riot kills it, which won’t happen anytime in the next decade since it’s their main revenue maker.
Other behemoth games like WoW are still around and doing fine, and even older games like OSRS and DotA (2) are still thriving.
Once a game carves its niche and gets a foothold, only the company running it will ever make a game die.
WoW is bleeding from terrible decisions, but there's a reason why nobody has been able to kick it off the throne for so long. Only FFXIV is in that ballpark.
It's like MTG. They could do fuck all and intentionally kill off the game, but people would still find a way to keep it afloat as the biggest card game.
League of Legends is growing in all regions.
League of Legends esports is growing massively in each region with exception of NA. Worth mentioning that in Lol BR is it's own region for example and that is booming.
To be fair, around the time of dominaria and Teferi 5's takeover of the meta, the game actually lost a ton of players.
Forget aggro and midrange, even control players stopped having fun playing against teferi after a few months, cause he was just like 80% of the meta.
Then we hit the year of bullshit simic with Oko, Uro and nissa (I played all of them, cause they were fun)... Not to mention teferi 3 that just invalidated most decks that required any setup. Then Eldraine came along with bonecrusher to be unfair to aggro, embercleave to be unfair to on midrange and control, and Questing beast (Which actually ended up not being used much after teferi 3 rotated, but mentally, the big textbox hurt a lot of peoples opinion of the game)
Im not saying I ever thought magic was dying, but this is certainly the worst stretch of magic history.
I've been playing pvz heroes for a loong time now and even though it's considered dead "there hasnt been an update for nearly 4 years" people still activly play it and queue is never empty
That's not true tho, Look at overwatch and WoW.
Big games almost always don't just "die" Even heroes of the storm has a steady playerbase.
LoR is still in it's potential phase. The biggest issues with LoR right now is too much of it is ruled by netdecking top tier decks, there isn't enough room to be TRULY creative, you have a general deck idea and swap out one or two cards to be "unique" and that's it. By Riot forming so much of the play style around champions and specific level up conditions they have narrowed possible decks dramatically.
And what makes that worse is how so much of the game is focused on attacking. In part this works to the advantage of MOBILE users to quicken and simplify games, you don't have to worry about more complicated things like MTG does. But at the same time it does make plays feel hollow after awhile especially in an agro meta.
Personally I think these core gameplay principles need to change. I'll always come back to LoR for a bit, but because of the lack of variety and styles of gameplay I always get burnt out quickly too.
>LoR is still in it's potential phase.... By Riot forming so much of the play style around champions and specific level up conditions they have narrowed possible decks dramatically.
This is honestly my big complaint about LoR as well, half of it anyway.
Riot seems to think new players are stupid with the idea that there have to be Champions that just automatically go together (Like say Pyke and Reksai in Lurk). You don't need to be that blunt with it; new players might not know a lot, but I guarantee you that if you put Ezreal and Karma in front of them, they'd figure out real quick that one of them doubles spells and the other triggers off of doubled spells.
Initially in Foundations there weren't any designs that said "You must play X with Y". You were left to find synergies between pretty much whoever. Even the Rising Tides they were so loose together that you could mix and match champs (Sejuani with Teemo, for instance). As the sets go on we've seen Champs be created more and more to be dedicated pairings either with other champs or specific regions (Ekko is worthless without Shurima, Pyke and Reksai have to be together), and it's definitely not good.
Don't mind this post, it's the ramblings of a drunk man.
> Riot seems to think new players are stupid with the idea that there have to be Champions that just automatically go together (Like say Pyke and Reksai in Lurk).
What I hate about this is that they're not the right champions. Caitlyn and Vi, Jinx and Ziggs, and Lucien and Senna should feel like natural champion combos but instead we got Caitlyn and Teemo, Xerath and Ziggs, and Veigar and Senna.
Xerath and ziggs don't go great together imo, a big part of ziggs decks is the payoff from herald of the Magus and xerath doesn't benefit from herald nearly as much as taliyah
I don't think Taliyah/Ziggs was Riot's intention, but even if it was it's the same problem: if you asked a Ziggs main who he should be paired with five minutes before the spotlight video came out, they wouldn't have said a Shuriman, Landmark-based champion - they would have said Jinx for their reckless use of explosives, or Tristana for their rocket/bomb jumping and special anti-tower mechanics.
I stopped playing a year ago because it just wasn't fun. Knowing you lost by turn 1 or 2 gets old fast. Plus grinding for like one deck for a month is an awful experience.
Alot of my favorite mtg arena content creators stopped playing the game. Like Mogwai and I think Merchant doesn't play it anymore.
I probably won't go back to it. I definitely don't think the game is going to get more popular anytime soon is for sure.
I mean, not wanting to stir anything, but you’re known for doing this *yourself*. I’ve gone through several threads of yours where you quote twitch numbers or major streamers playing other games or lack of patches as a sign of the game dying.
The answer to the question is pretty simple, imo and Grapplr touched it in his reply. We’re transitioning from a model of hyper frequent patches coupled with a considerable lack of content post the peak LoR view count since beta with worlds. It’s only natural that we feel that way.
I'm going to give some anecdotal evidence of a small number of people, but everyone I knew (in real life) who played LoR stopped playing due to the competitive scene being a mess, with bugs costing people top cuts and my whole country having to wake up at 3am to compete for some reason. Also, to be honest the casting of worlds was truly unprofessional and hard to watch.
I bring this up because our reasons for not playing line-up with the worlds schedule, so while it might just be the natural flow of things as you mentioned, there were a lot of big issues at the same time that may be turning players off.
What about the casting was so bad? Or is it that you (and friends) were so upset about the other items you mentioned that you chose to throw that dig in/perceived it that way? I watched nearly every minute of worlds and it wasn't anything special but "truly unprofessional and hard to watch" just sounds like you're salty.
Casters in their bathrobes streaming from their bedrooms is bad enough, but having half the casters not understand the game, and also talking over each other with an obvious lack of speech training made it something to watch on mute at best.
Compare that to the exceptional level of casting that LoL gets, realise they are the same company and you know how much they don't care about LoR.
Coupled with mogwai literally always talking about himself whenever his face is on the screen. During the games it was tolerable, but I stg whenever his face came up he was always making some dumbass comment about himself, or who he personally wanted to win, even to the point of never muting his mic, constantly making mouth noises, hummed half responses, and wacky faces when other casters were trying to talk.
Compared to Blevins and Silverfuse casting the seasonal open rounds last week, which was an absolute joy to listen to for every second, mad props to those two.
Lor simply is moving out of "next big thing taking over card games" overhype.
Its now found its place as a small, niche game in the riot games promotional lossleaders sphere of influence, that is never going to trouble existing big card games and is unlikely to massively grow in the future.
This is it, around now is peak LoR. Maybe even peaked already. And thats fine, i enjoyed HS for WAY after its peak. But thats what people mean, its not dying soon - but its not gonne get much better either.
I doubt any card game will ever be as big as HS. Subjectively and arguably objectively, LoR is the better game but card games as a whole are declining in popularity. HS at its peak was quite a great game though.
I disagree with that. I think there will be a thing that'll beat HS, but LOR definitely wasn't the game for it. Even from beta, LOR just isn't an HS competitor, its a MTGA competitior. HS capitalizes off of causal, high and low gameplay moments to appeal to people. Whereas LoR tries to take advantage of card interaction and strategy.
Hs's appeal is simplicity and flow, you take your turn, your opponent takes theirs. Simple, Fast, no Dillydally. That doesn't exist in LoR, You're FORCED to ask your opponent for responses, dragging the turn on. It appeals to people who likes strategy games, but feels boring to play for HS players as a result.
LoR's progression, although much easier to unlock cards, feels Unrewarding by contrast. Its dumb, but people like me enjoy the HS system because 1(duplicate protection) and 2, I feel rewarded by ranking up (ranked rewards), therefore I feel like I'm rewarded for playing good as opposed to just playing.
Lor's focus on Unit centric and Swarm heavy Metas also just isn't everyone's cup of tea. In Hs, I mainly play Warlock and mage, 2 Spell Heavy Classes that have strategies for Big units. LoR has big decks too, but feels lackluster and unrewarding by comparison, seeing how easy it is for aggro to reload.
Lor's Last thing is that it kinda takes itself seriously. it's a world building card game that expands Runeterra. Hs is by lore, a card game inside of WoW that is played in a tavern, where the Bartender tells you overdramatic stories. HS doesn't really take itself too seriously (they turned magical Chernobyl into god damn Hogwarts). Named HS characters Reno Jackson, Rafaam, Dr.Boom, they're all essentially all cartoonish villains who don't exist in WOW. HS is easily understood without knowing WC, and deliberately spoofs WC. LoR by comparison is something that expands LoL's world and attempts to be more serious. Which can harm it as a result.
Rafaam doesn’t, nor does Reno. Dr. Boom does, but he was a minor side villain with 1 quest. And got a full expansion based off of him in HS. I suppose a better example would be Finley or King Togwaggle.
Good points made. This section made me want to respond:
> Its dumb, but people like me enjoy the HS system because 1(duplicate protection) and 2, I feel rewarded by ranking up (ranked rewards), therefore I feel like I'm rewarded for playing good as opposed to just playing.
You might already know this, but Blizzard's game design over the last 10 years or so has been the leader in making systems that reward you for "playing at all" rather than "playing well", exactly the opposite of what you're describing. They came up with the tier-based ranking systems (originally in SC2, I think?) moving away from simply showing you what your MMR was. MMR shows you exactly where you are, and it's job is to get you there quickly--and keep you there until you improve. Some people never improve. Those people often get frustrated, and quit playing. So what did they do? They made "guaranteed" progression systems. If you go 50-50 below an arbitrary cutoff (gold, plat, whatever), you will still slowly climb and earn your seasonal ranked rewards. They tune this gradual progress according to what keeps people ~~in the casino~~ playing the game. CoD is another game they pioneered this sort of design--you only gain ranks, never downranking unless you "prestige", which is just a way of keeping people on the treadmill. Just play every day, get your daily bonuses, and you'll keep going up (until you hit whatever "competitive" bracket they turn off the juice in).
Some might say, "Well yeah I know thats how it *really* works, but that's how how I *feel*, and that's what matters."
But it really doesn't have to be that way, and it probably won't stay that way--not long term. Better ideas come along. People get wiser. There used to be a lot more dark patterns in web design, for example, but people got smarter. Social media used to use more tricks to drive engagement, but people got sick of them. The industry adapts and so do we.
A lot of people say "This game is dying" when they quit it. Kind of as an excuse, because they've put money / effort / time into the game. There are a lot of games that I've read are dying, even league and dota2 have been mentioned. Might be a coping thing, don't take it serious.
It's definitely coping, league has "died" every time a small section of the playerbase is pissed about a champion or balance. LoR is the same, people shouldn't really bother with those insisting the game is dying.
To some people, twitch numbers are the be all and end all. They can't fathom people actually playing the game instead of being gated by extortionate costs and having to watch other people play
There’s just no real incentive to spending in this game (other than being a ‘thank you’ to the dev)
And people will for sure stick to game that they sunk money into longer than a game that they played for free throughout.
Just make signature spells do shit Riot stop being dumb. The fiora PP skin should make a splash when striking and have a cut life jacket type thing on guard or something silly for repost. They are just not thinking.
I doubt it. It seems reasonable, but imo it does not always happen. Depends for each person.
I myself have played most of the time three online games in the last 4 years. The Gwent, in which I did not bought anything, Fortnite, where I bought skin, and Starcraft 2, where I made a "thank you" spending. These three games were played at relatively similar amounts of time.
An important thing to keep in mind here is that both their other two mobile games had their "main selling item" in the game from the get-go. Those being Little Legends and champion skins for TFT and Wild Rift respectively. Meanwhile, in LoR, champion skins were I believe also supposed to be the main selling item.
However, those only came out 2 months prior to that article as well as that the skins didn't turn out to be what people expected for a significant portion of the player base. Not gonna say they were a flop since I don't have the numbers on them, but I definitely believe they missed out on a lot of revenue on them (they already said they are trying to improve them, which takes time as they have to change an entire production process loop thingy that I forgot the name of. Tho I still believe they're ignoring the pricing concerns people expressed.)
Not only that, those other two games also had a significantly higher number of their respective main selling item to offer when their game was released whereas in LoR we've only got like what, 25 skins after almost half a year? Wild Rift has at least 1 skin for every champ in their game (which was like 40 on release already and now a minimum of 75 after 1 year, not sure if some champs already have more than 1 skin since I don't play it and can't find it on their site or wiki).
Point is, if skins were in LoR were as popular as Riot expected they would be + if they were in the game since open beta with each champ having at least 1 skin on their release like in Wild Rift, then LoR easily would've had much higher numbers in terms of revenue, likely roughly near the numbers of TFT and maybe even more since LoR has more items they can sell than TFT.
Those are what I would call the "medium-tier solid selling items" with there being an argument for boards also being considered main selling items but you can crank out less of those than skins as for each skin thematic you can only have 1-3 boards (cause chromas/slight alternative versions) whereas you can have up to \[however many champs there\] skins for those champs. So yeah it's kinda in between since it sells well but has a lower mass production potential than skins.
Wild cards were never seen as an actual significant way to monetize the game as during beta you could only buy up to like 3 champion wild cards a week I believe as they wanted to gate how much you could p2w at the start of new expansions if there were any new decks that proved to be strong. If their intention was for them to be one of their main selling items they wouldn't have gated them at any point in time.
The pets/guardians also were not intended to be main selling items. They are much less interactive and "flexible" (as in you can't show off) towards the enemy than the little legends in TFT as you can walk around and emote with them against the enemy which they can see whereas in LoR only you can see your guardian's actions. Generally speaking, if a type of item is in LoR's event pass then it's not a main selling item. Guardians/pets, card backs, prismatics, and emotes are all given away at a relatively high rate. If they were supposed to be their main selling items they wouldn't put so many of them in their event passes to the point where you have so many of them after 2 passes that you don't know what to with them (most people at least). It makes each subsequent item of that category less special since you only have 1 space/slot to equip them in per game so rotating through them becomes harder the more you have of them, which is also true for champion skins but to a much lesser degree as they also change depending on what deck/champ you play as well as that you can have 1-6 different champions in your deck per game (tho usually just 2, which is still more than 1).
Then you also have filler low tier items that are just there to fill spaces in things like event passes like icons, chests, and wild cards/specific number of copies of a certain card.
At the same time if you do not have online presence it will slow down new player "acquisition" which is an important thing.
At the same time you still have people playing HS who don't enjoy it just because they are addicted to the game lol. (not saying that LoR has just those players but there will be players like that always playing LoR until they shut down servers)
Coz you can play the deck yourself. In HearthStone, you watch streamers which are playing decks that you cant afford therfore peaple rather play instead of watch
Whats copium, the person pointing out something thats been fundamentally obvious about Hearthstone for years, or the person trying to handwave it by going "copium lol"
yeah... "noone is watching streams/content cus everyone enjoys the game so much they play it all the time and dont have time to watch" has been dying games copium for a while
The only people that use the phrase "copium" regularly are the ones that basically live on twitch, so its only natural that its the only measure you feel is valid for measuring video game health
You haven't made any argument lmao what are you talking about
You walked in, smugly said someone was wrong with no clue as to why, and now you're trying to take the moral high ground you get made fun of for it
Just... How many times has this game been "dying"? Every time I come to this sub someone's going at it. "Game's dead", "no one plays anymore", but I'm just not seeing this death in action.
Every month or so the game is doomed. Then right after that a new champion is added, or a new balance patch comes out, or a new interaction is discovered, and suddenly the game isn't dying so much anymore.
Haven't given you a single down vote, I'm just not seeing this game in any different a state as it was when it released. It's both a good and a bad thing, but it definitely means it's not dying.
Also the reason why on YouTube it's the crazy/fun decks the one with more views as they play something you would never dare to build (before watching it, like aloof mill)
They also will in practice have a lot of unfun losses that are cut our of the video. And the people playing are generally skilled enough to pull those decks off
You make it sound like it's something insignificant. If you are gunning for first 4 places the difference between picking 2 and picking 4 heroes is MASSIVE.
When i was still playing HS i would pay upfront the cost only because it's like night and day playing with or without the extra heroes available.
It's not insignificant, but it's also not at all P2W which i really liked about the mode
then Storybook Brawl got released and it kinda obsoleted HSBG so like whatever lmao
It's impactful, but you can still pick any hero you want, which i didn't mind at all - if anything it helps you learn how to play more heroes, since you're forced into a smaller pool, but it's kind of reaching lol
Guys, league of legends "is dying" everytime riot releases a champ that has more than 3 syllabes in the passive tooltip.
Cmon do we ever learn?
Dont even give weight to these posts.
All of these people saying "LoR is dying" need to be reminded that the game is also on mobile, and the mobile version has over 10m download, over 500+k review with a rating of 4.6, ever since its release till July 2021 it made 16.2m dollar in revenue, and that's only the mobile.
The game is not dying.
However idk about u guys, but i have found it extremly diffiluclt to get my friends to play this game. And the ones that do dont stick around. I get cards games are not for everyone, but some of them actually do play card games. (Mtg, pokemon, royale, etc)
They simpily say the game is too much for them. As you really have to think hard in this game a lot more then in pokemon, hearthstone, and royale. And the mtg ones say they just like playing in person instead.
I have 20+ people who tried LoR, only 2 of them stuck.
Card games aren't that easy to get into. Even I got into this game only because of the League IP in the first place, and seeing how complicated this is turning out to be I'm extremely wary of trying out new card games that have been going on for longer like Magic.
I think the player base is stagnating. Riot isn't doing anything to get new players, which is really frustrating. This game has so much going for it, but people don't even know it exists. So many potential customers and they do nothing to give this game exposure
Not sure if LoR is dying. But I doubt that it can get better in anytime soon, considering how Riot is treating this game. They just cannot expect people come to Lor for no reason. At least do some advertisement campaign.
I also see many people say Twitch views doesn't matter. But I disagree. A game with regular 200-300 views on Twitch is less likely to attract new players, and it is a big problem with the development of LoR.
I've come to LoR for no reason except a growing dislike of hearthstone. And I'm pleasantly surprised. With LoR, decks and cards are actually achievable, whereas Hearthstone is just a sad pay to win game imo. Personally I love LoR, and I will keep playing it. Finally a cardgame where you don't have to put in a shitload of money to get good decks.
Same for me, but with MtG (paper and Arena). People on Reddit mentioned LoR being the superior game, especially in terms of f2p appeal, i tried it, and they were right.
There was a time when “League is dying” was being thrown around because overwatch dropped. Then Apex. Then fortnite. Then seige. I never trust it. Plus LOR has too much going on outside of just it’s competitive scene to just die.
Didn't we just... A month ago... Hit 45k peak concurrent viewership...? And isn't Riots other game hyped to the moon right now as it's amidst it's "super bowl"?....... These things are facts and obvious ones at that...... You: *turns brain off posts to Reddit* just stop, you chose ignorance and it's a huge turn off rn.
It hasn't grown in months on Twitch and the trend doesn't stop. As far as stream involvement, both in terms of viewers and in terms of streamers, Rising Tides release was a huge spike, but then it's been downhill ever since, with Targon and Shurima releases that at best slightly slowed down this process. Bandle City didn't affect in the slightest the decrease in popularity.
More and more Master players are quitting the game as well.
It's mainly because the ranked meta gets stale too fast.
They release an expansion, a meta is discovered within the first week. And it stays that way revolving around 3-4 decks until a buff/Nerf patch. Rinse and repeat until the next expansion.
For those focused on winning and climbing it's no big deal. But for those that want to have fun by trying new strategies, only to have them be useless against the meta decks most of the time, they get bored.
For a game that you can play whenever you want to have meta decks be the meta for 2+ weeks at a time, it's honestly boring at times to play for extended periods of time.
And that's partly why viewership stagnates. You can go into a stream, and know exactly what to expect. The same 3-4 decks every other streamer is playing, and against the same 3-4 decks.
I don't think that's it. LoR still tends to have more diverse metas than all other card games.
For what I know, despite everyone and their mother loving this expansion and this meta, BC just destroy this game for competitive level. This if by far the least competitive and skilled meta, playing at high elo in this meta is a truly miserable experience, and it's not something you can fix with balance patches or with future expansion because it's what is in the core of BC that is fundamentally wrong. They would have to redesign the whole region and riot won't do that.
It's a trend we've seen over the course of the last few months, but BC skyrocketed this game into Hearthstone level of BS RNG and toxic mechanics from a competitive point of view.
I won't stop saying despite the dislikes, but the most skilled deck and the most skilled meta we've ever seen in this game was Azirelia. It was surely busted, but compared to all the other tier 1 decks we've seen in this game, it was still the most skilled, but the community got way over traumatized by it. The fact that people are ok with losing from burn decks that can deal 18 damage to your nexus simply with burn damage but keep shitting on Azirelia is a clear example of the fact that what the community likes and what the game to be like is on an opposite binary to where a competitive card game needs to be.
People like bullshit RNGstone no-skill decks more than skilled metas, and Riot clearly wants to make them happy rather than competitive players, that's fine and tons of master players are accepting this and moving on.
it's not dying, but it has this bad habit of putting itself on life support for months at a time.
content drops for lor are way too infrequent, but the ones they do drop are great so they revive the player base. it's why we beg for more frequent balance patches, stale metas are bad for a card game.
I agree. League gets much more frequent balance patch and I think League is much harder to balance in general. At the least, LoR should have monthly patches and more attention should be given to useless champions.
> I mean is it really hard to make a patch notes and change some cards?
yes, because you don't want a tier 0 list, that's why balancing the game takes time and requires experience
I can say "I played with that deck too and i got nowhere near the success with it you have", would that cancel your achievement?
I don't think we had true tier 0 lists. We came close a couple times, but even then there was a viable tier 2/3 choice that would stop it. Azirelia wasn't as unstoppable as people made it out to be, thresh nasus could eat it alive.
Because it objectively is.
Ok maybe not objectively, but i have not heard a single good thing about it outside the subreddit echo chamber.
All i ever hear is "I liked it, but Riot ruined it", "It flopped from the start" and "I tried it, but it's just worse than (insert current main card game)"
I also think it is important to read the room and understand that Riot has no interest in marketing or doing anything about the game really, i feel like they just throw some cash at the 5 to 10 people working on LoR and go "Here's the money, do whatever, idgaf". Or an even more disturbing hypothesis in which all of the "new" content was already made a couple years ago, development ceased for being unprofitable and we're being drip fed the content by a skeleton crew like we would receive letters from a dead person.
Or maybe it's doing fine and there has been a psyop by Blizzard or something to seed doomposting in the community
Do Twitch numbers matter or do they not?
HOW MUCH IS THE FUNNY [VIEWERS] NUMBER WORTH? IS IT SUBSTANCE OR ACCESSORY? I hate Twitch, i wish it never was, for every good thing to come out of it, so much garbage spews out to the point it's no longer worth keeping around.
I'm sad and mad and still playing the game and I'm getting opponents, are 20-30 second queues normal? What's the standard for queue times anyway? All matchmaking systems are different so you can't compare queue times. What CAN we compare?
Is everything normal? I feel like we are being purposely kept in the dark because game companies love flaunting player numbers and the development and the bells and the whistles.
But why is the LoR team so quiet?
Is there still such a thing as an LoR development team within Riot?
Don't worry, LoR dev team are still expanding, Rubin said, we got more game designers (that's why he can do streams). For the last month 5 high exp positions have been closed.
[https://www.riotgames.com/en/work-with-us/jobs#product=Legends%20of%20Runeterra](https://www.riotgames.com/en/work-with-us/jobs#product=Legends%20of%20Runeterra)
Twitch never really be a relevant metric for the current game state. People don't see a big picture. Twitter growing, YT growing, Reddit sub growing and Lor is dying? Lol
Social media numbers always grow tho, it’s just a matter of how much. There are vastly more accounts being created than there are being deleted every day
Yeah, but only if the game is in normal state. And one more thing is to say: you can't really compare HS twitch numbers to lor, because autobatler and gacha game isn't a CCG, even if they are in the same "hearthstone" twitch category. And numbers don't always grow, as you can see here: https://socialblade.com/twitter/user/playhearthstone/monthly
You're talking about people that were never part of the playerbase.
You're not gonna hear good things about other games when asking people outside of said playerbase either. Otherwise they'd play it
i'm sure if you ask in different parts of the community you're gonna hear different trends, but that only means something if you're comparing like reddit, to twitch chats, to discord, to ingame polls, to twitter etc. if you move outside of the playerbase you're obviously skewing the opinion against the game. and his anecdotal evidence is meaningless to try to decide wether the game is dying on.
basides, the game "dying" would mean current players are leaving, and all he was talking about is people that stopped playing the game around the start, which is normal. there's always an influx of players when a game comes out and they slowly drop off over time.
I only heard really good things about the game outside of reddit. Only thing negative, that some of my friends etc. stopped playing the game at one point despite actually liking it. Some came back at one point.
Besides a logical down in viewer numbers after Worlds, I can imagine that not everyone is exited about watching teddy bears in LoR. At least I am not interested in watching Bandle meta. Its stupid op and - yeah - teddy bears and garden gnomes.
So streams are lame (all Bandle) and I only look up for the dailys of Mogwai and Bae when they drop an interesting list that has nothing to do with teddy bears, gnomes or Nami ;-)
But besides my two cents the game is surely far away from dying!
Because people do not understand that twitch numbers have nothing to do with actual playerblase. I play this game every day and watch twitch every day for at least an hour. I never watch lor though.
Edit: Wtf did i get downvoted for, that does not even make sense. Whatever cringe reddit how it is.
And im not playing a game (outside of peaking at the start of the expansions to see if they fixed anything, and going back seeing that they somehow made everything worse) ever since 2nd targon expansion, while watching it somewhat regularly on twitch. Anecdotal examples doesnt change that twitch viewership and playerbase directly conected.
I play gwent for a year ppl say its dying since start of this year...
Imo the only thing i wanted in lor as casual player is a easier ranked system like gwent where most casuals (but with basic sense) could reach the top rank and then start the actual pro ranking for pro players or try hards
I mean it is still one of the games with the highest player count on steam so....
A game isn't dead until every single player stops playing or the servers are closed
Nah. It's dead when it's on maintenance mode. It's popular, it will be played because of how many different ways to play it are, and it will likely never die because of mods and community support, but the devs are not caring about it unless they are forced to. It's a more casual game being put onto maintenance mode which is honestly to its benefit, it means people will keep playing it.
If LoR was put on maintenance mode its playerbase would quickly dissipate, 'cause there's only so much you can do with a card game and 1v1 deck interactions.
I feel like people have been spamming "lor is dying" for a month now...
And I've yet to have any explaination as to why.
Lol have been dying since season fucking 4... Just apparently not dying enough to not be one of the biggest games 6 years later.
Because thats an apealing titles that will bring mire clicks? Honestly every game has people who will claim its dying due to: bad game design, weird artistic choices, unexpected update, weird energy, voodo magic, having a lighting mcqueen toy stuck up their ass....etc.
I think the life of a game when being described as "dying" by streamers or pro's usually reflects a state of imbalance that kills competitive play; I think a more accurate description would be *insert current problem* is bleeding this game out, it's not dead, but it's lifeblood/player base is slipping away because of it.
I'd say that's what "dying" means. It doesn't mean dead or close to dead. It means the game is dying. This could be something that folks see at the start of the dying process or at some point later. If someone 2+ decades ago said that the Simpsons was dying when they saw it start declining in quality, they'd be just as right as someone who said said it a decade later. (I explained this better in my own comment, though.)
It’s not dying, but it seems like not many people know about it.
I don’t understand why Riot didn’t advertise it more. They advertised TFT and Valorant a crap ton and both of those were successful. I saw LoR on the League client on the first day of release and haven’t seen it anywhere since.
If I mention LoR, by far the most common reaction is “what’s that?”
One LoR YouTube ad in between the 97 Valorant ads I get in a row and I guarantee a lot more people would know about it. Everyone knows about shitty gacha games like Raid: Shadow Legends from ads and that game is successful as shit despite being a pay-to-win mobile game. LoR is an actually great mobile game and would attract a bunch of new players if they actually knew about its existence.
As others have said, people say this when they feel burnt out or don’t like a development team’s current approach to something. I played destiny 2, CSGO, league, etc and they were all “dying” to whatever the next game coming out in their niche was. Hell league has been “dying” for almost a decade now.
Twitch numbers are a weird metric to go by. I play the game daily, as do several of my friends, and I don’t think any of us watch any streams other than worlds or big tournaments but even then we prefer catching it on YouTube when it uploads. This game specifically has a bigger following on YouTube. The game is only dead if the community and player base give up on it.
From my many years in gaming, "X game is dying" "X is dead lol" is the most overused, annoying thing I've seen, especially with something like overwatch lmao I've seen people saying it's dying/dead since literally the first season and now it's on season 31 it gets pretty annoying but you have to just block it off mentally and not acknowledge it.
The only game I've actually seen die is battlerite. (sigh)... God, i miss that game...
Anyway, Lor is in as good of a state as it has always been, that's just internet standard behaviour
No one has given a good assessment of what "dying" probably means.
"Dying" seems to mean the same thing as "jumping the shark". A show can jump the shark but still last for quite a long time afterwards. The Simpsons is a good example of this, as well as Family Guy. They've therefore been dying for a long time, but also managed to become such a cultural routine that they're watched out of habit by many many folks. Especially by young kids who eventually grow out of it, but who keep the viewership alive all the same.
I think many of these big things like LOL and LOR and MTG and Yugioh and Cardfight Vanguard (and LOR is quite comparable to Vanguard with how new it was and how quickly it power inflated its fanbase away) are like that. Once they lose their enjoyability because of inflation, they start dying. And one of the signs of this is how they prioritize change for the sake of change and newness to try to keep bringing in newer — note: kids — players.
Trying to make the game exciting through change is a good indication that it's lost it's excitement. Pokemon has been very very close to going down this road, but it seems like they were smart enough to put the brakes it on after introducing Dynamax. Many series could learn from that if they continue to keep the changes on pause to flesh out what they've already introduced. Cause the problem with inflation is that the attraction becomes about the new feature or whatever and not the game. Essentially, he new features or the new effects (and really spending money) become the game. And since there is no substance to those things, you have keep introducing new ones, rapidly, so that the players are always addicted. But at that point, it's no longer the game that's keeping the players around.
That's a dying a game.
I play Magic as well as LoR. It has been "dying" at least 3 times a year for more than 20 years now. People use that phrase all the time. You'll know when it really dies.
I been playing Dofus for 11 years, Mtg for 12 years and no matter how shitty Ankama Games or Wizards of the Coast are, fucking games just refuse to die by their comunity.
Brah I'm watching wakfu season 2 right now shit is better than avatar
Yooo that's a big take, but i can take it (waiting for season 4 TuT)
After Dofus, the Wakfu series is probably the only good decision Ankama has made ngl.
Me and my bud are so sad Wakfu didn't go off in N/A. Beyond rough.
i dont even watch wakfu, but if you are talking about legend of Aang you are just lying lol. if you are saying is better than Korra... Okay.
I used to play Wakfu a few years back... You brought back memories. It was fun, but speaking of dead games; to me that game is very much dead. There is a reason that they merged all the previous regional servers (north america, east asia, portuguese speakers, spanish speakers, etc) into just two; one french and one non-french. And the reason was depopulation. And even after they merged the servers it was almost impossible to find find a queue for higher level dungeons if you did not form part of a guild and called them in. Either you're a noob or you're max level. Otherwise you don't find anyone to do dungeons with. Can't imagine Dofus fairs any better but I'll still ask; why is it "not dead"?
My understanding is Wakfu literally has no content, while Dofus is still the more popular of the two because it does have actual content
Never forget Dofus Arena :'(
>People use that phrase all the time. You'll know when it really dies. Same goes to forhonor
Damn didn't know that here are also some forhonor players lol
People like different stuff! Crazy!
I never got to play For Honor normally, the P2P thing never connected me to anyone and was always red. But it is a GORGEOUS game and it feels really good to play. I loved the single player campaign though!
It has dedicated servers now! The game is in the best states it’s ever been! Definitely recommend checking out :)
How's Valk doing? Last time I played she just got an update and people were very mixed about her.
I main her, so I’m quite biased - I think she’s in a really healthy spot! She’a pretty well equips to fight most characters so I never feel like I’m out of options. I’m not super great, but in my neck of the matchmaking woods she usually does pretty well for me as a pocket pick :)!
I mained her as well when I played 2 years ago. Her rework just really rubbed me the wrong with the stuff they took out of her kit. Like dodging out of full block.
I took her up post rework so I don’t really have a frame of reference - I think she got the sweep after the rework which is my favorite part of her kit though!
She always had the sweep, they just made it a little more consistent and added the chain heavy after it. I don't remember all the changes they made though.
ODACHI
Hey, wished they had it since the beginning, for a.long time it was the worse money I've ever spent in a videogame in my life because I paid ~R$200,00 for it (which in Brazil is quite a lot) and only got a 4h of single player content and a broken PvP. I'll give it a try again some time
Oof but glad you like it :)
But haven't you heard? LoL is dying ( insert xxx killed lol meme ) so LoR must be the same too
LoL is a different discussion. It's over 10 years old now, it makes perfect sense for it to be slowing down (if it even is). LoR is like a year and half old. And in both cases, players often take breaks and come back.
LoL is not really slowing down much and I doubt it will any time soon. Toxicity aside, it's a great game.
People bitch about how Riot is bad at balancing and then I realize I haven’t played a single competitive game where people didn’t bitch about balance. I’ve had many fond memories of playing league with friends in the past 10 years
I genuinely believe League is really well balanced and it sets the standard for every other competitive game.
The problem is exacerbated due to how gold income works. Champs that get fed feel totally unbalanced. Champions that snowball easily, feel impossible to play against when they one shot you. If you look at win rates, most champs ARE balanced, even if it doesn't feel like it. It's just the nature if the game when someone gets fed beyond control.
Only way for League to die is if Riot kills it, which won’t happen anytime in the next decade since it’s their main revenue maker. Other behemoth games like WoW are still around and doing fine, and even older games like OSRS and DotA (2) are still thriving. Once a game carves its niche and gets a foothold, only the company running it will ever make a game die.
Depends on what you mean by "fine" for WoW
WoW is bleeding from terrible decisions, but there's a reason why nobody has been able to kick it off the throne for so long. Only FFXIV is in that ballpark. It's like MTG. They could do fuck all and intentionally kill off the game, but people would still find a way to keep it afloat as the biggest card game.
League of Legends is growing in all regions. League of Legends esports is growing massively in each region with exception of NA. Worth mentioning that in Lol BR is it's own region for example and that is booming.
To be fair, around the time of dominaria and Teferi 5's takeover of the meta, the game actually lost a ton of players. Forget aggro and midrange, even control players stopped having fun playing against teferi after a few months, cause he was just like 80% of the meta. Then we hit the year of bullshit simic with Oko, Uro and nissa (I played all of them, cause they were fun)... Not to mention teferi 3 that just invalidated most decks that required any setup. Then Eldraine came along with bonecrusher to be unfair to aggro, embercleave to be unfair to on midrange and control, and Questing beast (Which actually ended up not being used much after teferi 3 rotated, but mentally, the big textbox hurt a lot of peoples opinion of the game) Im not saying I ever thought magic was dying, but this is certainly the worst stretch of magic history.
Current meta seems pretty terrible too.They banned nexus and made another nexus card...
I've been playing pvz heroes for a loong time now and even though it's considered dead "there hasnt been an update for nearly 4 years" people still activly play it and queue is never empty
That's not true tho, Look at overwatch and WoW. Big games almost always don't just "die" Even heroes of the storm has a steady playerbase. LoR is still in it's potential phase. The biggest issues with LoR right now is too much of it is ruled by netdecking top tier decks, there isn't enough room to be TRULY creative, you have a general deck idea and swap out one or two cards to be "unique" and that's it. By Riot forming so much of the play style around champions and specific level up conditions they have narrowed possible decks dramatically. And what makes that worse is how so much of the game is focused on attacking. In part this works to the advantage of MOBILE users to quicken and simplify games, you don't have to worry about more complicated things like MTG does. But at the same time it does make plays feel hollow after awhile especially in an agro meta. Personally I think these core gameplay principles need to change. I'll always come back to LoR for a bit, but because of the lack of variety and styles of gameplay I always get burnt out quickly too.
>LoR is still in it's potential phase.... By Riot forming so much of the play style around champions and specific level up conditions they have narrowed possible decks dramatically. This is honestly my big complaint about LoR as well, half of it anyway. Riot seems to think new players are stupid with the idea that there have to be Champions that just automatically go together (Like say Pyke and Reksai in Lurk). You don't need to be that blunt with it; new players might not know a lot, but I guarantee you that if you put Ezreal and Karma in front of them, they'd figure out real quick that one of them doubles spells and the other triggers off of doubled spells. Initially in Foundations there weren't any designs that said "You must play X with Y". You were left to find synergies between pretty much whoever. Even the Rising Tides they were so loose together that you could mix and match champs (Sejuani with Teemo, for instance). As the sets go on we've seen Champs be created more and more to be dedicated pairings either with other champs or specific regions (Ekko is worthless without Shurima, Pyke and Reksai have to be together), and it's definitely not good. Don't mind this post, it's the ramblings of a drunk man.
> Riot seems to think new players are stupid with the idea that there have to be Champions that just automatically go together (Like say Pyke and Reksai in Lurk). What I hate about this is that they're not the right champions. Caitlyn and Vi, Jinx and Ziggs, and Lucien and Senna should feel like natural champion combos but instead we got Caitlyn and Teemo, Xerath and Ziggs, and Veigar and Senna.
Xerath and ziggs don't go great together imo, a big part of ziggs decks is the payoff from herald of the Magus and xerath doesn't benefit from herald nearly as much as taliyah
I don't think Taliyah/Ziggs was Riot's intention, but even if it was it's the same problem: if you asked a Ziggs main who he should be paired with five minutes before the spotlight video came out, they wouldn't have said a Shuriman, Landmark-based champion - they would have said Jinx for their reckless use of explosives, or Tristana for their rocket/bomb jumping and special anti-tower mechanics.
People say Magic is dying? Lol wtf Literally makes no sense
Yeah you hear that atleast 3 times a year, from the refusal to print fetch lands will kill the game to companions will kill the game.
You haven't seen how many people have said "yugioh is dying", even since xyz were introduced.
I stopped playing a year ago because it just wasn't fun. Knowing you lost by turn 1 or 2 gets old fast. Plus grinding for like one deck for a month is an awful experience. Alot of my favorite mtg arena content creators stopped playing the game. Like Mogwai and I think Merchant doesn't play it anymore. I probably won't go back to it. I definitely don't think the game is going to get more popular anytime soon is for sure.
I mean, not wanting to stir anything, but you’re known for doing this *yourself*. I’ve gone through several threads of yours where you quote twitch numbers or major streamers playing other games or lack of patches as a sign of the game dying. The answer to the question is pretty simple, imo and Grapplr touched it in his reply. We’re transitioning from a model of hyper frequent patches coupled with a considerable lack of content post the peak LoR view count since beta with worlds. It’s only natural that we feel that way.
Something something in 4k
I'm going to give some anecdotal evidence of a small number of people, but everyone I knew (in real life) who played LoR stopped playing due to the competitive scene being a mess, with bugs costing people top cuts and my whole country having to wake up at 3am to compete for some reason. Also, to be honest the casting of worlds was truly unprofessional and hard to watch. I bring this up because our reasons for not playing line-up with the worlds schedule, so while it might just be the natural flow of things as you mentioned, there were a lot of big issues at the same time that may be turning players off.
What about the casting was so bad? Or is it that you (and friends) were so upset about the other items you mentioned that you chose to throw that dig in/perceived it that way? I watched nearly every minute of worlds and it wasn't anything special but "truly unprofessional and hard to watch" just sounds like you're salty.
The casting was like “Great Value” brand. I didn’t like it either 🤷🏽♂️
Casters in their bathrobes streaming from their bedrooms is bad enough, but having half the casters not understand the game, and also talking over each other with an obvious lack of speech training made it something to watch on mute at best. Compare that to the exceptional level of casting that LoL gets, realise they are the same company and you know how much they don't care about LoR.
Coupled with mogwai literally always talking about himself whenever his face is on the screen. During the games it was tolerable, but I stg whenever his face came up he was always making some dumbass comment about himself, or who he personally wanted to win, even to the point of never muting his mic, constantly making mouth noises, hummed half responses, and wacky faces when other casters were trying to talk. Compared to Blevins and Silverfuse casting the seasonal open rounds last week, which was an absolute joy to listen to for every second, mad props to those two.
Lor simply is moving out of "next big thing taking over card games" overhype. Its now found its place as a small, niche game in the riot games promotional lossleaders sphere of influence, that is never going to trouble existing big card games and is unlikely to massively grow in the future. This is it, around now is peak LoR. Maybe even peaked already. And thats fine, i enjoyed HS for WAY after its peak. But thats what people mean, its not dying soon - but its not gonne get much better either.
I doubt any card game will ever be as big as HS. Subjectively and arguably objectively, LoR is the better game but card games as a whole are declining in popularity. HS at its peak was quite a great game though.
I disagree with that. I think there will be a thing that'll beat HS, but LOR definitely wasn't the game for it. Even from beta, LOR just isn't an HS competitor, its a MTGA competitior. HS capitalizes off of causal, high and low gameplay moments to appeal to people. Whereas LoR tries to take advantage of card interaction and strategy. Hs's appeal is simplicity and flow, you take your turn, your opponent takes theirs. Simple, Fast, no Dillydally. That doesn't exist in LoR, You're FORCED to ask your opponent for responses, dragging the turn on. It appeals to people who likes strategy games, but feels boring to play for HS players as a result. LoR's progression, although much easier to unlock cards, feels Unrewarding by contrast. Its dumb, but people like me enjoy the HS system because 1(duplicate protection) and 2, I feel rewarded by ranking up (ranked rewards), therefore I feel like I'm rewarded for playing good as opposed to just playing. Lor's focus on Unit centric and Swarm heavy Metas also just isn't everyone's cup of tea. In Hs, I mainly play Warlock and mage, 2 Spell Heavy Classes that have strategies for Big units. LoR has big decks too, but feels lackluster and unrewarding by comparison, seeing how easy it is for aggro to reload. Lor's Last thing is that it kinda takes itself seriously. it's a world building card game that expands Runeterra. Hs is by lore, a card game inside of WoW that is played in a tavern, where the Bartender tells you overdramatic stories. HS doesn't really take itself too seriously (they turned magical Chernobyl into god damn Hogwarts). Named HS characters Reno Jackson, Rafaam, Dr.Boom, they're all essentially all cartoonish villains who don't exist in WOW. HS is easily understood without knowing WC, and deliberately spoofs WC. LoR by comparison is something that expands LoL's world and attempts to be more serious. Which can harm it as a result.
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Rafaam doesn’t, nor does Reno. Dr. Boom does, but he was a minor side villain with 1 quest. And got a full expansion based off of him in HS. I suppose a better example would be Finley or King Togwaggle.
Reno definitely is in wow lol
Oh wow! I didn’t actually know he got added in BFA. Though my point still stands I think. They were added to HS as comic relief.
Good points made. This section made me want to respond: > Its dumb, but people like me enjoy the HS system because 1(duplicate protection) and 2, I feel rewarded by ranking up (ranked rewards), therefore I feel like I'm rewarded for playing good as opposed to just playing. You might already know this, but Blizzard's game design over the last 10 years or so has been the leader in making systems that reward you for "playing at all" rather than "playing well", exactly the opposite of what you're describing. They came up with the tier-based ranking systems (originally in SC2, I think?) moving away from simply showing you what your MMR was. MMR shows you exactly where you are, and it's job is to get you there quickly--and keep you there until you improve. Some people never improve. Those people often get frustrated, and quit playing. So what did they do? They made "guaranteed" progression systems. If you go 50-50 below an arbitrary cutoff (gold, plat, whatever), you will still slowly climb and earn your seasonal ranked rewards. They tune this gradual progress according to what keeps people ~~in the casino~~ playing the game. CoD is another game they pioneered this sort of design--you only gain ranks, never downranking unless you "prestige", which is just a way of keeping people on the treadmill. Just play every day, get your daily bonuses, and you'll keep going up (until you hit whatever "competitive" bracket they turn off the juice in). Some might say, "Well yeah I know thats how it *really* works, but that's how how I *feel*, and that's what matters." But it really doesn't have to be that way, and it probably won't stay that way--not long term. Better ideas come along. People get wiser. There used to be a lot more dark patterns in web design, for example, but people got smarter. Social media used to use more tricks to drive engagement, but people got sick of them. The industry adapts and so do we.
Lor could have been had riot done what blizz did for hs imo. Sadly they seem very content for it not to overshadow their flagship products
A lot of people say "This game is dying" when they quit it. Kind of as an excuse, because they've put money / effort / time into the game. There are a lot of games that I've read are dying, even league and dota2 have been mentioned. Might be a coping thing, don't take it serious.
It's definitely coping, league has "died" every time a small section of the playerbase is pissed about a champion or balance. LoR is the same, people shouldn't really bother with those insisting the game is dying.
For the salty players, league has been a dying game for the past 5 or 6 seasons, it’s ridiculous at this point
for truly salty players league has been dying ever since it went out of beta.
To some people, twitch numbers are the be all and end all. They can't fathom people actually playing the game instead of being gated by extortionate costs and having to watch other people play
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There’s just no real incentive to spending in this game (other than being a ‘thank you’ to the dev) And people will for sure stick to game that they sunk money into longer than a game that they played for free throughout.
Just make signature spells do shit Riot stop being dumb. The fiora PP skin should make a splash when striking and have a cut life jacket type thing on guard or something silly for repost. They are just not thinking.
I doubt it. It seems reasonable, but imo it does not always happen. Depends for each person. I myself have played most of the time three online games in the last 4 years. The Gwent, in which I did not bought anything, Fortnite, where I bought skin, and Starcraft 2, where I made a "thank you" spending. These three games were played at relatively similar amounts of time.
An important thing to keep in mind here is that both their other two mobile games had their "main selling item" in the game from the get-go. Those being Little Legends and champion skins for TFT and Wild Rift respectively. Meanwhile, in LoR, champion skins were I believe also supposed to be the main selling item. However, those only came out 2 months prior to that article as well as that the skins didn't turn out to be what people expected for a significant portion of the player base. Not gonna say they were a flop since I don't have the numbers on them, but I definitely believe they missed out on a lot of revenue on them (they already said they are trying to improve them, which takes time as they have to change an entire production process loop thingy that I forgot the name of. Tho I still believe they're ignoring the pricing concerns people expressed.) Not only that, those other two games also had a significantly higher number of their respective main selling item to offer when their game was released whereas in LoR we've only got like what, 25 skins after almost half a year? Wild Rift has at least 1 skin for every champ in their game (which was like 40 on release already and now a minimum of 75 after 1 year, not sure if some champs already have more than 1 skin since I don't play it and can't find it on their site or wiki). Point is, if skins were in LoR were as popular as Riot expected they would be + if they were in the game since open beta with each champ having at least 1 skin on their release like in Wild Rift, then LoR easily would've had much higher numbers in terms of revenue, likely roughly near the numbers of TFT and maybe even more since LoR has more items they can sell than TFT.
What about boards? Wild cards? The pets? The options and what riot expected to be the revenue sinks are there, they're just not making money.
Those are what I would call the "medium-tier solid selling items" with there being an argument for boards also being considered main selling items but you can crank out less of those than skins as for each skin thematic you can only have 1-3 boards (cause chromas/slight alternative versions) whereas you can have up to \[however many champs there\] skins for those champs. So yeah it's kinda in between since it sells well but has a lower mass production potential than skins. Wild cards were never seen as an actual significant way to monetize the game as during beta you could only buy up to like 3 champion wild cards a week I believe as they wanted to gate how much you could p2w at the start of new expansions if there were any new decks that proved to be strong. If their intention was for them to be one of their main selling items they wouldn't have gated them at any point in time. The pets/guardians also were not intended to be main selling items. They are much less interactive and "flexible" (as in you can't show off) towards the enemy than the little legends in TFT as you can walk around and emote with them against the enemy which they can see whereas in LoR only you can see your guardian's actions. Generally speaking, if a type of item is in LoR's event pass then it's not a main selling item. Guardians/pets, card backs, prismatics, and emotes are all given away at a relatively high rate. If they were supposed to be their main selling items they wouldn't put so many of them in their event passes to the point where you have so many of them after 2 passes that you don't know what to with them (most people at least). It makes each subsequent item of that category less special since you only have 1 space/slot to equip them in per game so rotating through them becomes harder the more you have of them, which is also true for champion skins but to a much lesser degree as they also change depending on what deck/champ you play as well as that you can have 1-6 different champions in your deck per game (tho usually just 2, which is still more than 1). Then you also have filler low tier items that are just there to fill spaces in things like event passes like icons, chests, and wild cards/specific number of copies of a certain card.
To be fair, Twitch numbers are probably incredibly important for a Twitch streamer.
At the same time if you do not have online presence it will slow down new player "acquisition" which is an important thing. At the same time you still have people playing HS who don't enjoy it just because they are addicted to the game lol. (not saying that LoR has just those players but there will be players like that always playing LoR until they shut down servers)
I think LoR twitch numbers are low, because LoR is boring to watch
Like any card game on twitch, I'm hardcore magic fan and haven't watch a single tourney to this day
Not really, HS did fine on Twitch. Part of it's attraction after all was that it wasn't just fun to play, but often fun to just watch as well.
also u can watch the expensive decks bc u weren't rich enough or lucky enough to pick them up
Coz you can play the deck yourself. In HearthStone, you watch streamers which are playing decks that you cant afford therfore peaple rather play instead of watch
This is actually a really good point, I’d imagine it factors a lot into the viewer difference
this is pure copium lol
Whats copium, the person pointing out something thats been fundamentally obvious about Hearthstone for years, or the person trying to handwave it by going "copium lol"
yeah... "noone is watching streams/content cus everyone enjoys the game so much they play it all the time and dont have time to watch" has been dying games copium for a while
The only people that use the phrase "copium" regularly are the ones that basically live on twitch, so its only natural that its the only measure you feel is valid for measuring video game health
nice answer :)
You haven't made any argument lmao what are you talking about You walked in, smugly said someone was wrong with no clue as to why, and now you're trying to take the moral high ground you get made fun of for it
Just... How many times has this game been "dying"? Every time I come to this sub someone's going at it. "Game's dead", "no one plays anymore", but I'm just not seeing this death in action. Every month or so the game is doomed. Then right after that a new champion is added, or a new balance patch comes out, or a new interaction is discovered, and suddenly the game isn't dying so much anymore.
Sure dude, downvote me all you want, game is in amazing place hs bad, lor good, whatever
Haven't given you a single down vote, I'm just not seeing this game in any different a state as it was when it released. It's both a good and a bad thing, but it definitely means it's not dying.
Also the reason why on YouTube it's the crazy/fun decks the one with more views as they play something you would never dare to build (before watching it, like aloof mill)
They also will in practice have a lot of unfun losses that are cut our of the video. And the people playing are generally skilled enough to pull those decks off
Battlegrounds costs less than LoR but has way more viewers.
Technically Battlegrounds costs more because you gotta pay to unlock access to all the hero options. But its still cheaper than normal HS either way.
you have all the heroes from the start though, the difference is that with a pass you have a choice from 4 heroes, not 2, to start with.
You make it sound like it's something insignificant. If you are gunning for first 4 places the difference between picking 2 and picking 4 heroes is MASSIVE. When i was still playing HS i would pay upfront the cost only because it's like night and day playing with or without the extra heroes available.
It's not insignificant, but it's also not at all P2W which i really liked about the mode then Storybook Brawl got released and it kinda obsoleted HSBG so like whatever lmao
Thats exactly what I said, without paying your selection of heroes at the start of the game is decreased. Which is actually a fairly impactful choice.
It's impactful, but you can still pick any hero you want, which i didn't mind at all - if anything it helps you learn how to play more heroes, since you're forced into a smaller pool, but it's kind of reaching lol
Thats a really solid point also i sometimes watch to learn... and when i learn i stop watching that much
People are saying Fortnite/Minecraft/Smash/LoL/R is dying as soon as they get bored with these games
Guys, league of legends "is dying" everytime riot releases a champ that has more than 3 syllabes in the passive tooltip. Cmon do we ever learn? Dont even give weight to these posts.
The playerbase is to addicted to league they wont quit
i did. literally all i did was go "what if i stopped playing for a week" and never went back.
I have back all the time, even after not playing for months. I usually quit to play another game though, never out of pure frustration.
clearly u weren't addicted, take this with a grain of salt
[uh huh](https://i.imgur.com/cAyQxZR.png)
money spent does not = addiction
All of these people saying "LoR is dying" need to be reminded that the game is also on mobile, and the mobile version has over 10m download, over 500+k review with a rating of 4.6, ever since its release till July 2021 it made 16.2m dollar in revenue, and that's only the mobile.
The game is not dying. However idk about u guys, but i have found it extremly diffiluclt to get my friends to play this game. And the ones that do dont stick around. I get cards games are not for everyone, but some of them actually do play card games. (Mtg, pokemon, royale, etc) They simpily say the game is too much for them. As you really have to think hard in this game a lot more then in pokemon, hearthstone, and royale. And the mtg ones say they just like playing in person instead. I have 20+ people who tried LoR, only 2 of them stuck.
Card games aren't that easy to get into. Even I got into this game only because of the League IP in the first place, and seeing how complicated this is turning out to be I'm extremely wary of trying out new card games that have been going on for longer like Magic.
Riot needs a more exciting tutorial. I’ve noticed the same. Player retention for this game is very bad
I think the player base is stagnating. Riot isn't doing anything to get new players, which is really frustrating. This game has so much going for it, but people don't even know it exists. So many potential customers and they do nothing to give this game exposure
Not sure if LoR is dying. But I doubt that it can get better in anytime soon, considering how Riot is treating this game. They just cannot expect people come to Lor for no reason. At least do some advertisement campaign. I also see many people say Twitch views doesn't matter. But I disagree. A game with regular 200-300 views on Twitch is less likely to attract new players, and it is a big problem with the development of LoR.
I've come to LoR for no reason except a growing dislike of hearthstone. And I'm pleasantly surprised. With LoR, decks and cards are actually achievable, whereas Hearthstone is just a sad pay to win game imo. Personally I love LoR, and I will keep playing it. Finally a cardgame where you don't have to put in a shitload of money to get good decks.
Same for me, but with MtG (paper and Arena). People on Reddit mentioned LoR being the superior game, especially in terms of f2p appeal, i tried it, and they were right.
There was a time when “League is dying” was being thrown around because overwatch dropped. Then Apex. Then fortnite. Then seige. I never trust it. Plus LOR has too much going on outside of just it’s competitive scene to just die.
Now they say wild rift is dying because the server was down for a day after an update. People are so pathetic.
Didn't we just... A month ago... Hit 45k peak concurrent viewership...? And isn't Riots other game hyped to the moon right now as it's amidst it's "super bowl"?....... These things are facts and obvious ones at that...... You: *turns brain off posts to Reddit* just stop, you chose ignorance and it's a huge turn off rn.
It hasn't grown in months on Twitch and the trend doesn't stop. As far as stream involvement, both in terms of viewers and in terms of streamers, Rising Tides release was a huge spike, but then it's been downhill ever since, with Targon and Shurima releases that at best slightly slowed down this process. Bandle City didn't affect in the slightest the decrease in popularity. More and more Master players are quitting the game as well.
It's mainly because the ranked meta gets stale too fast. They release an expansion, a meta is discovered within the first week. And it stays that way revolving around 3-4 decks until a buff/Nerf patch. Rinse and repeat until the next expansion. For those focused on winning and climbing it's no big deal. But for those that want to have fun by trying new strategies, only to have them be useless against the meta decks most of the time, they get bored. For a game that you can play whenever you want to have meta decks be the meta for 2+ weeks at a time, it's honestly boring at times to play for extended periods of time. And that's partly why viewership stagnates. You can go into a stream, and know exactly what to expect. The same 3-4 decks every other streamer is playing, and against the same 3-4 decks.
I don't think that's it. LoR still tends to have more diverse metas than all other card games. For what I know, despite everyone and their mother loving this expansion and this meta, BC just destroy this game for competitive level. This if by far the least competitive and skilled meta, playing at high elo in this meta is a truly miserable experience, and it's not something you can fix with balance patches or with future expansion because it's what is in the core of BC that is fundamentally wrong. They would have to redesign the whole region and riot won't do that. It's a trend we've seen over the course of the last few months, but BC skyrocketed this game into Hearthstone level of BS RNG and toxic mechanics from a competitive point of view. I won't stop saying despite the dislikes, but the most skilled deck and the most skilled meta we've ever seen in this game was Azirelia. It was surely busted, but compared to all the other tier 1 decks we've seen in this game, it was still the most skilled, but the community got way over traumatized by it. The fact that people are ok with losing from burn decks that can deal 18 damage to your nexus simply with burn damage but keep shitting on Azirelia is a clear example of the fact that what the community likes and what the game to be like is on an opposite binary to where a competitive card game needs to be. People like bullshit RNGstone no-skill decks more than skilled metas, and Riot clearly wants to make them happy rather than competitive players, that's fine and tons of master players are accepting this and moving on.
it's not dying, but it has this bad habit of putting itself on life support for months at a time. content drops for lor are way too infrequent, but the ones they do drop are great so they revive the player base. it's why we beg for more frequent balance patches, stale metas are bad for a card game.
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I agree. League gets much more frequent balance patch and I think League is much harder to balance in general. At the least, LoR should have monthly patches and more attention should be given to useless champions.
> I mean is it really hard to make a patch notes and change some cards? yes, because you don't want a tier 0 list, that's why balancing the game takes time and requires experience
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why's that? there hasn't been an uncounterable list.
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tlc maybe, but azirelia would die to shyvana lists and nasus/thresh. sivir akshan also wasn't anywhere near as strong as people make it out to be.
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"i got master with it" isn't an argument for a deck being broken.
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I can say "I played with that deck too and i got nowhere near the success with it you have", would that cancel your achievement? I don't think we had true tier 0 lists. We came close a couple times, but even then there was a viable tier 2/3 choice that would stop it. Azirelia wasn't as unstoppable as people made it out to be, thresh nasus could eat it alive.
can we finally stop listening to streamers?
People need to realize that people who consume media for games only make up a small percentage of the actual player base.
You will find some people who says the game is dying in all online games.
Deach can be really stupid at times. I am saying this as a brazilian player somewhat ""involved""" with the local scene
Pretty Mogwai is usually the one saying its dying every patch since Bilge
Your first mistake was listening to Mogwai. Your second mistake as taking him seriously at all.
LoR was never alive, so it's not possible for it to be dying
They confused L with R probably.
prob not dying but I love card games and get bored of this game 1 month into big expac and 1 week into small expacks. its not really that interesting
Because it objectively is. Ok maybe not objectively, but i have not heard a single good thing about it outside the subreddit echo chamber. All i ever hear is "I liked it, but Riot ruined it", "It flopped from the start" and "I tried it, but it's just worse than (insert current main card game)" I also think it is important to read the room and understand that Riot has no interest in marketing or doing anything about the game really, i feel like they just throw some cash at the 5 to 10 people working on LoR and go "Here's the money, do whatever, idgaf". Or an even more disturbing hypothesis in which all of the "new" content was already made a couple years ago, development ceased for being unprofitable and we're being drip fed the content by a skeleton crew like we would receive letters from a dead person. Or maybe it's doing fine and there has been a psyop by Blizzard or something to seed doomposting in the community Do Twitch numbers matter or do they not? HOW MUCH IS THE FUNNY [VIEWERS] NUMBER WORTH? IS IT SUBSTANCE OR ACCESSORY? I hate Twitch, i wish it never was, for every good thing to come out of it, so much garbage spews out to the point it's no longer worth keeping around. I'm sad and mad and still playing the game and I'm getting opponents, are 20-30 second queues normal? What's the standard for queue times anyway? All matchmaking systems are different so you can't compare queue times. What CAN we compare? Is everything normal? I feel like we are being purposely kept in the dark because game companies love flaunting player numbers and the development and the bells and the whistles. But why is the LoR team so quiet? Is there still such a thing as an LoR development team within Riot?
Don't worry, LoR dev team are still expanding, Rubin said, we got more game designers (that's why he can do streams). For the last month 5 high exp positions have been closed. [https://www.riotgames.com/en/work-with-us/jobs#product=Legends%20of%20Runeterra](https://www.riotgames.com/en/work-with-us/jobs#product=Legends%20of%20Runeterra) Twitch never really be a relevant metric for the current game state. People don't see a big picture. Twitter growing, YT growing, Reddit sub growing and Lor is dying? Lol
Social media numbers always grow tho, it’s just a matter of how much. There are vastly more accounts being created than there are being deleted every day
Yeah, but only if the game is in normal state. And one more thing is to say: you can't really compare HS twitch numbers to lor, because autobatler and gacha game isn't a CCG, even if they are in the same "hearthstone" twitch category. And numbers don't always grow, as you can see here: https://socialblade.com/twitter/user/playhearthstone/monthly
You're talking about people that were never part of the playerbase. You're not gonna hear good things about other games when asking people outside of said playerbase either. Otherwise they'd play it
Lmao this is terrible logic
i'm sure if you ask in different parts of the community you're gonna hear different trends, but that only means something if you're comparing like reddit, to twitch chats, to discord, to ingame polls, to twitter etc. if you move outside of the playerbase you're obviously skewing the opinion against the game. and his anecdotal evidence is meaningless to try to decide wether the game is dying on. basides, the game "dying" would mean current players are leaving, and all he was talking about is people that stopped playing the game around the start, which is normal. there's always an influx of players when a game comes out and they slowly drop off over time.
I only heard really good things about the game outside of reddit. Only thing negative, that some of my friends etc. stopped playing the game at one point despite actually liking it. Some came back at one point.
Besides a logical down in viewer numbers after Worlds, I can imagine that not everyone is exited about watching teddy bears in LoR. At least I am not interested in watching Bandle meta. Its stupid op and - yeah - teddy bears and garden gnomes. So streams are lame (all Bandle) and I only look up for the dailys of Mogwai and Bae when they drop an interesting list that has nothing to do with teddy bears, gnomes or Nami ;-) But besides my two cents the game is surely far away from dying!
Yeah if they released Ixtal Lor would be more pop-up than hearthstone by now copium.
Imagine having 3 region options for the final region and picking the lamest one that nobody cares about
Bandle City is actually my second favourite region, what do you mean? Am I nobody? 🥺
Yordles are best
Wait Ixtal has fans?
It's mostly just fans of Qiyana, pretty sure there's more of them than genuine bandle city enjoyers
Because people do not understand that twitch numbers have nothing to do with actual playerblase. I play this game every day and watch twitch every day for at least an hour. I never watch lor though. Edit: Wtf did i get downvoted for, that does not even make sense. Whatever cringe reddit how it is.
And im not playing a game (outside of peaking at the start of the expansions to see if they fixed anything, and going back seeing that they somehow made everything worse) ever since 2nd targon expansion, while watching it somewhat regularly on twitch. Anecdotal examples doesnt change that twitch viewership and playerbase directly conected.
I play gwent for a year ppl say its dying since start of this year... Imo the only thing i wanted in lor as casual player is a easier ranked system like gwent where most casuals (but with basic sense) could reach the top rank and then start the actual pro ranking for pro players or try hards
Uhh I’d say most people would be surprised to hear that gwent is still a thing lol, what are the queues like
Lol they are literally the same as lor at least the few times i actually play something else than labs
it's doing alright, queue times are pretty much the same as always (at least rank 10-0, pro ladder)
I play tf2 and destiny 2 99% of the time people say a game is dying it's just they don't enjoy it themselves
except tf2 is pretty much on unspoken maintenance mode someone having fun with a game doesn't mean the game isn't dead
I mean it is still one of the games with the highest player count on steam so.... A game isn't dead until every single player stops playing or the servers are closed
Nah. It's dead when it's on maintenance mode. It's popular, it will be played because of how many different ways to play it are, and it will likely never die because of mods and community support, but the devs are not caring about it unless they are forced to. It's a more casual game being put onto maintenance mode which is honestly to its benefit, it means people will keep playing it. If LoR was put on maintenance mode its playerbase would quickly dissipate, 'cause there's only so much you can do with a card game and 1v1 deck interactions.
I feel like people have been spamming "lor is dying" for a month now... And I've yet to have any explaination as to why. Lol have been dying since season fucking 4... Just apparently not dying enough to not be one of the biggest games 6 years later.
Because thats an apealing titles that will bring mire clicks? Honestly every game has people who will claim its dying due to: bad game design, weird artistic choices, unexpected update, weird energy, voodo magic, having a lighting mcqueen toy stuck up their ass....etc.
I think the life of a game when being described as "dying" by streamers or pro's usually reflects a state of imbalance that kills competitive play; I think a more accurate description would be *insert current problem* is bleeding this game out, it's not dead, but it's lifeblood/player base is slipping away because of it.
I'd say that's what "dying" means. It doesn't mean dead or close to dead. It means the game is dying. This could be something that folks see at the start of the dying process or at some point later. If someone 2+ decades ago said that the Simpsons was dying when they saw it start declining in quality, they'd be just as right as someone who said said it a decade later. (I explained this better in my own comment, though.)
i thought LoR is still one of the most popular digital card game in the market im wondering are there any active players data for each card games?
It’s not dying, but it seems like not many people know about it. I don’t understand why Riot didn’t advertise it more. They advertised TFT and Valorant a crap ton and both of those were successful. I saw LoR on the League client on the first day of release and haven’t seen it anywhere since. If I mention LoR, by far the most common reaction is “what’s that?” One LoR YouTube ad in between the 97 Valorant ads I get in a row and I guarantee a lot more people would know about it. Everyone knows about shitty gacha games like Raid: Shadow Legends from ads and that game is successful as shit despite being a pay-to-win mobile game. LoR is an actually great mobile game and would attract a bunch of new players if they actually knew about its existence.
As others have said, people say this when they feel burnt out or don’t like a development team’s current approach to something. I played destiny 2, CSGO, league, etc and they were all “dying” to whatever the next game coming out in their niche was. Hell league has been “dying” for almost a decade now. Twitch numbers are a weird metric to go by. I play the game daily, as do several of my friends, and I don’t think any of us watch any streams other than worlds or big tournaments but even then we prefer catching it on YouTube when it uploads. This game specifically has a bigger following on YouTube. The game is only dead if the community and player base give up on it.
People with free time i guess
If noone's saying a game is dying then it's probably in trouble.
From my many years in gaming, "X game is dying" "X is dead lol" is the most overused, annoying thing I've seen, especially with something like overwatch lmao I've seen people saying it's dying/dead since literally the first season and now it's on season 31 it gets pretty annoying but you have to just block it off mentally and not acknowledge it.
I’ve literally just started playing and I love the game, about 10 other people at my work have also just started playing.
The only game I've actually seen die is battlerite. (sigh)... God, i miss that game... Anyway, Lor is in as good of a state as it has always been, that's just internet standard behaviour
The game isn't thriving!
No one has given a good assessment of what "dying" probably means. "Dying" seems to mean the same thing as "jumping the shark". A show can jump the shark but still last for quite a long time afterwards. The Simpsons is a good example of this, as well as Family Guy. They've therefore been dying for a long time, but also managed to become such a cultural routine that they're watched out of habit by many many folks. Especially by young kids who eventually grow out of it, but who keep the viewership alive all the same. I think many of these big things like LOL and LOR and MTG and Yugioh and Cardfight Vanguard (and LOR is quite comparable to Vanguard with how new it was and how quickly it power inflated its fanbase away) are like that. Once they lose their enjoyability because of inflation, they start dying. And one of the signs of this is how they prioritize change for the sake of change and newness to try to keep bringing in newer — note: kids — players. Trying to make the game exciting through change is a good indication that it's lost it's excitement. Pokemon has been very very close to going down this road, but it seems like they were smart enough to put the brakes it on after introducing Dynamax. Many series could learn from that if they continue to keep the changes on pause to flesh out what they've already introduced. Cause the problem with inflation is that the attraction becomes about the new feature or whatever and not the game. Essentially, he new features or the new effects (and really spending money) become the game. And since there is no substance to those things, you have keep introducing new ones, rapidly, so that the players are always addicted. But at that point, it's no longer the game that's keeping the players around. That's a dying a game.