I came to this video expecting some crappy arguments from someone who never played the game trying to capitalize on rage-clicks. But you’re right, and even as someone who put thousands of hours into the game, and played in the game’s biggest tournaments, I knew that LoR was a wreck. Even just watching the devs interact with the community on Reddit, you could feel how overwhelmed the devs were and how underwhelmed the playerbase was. Every scale was unbalanced from the start.
You failed to mention LoR has an excellent PvE mode with a loyal playerbase, far bigger than PvP used to be. Riot is gonna motetize that mode and if it works out, PvP might make a return one day as well.
PVE modes are notoriously difficult to monetize, and don't personally interest me, but I've heard nothing but good things about Path of Champions. Hopefully a rising tide lifts all ships.
@@tlee3205 Well with the little monetization they had so far they still made more money than from PvP so i'm hopeful. I enjoy rogulelike games, so for me PoC is a fine alternative. For PvP card game i'll wait for Shadowverse next I guess.
Good video. Without going into too much detail LoR is a shining example of utter incompetence on the designers' part. It started off with pretty damn strong fundamentals (which I still think are brilliant for a casual CCG), but so many of the design decisions made over the course of its lifespan have just been... awful. The moment I realized the game was never going to have a future is when they released Lurk - which is essentially the same parasitic design mistake MtG made 10 times over before they had to admit they should never do this again.
Okay, First things first. I agree with a lot of points made in this Video. I agree that the Cinematics became overly long and tedious. I agree that they should have more aggresively monetized the game. But there are just so many things in your Video that feel either poorly researched,misrepresented or are just flat out not true. Especially points regarding Linearity in deckbuilding and lacking variety in Archetypes/ interachetypical play. But let me Elaborate: One of the big points in your Video is that "champions having predetermined packages made deckbuilding to linear and made matchups and Games repetetive." I would say, that based on the games History, this just is not true. Yeah Champions were always printed with a support package in mind but were only played with it half the time. For the Majority of the Game "cobbled together piles of Cards" were the most powerfull and popular decks. Be it decks like Zoe Nami which often ran cards from like 8 different packages or expansions. Or like Illaoi which Swain which combined and repuposed their own packages to synergize. And these two examples are barely the exception. There were Pre made packages like "Deep" or "Evolve" or but even they and their elements saw play a wide variety of different decks and in combination withmuliple different things. And many of their cards saw play outside of their archetype, like Salvage, undergrowth, Domination. More often than not, support cards or Champions were even stronger outside their respective archetype than inside of it. Also I cannot think of a single champion that became "Obsolete" due to their support being to weak. Literally all the Champions that did not release in the last 4 expasions saw popular and Meta play over the whole course of the game. Yeah some champs had long times without seeing much play but I dont think someone can argue a single champion became obsolete. If one does compare this with Hearthstone, a game that does relatively well, where for years cards almost exclusively see play in the Package they were made for and Archetypes and classes are concieved around one or two mechanics each expansion. And once a package is worse than another its replaced, by the better archetpe/package until its rotated. I think there is hardly a case in claiming lack in variety and deckbuilding is a reason why LoR struggles so badly. I also do not agree with the points made about expansions: Yeah Hs Expansions are Bigger but there were also way fewer in a time frame... In 2022 LoR released around 250 new cards which is less than HS. But contrary to HS LoR recieved frequent balance patches and buffs or reworks to old cards which kept the meta quite fresh and fun. This is reflected in the LoR meta being exeptionally divers. With off meta decks being not only able to beat optimized "Netdecks" but also be played at similar rates, something unthinkable in Hearstoens current metagame. And I am not just baselessly stating things here, look up old versions of sites like Runeterra.AR or Mobalytics and see the massive amounts of decks and champs played. And the low playrates of Meta decks in general. Then the graph you give at 4:26 is also widely misleading. Since not only do Heartstone and Magic run for for significantly longer than LoR did so naturally their card pools are large. But in Heartstone a maximum of about 1000 cards is playable in the main format and is actively worked around. And that is significantly less than in LoR. The reason LoR has a lower volume of cards is mainly because it did not run as long and not because Champion cards were to expensive or animations took to long to develop. The reason the Meatgame became stale and repetetive, is that, as you said correctly, no significant rotations happened and that they stopped regularly patching. And both of these things started happening after Riot moved many of their assets away from the game. In fact I would claim that the card pool became too large by the end due to the lack of rotations, making new content less apealing to play and mostly obsolete in the massive amount of cards at your disposal. Which is also refelcted in the generally low popularity of new champions aroudnd their release. Most new champs in the last two years of the game, took multiple balance changes to make them or the cards in their archetype see succesfull play. The 250 cards per year did not prevent them from doing Proper rotations they just did not do it. Why they didn't? I don't think we have a definitve answer to that and everything else would be speculation. In An In conclusion, i do not think the above mentioned points, had any significant impact on the games state right now, like your Video would suggests. Nor do I think that the information we have about the game in the form of playrates winrates and community content, support the conclusions you made about the game. A already stated I think the vast majority of data , we had and have access to, actively attacks some of your points. I hope I could make my disagreements with the points in this Video clear and I hope they are recieved as the well meaning criticism they are intended to be.
I think you make some excellent points, though there are certainly areas we will have to agree to disagree. I agree that I undersell the results of a lack of proper rotation, though I disagree that the lack of card volume didn't play a role in rotation being more difficult to do properly. I'd also agree that deck diversity is slightly better than I let on, though I cannot judge your claim that most champions are viable since I still haven't seen most of them played a single time over weeks of play in preparation for this video. I'd also like to note that the Magic portion of my bar graph only includes standard legal cards, which were all printed post LoR release. I appreciate you taking the time to watch the video, and I genuinely appreciate the effort you put into your feedback.
@@tlee3205 Ohh Okay I was not clear about one thing, you correctly pointed that out. I do not want to say that every champion does see play now. Now the game is as we all can see, "living out its last few days." I wanted to communicate that all champions had their spot in the meta at some time, then fell out of the meta and became powercrept and then got buffed or resurged on their own (like TF like 4 times). Its quite similar to league of legends were in one snapshot of the meta some Champs are good and frequently played and in another other champs thrive. Thats what I meant when I said no champion was obsolete. It was really dynamic over most the games duration, until the patches became way less frequently and the new cards failed to make lasting impacts. Some may have inevitavely become obsolete but as a result of the game dying not as the cause of it.
I have to slightly disagree about deck building, I think you have been caught up playing "metas", I have multiple decks that have no champions at all and most of the cards added lately are for regions and decks that are from the past or haven't recieved much love. My only gripe with champions is how many can no longer be used.
"Working with a much smaller budget than other card games" LoR's budget used to be exorbitant. Obviously that's been cut back, but did you see all the animations that were made early on? "Riot is now shutting the game down" ?????????? Do you have a source for this (that isn't doomposting on LoR Reddit)?
I came to this video expecting some crappy arguments from someone who never played the game trying to capitalize on rage-clicks. But you’re right, and even as someone who put thousands of hours into the game, and played in the game’s biggest tournaments, I knew that LoR was a wreck. Even just watching the devs interact with the community on Reddit, you could feel how overwhelmed the devs were and how underwhelmed the playerbase was. Every scale was unbalanced from the start.
You failed to mention LoR has an excellent PvE mode with a loyal playerbase, far bigger than PvP used to be. Riot is gonna motetize that mode and if it works out, PvP might make a return one day as well.
PVE modes are notoriously difficult to monetize, and don't personally interest me, but I've heard nothing but good things about Path of Champions. Hopefully a rising tide lifts all ships.
@@tlee3205 Well with the little monetization they had so far they still made more money than from PvP so i'm hopeful. I enjoy rogulelike games, so for me PoC is a fine alternative. For PvP card game i'll wait for Shadowverse next I guess.
hey man, i noticed you didn't mention the impact of bingle bingle on the scene
Good video. Without going into too much detail LoR is a shining example of utter incompetence on the designers' part. It started off with pretty damn strong fundamentals (which I still think are brilliant for a casual CCG), but so many of the design decisions made over the course of its lifespan have just been... awful. The moment I realized the game was never going to have a future is when they released Lurk - which is essentially the same parasitic design mistake MtG made 10 times over before they had to admit they should never do this again.
Okay, First things first.
I agree with a lot of points made in this Video. I agree that the Cinematics became overly long and tedious. I agree that they should have more aggresively monetized the game. But there are just so many things in your Video that feel either poorly researched,misrepresented or are just flat out not true. Especially points regarding Linearity in deckbuilding and lacking variety in Archetypes/ interachetypical play. But let me Elaborate:
One of the big points in your Video is that "champions having predetermined packages made deckbuilding to linear and made matchups and Games repetetive." I would say, that based on the games History, this just is not true. Yeah Champions were always printed with a support package in mind but were only played with it half the time. For the Majority of the Game "cobbled together piles of Cards" were the most powerfull and popular decks. Be it decks like Zoe Nami which often ran cards from like 8 different packages or expansions. Or like Illaoi which Swain which combined and repuposed their own packages to synergize. And these two examples are barely the exception. There were Pre made packages like "Deep" or "Evolve" or but even they and their elements saw play a wide variety of different decks and in combination withmuliple different things. And many of their cards saw play outside of their archetype, like Salvage, undergrowth, Domination. More often than not, support cards or Champions were even stronger outside their respective archetype than inside of it. Also I cannot think of a single champion that became "Obsolete" due to their support being to weak. Literally all the Champions that did not release in the last 4 expasions saw popular and Meta play over the whole course of the game. Yeah some champs had long times without seeing much play but I dont think someone can argue a single champion became obsolete.
If one does compare this with Hearthstone, a game that does relatively well, where for years cards almost exclusively see play in the Package they were made for and Archetypes and classes are concieved around one or two mechanics each expansion. And once a package is worse than another its replaced, by the better archetpe/package until its rotated. I think there is hardly a case in claiming lack in variety and deckbuilding is a reason why LoR struggles so badly.
I also do not agree with the points made about expansions:
Yeah Hs Expansions are Bigger but there were also way fewer in a time frame... In 2022 LoR released around 250 new cards which is less than HS. But contrary to HS LoR recieved frequent balance patches and buffs or reworks to old cards which kept the meta quite fresh and fun. This is reflected in the LoR meta being exeptionally divers. With off meta decks being not only able to beat optimized "Netdecks" but also be played at similar rates, something unthinkable in Hearstoens current metagame. And I am not just baselessly stating things here, look up old versions of sites like Runeterra.AR or Mobalytics and see the massive amounts of decks and champs played. And the low playrates of Meta decks in general.
Then the graph you give at 4:26 is also widely misleading. Since not only do Heartstone and Magic run for for significantly longer than LoR did so naturally their card pools are large. But in Heartstone a maximum of about 1000 cards is playable in the main format and is actively worked around. And that is significantly less than in LoR. The reason LoR has a lower volume of cards is mainly because it did not run as long and not because Champion cards were to expensive or animations took to long to develop. The reason the Meatgame became stale and repetetive, is that, as you said correctly, no significant rotations happened and that they stopped regularly patching. And both of these things started happening after Riot moved many of their assets away from the game.
In fact I would claim that the card pool became too large by the end due to the lack of rotations, making new content less apealing to play and mostly obsolete in the massive amount of cards at your disposal. Which is also refelcted in the generally low popularity of new champions aroudnd their release. Most new champs in the last two years of the game, took multiple balance changes to make them or the cards in their archetype see succesfull play. The 250 cards per year did not prevent them from doing Proper rotations they just did not do it. Why they didn't? I don't think we have a definitve answer to that and everything else would be speculation. In An
In conclusion, i do not think the above mentioned points, had any significant impact on the games state right now, like your Video would suggests. Nor do I think that the information we have about the game in the form of playrates winrates and community content, support the conclusions you made about the game. A already stated I think the vast majority of data , we had and have access to, actively attacks some of your points.
I hope I could make my disagreements with the points in this Video clear and I hope they are recieved as the well meaning criticism they are intended to be.
I think you make some excellent points, though there are certainly areas we will have to agree to disagree. I agree that I undersell the results of a lack of proper rotation, though I disagree that the lack of card volume didn't play a role in rotation being more difficult to do properly. I'd also agree that deck diversity is slightly better than I let on, though I cannot judge your claim that most champions are viable since I still haven't seen most of them played a single time over weeks of play in preparation for this video. I'd also like to note that the Magic portion of my bar graph only includes standard legal cards, which were all printed post LoR release.
I appreciate you taking the time to watch the video, and I genuinely appreciate the effort you put into your feedback.
@@tlee3205 Ohh Okay I was not clear about one thing, you correctly pointed that out. I do not want to say that every champion does see play now. Now the game is as we all can see, "living out its last few days." I wanted to communicate that all champions had their spot in the meta at some time, then fell out of the meta and became powercrept and then got buffed or resurged on their own (like TF like 4 times). Its quite similar to league of legends were in one snapshot of the meta some Champs are good and frequently played and in another other champs thrive. Thats what I meant when I said no champion was obsolete. It was really dynamic over most the games duration, until the patches became way less frequently and the new cards failed to make lasting impacts. Some may have inevitavely become obsolete but as a result of the game dying not as the cause of it.
I have to slightly disagree about deck building, I think you have been caught up playing "metas", I have multiple decks that have no champions at all and most of the cards added lately are for regions and decks that are from the past or haven't recieved much love. My only gripe with champions is how many can no longer be used.
great analysis
"Working with a much smaller budget than other card games"
LoR's budget used to be exorbitant. Obviously that's been cut back, but did you see all the animations that were made early on?
"Riot is now shutting the game down"
?????????? Do you have a source for this (that isn't doomposting on LoR Reddit)?
I hope runeterra comes back from this
Good work champ
I mean, yeah, the larger part of the gaming community didn't care for the PvP content; most were there for its PvE content.