The sad part is: it really *did* took off as a trading card game. The thing is that the other games that have more profit simply have more predatory monetization systems and because of that can stay afloat. A HUGE number of players switched to LoR because of that, and while i doubt Riot *actually* did their best to promote the game (if even us can think of ways Riot failed catastrophically in marketing the game then we know they failed), it makes sense that the returns for the game were never going to be astronomical, and astronomical is what Riot always wanted. It s what making me afraid for 2XKO, because if they're going to make a fair monetization system (which would be a breath of fresh air considering the big Fighting Games this year are all slipping and making big mistakes on that part), unless the game REALLY hits it off with the casual audience, they are still going to be in a nieche.
The problem wasn't they were not making lots of money, LoR devs have openly said that they made multiple times less of what they invested into the game each year. That's insane. I love LoR but it doesn't surprise me, the art quality, sound design, card design is SO good, yet there's barely no monetization or incentive to spend with how doable it was to collect cards. It's a shame.
@@isusport Yeah, the funny thing is a lot of people are positive about them trying to monetize the game this way. Because we're keenly aware that it's not making money, and we want the game to survive. The best way for that to happen is for them to find something they can monetize, and PoC is absolutely the spot for that. The largest portion of players, the PoC items in the emporium already made the most money, and it doesn't cannibalize on how people can collect cards. Which was a huge thing they wanted to avoid doing. The devs didn't want to have to do monetize the same way as other card games, but they quickly realized that the cosmetics just weren't selling like they expected.
I was a HUGE MtG player, and have always loved the lore and world of Runeterra, so when Riot released LoR, I immediately fell in love and moved over to LoR.
Don't want to sound pessimistic, but this does indeed sound like the beginning of the end to an otherwise steeped-in-lore and narratively-rich side of Runeterra. I only hope to be proven wrong 😢.
Idk, for me it's like "finally they decided to try monetize this game". If this effort will succeed, maybe lor gona back gloriously. We should wait and see
I’m hopeful actually. For the first time I’m happy to see whaling mechanics to a game and it’s sustainable stuff that don’t require much effort to maintain unlike skins, best of all it’s on PvE so I won’t get my game ruined by whales. I hope this helps them recover
I wish rito dosent become so focused on lor in the same vain they are with lol, what makes lor so good is that its not in the same spotlight as lol so as to not create greed and arrogance among the staff and slowly it starts falling apart. Would i like to see be given attention? Sure, but never give it the same spotlight as lol.
Actualy I am a Mtg player and I converted to runeterra when it launched but that's mostly because I was 16 and I was sick of going broke whenever I wanted to buy a deck. The best aspect of LoR is that with a little bit of activity you can very easily have all the cards, wild cards and shards you would ever need to create any deck you want while having spent no money at all. Their marketing department rly should have pushed that aspect of "we know CCG games can be expensive but this one is free" But the only reason I started playing was through word of mouth. How hard could it have been for riot to just put LoR ads on RUclips on the videos of creators like CGB and rarran to get their audiences of CCG players to know about it. The reason LoR was never profitable is because they were so generous with giving cards and yet they never used that as marketing.
i also do wish we had more customization. once you find the 1~2 Pieces of equipment to use. runs become very much the same. and by the time you unlock the 2 or 3rd Blue Slots you're kinda done. at least if they raise the content ceiling. there would be a reason to grind out 3 purple Slots
I always kind of wished they would have made skins for non-champions, just card art replacements for whole sets of characters. This kind of stuff is classic *and* sells, plus certain cards get run way more often than champions because they're not restricted like those are. Just imagine like, replace all the Cithria art with a Star Guardian version! It would have been great. Compression infodump below. I'm fairly certain that the compression in LoL/LoR is classic BC1/BC3 (Block Compression formats) DDS (Direct Draw Surface, a file type most often used for textures), just judging by how it looks. The ratio of size for a compressed to uncompressed file is usually 1:4/1:8 and although more modern block compression formats like BC7 look _much_ better than BC1&3, these aren't supported by older versions of Direct X and Riot I think try to maintain compatibility (there's still a Direct X 9 option in the League client). I know for certain that League uses BC1/3, but I haven't dug into LoR's files at all. It is unfortunate and slightly sours the art.
SInce you showcased Samira, I wanted to say that all the additional buffs she gets might make the Lissandra fight doable. Also, as far as I understand it, some of the bonus stars only apply to that champion, some apply to everyone. Like, the bonus chance to find epic items applies just them unless it says otherwise, & Samira's +50 gold applies to all Noxian champions.
LOR is a game I was HAPPY to spend some money on here and there just because I got so many fun cards for free, and it make me want to buy cards to finish out decks. Plus, a lot of the events were so good and actually fun and easy to complete, so I wanted to splurge for the premium stuff
Im a big fan of rogue like deck builders (slay the spire, indies lies etc) but I never maged to fully get into PoC, 99 percent of decks and builds are designed to win 2 or 3 round, there is no thought process other than draw the main champ turn 1, and its just not randomized enough, every run isn't unique because how much the initial deck is over tuned. What this does is that the experience just blends in together and most champs core gimic is the onlything remaining of them. The least they can do is that to shift power from the decks to the map. This way runs are different than others.
On one hand, the current systems for getting the new currencies are way too slow and grindy as currently implemented. On the other hand... they're in this situation because they were way too generous and PoC had no hooks for monetization, and that means they don't have the foundation to build a good economy on. Hence this, where they just... take the in-development idle game approach and give us something really grindy to poke at while they implement the next advancement path. (Also, Neeko is simple: you tempo out the biggest things you can each turn, and if those things aren't big enough you just kind of die. Hence the Wallop: so you can do something in combat to even the scales a bit. Although you might have been thinking about Nidalee there?)
I LOVE card games, whether online or physical! Been playing LoR since beta, with some on/off periods mostly due to personal reasons than the game's fault (although I admit there have been some really toxic metas in the past with little to no balance updates). I've played YGO, Hearthstone and Pokémon, mostly all online because good luck buying packs in USD when your country's economy is in shambles... ... And that's the main thing I love about LoR. It doesn't feel predatory at all and you can build ANY deck and become as good as you can just by playing the game. I suck, but I have the same chance to be good as someone with far better living conditions than me. And that's AMAZING. True, maybe they could've nerfed it a little bit or do something like what Pokémon Live is doing (which is allow you to play meta decks for free but give you the option to buy collectibles in a separate game or buy real life packs to speed up the process). I think that a lot of potential was missing, mainly because they took the approach of appealing organically to people who know about League when in truth, people who play TCGs have much more in common with auto chess players or single players. The LoR button on the client was the first thing they could've done like ages ago, and more collabs with TFT from the start could've gone a long way. Maybe even, IDK, an ad on the Ruined King novel as a paper strip or something with an exclusive code to unlock Viego, Kalista, Hecarim and Thresh or something like that. As for the Constellations update, I like it so far! It gives you a lot of stuff to work for, even though IDK how far you can go as a F2P player. So far, everything you need to unlock the special nodes is behind paywalls (haven't gotten to missions who award them yet). I hope that you get the chance to maybe unlock a node or so every month if you play frequently? Idk, it would be cool if you could get a bit of that currency in the weekly vault if you get to the fifth extra capsule or something like that to reward dedication. Aside from that, it's cool that they're giving as much life to champions as they can with the budget limitations. I hope Arcane Season 2 gives us a similar experience to that of when they released POC v1.0, with the visual novels and the different endings, especially since a lot of people will be checking out other Riot content once they're hyped up by the series and knowing that everything from that is canon. Also, now that you mentioned the Tales of Runeterra and all the animations... My God, Riot, why???? 😭😭😭
If you say base lux "kinda sucks" in PoC, i would assume you probably haven't unlocked her star powers/chemtech duplicator, which gives you basically 3 rallies/round. She does not "kinda suck" believe me in my opinion i hope you'll get arround to her !
Im really surpised by MF changes, I didnt really like playing her but with the 2 new cards in her deck and the possible upgrades I think she is gonna be my Bildgewater champ for Asol. I hope the game does good. I was hoping for Kayle to be added tho
Ive been think alot about old skarner and personally rito did the right thing. His old lore waa cool and all but there so many "last surviving warrior race guys" in leagues lore it was exhausting. Plus the old hextech lore was as problematic as the mage rebellion and ruins everything. I do agree rito didnt need to make arcane canon since the lore skarner lore reveals the are other brackern clans, oh well.
I'm optimistic about them keeping LoR alive, just so that they have a place they can send anybody who tries to care about the lore instead of dealing with the logistics of concocting a bullshit reason to get rid of them.
I lived my life without a computer for 4 years, from 2019 to 2023. League of Legends was my favourite game at the time, and I was still paying attention to league stuff through twitter over time. That said, I had never even heard about Riot Forge until it shut down. Song of Nunu was the first Riot Forge game I heard anything about, and that was because you did that unpacking. I even played LoR on my ipad occassionally. That is all the proof I really need to how bad the advertisement for Riot Forge games have been.
Regularly scheduled ponderance by Me Specifically on how much more generously corporate would view LoR if they'd kept in the ball park of the original level up animations that used the card itself and not much beyond that instead of. Sliding scale of complete animations lmfao. (Though I'm biased and found those more interesting)
Devs said they couldnt because it was way too demanding on hardware. Because unlike simple mp4 files or whatever, every animation of just the card had to be loaded at the start of the game. So as the game would grow, the demands on hardware would grow as well just because of the loading screen.
As someone who played Runeterra competitively and loved ithe game from the depths of their heart, then tried to protect themselves from too much heartbreak by quitting the game preemptively the moment they admitted to cutting the budget even more, gosh this trailer hurt. You can see the lovely people of the Runeterra team are bleeding their hearts out to get anything worthwhile done, but clearly corporate just wants this game dead and off their minds and payroll.
I disagree with them wanting it dead, but you can't just keep hemorrhaging money like they were. LoR was unprofitable for five years so far, and couldn't even manage to break even on most of the cosmetics they would make. This is their last chance to prove that the game can survive, and if it does we may see the return of competitive in the future. Any other game company would've shut them down a few years ago, and would likely have never even gave the game a shot in the first place. I want competitive to return wholeheartedly, and for that to happen PoC needs to be monetized in some way. They've already said previously when talking about monetization that the PoC items outsold anything else by far. Between that and how many people played it I don't think there's anything else they could do at this point. It was this, shutting down, or changing how card collecting works. This is the most player friendly option imo. Doesn't mean we can't be sad for the lack of competitive though
4:56 promoting was not the problem with Forge. if you go look at polls on the lore reddit about if people have played Forge games, you will be shocked to see a staggering amount of lore-heads did not play them (or only played 1 or 2). i'm not saying that was the problem, but it kinda gives you a sign why it failed. these games were meant for people that love Runeterra, and if they couldn't even pull in those people, why would other people be interested?
@@sweetphoenix5386 It's honestly not predatory like modern Blizzard or EA. The monetization is only for single player. I have been playing for 2 years and I have only made purchases of around $300 over that time in order to support the game. Predatory is making pvp competitive only when money is spent and that is not the case with LoR. There are so many free cards and items gained from weekly quests in order to do pvp To put into perspective, I spent $1k on Hearthstone and left it in disgust because Blizzard is now the definition of predatory. I used to love Blizzard. D1 and D2, Starcraft, Warcraft, WoW, not anymore. Riot isn't like that and I gladly give them money to support the game.
I understand the focus on PvE being more profitable, but I dont know if itll help in the long run? How sustainable is it really to monetize a single player experience? I guess this would lean more into the gacha sort of experience, which I never liked, but at the same time you can buy exactly which PoC champs you want so there's no gambling- I mean incentive to keep giving them money beyond the two or three purchases. Maybe it's too late for it now, but maybe skins for a whole champ package might've been more profitable instead of *just* the champs themselves? Because like, Pyke has like 5 skins, and he is a champ you wouldnt get to see much if you're playing the archetype correctly. If his skins came bundled together with skins for his followers, then maybe you'd actually see lurk players buy skins
According to what riot has told people poc has ALWAYS been more popular than pvp. When the divide was at it biggest the player split was 80/20. With the 80 playing PoC pretty much exclusively. It's their best bet
You should look at Hearthstone some day. The art. Not the game it still sucks But the art style got it own style. Goofy and cartoonish, but it a Heartstone OWN style, very recognizable. I like it, but because i like goofness. Its not for everyone
Legends of runterra is failing because of capitalism. They had the goal of making a fair, free to play friendly game in a genre that is know for completely greedy monetization loot box economies. Shame that its being punished for being an actually good game.
Exactly! I love LoR and they accomplished their goal of making a fair f2p online card game, problem is it was TOO fair and free for customers. Meanwhile Hearthstone and Magic continues to rake in tons of money *sighs*
What it feels like to me is another thing to grind, that they want you to pay for so they make the grind insufferable. Just like Champion fragments, and then wild fragments, and then 'essence' and now 'Crystals's and 'Nova Crystals' and fragments of those on top of those other things. and this is all just to unlock some generic boosts for a champ, some being much less interesting or useful than others. On top of that, they've barely released any new ways to obtain these fragments. I've been grinding the weekly quests since they ADDED them, and i still dont have all the champs unlocked, let alone 3 starred. The weekly quests got objective worse when they changed duplicates giving you fragments to giving to essence because now a duplicate is literally worthless, meaning you could get literally nothing for an entire week. I've been at that point for ages. Each week I hope, i pray, maybe ill get something new. I usually dont. almost always. Theres stuff I dont have, but ill never get it. the gap will keep getting wider, and the means of crossing it will keep getting shorter. Over and over. Until they think i'll spend money. But I'll tell ya hwat. I'm not going to spend money to speed up a grind on what is literally an over developed Lab. Path isn't a game. Its a byproduct. A good one, but one that has overgrown the game itself. If PvP slows down, so does Path. Its just aggressive monetization. Some people see it, and say 'they are finally monetizing the game so it can get support again' but don't lie to yourself. They've been monetizing the hell out of the game for ages. Its just that its so aggressive that no one is buying. not enough people anyway. Event passes all the time, ALL the time, full of who the hell the fuck cares. Skins and skins and skins, and boards and pets and. I only think ive ever purchased one or two things. the tavern board is just cute, and you look at your board alll the time so i can justify paying some for that. But you know what? card variant art isn't worth literally anything when monetized in the method that LoR does. its just another png. sure, some of them were really cool. I really like the darkin set, those were all pretty sick. But most of the are boring alts. Something you would expect to drop for free alongside its original version, to bloat a card pack. Monetization at the start was fair. You could easily obtain cards without spending money. In fact, it was so fair, that it killed the game, right out of the gates. LoR has never recovered from being pro-consumer on release. It shouldn't have needed to. Riot is a mega company at this point, and their use of funds has become flippant. There is no reason for LoR to be getting such little funding, and the constant reductions in funding have only prevented the game from drawing in new players. So they keep trying to get old players to buy more shit. buy more, buy more, the grinds too hard so BUY IT. the games already dead. Its been dead for a little bit. Path is just an after image. the echo of the games deathgasp. Thats why it felt like it was doing so good even after PvP was declining. It was just trailing behind. It always has been. Its not a game. Its a Lab.
They literally added quests and such with this update to essentially give everyone a boost. You can get hundreds of champ shards for free right now. As someone who has owned every champion for months, now is the best time to catch up.
Completely agree with everything, Path only got more and more grindy over the years, if they hadn’t hamstrung the writing team I might have actually dropped some cash on it to support it
I agree with most of what you're saying except that last part. That's some massive ass entitlement to say that they should fund a game that can't even break even just because they can afford it. Also, a lot of people like PoC. I can understand why you don't like the gamemode, and you don't have to like it. It's not going to be for everyone. You could be right that it's dead, but we just need to wait to see if that's true. People not purchasing the cosmetics was also the entire problem. They thought they could just sell cosmetics like in League and TfT to the players to keep funding the game. It literally didn't work. They lost money on most of the cosmetics they made and put out. They've talked multiple times about how most weren't worth making because they couldn't make the money back that it cost to create most of the cosmetic in the first place. That's why the reaction is "They are finally monetizing the game" for some players. There's absolutely nothing wrong with not wanting to pay money, and you're completely right about the new grind feeling like it's meant to force people to buy from the store. I genuinely hope that they add a few more ways to get new currencies.
I honestly think if LoR's comestic Prices were a little cheaper they would have been able to sell a lot more also if their shop UI wasn't totally awful. I also think their policy of nerfs and buffs was way too fast, as not really a big LoL fan but a long time TCG player it is utterly jaring to never have time to learn a meta. The meta already changes by the time a card has totally new text on it. I think the marketing for LoR really should have aimed at Yugioh player, anime game players, like yes Shadowverse exists but I think there is more in the anime TCG over the top style than the slow MTG style of game design. I do think they should have commited a lot more to PVP and actually stuck to it the constant shift from PVE to PVP to PVE to PVP was terrible. Rotation was an awful idea and I said it when they announced it but it is true of basically every TCG that isn't Pokemon or magic, a year after announcing rotation the game killed competitive exactly like I predicted because it's what happens with every TCG. Rotation just isn't actually good for card games and the upper tier of player who likes rotation outside of MTG where they've all kinda just accepted rotation as good and needed cuz it's what their game does are simply the minority. I do hope somehow they can salvage LoR, I am not super thrilled with the shifting business model and that these Solo modes are not doing story which is what they should be doing but ya.
Honestly, my dream is LoR becoming a like Annual game series where there is a new version a year with a new story and you buy it for 50 bucks every year and can jam games online but there is a fun solo mode to play if you don't want to do that.
I am confused on the state of the sustainability of the game. My biggest confusion comes from their unexplained decision to remove so many challenges. It seems counter intutive to remove so much educational content that could help new players get more familiar with advanced game mechanics and systems. It just seems strange to remove tools to help newer players when in dire need to draw in and retain new players.
@@lunasperidot8760 the extra challenges in the tutorial section for things like daybreak, nightfall, deep, scout, for example. They removed a ton of those, some of which were actually pretty helpful for getting into a archtype.
I can see someone calling her weak if they haven't seen how she plays once her star powers get rolling and you start spitting out free rallies constantly, and since she's at 2* I assume he hasn't.
she is a solid A tier champion, kinda like aatrox, illaoi, leona. powerful champions that dont reach the level of being absolutely bonkers like the S tiers with morgana, nidalee, leblanc, diana, jinx, asol,etc.
Legends of Runeterra came out too late for it to make an impact. It came out years after card game trend. People playing card games mostly play only 1 card game cause mostly u gotta do a lot o grinding to get good cards - so basically hearthstone player mostly wont give it a try for a long shot and major audience isn't interested in card games either. It also misses the mark to interest league players, cause most of them play league and only league. ye, it sucks, but thats reality. I tried lor but i just dont like card games, even if i think that art, stories, and mechanics are fantastic
Игры
![[BLACKSWAN] ‘Roll Up’ Official Music Video](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ulvCwyKrwqw/mqdefault.jpg)
the laugh you gave upon seeing Norra's Legendary power gave me life LMAO
The sad part is: it really *did* took off as a trading card game. The thing is that the other games that have more profit simply have more predatory monetization systems and because of that can stay afloat. A HUGE number of players switched to LoR because of that, and while i doubt Riot *actually* did their best to promote the game (if even us can think of ways Riot failed catastrophically in marketing the game then we know they failed), it makes sense that the returns for the game were never going to be astronomical, and astronomical is what Riot always wanted. It s what making me afraid for 2XKO, because if they're going to make a fair monetization system (which would be a breath of fresh air considering the big Fighting Games this year are all slipping and making big mistakes on that part), unless the game REALLY hits it off with the casual audience, they are still going to be in a nieche.
The problem wasn't they were not making lots of money, LoR devs have openly said that they made multiple times less of what they invested into the game each year. That's insane.
I love LoR but it doesn't surprise me, the art quality, sound design, card design is SO good, yet there's barely no monetization or incentive to spend with how doable it was to collect cards. It's a shame.
@@isusport Yeah, the funny thing is a lot of people are positive about them trying to monetize the game this way. Because we're keenly aware that it's not making money, and we want the game to survive. The best way for that to happen is for them to find something they can monetize, and PoC is absolutely the spot for that.
The largest portion of players, the PoC items in the emporium already made the most money, and it doesn't cannibalize on how people can collect cards. Which was a huge thing they wanted to avoid doing. The devs didn't want to have to do monetize the same way as other card games, but they quickly realized that the cosmetics just weren't selling like they expected.
I was a HUGE MtG player, and have always loved the lore and world of Runeterra, so when Riot released LoR, I immediately fell in love and moved over to LoR.
Don't want to sound pessimistic, but this does indeed sound like the beginning of the end to an otherwise steeped-in-lore and narratively-rich side of Runeterra. I only hope to be proven wrong 😢.
Idk, for me it's like "finally they decided to try monetize this game". If this effort will succeed, maybe lor gona back gloriously. We should wait and see
I’m hopeful actually. For the first time I’m happy to see whaling mechanics to a game and it’s sustainable stuff that don’t require much effort to maintain unlike skins, best of all it’s on PvE so I won’t get my game ruined by whales.
I hope this helps them recover
I wish rito dosent become so focused on lor in the same vain they are with lol, what makes lor so good is that its not in the same spotlight as lol so as to not create greed and arrogance among the staff and slowly it starts falling apart. Would i like to see be given attention? Sure, but never give it the same spotlight as lol.
And luckily you are!
They announced 12hours ago* that more lore based runs with storylines are coming, just like they did with jinx/vi/cait/ekko/jayce
the day norra summon Eddy(Elder Dragon) will not be far anymore.
Actualy I am a Mtg player and I converted to runeterra when it launched but that's mostly because I was 16 and I was sick of going broke whenever I wanted to buy a deck. The best aspect of LoR is that with a little bit of activity you can very easily have all the cards, wild cards and shards you would ever need to create any deck you want while having spent no money at all. Their marketing department rly should have pushed that aspect of "we know CCG games can be expensive but this one is free" But the only reason I started playing was through word of mouth. How hard could it have been for riot to just put LoR ads on RUclips on the videos of creators like CGB and rarran to get their audiences of CCG players to know about it. The reason LoR was never profitable is because they were so generous with giving cards and yet they never used that as marketing.
One thing I will say is that they did a pretty good job at selecting mostly more popular characters to hopefully entice more league players to play.
i also do wish we had more customization. once you find the 1~2 Pieces of equipment to use. runs become very much the same.
and by the time you unlock the 2 or 3rd Blue Slots you're kinda done. at least if they raise the content ceiling. there would be a reason to grind out 3 purple Slots
Try different builds, impose challenges, have your fun :)
@@pedropimenta896very few actually do that, including the ones that are veterans.
I always kind of wished they would have made skins for non-champions, just card art replacements for whole sets of characters. This kind of stuff is classic *and* sells, plus certain cards get run way more often than champions because they're not restricted like those are. Just imagine like, replace all the Cithria art with a Star Guardian version! It would have been great.
Compression infodump below.
I'm fairly certain that the compression in LoL/LoR is classic BC1/BC3 (Block Compression formats) DDS (Direct Draw Surface, a file type most often used for textures), just judging by how it looks. The ratio of size for a compressed to uncompressed file is usually 1:4/1:8 and although more modern block compression formats like BC7 look _much_ better than BC1&3, these aren't supported by older versions of Direct X and Riot I think try to maintain compatibility (there's still a Direct X 9 option in the League client). I know for certain that League uses BC1/3, but I haven't dug into LoR's files at all.
It is unfortunate and slightly sours the art.
I love Lor content
If i knew Legends of Runeterra was a thing I would've played the ever-loving hell out of it
SInce you showcased Samira, I wanted to say that all the additional buffs she gets might make the Lissandra fight doable. Also, as far as I understand it, some of the bonus stars only apply to that champion, some apply to everyone. Like, the bonus chance to find epic items applies just them unless it says otherwise, & Samira's +50 gold applies to all Noxian champions.
LOR is a game I was HAPPY to spend some money on here and there just because I got so many fun cards for free, and it make me want to buy cards to finish out decks. Plus, a lot of the events were so good and actually fun and easy to complete, so I wanted to splurge for the premium stuff
Im a big fan of rogue like deck builders (slay the spire, indies lies etc) but I never maged to fully get into PoC, 99 percent of decks and builds are designed to win 2 or 3 round, there is no thought process other than draw the main champ turn 1, and its just not randomized enough, every run isn't unique because how much the initial deck is over tuned. What this does is that the experience just blends in together and most champs core gimic is the onlything remaining of them. The least they can do is that to shift power from the decks to the map. This way runs are different than others.
And for me I prefer roguelikes over roguelites
so I hated how you can't beat things because you didn't grind enough
The game also missed its launch window for China, every aspect of the game's marketing, monetization and launch is so weird, for such a great game
On one hand, the current systems for getting the new currencies are way too slow and grindy as currently implemented. On the other hand... they're in this situation because they were way too generous and PoC had no hooks for monetization, and that means they don't have the foundation to build a good economy on. Hence this, where they just... take the in-development idle game approach and give us something really grindy to poke at while they implement the next advancement path.
(Also, Neeko is simple: you tempo out the biggest things you can each turn, and if those things aren't big enough you just kind of die. Hence the Wallop: so you can do something in combat to even the scales a bit. Although you might have been thinking about Nidalee there?)
I LOVE card games, whether online or physical! Been playing LoR since beta, with some on/off periods mostly due to personal reasons than the game's fault (although I admit there have been some really toxic metas in the past with little to no balance updates). I've played YGO, Hearthstone and Pokémon, mostly all online because good luck buying packs in USD when your country's economy is in shambles...
... And that's the main thing I love about LoR. It doesn't feel predatory at all and you can build ANY deck and become as good as you can just by playing the game. I suck, but I have the same chance to be good as someone with far better living conditions than me. And that's AMAZING. True, maybe they could've nerfed it a little bit or do something like what Pokémon Live is doing (which is allow you to play meta decks for free but give you the option to buy collectibles in a separate game or buy real life packs to speed up the process).
I think that a lot of potential was missing, mainly because they took the approach of appealing organically to people who know about League when in truth, people who play TCGs have much more in common with auto chess players or single players. The LoR button on the client was the first thing they could've done like ages ago, and more collabs with TFT from the start could've gone a long way. Maybe even, IDK, an ad on the Ruined King novel as a paper strip or something with an exclusive code to unlock Viego, Kalista, Hecarim and Thresh or something like that.
As for the Constellations update, I like it so far! It gives you a lot of stuff to work for, even though IDK how far you can go as a F2P player. So far, everything you need to unlock the special nodes is behind paywalls (haven't gotten to missions who award them yet). I hope that you get the chance to maybe unlock a node or so every month if you play frequently? Idk, it would be cool if you could get a bit of that currency in the weekly vault if you get to the fifth extra capsule or something like that to reward dedication.
Aside from that, it's cool that they're giving as much life to champions as they can with the budget limitations. I hope Arcane Season 2 gives us a similar experience to that of when they released POC v1.0, with the visual novels and the different endings, especially since a lot of people will be checking out other Riot content once they're hyped up by the series and knowing that everything from that is canon.
Also, now that you mentioned the Tales of Runeterra and all the animations... My God, Riot, why???? 😭😭😭
If you say base lux "kinda sucks" in PoC, i would assume you probably haven't unlocked her star powers/chemtech duplicator, which gives you basically 3 rallies/round. She does not "kinda suck" believe me in my opinion i hope you'll get arround to her !
Im really surpised by MF changes, I didnt really like playing her but with the 2 new cards in her deck and the possible upgrades I think she is gonna be my Bildgewater champ for Asol. I hope the game does good. I was hoping for Kayle to be added tho
I know you made fun of the budget issue but to me the fact they made ASol actor. Do the voice over it was very badass, I loved it.
The powers go Brrrrrrrr
22:58 its working now, more slots for more rewards added
Damn, LoR is suffering just like what HoN does, talk about some weird karma
Ive been think alot about old skarner and personally rito did the right thing. His old lore waa cool and all but there so many "last surviving warrior race guys" in leagues lore it was exhausting. Plus the old hextech lore was as problematic as the mage rebellion and ruins everything. I do agree rito didnt need to make arcane canon since the lore skarner lore reveals the are other brackern clans, oh well.
I'm optimistic about them keeping LoR alive, just so that they have a place they can send anybody who tries to care about the lore instead of dealing with the logistics of concocting a bullshit reason to get rid of them.
I lived my life without a computer for 4 years, from 2019 to 2023.
League of Legends was my favourite game at the time, and I was still paying attention to league stuff through twitter over time.
That said, I had never even heard about Riot Forge until it shut down. Song of Nunu was the first Riot Forge game I heard anything about, and that was because you did that unpacking.
I even played LoR on my ipad occassionally.
That is all the proof I really need to how bad the advertisement for Riot Forge games have been.
YOUR PORTALS //WHAT//?????
Aurelion Sas*
I think a big part of LoR financial faliure is in large part due to it’s generosity. Every other CCG monitizes more agressively
Honestly, the release video made me cringe, but in an endearing kinda way. Like a supportive parent at a school play
Regularly scheduled ponderance by Me Specifically on how much more generously corporate would view LoR if they'd kept in the ball park of the original level up animations that used the card itself and not much beyond that instead of. Sliding scale of complete animations lmfao. (Though I'm biased and found those more interesting)
Devs said they couldnt because it was way too demanding on hardware. Because unlike simple mp4 files or whatever, every animation of just the card had to be loaded at the start of the game. So as the game would grow, the demands on hardware would grow as well just because of the loading screen.
i just build PoC Neeko around her gobal impact.
As someone who played Runeterra competitively and loved ithe game from the depths of their heart, then tried to protect themselves from too much heartbreak by quitting the game preemptively the moment they admitted to cutting the budget even more, gosh this trailer hurt. You can see the lovely people of the Runeterra team are bleeding their hearts out to get anything worthwhile done, but clearly corporate just wants this game dead and off their minds and payroll.
I disagree with them wanting it dead, but you can't just keep hemorrhaging money like they were. LoR was unprofitable for five years so far, and couldn't even manage to break even on most of the cosmetics they would make. This is their last chance to prove that the game can survive, and if it does we may see the return of competitive in the future. Any other game company would've shut them down a few years ago, and would likely have never even gave the game a shot in the first place.
I want competitive to return wholeheartedly, and for that to happen PoC needs to be monetized in some way. They've already said previously when talking about monetization that the PoC items outsold anything else by far. Between that and how many people played it I don't think there's anything else they could do at this point. It was this, shutting down, or changing how card collecting works. This is the most player friendly option imo.
Doesn't mean we can't be sad for the lack of competitive though
4:56 promoting was not the problem with Forge. if you go look at polls on the lore reddit about if people have played Forge games, you will be shocked to see a staggering amount of lore-heads did not play them (or only played 1 or 2).
i'm not saying that was the problem, but it kinda gives you a sign why it failed. these games were meant for people that love Runeterra, and if they couldn't even pull in those people, why would other people be interested?
hey tb, make the cards art live pleease
The unfortunate thing is that the monetization for this update is honestly pretty sketchy
though problem is that lor needs money to stay alive due to its monetization methods being highly f2p friendly to the point of it losing resources
@@VietDang-yk1yt That doesn't excuse predatory monetization tactics
@@sweetphoenix5386 I dont think that is what they wanted unfortunately, tis a sad time for LOR
@@sweetphoenix5386 understandable
@@sweetphoenix5386 It's honestly not predatory like modern Blizzard or EA. The monetization is only for single player. I have been playing for 2 years and I have only made purchases of around $300 over that time in order to support the game.
Predatory is making pvp competitive only when money is spent and that is not the case with LoR. There are so many free cards and items gained from weekly quests in order to do pvp
To put into perspective, I spent $1k on Hearthstone and left it in disgust because Blizzard is now the definition of predatory. I used to love Blizzard. D1 and D2, Starcraft, Warcraft, WoW, not anymore. Riot isn't like that and I gladly give them money to support the game.
Wait, Skyen knows MTG????? Please cover some of it's art.
I understand the focus on PvE being more profitable, but I dont know if itll help in the long run? How sustainable is it really to monetize a single player experience? I guess this would lean more into the gacha sort of experience, which I never liked, but at the same time you can buy exactly which PoC champs you want so there's no gambling- I mean incentive to keep giving them money beyond the two or three purchases. Maybe it's too late for it now, but maybe skins for a whole champ package might've been more profitable instead of *just* the champs themselves? Because like, Pyke has like 5 skins, and he is a champ you wouldnt get to see much if you're playing the archetype correctly. If his skins came bundled together with skins for his followers, then maybe you'd actually see lurk players buy skins
According to what riot has told people poc has ALWAYS been more popular than pvp. When the divide was at it biggest the player split was 80/20. With the 80 playing PoC pretty much exclusively. It's their best bet
You should look at Hearthstone some day. The art. Not the game it still sucks
But the art style got it own style. Goofy and cartoonish, but it a Heartstone OWN style, very recognizable. I like it, but because i like goofness.
Its not for everyone
Legends of runterra is failing because of capitalism. They had the goal of making a fair, free to play friendly game in a genre that is know for completely greedy monetization loot box economies. Shame that its being punished for being an actually good game.
Exactly! I love LoR and they accomplished their goal of making a fair f2p online card game, problem is it was TOO fair and free for customers. Meanwhile Hearthstone and Magic continues to rake in tons of money *sighs*
Locking the game into PVE is weird to me, cause who is gonna buy skins to fight bots? I think that's gonna hurt the monetization more.
What it feels like to me is another thing to grind, that they want you to pay for so they make the grind insufferable. Just like Champion fragments, and then wild fragments, and then 'essence' and now 'Crystals's and 'Nova Crystals' and fragments of those on top of those other things. and this is all just to unlock some generic boosts for a champ, some being much less interesting or useful than others. On top of that, they've barely released any new ways to obtain these fragments. I've been grinding the weekly quests since they ADDED them, and i still dont have all the champs unlocked, let alone 3 starred. The weekly quests got objective worse when they changed duplicates giving you fragments to giving to essence because now a duplicate is literally worthless, meaning you could get literally nothing for an entire week. I've been at that point for ages. Each week I hope, i pray, maybe ill get something new. I usually dont. almost always. Theres stuff I dont have, but ill never get it. the gap will keep getting wider, and the means of crossing it will keep getting shorter. Over and over. Until they think i'll spend money.
But I'll tell ya hwat. I'm not going to spend money to speed up a grind on what is literally an over developed Lab. Path isn't a game. Its a byproduct. A good one, but one that has overgrown the game itself. If PvP slows down, so does Path. Its just aggressive monetization. Some people see it, and say 'they are finally monetizing the game so it can get support again' but don't lie to yourself. They've been monetizing the hell out of the game for ages. Its just that its so aggressive that no one is buying. not enough people anyway. Event passes all the time, ALL the time, full of who the hell the fuck cares. Skins and skins and skins, and boards and pets and. I only think ive ever purchased one or two things. the tavern board is just cute, and you look at your board alll the time so i can justify paying some for that. But you know what? card variant art isn't worth literally anything when monetized in the method that LoR does. its just another png. sure, some of them were really cool. I really like the darkin set, those were all pretty sick. But most of the are boring alts. Something you would expect to drop for free alongside its original version, to bloat a card pack.
Monetization at the start was fair. You could easily obtain cards without spending money. In fact, it was so fair, that it killed the game, right out of the gates. LoR has never recovered from being pro-consumer on release. It shouldn't have needed to. Riot is a mega company at this point, and their use of funds has become flippant. There is no reason for LoR to be getting such little funding, and the constant reductions in funding have only prevented the game from drawing in new players. So they keep trying to get old players to buy more shit. buy more, buy more, the grinds too hard so BUY IT. the games already dead. Its been dead for a little bit. Path is just an after image. the echo of the games deathgasp. Thats why it felt like it was doing so good even after PvP was declining. It was just trailing behind. It always has been. Its not a game. Its a Lab.
They literally added quests and such with this update to essentially give everyone a boost. You can get hundreds of champ shards for free right now. As someone who has owned every champion for months, now is the best time to catch up.
Completely agree with everything, Path only got more and more grindy over the years, if they hadn’t hamstrung the writing team I might have actually dropped some cash on it to support it
I agree with most of what you're saying except that last part. That's some massive ass entitlement to say that they should fund a game that can't even break even just because they can afford it. Also, a lot of people like PoC. I can understand why you don't like the gamemode, and you don't have to like it. It's not going to be for everyone. You could be right that it's dead, but we just need to wait to see if that's true.
People not purchasing the cosmetics was also the entire problem. They thought they could just sell cosmetics like in League and TfT to the players to keep funding the game. It literally didn't work. They lost money on most of the cosmetics they made and put out. They've talked multiple times about how most weren't worth making because they couldn't make the money back that it cost to create most of the cosmetic in the first place. That's why the reaction is "They are finally monetizing the game" for some players.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with not wanting to pay money, and you're completely right about the new grind feeling like it's meant to force people to buy from the store. I genuinely hope that they add a few more ways to get new currencies.
I honestly think if LoR's comestic Prices were a little cheaper they would have been able to sell a lot more also if their shop UI wasn't totally awful.
I also think their policy of nerfs and buffs was way too fast, as not really a big LoL fan but a long time TCG player it is utterly jaring to never have time to learn a meta. The meta already changes by the time a card has totally new text on it.
I think the marketing for LoR really should have aimed at Yugioh player, anime game players, like yes Shadowverse exists but I think there is more in the anime TCG over the top style than the slow MTG style of game design.
I do think they should have commited a lot more to PVP and actually stuck to it the constant shift from PVE to PVP to PVE to PVP was terrible.
Rotation was an awful idea and I said it when they announced it but it is true of basically every TCG that isn't Pokemon or magic, a year after announcing rotation the game killed competitive exactly like I predicted because it's what happens with every TCG. Rotation just isn't actually good for card games and the upper tier of player who likes rotation outside of MTG where they've all kinda just accepted rotation as good and needed cuz it's what their game does are simply the minority.
I do hope somehow they can salvage LoR, I am not super thrilled with the shifting business model and that these Solo modes are not doing story which is what they should be doing but ya.
Honestly, my dream is LoR becoming a like Annual game series where there is a new version a year with a new story and you buy it for 50 bucks every year and can jam games online but there is a fun solo mode to play if you don't want to do that.
I am confused on the state of the sustainability of the game. My biggest confusion comes from their unexplained decision to remove so many challenges. It seems counter intutive to remove so much educational content that could help new players get more familiar with advanced game mechanics and systems. It just seems strange to remove tools to help newer players when in dire need to draw in and retain new players.
Wait what challenges did they remove?
@@lunasperidot8760 the extra challenges in the tutorial section for things like daybreak, nightfall, deep, scout, for example. They removed a ton of those, some of which were actually pretty helpful for getting into a archtype.
@@lunasperidot8760 They removed those things that taught you new mechanics. They kept the basic ones from Foundation I think tho.
did he just call normal lux weak in PoC. I always thought that with spell duping she is insanely strong.
Yeah she's not the strongest but she's one of my go to's because of that. If anything its so good you overload on it.
I can see someone calling her weak if they haven't seen how she plays once her star powers get rolling and you start spitting out free rallies constantly, and since she's at 2* I assume he hasn't.
Skill issue😂
she is a solid A tier champion, kinda like aatrox, illaoi, leona. powerful champions that dont reach the level of being absolutely bonkers like the S tiers with morgana, nidalee, leblanc, diana, jinx, asol,etc.
Legends of Runeterra came out too late for it to make an impact. It came out years after card game trend. People playing card games mostly play only 1 card game cause mostly u gotta do a lot o grinding to get good cards - so basically hearthstone player mostly wont give it a try for a long shot and major audience isn't interested in card games either. It also misses the mark to interest league players, cause most of them play league and only league. ye, it sucks, but thats reality. I tried lor but i just dont like card games, even if i think that art, stories, and mechanics are fantastic