We all like having plenty of options to select from different characters and classes, but I don’t think I’ve ever played a game like League of Legends that has so many to choose from. Going back to my days in Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II, if a game had more than 10 it was considered a lot. Since then games have grown to include 20-30 characters, but I don’t think I can name one game that comes anywhere near LoL. Honestly, how many characters do we really need?
I went and counted up the amount of selectable champions and tallied up a total of 88 including the upcoming champion Volibear. Since Oct 1st there have been five new champions which averages about 30 per year. So in 5 years are we really going to see 238 champions in League of Legends? Ugh, I don’t even want to think about having to learn that many characters and their skills. Even five in two months is WAY too fast, I’m not even comfortable against Fizz yet and will soon have Volibear to worry about who I have no doubt will be just as over-powered as Fizz was.
In the long run I don’t see how RiotGames can continue introducing more characters into an already crowded game. Not only is it overwhelming for new players, but it seems like most of the new characters have recycled skills. Watching the Volibear spotlight trailer, it looked a mish-mosh of skills taken from other characters.
I think LoL will eventually hit a tipping point where they’ll have so many characters they’ll scare away any potential new players and veteran players will feel run down having to learn a new character ever few weeks. Honestly I’ve only been playing for 2-3 months, but ever time I hear a new champion is coming I cringe.
I get that RiotGames probably make most of their money from new characters, but seriously, slow things down a bit. A new character every 3 weeks isn’t needed.
I totally agree… furthermore, the champions they come out with are typically very over-powered or have an unfair item advantage that tend to make them super tough to kill compared to the older champs that were designed before tenacity/spell-vamp/Dominion
November 29th, 2011 at 5:25 pmQuote
I do not agree with this review. I played 4 months and was already familiar with all the characters. Plus every week they rotate your Free to play account with new characters so you can test them all out, and then chose which ones to buy with either in game points you win, or real cash (riot points).
The one thing you have to remember, there are “class” of characters. So, Tanks, Pushers, Fighters, Mages, Assassins, Juggelers. etc.. Once you figure out what class you like, you minimize your options, and it is less hectic. ALSO, there are filters in game to help you select all of this.
MY biggest complaint. They focus on new heroes (and yes, repetitive skill useage)and they do not fix theri GLARING 2 game killing problems:
1.) The community is horrible and they abuse the Banning button. I was banned for “AFK”, but I was never AFK, the in game community like to press the “AFK” button on other players. It has turned into a game.
2.) The lag and unstability. I get players from all over, and the PING is measured in game. You can wait up to 30 min to start a match as you may have 45 ping (average) and some one has 10 ping (super good) and then 3 others have 999 Ping (Super bad). Then the server crash and the foot troops stop moving, and you get labeled as disconnect, leading to an account ban… At this point, I uninstalled this garbage. It is not cool enough, or in depth enough to continue getting harrassed by it’s poor features.
November 30th, 2011 at 5:24 amQuote
Its unusual for someone to complain about a gome giving to much choice – More characters, more ingame diversity, more tactics and strategy leading to more varied gameplay.
Normally having a plethora of options would be a games major selling point.
I haven’t really played this game properly – not being a huge fan of the genre, so I cannot comment categorically on this but I find it hard to believe that it can really that big an issue.
November 30th, 2011 at 6:49 amQuote
I’m not really complaining about the number today, ok maybe a little, but there’s got to be a limit to how many characters a single game has. I think LoL is getting close to that limit where it’s going to start hurting the game more than helping.
November 30th, 2011 at 12:18 pmQuote
I have to say… I somewhat agree with this review. Riot just pumps out new champs like a gumball machine! Like what was mentioned before you can focus on playing a certain class of champs but even they tend to get overcrowded.
November 30th, 2011 at 1:00 pmReally.
There are some other points that should be considered as well… like champ specific rune pages, because really just having those 2 free runes pages doesn’t cut it…
With more and more interesting (and not so)champs coming it hammers on your IP, considering that you’ll want new runes or a rune page to suffice.
Riot should really just go slower with the champs and go to fixing the problems with balancing and tuning up features.
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They have to slow down imho. I think 100 champions is reasonable, but beyond that, it’s going to just be insane for a new player learning this game. If you scare away your new players and continually churn through old players, your growth stagnates and eventually your game’s population behinds to decline. They can’t let that happen if they want to succeed long term.
Take 100 champions for example:
With 4 active abilities and 1 passive each
With multiple cooldowns on each active ability
Now have them played by bad, mediocre, and godly players
You need to learn 400 actives (what they do), 100 passives (what they do), and 400 cooldowns (how long before they can do it again) if you really want to do well at this game. You then see them played extremely inconsistently by 300 varying degrees of skill.
That’s a pretty steep learning curve for any new player, especially when you can only play 10 freebies every week to experiment on your own.
December 2nd, 2011 at 4:53 pmQuote
The orginal Dota still have more heroes (104), and you don’t have to pay for them
December 4th, 2011 at 11:51 amQuote
Having only picked up LoL abpout 2 months ago and having never really played a Moba game I found it quite easy to learn all the champs.
Sure there are some situations where I forget exactly what some of the other champs abilities are but it only takes them to cast it once for me to remember.
There may be 100+ champs someday but there are only ever 10 on the field at any one time. So really all you have to do is remember 10 champs at any given point.
December 4th, 2011 at 7:43 pmQuote