In the past few weeks League of Legends has gone through a large number of patches that have brought a huge number of changes to the game. Although changes are normally good for games and often rekindle a passion that fans have, League of Legends players are getting very dissatisfied with how Riot is handling the changes this time around. With another huge patch just hitting the rift, fans of the game have gone to Reddit to express their distraught with the game’s developer and the current state of the game.
The rapid change at which Riot is releasing new patches is part of their new patching strategy that they had announced earlier this year. For 2018 they wanted to try a system where they would release a big patch every four weeks and a smaller patch every two weeks. This way the game would change at a faster pace, which would bring more variety to the state of the game. Riot felt that a meta that would remain relatively unchanged for a year would be unhealthy for the game, and that releasing patches within a shorter time span would bring League up to speed with other games like Overwatch, that has much shorter seasons.
The rapid pace in which changes come out have left a lot of casual players feeling abandoned by Riot. Although players that play 5 or 6 games daily might have little to no problem adjusting to the changes, it’s the players that play relatively little throughout a week that have expressed their concerns. Players with little time to play League are not getting enough time to adjust to the changes and many have said they have no desire to play the game anymore. It can be a chore to adjust to a new meta, and even more so if there’s a new meta every other week.
There are also redditors arguing that due to the new system, problems that come with new patches are not getting resolved. Most large patches often bring about numerous unforeseen problems that the balancing most likely overlooked. In the past however, these problems would be fixed not too long after the patch released as Riot would monitor the situation. With the new system in place, instead of fixing the existing problem a new big patch is released that comes with it’s own problems. Which would create an endless cycle of problems.
A lot of streamers have also expressed their concern with the new patches and Riot’s balancing team. Just a few days ago Tyler1 burst into an outrage claiming that Riot is not doing any testing for their new patches and that some things that make it into the game should never be allowed to, such as the new banner of command. Riot meant to nerf the item, but indirectly buffed it so much that almost every player will pick one up. Imaqtpie can also be seen making fun of the new patch on Stream, in which his entire team builds a banner of command.
Not everything is bad however, there have also been redditors that said that they are having more fun than ever before with the game as the meta keeps changing, making the game feel fresh and new every month. Popular streamer Cowsep has shared that sentiment on Reddit and stated that he has been having so much fun with the new patches that his average stream times have gone up by a total of 3 hours. He also states that he thinks this new system is the way to go for Riot as he has always wanted the team to be more actively changing the game.
Cowsep further makes an argument that the largest amount of players are investing a lot of time in the game every day and that they are the ones who don’t have any problems with the changes. It’s often seen on Reddit that the most vocal people are often just a minority. It could be very true that the majority of the players have no problems with the new system but don’t feel the need to share they views on the topic.
Riot has already stated that they are actively reviewing feedback from the player base, and while a lot of the players might just be complaining without any solid reasoning, there are enough players out there who create well written arguments. It’s definitely interesting to see Riot changing up the pace of the game, however, whether or not they will stick with the new system will remain an unawnsered question for a while. As of right now, it definitely seems that a lot of players are not enjoying the large changes at such a rapid pace and having to relearn the meta every so often.
