LoL Season 3 to ditch ladder system in favour of league system, balance changes inbound
By Tim Colwill on January 17, 2013 at 2:14 pm
Despite its name, League of Legends has actually never used a proper league system, always choosing to rely on a single ladder system when ranking players and organising tournaments. Now, as of Season 3, Riot are introducing a six-tier system — Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond and Challenger — and it’s up to you to win ranked matches and work your way up through them if you want to take part in the finals.
To take part in the league system, you need to be at least level 30 and have access to at least 16 champions. It’s all very serious business, so check out the explanation and infographic on Riot’s website and get all the details on how you can work your way up to the top.
A major patch is also in the works which contains a slew of balancing changes — get all the details in the video below.
Source: VG247
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Is there a LoL forum yet?
It’s actually not really any different to how things work already. This league system is all for show, nothing else. You still have an ELO which matchmaking uses to give you your matches (you can be in gold league and still verse people in silver league for example) you just can’t see it anymore. About the only thing the new system does is make it look like you’re making progress beyond just a number getting higher. It’s alright I guess but nothing that special.
Maybe there isn’t a forum for it because League of Legends is run using a shady business model much like how Zynga monetizes Farmville. Players either grind hundreds of hours, or pay money to Riot for access “restricted but required” content.
So you can only play “league” mode if you have 16 champions unlocked? Champion prices range from 450ip to 6300ip each, most of the newer and cooler champions are all 6300ip. You only get about 100ip per game on average, so that is 30 games to unlock 1 average priced champion, not to mention you need to purchase a set of runes as well, which will run you another 5000ip for a set of T3s… so I bought Ezreal and an ADC runeset, which set me back about 10,000ip, so that required 100 games, or nearly 80 hours of grinding.
Or I could have paid Riot about $10 for this one champion. And you need 16 to participate in League mode? Well played. Riot should burn at the bottom of a rubbish heap along with Zynga… people should play DOTA2 instead, which has far superior graphics, content, and everything necessary to play the game is truly free, the only thing you pay for is cosmetics, no need for a 400 hour grind before you can even start to play ranked.
Yeah you also need to be level 30 champ and by the time you get there you will easily have 16 champs.
I suggest having a look here;
http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/16pay7/ranked_league_system_ama/
as It will answer most of your questions.
aetherfox,
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHA
Oh wait you were being serious.
…
BWAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA
Are you serious? There is not a single thing you HAVE to pay money for, and you’d be surprised how quickly the IP starts rolling in. There’s a bonus IP for your first win of every day, they have free champions every week so you can always try out people you haven’t had a crack at before, they have very very cheap champions IP wise that are still viable in the game. And just because a champion is new, doesn’t mean they’re always overpowered. They don’t immediately make new champions a must have, they make them interesting.
I’ll admit straight away I’m biased, and from the tone of your comment so are you. Riot Games is in no way similar to Zynga who rely on micro-transactions for time based games that require zero skill.
League of Legends is a free to play game that if you want to, you can get the odd custom skin here and there. The only time I unlocked champions with riot points (paid for in-game currency) is when I first started over 3 years ago. I’ve only played about 700 games in that time, but I don’t regret spending the money on it and I’ve still amassed a surprisingly large amount of IP in the process.
And there is a massive League of Legends forums on their main site:
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board
or for SEA:
http://forum.lol.garena.com/
Also everytime they have had a massive and sudden price drop, anyone who just ordered a skin/champion usually gets a reimbursement of the cost difference.
Most importantly, I don’t WANT a novice player to play ranked from the get go. They need time to get adjusted to the game, learn how to play different roles effectively, and develop some decent strategies. Playing until you get to level 30 is a good way of being eased into the game, as opposed to the anal rape that is DotA2 to novice players.
EDIT: Oh yeah, what changes were made to Diana?
Well that’s just a terrible analogy.
League of Legends is no different to any other F2P business model – you can invest time to unlock heroes, or you can invest money, whichever you prefer. That’s why it’s such a successful business model, because it broadens the accessibility of the game.
I work a full time job, so I choose to pay a trivial amount to unlock a hero I want to play, rather than having to spend a week of evenings to unlock the same hero. I can see how an unemployed student would prefer to spend time rather than money, because he/she has more time on their hands.
In fact, I enjoy the option to pay Riot for stuff because I really like their game. The more successful they are, the better the game I enjoy playing becomes. Why is that a bad thing? It lets them develop more features in the game, and expand the game to new regions.
And “League mode” is just one aspect of the game. There’s nothing stopping you from playing the Normal, un-ranked modes with only 1 or 2 champions. As Ashigaru said, League mode is for experienced players who have invested large amounts of time in the game, which inherently means they own a large amount of champions just from playing the game (whether they paid to unlock any or not).
The whole DOTA vs LoL argument reminds me of Xbox vs Playstation arguments – a sea of vocal minorities championing their opinion on internet forums as fact.
They hit her pretty hard with the nerf bat in the patch before this current one. Her Q, W and R all took either damage reductions or CDR increases.
They’ve dialed that back a little now and increased the range on her Q, and fixed her shield orb things a bit. She’s in a much better place now.
Oh good, she’s one of my favourite champions at the moment :) I hadn’t even noticed the nerf bat hitting her as I haven’t played her in quite some time!
I’ve got 32k IP, BOW TO ME MINIONS!
can I turn this into a full-blown flame-fest and refer to IP as idiot points?
Wow, what a way to make the LoL fans appear from the woodwork =P I appreciate that LoL works for you, but it certainly isn’t working for me.
I’m really frustrated that Riot has basically said, you either grind 400 hours (which I don’t really have) or pay us $100 or you can’t play with good players with good queue times.
Even though I’m not level 30 I have played (and beaten) players who appear regularly on the front spectator page when you enter LoL. Yes, those players with 1000 wins and play at near the top level of skill. Typically, my games take 10+ minutes to find a match, because there’s no one at my ELO for my player level, and even though I’m level 23 I end up in games with people at level 30 and 1000 wins.
I’d dearly like the game to be FAIR and EQUAL where I have access to equal runes, masteries and champions as my opponents, but that just isn’t happening. I play all games, (which is why I’m here too) but it won’t stop me complaining about the flaws in a game if I see one.
Aetherfox,
You interpret playing a game regularly for enjoyment as “grinding”?
If you like the game and are happy to progress as your free time permits – play it and get ip’s
If you like the game and want more stuff sooner – buy it with real world cash.
If you dont like the game – dont play the game.
You beat level 30 with 1000 wins and because of your elo it takes 10 minutes to find a game – well done you are skillful at MOBA games :)
Can you please explain further how it is not fair and equal?
In your example of lvl 23 vs lvl 30:
you have access to 7 less rune spots than a lvl 30. VERY small difference in stats.
you have access to 7 less mastery points than a lvl 30. not a very big deal in my opinion.
there is always 10 free champs of mixed roles to play every week, plus by level 23 you would have unlocked at least that many again. More than enough!
Everytime ive lost its been because of poor play on MY part or poor teamwork, not some insignificant stat difference.
cant really be more equal in my opinion!
teamwork and individual player skill will always, i mean always, beat any arbitrary rune/mastery/champion setup.
TBH, I think it is a big deal. Players have always gone on about there ELO as if its the best thing ever. Now they can’t. So its a REALLY good thing community wise.
uncleleeroy,
Same arguments people made about Zynga. Don’t like it, don’t play. Doesn’t change the opinion of many people that it’s shitty way to run a business. You may as well say that all movies can’t be criticized either, since the audience has a choice not to watch it. Well that’s dumb, of course there can be bad movies and good movies, and people have the right to call it out, and I’m calling out LOL.
I play games of nearly all genres, and in the case of the MOBA genre, put in about 200+ games in each of LoL, DOTA2, and HoN. While DOTA2 and HoN allowed me to play in the top 5% of userbase skill within 100 matches, LoL is still trying to hold me back and force me to play in the “kiddie pool”. Of the business models that each of them adopt, virtually everyone agrees that DOTA2 is the most ethical (all base content free, players create skins and buy / sell / trade with each other – a cut of revenues flow back to the players) while LoL to be the least ethical (creating a massive grindfest, then offering players the choice to pay money to shortcut the huge number of hours required). LoL is actually looked down upon by many reputed gaming sites (Sirlin refuses to entertain discussion of LoL on playtowin, for example, because of their business / game model).
And of course, Riot being too cheap to set up an Australian or even Oceanic server doesn’t help matters (despite, I note, several gigantic threads with 250 pages of replies, there’s been exactly 1 response from a developer saying “we’re looking into it”). Even DOTA2 and HoN have Oceanic and Australian servers and you can switch effortlessly between them to play with friends. There’s some alternate “Garena” server host in Asia that is not compatible with the rest of the world (so, say, you spend 500 hours grinding up a character on North America, and you want to play on Garena, you need to spend another 500 hours building up another character on Garena, and the chance of finding teammates who speak English there is pretty low).
I consider myself a gaming critic of sorts, with my large experience and high level play in nearly all genres, so this is just my 2 cents. Most people defending LoL I find just haven’t seen what other companies are able to offer. There are people who’re happy to spend hundreds of dollars to “support” LOL, while they don’t realise that people who support DOTA2 can get paid tens of thousands of dollars from skin sales. (some players earning 6 figures per year) People who put up with LOL’s 200 ping to NA when DOTA2 offers 20 ping to Sydney.
I never said that LOL was a bad game. It might actually even be a better game than DOTA2 and HON, there are many good aspects of game design in LOL. I’m just frustrated at the business decisions of their management and the way they run their business.
But now they’ll just say their division stuff is the best thing ever.
aetherfox,
Unless you want to go full competitive (less than 1% of the community) then the way Riot have set up their F2P model has no issues at all. You’re not entitled to the entire game from the get go without investment of time or money just because you think you’re really good. There’s nothing wrong with their model so if you don’t like their model so much that you choose not to play the game then all the more power to you but that doesn’t mean the model is bad. You don’t have to buy exclusively 6300IP champs as there are tons of 450IP, 1350IP 3150IP and 4800IP champs as well. Also most runes are interchangeable, unless you’re going to be that less than 1% of the community you don’t need all the runes.
There may be an issue but you’re blowing it completely out of proportion. HoN is next to dead last I heard so it could be argued that it’s an example of a bad business model and Valve is Valve, it’s doing its own unique thing. Riot did the best system the could at the time given they were the first with this F2P system and it does work and for the most part is relatively fair.
I mean honestly are you straight faced telling me that you require every single champion and rune set? Because the fact of the matter is that you don’t and that’s one of the things that make Riot’s system alright, you only unlock the content YOU want. You honestly sound like you just want free stuff.
And tbh I doubt you’re as good as you think you are, i’ve seen plenty of people with 1000 wins who were so bad they may as well have only played 100.
Zynga’s business practices were called into question because of the way they started blatantly ripping off the IP of other games and re-hashing into their own shitty copies. People weren’t whinging about the micro-transactions as much as that. You’re calling out LoL, good for you.
Where? Show me? Reputed? Never even heard of playtowin. Sounds like typical wannabe progamer garbage to me.
Look at the figures, we’re a tiny country with hardly the number of people to warrant building a separate server block when there are so many other priorities on their list. They’re currently expanding into China, solidifying their presence in the SEA market, and still expanding in the states. “but it’s just setting up a server.” Still costs money. Look into the costs involved, the capital you need to have on standby if the server block goes to shit, and the maintenance involved to do it.
You’re missing a key point of the “support” thing. You have to generate the user content and not all of us have the time or ability to partake in such a thing. As for 6 figures? Numbers please.
You’re not frustrated with their business decisions, you’re only seeing the very surface of how their business operates. DotA2 requires a guest pass to play at the moment anyway, not everyone can jump in.
You’re pissed off because of what exe has already said, you think you’re better than everyone else you’re playing and want more stuff for free. Also you seem to come across as a very competitive person. LoL isn’t for you. Go play HoN or DotA2 and get your fix there.
exe3,
I’m at level 23, my friends have been pestering me to join them in ranked for months. I’m not saying I need every single Champion and Runeset but the bare minimum to play League would be nice? I have unlocked two champions that I enjoy playing (Nidalee, Ezreal) and as much of their rune set as I have access to now, and have about 7000ip remaining, with 7 levels to go. I suppose I could go and unlock every single 450ip and 1350ip champion even if I don’t intend to play them in order to try make the 16 quota…
As it stands, at my rate of playing (maybe 1 game a day, maybe less) it will be a very long time indeed before I can join them in league play. Well perhaps I am being entitled when I say I want to play on a level playing with other people for free, but all I’m doing is pointing out their major competitor who has done things exactly right to enable fair and competitive play.
(perhaps my mistake was in assuming LoL was a competitive game…)
And I made the point that the people I played against aren’t just 1000 win players – they’re players I see on the front spectator page when you load up LoL, when I want to watch and learn how to play a specific champion.
Ah well. Whether you think I’m good or not, I don’t care honestly.. even I don’t care myself, I even wish my account had a lower skill rating, so I could get matches more easily. My average skill friend gets matches within a minute or two while mine takes over 10 minutes. And you’re right, it seems that no one else posting here seems to have an issue with how Riot chooses to run its game, so I guess I’m just the lonely 1% having a whinge at them.
ashigaru,
If you haven’t heard of Sirlin, then you aren’t a serious gamer. But that’s no shame there. You don’t want to be called progamer garbage after all =P
Zynga is maligned in the industry because of its revenue model, where they exploit the 2% of their playerbase with poor impulse control and end up spending thousands of dollars on the game. There are plenty of articles about this, but this issue was hashed out many years ago so I’m not going to try google them again…
LoL claims they have a much larger playerbase than either DOTA2 or HON, so the “tiny playerbase” argument doesn’t fly. Even games like Hawken, Star Wars, etc, have all provided Australian servers. The only reason Riot isn’t doing it is, yes, it “costs” too much, as you say. Well apparently plenty of other companies have found a way to do it, so I’m not sure what their excuse is… maybe greed? Lol.
There are plenty of articles about the amount players earn from the Steam store selling cosmetics. I think there might have been one featured right here on Games.On.Net, if there hasn’t, there should be. Valve is naturally coy about the amounts players earn, because it’s confidential, but there are interviews with individuals who have said they earned over $100k USD from a single item set. Look at the store in DOTA2 – thousands of items, and players get a 25% cut of them. A polycount skin would be about $12, so the designer would get $3 per download. There’s about 3 million players currently in the Beta, with a total estimated potential playerbase of 20-40 million (based on DOTA1 populations). You’d only need 1% of players to like an item enough to buy it to make megabucks. (still waiting to see what Belle of the North Star looks like…)
Ah well. It’s all well and good that you’re “satisfied” with the way things are, but I see a better outcome that is not just theoretical, but already proven. After all, that’s the only way the world progresses, is it not? =P
Sirlin is an arcade player and game theorist, why would I have ever heard of him in the competitive CS scene? And you’re saying that a user who makes an item set only gets 25% of the profits? Who’s being the greedy prick now?
Also check your points, I never said it was a tiny player base. You’ve misconstrued that from a different comment.
As I said at the end of my last post, you clearly prefer DotA 2 so have fun playing that instead.
I’d comment more but you’re clearly at odds to me and due to me being such a lowly casual gamer, have no relevance in your competitive game theory dominated world. Have fun getting sponsorship with your mad skills.
All good mate.
Im a casual evening gamer.
I dont really know about business models of these companies, and i personally have not spent any money on these type of games. You dont have to spend anything if you dont want to. I have access to cosmetic content but dont really see the need for it.
When i play LoL the outcome seems decided by player skill and team skills. The little differences you earn with time/money dont make much difference. In that respect the game is FAIR and EQUAL. same as DOTA and HoN.
Just my opinion though. seems to me that if you like something you invest time into it. if you dont like it, all good, there is plenty other games/stuff to invest time into
gg wp :)
aetherfox,
I don’t think you understand why there’s that 16 champion requirement. It’s there because there’s 6 bans and 10 champs chosen, that’s 16 champs total. Basically what they’re doing is preventing the rare chance that you’ll be literally left with 0 option to select a champion because all the ones you have access to have either been banned or picked already.
People on the front spectator page aren’t automatically good either. Riot made it specifically to capture all types of games, not just high skill ones.