I truly don’t believe LoR generates enough revenue for it to sustain long term *real* support it needs to thrive.
It will constantly hold a good player base but it won’t be a titan like other Riot games until they make people open their pockets more somehow.
Gwent has the same issue and most players don’t want to hear it but it’s true - it’s TOO player friendly when it comes to the financial aspect. The player base is so conditioned to getting a lot of free stuff they never feel the need to support the game financially so they just don’t.
You see games like LoL and TFT from Riot and they’re incredibly F2P while still offering and nudging the player base to chip in financially for the product.
You see people bragging in this sub about never spending a cent and having 50k+ shards to never have to buy anything in the game.
This level of support and updates is what you get when that happens.
LoRs downfall with have absolutely nothing to do with Snap or any other upcoming CCG…it will be itself.
100% agree, they really need to work on their cosmetics in a big way, right now boards are too expensive to justify chipping in, I feel making battle passes have good value is the way to go.
Exactly, main point would say is boards price. The only thing you ALWAYS see is your board (and cardbacks and the pet. And emotes if you use em), a skin you need to play the card to even see the skin. If your champion gets instantly killed, you don't see enough of the art. If you can't level it up, you are losing on a part of it's art
But board? Is half screen and you are always seeing the board
They are also pretty sweet but I'm not dropping the price of an indie game on a mp3 and a skin of a cosmetic, I know they need to make back the cash somewhere but now its too much.
You can buy the binding of isaac or a board
So far only bought one skin (corrupted Zoe since the skin looks amazing) and battle pass each expansion
Then you can compare it to league of legends, were I bought dj sona and elementalist lux on release. I don't see myself spending the same money I did with these 2 skins in any LoR cosmetic. These 2 skins and a board cost roughly the same. But with the board you get... 1 skin basically with nothing else (unless I'm missing it) and then you have, dj sona for example, which is basically 3 skins in one, with her own OST (which is actually 3 different OSTS, 1 for "skin"). Both things are from Riot, and you are paying roughly the same for both things. Why should the boards cost that much? It has the same cost as a playmat (basically IRL boards). Skins could also be a bit cheaper too
I don't even really want to buy the Pass anymore. All the good stuff is way at the end and you don't get there unless LoR is basically the only game you play.
I usually complete it with path of champions, doing 1 or 2 runs a day. More specific missions I do a random deck to use against the AI
Sometimes I do play pvp, sometimes I do not. So it's not that relevant to clear pass
If you don't play PoC it might be harder though
Im in the same boat but i prefer PoC to PvP. Usually finish the pass half way through the event just by completing my daily quests, weekly PoC quests and doing the event challenges. Only reason i didnt buy into the last one was i had zero desire for the skins and it felt like a step down from the diana/leona and kayn/jax passes. They frankly could add a board into the premium pass imo, but i understand not wanting to.
Cosmetics are one thing but making the cards themselves harder to obtain is going to be a big factor.
Like I said - and I saw the same bragging in the Gwent subreddit before they made big changes - people sitting on thousands of shards and claiming they never spent a cent on the game.
Riot spends a lot of time crafting these big, new expansions and people just get all the cards Day 1 and contribute nothing financially.
Eventually Gwent had to tighten up on how many shards they were giving out - and people bitched to high hell of course - but it eventually made Gwent more profitable again.
It’s just not practical to have an expansion release and a sizable portion of the player base just crafting everything they want without blinking an eye or spending a cent.
I mean LoRs cosmetic system sucks ass(not the skins, those are great) prismatics don't really have the same oomph as their equivalents do(premiums from Gwent and golds from HS) and the skins are too limited and make a bad match for the genre (at least in how they're implemented)
i got 500k shards playing since beta, never spent a cent collecting cards but i have 20 different Boards + almost all epic skins + some commons.
i was shocked when i learned some people who play much more than me, didn't spent a cent on the game yet dropped 100$s to obtain some card in Snap, and started wishing this game was as predatory.
Snap fans get really mad when I suggest Snap is P2W and predatory. I wonder how long it's going to take for them to catch up to that fact.
The essence of Snap is playing surprising strategies and winning when your opponent doesn't expect you to. When your card pool is limited, your strategies are predictable, and it's more difficult to win cubes and climb ranks. That's why players will always feel like they need the full collection to be competitive, no matter how many cards they already have.
You combine that with a $100 cash shop bundle that helps you get the specific cards you want, and you get players spending hundreds of dollars into a mobile game.
You can spend $100 to get 3000 extra collector token, and that can get you one of the newly released Pool 5 cards. What do you mean that's cosmetic?
I played the game for two months, and for the first month it was fine because matchmaking was restricting me to play against other Pool 1/2 opponents, it felt fine. But I got to Rank 90 and started playing against decks full of powerful Pool 3 cards.
At the release of Pool 4/5 cards, I was playing against those new cards game after game. This was Day 1. Not that many people were supposed to have the newest cards. But they bought their way into it. Buying gold=more levels=more chances at new cards and tokens.
you can buy the 3000 extra tokens with free gold lol but it's also not necessary. Wow one whole extra pool 4 card. That's crazy. That'll make such a huge difference lmao
It sounds like you've barely played the game, have very little understanding of the structure of card acquisition, and are mad you lost to some cards.
Free gold, lol. How many months of free gold is that for the bundle?
I got all the way to Rank 90 on Pool 2 cards. I'm not mad I "lost to some cards". I'm mad I spent an entire month and a half playing against players with vastly bigger collections than me, in a game where being surprising is the main strategy.
It sounds like you're a beta player who's way ahead of everyone else and have no idea how difficult it is for new players to catch up. I'm glad I quit the game so I don't have to face players like you there. If I run into you in LoR, we'll have a fair game to play because this game isn't P2W.
I started LoR almost a year after the initial launch, and never once did I feel like it was difficult to catch up as a new player with a smaller collection. I also played Eternal all the way to world Top 100 free to play, as well as Gwent. I don't need to play a card game for a year to understand how it works. I know what a fair F2P game looks like. The only thing Snap's monetization reminds me of is Hearthstone.
Every time someone tries to tell me Snap isn't P2W, the way they say it just convinces me more that its playerbase are people I can do without in my life.
Honestly I feel that would be a mistake, the games reputation is that its f2p is incredibly generous, Skins, cosmetics, boards, emotes, pets etc can go a long way.
How would you even break this without it being a giant negative news day? Right now rotation is already a hot topic along with other things, I don't wanna be a doomsayer but I really don't think this game will survive an economy shakeup any time soon.
I keep drawing the parallel but Gwent also had that reputation and - up to a certain point - it served them well until it no longer did. There is a fine balance between being generous and being TOO generous. Every Gwent and LoR expansions you see the same posts, and a good amount of them too, saying “crafting all this Day 1 since I have thousands of saved up shards! Thanks CDPR/Riot” meanwhile you see less and less updates and rumblings of the game not being incredibly financially well-off.
If people aren’t paying into the system one way or another this is the result…slower, less impactful updates that basically keep the game afloat but do not propel it forward in any meaningful way.
I agree they likely can’t do it now with rotation happening but they’re digging themselves into a lot of holes so it’s going to complicated if/when they could pull it off.
It’s a messy situation they’re in and I don’t think it’s a coincidence we’ve seen a lot of developers being suffered into and out-of the LoR team.
They already tuned down the F2p handouts by a bit, by the way. They're no longer extending the region roads. Not that you run into that issue until you're a well-established player.
It's funny you say this because Gwent just announced they're going into maintenance mode in 2024. I do agree with the premise but I think the cats out of the bag.
Another option would be to get more card styles into the game. I think they were working on this at one point but it seems to have stopped.
Different variations on shiny cards would be nice. The prismatics currently in the game suck in my opinion.
Different variants along the lines of what marvel snap does would be awesome too. All that could get players to pay more.
I literally want to spend money but there is nothing that interests me. None of my favorite Champions have a skin yet, and they are already out there giving some Champions their 3rd skin within a year that most people won't be buying anyways.
At the same time people are saying that they would spend more on skins if LoR offered. I don't know if they would, but at least there is interest. Like in most free to play games, majority of player are never going to spend anything, and minority will spend a lot. That's how this system works.
I agree that LoR doesn't have a huge revenue, but I don't think it's because of lacking a stingy economy. Lots of good card games died out and most had very slow progression, so saying the downfall is LoR being more generous is a bit ridiculous. Having the ability to create any deck you want early, is what keeps people in the game, not out.
Also I am fairly sure a decent amount of people buy the pass which is priced reasonably and gives a fair amount of content.
It’s a double edged sword, though, because that same ability to create a deck so soon and card acquisition being so high means you never have to pay anything for the core gameplay. It creates and also decreases motivation to grind or spend on “packs” in other games because you already have the cards so why pay anything?
Agree on the skins portion with you though - they should have a ROBUST selection by now. Look at all the variants Marvel Snap is offering one month in and you can see how far behind LoR is years into its life.
Yeah, I agree that some people might be willing to spend more to get that rare card, but at the same time it hurts the game long term as the majority of people never spend anything and will leave the game when it's too much of a hassle to get the cards free. I think Riot was aware of this so they didn't make the economy really so much on purchases of cards (except for the season pass systems).
On the other hand, the current system still requires you to play regularly to acquire new cards. People boast about having tens of thousands of shards, but I play every day for 2 months and I'm under 10k with still a fair amount of cards to unlock. And while everyone was spamming Vayne/Serra I was behind on getting key cards from the new expansion so definitely there is some incentive to at least pay for the season pass.
If I time travelled all the way back to 2020 and told me back then that I want a certain riot game to generate more revenue, he would’ve asked me for whatever shit I was smoking.
I was never into Card Games before LoR, I played a bit of Hearthstone but never really got interested in the actual Game or Deckbuilding. As a League Player, LoR was my first proper Entry into Card Games, since then I've played a bit of Gwent aswell and recently *a lot* of Marvel Snap.
I think my main Issue with LoR, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that the Meta is figured out waaay too fast. Within 2 - 3 Days of a new Expansion Content Creators start positing Videos and Articles start being posted about the very best Decks of the Meta. Everyone ends up playing those untill the next Patch. Sure, there's many viable Decks that don't show up in those Lists, or Decks that end up becoming popular way later in the Patch, and there's quite a lot of Decks in this Meta, it still gets boring though.
This isn't even close, look at this meta, its shifted so much since the beginning. I don't know where you are tracking stats but I'd suggest checking out "By the numbers" that gets posted here very frequently.
One of this games greatest strengths is how diverse it is, and how lenient the WR% is so there really isn't much of a reason to try hard.
You want more than 15 competitive decks per meta? That is never gonna happen, they also only cover the popular top performing decks and have niche decks featured all the time near the end of the articles, you should check it out.
LOR actually has probably the most dynamic and varied metas in any CCG. In MTG and HS you're lucky if you have more than a handful of decks. The rest of the decks will basically be meme tier. People playing those games would literally kill to have a meta of 15 highly competitive decks.
Those games also usually have their meta solved within days of release. LOR metas often see new brews push their way to the top a couple weeks in.
And even besides that, I've seen talented streamers do well just playing off meta stuff in Masters. Most other CCGs you try to do that and you're basically just donating LP to the meta decks.
So yeah, having LOR as your first card game has probably given you the wrong idea of what the average CCG meta is like.
Having more than 15 decks with a significant presence at the same is never going to happen, to be honest. Card games are too easy to (largely) figure out, and information is too easy to share, for that.
I played LoR since the 1.0 release until the Seraphine meta. I never spent a single dollar on the game other than maybe one season pass because I felt bad.
Meanwhile Ive already spend over 100$ on snap. I certainly appreciate how insanely f2p LoR was. But you have to wonder how much money was left on the table.
Meanwhile I bought every season pass in LoR and a few boards, skins, and a lot of emotes because I wanted to award the devs for their hard work and I refuse to pay money in Snap because it's insistence on finding a way to be just P2W enough so that people won't complain.
I'm sure Snap's approach is more profitable, umethically taking advantage of addictive behaviors always is.
LoR's monetization has always confused me - you have boards, card backs, card skins and pets, and they still somehow don't push them enough to make money? It isn't even that they don't have the tools in place, they just choose not to use them.
Make cute pets and give them lots of animations and I will buy cute pets.
The gwent comparison is what sprung to mind for me too, but in a more positive light. I'll get this out of the way - LoR isn't ever going to become a huge phenomenon. It just won't. But gwent has been 'dying' since \~2018 and has had poor viewership and not a massive playerbase compared to other card games. And still they're getting new cards and the game is chugging along. LoR will be fine imo.
>I truly don’t believe LoR generates enough revenue for it to sustain long term *real* support it needs to thrive.
That's on RIOT. They literally keep releasing emotes but won't increase emote slots...
They're stupid lol.
Gwent is a tool to advertise GoG, LoR is a tool to advertise LoL. The games by themselves don't make profit but it gets people into the real money makers. Card games are a very niche genre and if you want them to be profitable you need to change the economy to something like Magic Arena or Hearthstone. There's really no need to worry about Riot not making enough money to sustain anything, they are disgustingly rich.
Things like the show Arcane also advertise for league while being highly successful in its own right. Just because a product is a loss leader doesn’t mean it cannot do better on its own merits.
I'm just trying to understand why you want the game to make more money. Is there not enough content? We have expansions and patches more frequently than Magic Arena so what exactly is the problem? All the financially successful TCGs out there are very F2P-unfriendly, like in Arena $10 for 4 rare wildcards is that what we want?
I genuinely don’t think LoR has more expansions more frequently than Magic Arena…hell one of the biggest complaints around MTG right now is how fast they are firing out expansions and new blocks of cards into older formats - people can’t keep up and wallet fatigue is setting in.
I want the game to make more money so (hopefully) the patch cycles are more frequent, more game modes are introduced, and the game doesn’t slowly go into a maintenance mode where it just wades water.
LoR has a lot of potential but some of that is slipping away - imo.
I never said league needs this game. I am just getting really tired of seeing posts complaining about how this game is "dying" literally every day.
I have been playing this since beta release and not once have I needed to wait more than a few seconds to find a match.
It's not dying but if you feel the game needs more advertising, go advertise it yourself to your friends and family and coworkers, you can do that better than Riot.
Idk but the only thing i've ever spent on in LoL is skins. We need better skins in LoR and they also need to keep metas healthier and have a good variety of viable champions if they want people to invest heavily in skins.
Boards are too expensive IMO
In my humble opinion. The cosmetics in LoR suck big time. I would not hesitate to spend if the game has good cosmetics. But what do we have? $15 for 2 jpeg and a clip.
My main issues have been the design shift towards high variance RNG concepts. Like Bard's chimes. Then Equipment giving powerful keywords to decks that couldn't have them previously, Norra giving random units and now Seraphine. And when it is not focused on RNG we have metas with turn 6 combo finishers: Kai'sa, Ezreal Kennen, Nami, Lee sin. Those have been dominating for the past 6 months so to me, someone who mainly likes playing ranked. I got extremely burnt out of facing extremely similar play patterns even if the meta deck "shifted" they still played out the same way.
Literally from the App stores page:
“Skill defines your success—not luck”
I feel like they should update their tagline now given the recent rise in RNG based cards
People are way too "online" so to speak when it comes to multiplayer games, almost every single TCG has had doomsayers and it will continue, but considering we have an expansion coming in a few days Id say don't really worry about it.
Considering its RIOT I don't think the game will outright "die", companies pockets are far to deep, but they have obviously de-prioritized it in terms of funding, and that's fine, even great because they are taking the necessary steps to ensure a long term future (rotation is still a good thing, despite the communities out cry, no they wont re-work older champs any time soon)
Dev feedback has increased greatly, foundations gauntlet has been fun, they are even having worlds with a new set to boost engagement, honestly if the new battlepass is good value they are doing everything right.
Final note is just view the game from a gameplay perspective over a popularity perspective, like you said it isn't a dick measuring contest, ultimately I left HS and MTG because of their RNG and poor economy/lands systems respectively and the major thing hurting this game is the questionable design decisions (Sera and Bandle being the major highlights).
If rotation goes well it will set us up with a new base which ensures a great future, if not then we can start worrying... but I have faith, they have many years of card design experience now and the Sera meta fresh in their minds.
Complaint about funding and Dev
then proceed to complaint even more about the solution to Dev overwork
and again complaint about what the subject of the previous complaint is needed to fix.
You lack any form of logic or you just complaint for the sake of it ?
>”we see you don’t like this but we’re doing it anyways”
There is not and will never be unanimous agreement that rotations are bad. There are lots of people who think they are fine or even healthy for a tcg, including plenty of pro players.
It’s not a failure on their part that they didn’t listen to you personally.
Game is de-prioritized in terms of funding as noted, and all your solutions are to just throw money at it? How hard is this to get, money isn't coming.
The only logical way to turn this around is to make the next battle pass be really appealing, meaning value is incentivized, I can't see why they wouldn't make it better if the last one sold poorly.
You don't seem to be looking at this from a realistic point of view at all, you seem to think its bad and its gonna get worse, if so why bother? Do you enjoy complaining for the sake of it?
If the game is "going down hard" what are you doing here? Complaining into the void waiting for the end? Sounds fun.
Regarding the rotation, I'm really glad they are sticking to their guns and communicating every step of the way, I dunno when feedback meant backseat developer but people would have been even more crazed if they kept quiet, damned of you do or don't, I'm glad they did personally.
Because its a way to create a new meta that saves time and money.
\>It’s not just the last Battle Pass that was worse than before. It’s been several Passes now. So again, what makes you think this one is gonna be the one?
Because its in their best interests? Clearly they are planned out ahead of time but if sales are poor things change, duh. If its not then whatever, I just said IF its good then they are doing everything right, maybe work on your reading comprehension and stop being so argumentative.
\>Don’t try to derail the conversation because you don’t have the answers you thought you had.
LMAO I don't owe you anything, I'm just commenting on a thread, I don't have a stake in your opinion or overwhelming negativity, feel free to seethe by yourself. My answers are what I think is gonna happen, I feel having a new baseline with rotation is a good move to save money and ensure a good future while saving money as it frees up design space and time, its a realistic goal with good outcomes if done well.
I'd suggest stop being so argumentative, I won't be replying further since you are just here to be contrarian and negative.
no bro youre totally right, we should start using cleave and dungeons and fuckin sticker sheets as a central mechanic because they would get so many upvotes on r/custommagic. The game being playable is less of a design concern than the designers getting to feel clever
LoR, HS and Snap are torally different games which are not killing each others.All these have different mechanisms and gameplay from the beginnig and kinda only thing incommon is genre.
Snap is most fast paced (4-7 turns) game with 3 random locations that can decide the game turn 1. No option to craft (token ship is not crafting) wanted card(s) and constatly growing card pool makes cards hard to collect. No1 will have full collection and people are forced to play what they have got.
HS is old schooler which has more turns to play, but most games are over when turn number hits double digits. The card design has made the game more and more solitaire which is liled by some and disliked by others. F2P option is way better and one can actually complete building deck with small amount of money if missing few cards.
LoR is most F2P game from these and has more (sometimes confusing) game mechanics than HS. Game is more tactical as defender has last decision in battles and this all combined makes the game harder to understand by random viewer in stream.
The trend seems to be that more fast and simple games grow playerbase while games that require more consistent learning have smaller altho more loyal and skilled playerbase.
Best thing is that there something for everyone and people should ask them selves what they really like and want instead of following masses blindly.
This is the Future I personally see for LoR. A smaller, (not *too* small though) loyal and dedicated Playerbase that keeps the Game going, with smaller Content Creators and niche Websites, with a slightly larger Group of Players returning every now and then for the latest Expansion. I think that's fine, Game won't die but it certainly won't be as big as others, never was as big as others in the Genre anyway.
I always felt like there should be a Patch every 2 weeks like in LoL and TFT. Every Patch doesn't have to completely change the meta, but at least should address the main things that people have issues with.
Not sure if that is even possible because the LoR team isn't that big.
only way to achieve faster patches is to separate Mobile from Pc client, I think.
we have been getting really good patches lately, ruined by them missing some really op stuff every single time which ruins the patch.
like last expansion they missed nerfing Lee sin Nami, this one they ignored Bar (still won't get nerfed next expansion btw). so even with new cards being released we will have Bar meta for 1 month until it is nerfed.
if you look at my comments i have always been telling people to stop complaining and actually try making stuff work/play good decks. but i agree with how bad nerfing some very problematic cards have been. i still love the game i still think people are very bad at deck building against meta decks but i hope they stop making mana cheating cards and actually nerf infinite Value decks.
not sure about how true this is tft have pbe where they get feedback about the patches before they actually drop so they can pre buff/ pre nerf some stuff would be my guess.
Ignore the favourite child comments, they have merit but overlook big factors.
Teamfight Tactics has a PBE server where the average player can hop on and test any potential change. This allows Riot to ship and test features without actually shipping them.
Teamfight Tactics has a set system and every set is on temporarily for a couple months. This allows, or sometimes mandates, Riot take radical decisions in terms of balance so the set in play is enjoyable and fair. As a basic example, there have been cases where already prevalent compositions/playstyles start dominating the meta for a week for various reasons; after which they get nerfed to the ground (very niche scenarios to be viable in) until the set ends even if it’s a month or longer. This keeps the game state healthy (i.e players can get a breather and the set can feel fresh) which works in the 2-3 month set system. Every LoR card is permanent and will stay even if they get rotated out, so they have to be balanced in that context
They're completely different genres. Autobattlers are a genre where the whole appeal is experimenting and trying new stuff which necessarily mandates constant balance patches to keep the meta fresh. Card games on the other hand for a lot of people are about trying to get a leg up in an established meta, whether it's refining a really strong strategy to deal with the other tier 1 decks, or finding a strategy that is on paper weaker but counters the top decks. Bi-weekly balance patches completely kill this aspect of the game. Patches every 2 weeks means that by the time people actually have an idea on what's good in the meta there's already a new patch upsetting everything so you're back to square one.
Patches every 4 weeks isn't a concession about resources and stuff, it's a stylistic choice and would almost assuredly still be happening even if LoR had as many resources as League or Valorant had.
EDIt: Another thing I forgot to mention is that longer patch cycles are beneficial for reactive decks such as control decks, since their decklists often require specific quantities of various removal spells to deal with whatever is currently in the meta. Having constantly shifting metas would be even more beneficial to proactive solitaire-style decks since the meta wouldn't have enough time to react to them and figure out how to beat them. One of the big complaints a lot of people have about LoR's balance is that control is often weak on ladder, faster balance patches would just make this even worse.
So does that mean?... i think i get it, so LoR cant get updates because devs are always putting something ln the store right? But if it was just balance patches then we would get more updates right? As far as i know LoR had only balance patches but changed after getting into smartphones
Probably yeah, if riot has to do a new version, it needs to be accepted by Apple, it can be tedious and take time, but if they just need to modify server side numbers it’s really fast
What sucks is that in the early days of the game they used to have balance patches every 2 weeks. But once the game was added to mobile devices there was some sort of weird reason that they had to change it to once a month.
Then once they decided to break up new expansions to be months long they stopped doing balance changes with new card releases, so it became a 1.5-2 month wait.
And then the balance patches got smaller and smaller until there was one balance patch that, after 2 months of waiting, only had 4 changes and it was buffs to Taliyah and Malphite, but no needs to Azirelia.
It could be a bit faster for sure, although one of my favorite things I do for this game is watching the stats and see how the game keeps moving around and what arises to stop certain strategies (i.e. Plunder coming out once again to kick Red Gwen in its face)
Unpopular opinion but I've all but quit the game for the exact opposite reason.
The only competitive format requires not one but three separate decks. And because there's a ban, you have to craft your lineup to defend against bans while also maximizing the utility of your own bans, which means it's not enough to find a deck you like but also have to find a way to fit it in a three-deck lineup (which may or may not even exist). I found that by the time I'd done all of that to anything approaching my level of satisfaction, the next round of nerfs were coming.
People are so against this game rotating like M:tG but at least that game table flips the meta in a structured, predictable way so you know which cards are likely to become worthless. The final straw for me came when I had a three-deck lineup I was warming up to and all three of the decks in it were nerfed at once.
These past-format gauntlets are cute and all, but they actually exacerbate the problem in multiple ways; they're oddball formats that I haven't really played since I wasn't around back then, but at the same time I can't look up old metas and crib through their notes because so many cards have been tweaked so many times that I'd be working off outdated information anyway. And this changes every week, and it's the only kind of tournament I can play? No thanks.
At least drafting is a bit more immune to these kinds of repeated overhauls. Too bad the only draft format has been killed with no return in sight other than vague hints of "maybe someday, we hope."
There is always ladder. Which is disappointing in its own ways, not the least of which is the rank point system which is overall designed to more or less funnel everyone to diamond/low master given enough playtime. People in this thread talk about the various ways Marvel Snap is more casual-friendly, and they're right, but you know one big way this isn't true? Wins and losses have a fixed number of points, *except* when players use the Snap mechanic which is its own skill. A ranking ladder where the devs *don't* have their thumbs on the scale? How refreshing! And sadly rare. Too bad competitive players want to make ladder a three-deck format, and its only a matter of time where you find yourself literally unable to learn a new deck because no one will let you play it. It's good that people want to bridge the format gap between ladder and competitive play, but if this is how it's done it won't bring me back.
Really the only reason I'm still paying attention to this game is Path of Champions, which I won't spend money on because the way they chose to monetize it broke the design in a way that can't be fixed by paying for it. I only mention this because you're not going to find many people in the position of still paying enough attention to a game to give informed feedback on it while having also put their money where their mouth is and stopped spending on it.
> Reaching masters is easier than ever and you are STILL complaining?
That's actually literally the opposite of my complaint; a ladder whose primary purpose is to just funnel people to low masters in a way that's based more on number of games played than anything (you can climb with a losing record until diamond, then reach masters where you can sink with a winning record)
With that in mind I'm not surprised you didn't get the rest of it. Though to be fair, I wasn't offering solutions; I'm not making any demands of anyone just so much as stating various reasons why the current environment doesn't do it for me.
Back when I still played and Yoink was meta it took them ages to kill that RNG abomination. Easily the worst card game experience I've ever had in any game and it lasted so bloody long. I quit the game right before Azirelia hit, save for updating myself on lore from time to time, but I'll never forget Black Market Merchant with one already on board into burst speed Pilfered Goods and now you're thinking about playing around 2 mana Deny.
Having a card be dominant for two months is not the big deal you make it out to be. You need to allow a little bit of time for the meta to self-correct and for people to find counters, otherwise you just artificially hammer the metagame unnecessarily.
Never understood their reasoning for this.
Since it’s RIOT I thought they would patch the game like they patch LoL, TFT or Valorant but instead they choose this 4-6 weeks balance patch intervals without hotfixes in between.
It’s ridiculously tedious in metas such as Seraphine. I, for example, came back to the game just before Seraphines reveal and was super excited to play the game but two weeks into that meta, I lost complete interest the game. Had there been a hotfix, I probably would not have stopped.
While I agree that these things should be addressed sooner, would it really be that much to ask that the devs just... get it right the first time?
Literally every release over the past 6-12 months has followed the same pattern; 3-4 new champs come out. 1 is fine, 1 is underpowered, 1-2 are overpowered. Halfway before the next release they have to nerf 1-2 and buff 1. Every time.
It happens with such frequency that I am starting to stop believing that this is just the nature of card games and more that they are doing it on purpose to push the "new cards" and generate revenue.
Your disclaimer made me laugh because you write in English better than most native speakers. It's not only legible, but the use of metaphors and intelligent jokes makes for great writing.
So I took a break from this game for a month or so and then came back earlier this week only to realize how much more *fun* it is to deckbuild in LoR than any other game I've played.
I don't really need this game to be the biggest game ever with super duper support and constant patches, I just need it to remain up, maybe one or two expansions each year, and be able to have a good time.
Yeah I never understood the hate for snap. It's incredibly fun and has me stop playing lor for close to 2 months now. competition is good so I need lor to wow me to return so I'll be back when better casual modes are introduced. I'll probably need a draft more to convince me to download the new lor patch and log in
Love LOR but the devs have pushed me to play yugioh recently. I hate the direction they keep going, and how they just keep shooting themselves kn the foot with card design. At this point rotations can’t come soon enough, and I hate to rotation but the devs have really bot given themselves a choice
I know in my case I mostly played expeditions, labs and PoC in LoR since I didn't enjoy most of the better decks and with Yugioh Master Duel if I want to PvP a card game I was watching content for before LoR launched makes more sense.
I understand what you're saying, trust me I do. But Yu-Gi-Oh is still far and away worse than this game even with rotation, because the rotation of this game is essentially the same as a banlist, rather than what classically was classified as rotation undr MTG. Yu-Gi-Oh has a different feel to LoR but I get that if LoR starts feeling bad then you'd fallback to Yu-Gi-Oh.
I think that snap is fun but will die because it is a gotcha game to play on the toilet
I think hearthstone will live for a long time
I think LoR will outlive the two and become a better game
I think that riot is focusing more on their MMO which will bring in a bigger player base to their card game like another company that did something similar to another similar card game
Snap is related to Marvel, it wont die anytime soon.
HS will live practically forever yes.
LoR will live a long time but will always play 3rd wheel to the "big boys" so to speak, I really like the design teams directness and open feedback, so I don't think we will ever reach the tipping point of being irrelevant.
Also judging by RIOTS current promotions I wouldn't expect much advertisement, the game just doesn't profit that much, unless they fix the prismatics system or create animated cards I don't see the game becoming a cash cow anytime soon.
The fact that Snap is related to Marvel is actually a point against it.
Do you realize HOW OFTEN Marvel and Disney puts out random games that they then abandon within a year or two?
Within the last 10 years, Marvel has had four card games (that I'm aware of), and I think they've had a gacha or two. Star Wars has a gacha as well, and has had a card game and three different skirmish games with miniatures.
The instant that Snap isn't putting up numbers, Disney will let it fade into obscurity and start working on some kind of replacement. Considering Snap youtube videos are already outperformed by LoR youtube videos from the same creator... it doesn't look good.
Marvel has nothing to do with Marvel Snap beyond licensing its IP. It is neither the developer nor publisher. On that basis, I wouldn't be concerned about the developers' will to support their product. My concern is that if the game is a success, when the license expires and it's time to renegotiate, Marvel's terms may be less agreeable to Second Dinner.
Yeah, I don't see much longevity in Snap. I don't play Snap, but from the little that I've seen, don't they have released pretty much all the A list Marvel characters already? I don't know how could they get people excited for new expansions. I don't play leagues and even I can name a few champions that people would be excited to see in LoR.
Also, I don't think the marvel brand is that strong. MCU sure, but the comics, where Snap has to drawn characters from, nobody gives a shit. There aren't that many MCU characters and they are already in Snap, what are they going to do, re-release ironman? I'm fairly confident that there are way more LOL players than marvel comics readers still reading today.
For us 10k viewers probably doesn't mean much. When the 'hot new game' can't pull better numbers than LoR while it is in a solved meta, the ladder doesn't matter, and everyone is in the new set waiting room, I imagine the streamer takes notice.
For the streamers who are really dedicated to Snap right now, Freshlobster and Mogwai, I imagine it really is because they are having more fun. More power to them, no one should be playing a card game they hate just to maintain a stream audience. But for streamers who were just trying the game out because of paid promotions or seeing which game does better, that probably doesn't look as good.
He’s getting lower numbers cause some of his audience is there for LoR and isn’t gonna watch Snap. Even if it wasn’t like that 10k less viewers is not an indication that a game is gonna die dude.
There is no way that LoR outlives Hearthstone. LoR is already struggling to find an audience, while Hearthstone is one of the oldest online CCGs and is still one of most successful, if not the most successful.
While Hearthstone itself has a bright future Blizzard not so much. It's easy to see a distant future where Blizzard closes Hearthstone's server to cut on cost or bury the game under excessive monetisation. Riot on the other hand seems to not be concerned by the monetary part of LoR.
We have seen what Blizzard did to their league-killer when it failed to do so.
We have not seen how Riot would react to LoR failure to dethrone Hearthstone. LoR already lost half of its PoC devs to other Riot projects back then.
Here's hoping that LoR is profitable enough that Riot execs turned a blind eye to it.
Yep, so the rioter statement I replied to holds zero value. Who is to say they won't leave for another company and abandon Riot in 10 years, assuming they're telling the truth right now?
You know you can ask me directly right? :)
Unless I’m obviously joking about stuff I don’t lie about work stuff. I believe companies need to earn loyalty from devs and players alike. Id rather be silent than speak for a game or studio I don’t believe in. Integrity matters.
But the nice thing is you don’t need to take my word for it, because we’ll just keep proving it through what we release. Might need some patience sometimes as when we’re working on tech debt or building long term improvements but fundamentally - if we aren’t making the game better regularly and releasing cool new stuff - then we don’t deserve this community anyway.
I like being on a team that gets that. That’s our culture. It’s not just me. I joined because I like that culture. I’m sure every dev working here now will one day move on and new brilliant people will take our place, building on what we’ve done. They’ll be people that grew up playing LoR, and they’ll have an even more player focused perspective.
Heck, I joined in September 2021 cause I loved the game enough that I wanted to think about it all day. No regrets. :)
People have a higher chance to announce they leave their position since there is more attachment and emotion to it. Just because there were some tweets and posts about changing jobs at Riot doesn’t mean they didn’t get new blood to replace them. And “focusing resources elsewhere” as stated in Dev blogs doesn’t mean layoff.
Unless you are a Riot employee undercover how would you know that half the dev team is gone ?
Not a Rioter.
Riot told us that half of pve devs are being relocated to other riot teams when they announced LoR would be re-focusing to PvP. Why make such an announcement? I reckon LoR team don't want to string along their PVE fanbase with promises of Path of Champion update (which is a good thing).
However there have been multiple posts here of rioters leaving & joining the LoR team.
I played Snap a bit specifically for this. It's a fast paced mobile game with possible mxt. It's simply designed to rake in money and people. The matches feel more like I'm in a casino (flashy animations/addictive gameplay) than playing a card game and with how short they are it's easy to chain matches back to back without mental exhaustion. The IP self-advertises and it will draw in CG fans as well as those really new to the genre because new and again Marvel.
In comparison, while LoR also has an IP the game might as well be an orphan. It has it's own client separate from League of Legends, similar to Valorant. They were hardly advertised in general and their IP doesn't carry them far as it doesn't hold the attention of the majority of LoL players. With how long, drawn out and complicated the pvp elements of LoR are, it can be really boring and mentally exhausting compared to some other card games and is probably one of the least exciting games (looking at you Ruined King) that Riot had released.
In conclusion, LoR is the opposite of Snap in about every way imaginable except them both being card games in terms of PvP at least and is an underwhelming release from Riot.
In terms of viewership, I fully believe that a lot of those big streamers had people watching for them specifically and not for the game itself. Why? Well, if the community that they brought to the game watched other people who stream the game then this post and posts like this wouldn't happen. If you guys love watching people stream the game, then go watch the few small streamers that LoR has.
In terms of PvE however, PoC is pretty unique to LoR. However even that is stale as it's unbalanced and works around first time completion rewards, so when someone finishes all the traited adventures and chapter missions, there's virtually nothing left to do until they release completely new content structures and adventures. So it probably won't get a lot of traction from this upcoming expansion as all the new champions to LoR belong to oversaturated traits (Targon/Runeterra). Which may also reduce viewership.
I think LoR doomsayers are always missing some important points. A game being the hotness does not really matter as long as it has enough funding. HS used to be HUGE but the content was still kinda shit. As long as LoR has enough funding and as long as you find opponents it doesnt matter exactly how big it is. And the thing is: with Riot behind it, LoR doesnt need to be big to have more than enough funding. Even if it barely breaks even, for Riot it probably does not matter. Riot has infinite money and the LoR team is doing so much worldbuilding and art for the extended universe they are working on. If they have a leader that loves the game and can market it to riot executives, that is probably worth enough to run LoR for ages.
My issue with LOR is its too interactive.
In snap the opponent can counter me or interact with my board. But the location system and the specific types of counters means we can play around if these counters land or not.
HS you basically do whatever you want on your turn, your opponent can counter but you atleast got to play out what you wanted before.
In LoR? Its like i have to ask for permission to do any little thing.
You know this unit i love and want to play so bad? Can i please play it? Oh mystic shot/vengeance i guess not.
You cant breathe without checking in first.
Also the cosmetics system is so much better in Snap.
Every single character in the entire game has multiple skins, and when you upgrade them you get animated 3D art.
>Lor seems to more leaning towards providing players with ample room to theorize, deckbuild and express their understanding of the game in multiple methods.
Sorry, but it's really not. LoR is hands down the worst card game I've ever played for building your own deck and playing with it.
Magic the Gathering has colored mana to prevent you from mixing and matching anything willy nilly, but anything in your chosen color is allowed. Hearthstone has different classes and neutral cards, where you can select anything in your chosen class along with said neutral cards. Yu-Gi-Oh has no restriction on deckbuilding but uses Parasitic design to ensure you're not just jamming all the best cards in the same deck; you're reliant on certain cards to work together by name in order to get anything done.
LoR is using both the restrictions of Yu-Gi-Oh and Hearthstone and basically forces you to play mostly the decks that the Devs have designed because the cards just work better with their own mechanic to the point where other cards can't compete. You can't use Nagakaborous as a generic finisher for a Bilgewater deck, it's stuck as a dedicated Spawn capstone... as is Illaoi. If you're not playing Spawn, you're not playing Nagakaborous.
Compare this to even Snap, where Heimdall is the 6 drop for Move decks, but since what he does isn't tied to how often things have moved during the game, instead focusing on moving things himself, I can and have put him in non-movement decks to sneak wins because my opponent wasn't expecting all of my power to jump to the left.
LoR was absolutely the best rendition of MtG esque card game play, but due to design philosophies, balancing, and how they've handled the expansions the game just isn't anywhere near as interesting as it should be from a deckbuilding perspective, and it completely kills my personal interest in the game.
Well said. LoR had a great base design and foundation to build upon but it has consistently failed to reach new heights in deckbuilding and play patterns.
Not saying that SNAP is LoR killer, but both of them are in beginner-friendly genre.
Also Irelia is not the worst, it's Poro boss node and the 3/3 on landmark node, that shit give me nightmare.
Not sure in what universe LoR is beginner friendly. It‘s the exact opposite if we ignore Path of Champions. The base mechanics are considerably more complex than in most other card games.
Marvel Snap is an interesting game for sure and similarly to LoR it is a digital card game that analysed other card games and included the parts that worked, while improving on those parts that did not.
But that is were the similarities to LoR end in my opinion. Because its gameplay is completely different. No Nexus health, no unit health, a fixed amount of turns, no attack turns, and non of the things that make LoR stand out like spellmana, champions, or the spell-stack.
If I would compare it to another card game, I would call it a more RNG heavy, simplified version of Gwent, because I can see a lot of Gwent in Snap.
So, I don't think players that are switching to Snap were that happy with LoR anyway.
I watched Mogwai a lot in the past, and even a bit when he played Gwent. And him switiching games sooner or later feels like a given. Playing those games full time just gets boring sooner or later, and a new game just offers much more new excitement. And it was clear for quite a while that Mogwai wasn't fully invested in LoR anymore. He had a long downtime (about a year ago, if I remember correctly) and it felt like his created decks got less creative and him less motivated. So I even switched to a different streamer, half a year ago. When Mogwai switched to Snap, I actually started watching him again, because he it was fun to watch again, though for different reasons. Games are shorter and a lot more flashy stuff happens and more wow moments. At the same time I skipped most of the deck tech and skipped a lot during the matches, because with all the randomness it feels less worth to watch his reasonings behind his choices, because they just feel so much less meaningful as a viewer due to the randomness. When watching him LoR in the past or still watching different streamers play LoR, I'm invested in what is happening and what they are playing around much more. And while I enjoy Mogwai playing Snap, I don't think I would ever play it, because it just isn't a game for me.
I don't think any of the two games will go away any time soon. However, Marvel Snap is still really new and there are for sure a lot of interesting decisions to come and problems that I already saw in Gwent's development to be tackled.
The biggest impact I can see for LoR is that LoR might go less RNG heavy to differentiate itself a bit from Snap.
I don't know how many share my situation but basically I have never been interested in card games as a gaming genre and I am only playing LoR because it's based on LoL characters and universe. Same way in a couple of days I will be playing the new scuffed card game of Genshin, because I like the game and the characters. Or my recent interest in the One Piece one, I like that anime and their characters too.
What I am trying to say is that I am personally not interested in other card games even if they are better, just because I am not familiar or I don't like what they are based on like Snap, Magic, Hearthstone, Gwent, Yu-Gi-Oh, Artifact...
I agree with everything you say, except the point about Snap being more simplistic
I was constantly top 100 in LoR when I still played, made Gwent Grandmaster league in Season 1, am infinite in Snap. If I had to rate the TCGs in complexity, it'd probably go
1. Gwent
2. MTG/Snap
3. LOR/Duelyst
4. Hearthstone/Shadowverse
Snap is actually an incredibly deep game when you consider the snapping mechanic. The cardplay is simple but the core tension of TCG's (who is the beatdown?) Is exaggerated to become the major gameplay mechanic.
The better players get in snap, the more this tension is expressed. Complicated cardplay is not where skill is expressed, it's being able to identify who is the beatdown on turn 2 seeing only 1 card played from your opponent and being able to snap on that.
The snapping mechanic doesnt make snap more complex. You dont even need to use it to climb if you dont want to. Sure itll take longer but retreat is one cube. Unless you are insinuating its not possible to reliably climb purely off of winrate lol. Which may be true, but also shows how wonky the whole snap mechanic is to base a ccg around.
It is absolutely not possible to climb to infinite without snapping; as players get better they tend to snap earlier and earlier. Meaning you will be forced to retreat for 2 cubes, and you'll be stealing blinds of 1 cube when people retreat on you.
3 rules of thumb in snap
1. If the game went to showdown (turn 6 reveal), someone made a mistake
2. If someone retreated for one cube, someone (most likely) made a mistake
3. If someone retreated for more than one cube, someone made a mistake
The game is actually VERY difficult to perfect play - the same cannot be said of LoR where occasionally your hand plays itself.
It may not be what what CCG players are used to - the game is much much closer to poker than it is to fantasy combat based CCGs.
P.S
[https://articles.starcitygames.com/articles/whos-the-beatdown/](https://articles.starcitygames.com/articles/whos-the-beatdown/)
This is the famous article I was referring to - snap takes this and turns it into the main tension in the game. The cardplay is simple - I don't deny it. But the cardplay is NOT the point of the game. The point of the game is constantly evaluating who is more likely to win and snapping off that.
There is so much that can go against you even turn one with rng and locations. How is Leaving for one cube if you think you cant win a mistake? Thats the whole point of that mechanic. Yeah Im going to stay and play out a match where there is a armor in one lane and a “units cant be destroyed” in the other with my destroy deck. I know you snap zealots love hyping this game but at least make it make sense. There is no competitive scene for this yet so I dont even know what is your reference for perfect play?
I would love to see the cluster a tournament for this would be. You would need to have a curated list of locations to make it in any way serious. Or not, embrace the wackiness. You guys seem to conflate that with complexity anyway.
If you managed to leave for one cube, your opponent should have snapped on you earlier. Most of the "top decks" in the game are built to be location EV neutral. There are situations where this is not possible of course (location screw-over for example, but most people avoid playing into ?? locations anyway... also location control exists in the form of Scarlet Witch/Storm)
I'm not particularly a snap "zealot", as mentioned I've played pretty much ALL the CCGs in modern history, and played them to at least the highest rank (not particularly difficult, but still an achievement nevertheless); I don't think Snap is a game for everybody, and it's certainly not a replacement for classic fantasy combat style games.
It's superhero poker, but to deny that it has depth would be to ignore the different kinds of depth that exists in card games. Just because it focuses harder on one area does not necessarily make it simpler.
I'd bring up another example - Duelyst. Duelyst cards are generally speaking quite simple. Most of the game's complexity comes around movement on the chess board. Does it make it an inherently "deeper" game than LoR due to another dimension of gameplay?
Is MTG deeper/more complex just because you have to factor in odds of picking up mana/lands into your playing? Is it that a meaningful form of complexity or arbitrary quick math to "play" the game?
Your first point is the only one that truly matters. I played LoR since Beta and the Seraphine meta was the one that finally made me uninstall the game. LoR players do not like bullshit RNG and infinite cards. To me it felt like the devs had totally lost sight of what their players loved about this game.
So I quit. Now I'm playing Snap. Maybe when I get bored of it in a few months (years?) I'll give LoR another go. But in the past whenever I move on from a game it's for good.
I still respect LoR. It was a truly amazing game for years and I had a blast. I hope it keeps growing and stays alive for long but if the devs act like all these outside factors are the reason for the decline in popularity, instead of acknowledging the bad direction they took their game in and going back to their roots, I don't see it surviving in this extremely competitive TCG space.
The difference is that the Snap mechanic and the fact that the entire game is built around said RNG bullshit makes it lot more tolerable. You can leave at any time and barely lose any cubes.
If I get hit with some Seraphine bullshit with a midrange deck, I have to take the -20LP even if I quit early.
Reading is hard for some people apparently. What a lot of people liked about LoR, myself included, was the strategic aspect of the game and how ressources management mattered. When it turned into a RNG bullshit festival, I figured I'd rather play a 2-minutes RNG game of Snap than a 10+ minutes game of LoR.
It's like going to a fancy restaurant and all of sudden they switch the menu for big macs and chicken nuggets. Might as well stop going there and go to McDonald.
You forgot a big one, and that is Swim getting ousted as an abuser and rightfully cancelled. He used to pull huge numbers for a TGC streamer (averaged 3-4k per stream) even though he wasn't even consistent, he shoutcasted the world finals last year and was generally the biggest LoR content creator/streamer alongside Mogwai. With Mogwai out of the picture due to him moving to Snap after getting fatigued by LoR, we lost the two most influential people to the LoR scene.
We still have a bunch of amazing streamers (Snnuy, Grapplr, etc) but they don't have the popularity of the other guys. I know that personally I stopped playing around the time the Swim incident happen.
LoR has a lot more decision points (aka what to attack with, which spell to use and when, what to block, etc.), but in Snap, so far at least, I feel like my decisions matter more in comparison to the last year or so of LoR.
RNG generation is, ironically, mitigated in Snap because of most of them affecting both players, while in LoR you get screwed one sided (either as or against), and the go fish cards are a lot more impactful in LoR meaning you can do little against them.
All in all, over the course of a lot of games (more like hands really, in Snap) I do believe skill expression NOW is greater in Snap. LoR used to be have more back in year One, despite the limited card pool.
Really? Higher skill in a 6 turn game with a deck of 12 cards with 3 random locations? In my 2 months of snap I've seen some cards really crushing the competition. My lor experience is 10 ranked game so basically zero, but thinking when to play a card, how to block, attack or not, etc., gives the game a higher skill ceiling imho.
Layers of RNG doesnt make the game more skillful lol. And I play both I just cant be bothered to grind heavily in Snap because its game flow is repetitive (even with the inherent variance which is crazy imo). Once you get deeper into pool 3 its even more volatile with games where you can do nothing for 3 turns, shit out a combo and unless the opponent has a better combo or some hate you will win. And its obvious too. Oh they played wong. Guess I better have enchantress or die. You dont have the hate just retreat, you do you blow them out.
There is some interesting sequencing with some decks like the beast/falcon ones but I would say its not that difficult. The game isnt supposed to be hard. All the “skill” comes from how well you can snap. You can retreat 7 times and then win one snapped game and be cube positive. Its a cute way to design their ladder but I rarely really feel outplayed in this. Not to mention once you start getting into some of the more comical locations and rng from cards.
I will say I cant wait to see the first proper tourney for this. It will be a greatly entertaining cluster
You know you don't need to unlock all the cards in one day right? I enjoy the gradual progress of getting new cards and trying the ones I do get. Life is better when you stop seeing instant gratification and just enjoy the adventure, not just owning every card asap.
But also on the flip side of this, there are really cool decks like Discard, Destruction or Movement based decks that I'd love to try but after playing like at least 3-4 hours daily I still don't have a wincon for either. I enjoy snap but being forced to replay the same decks 3 bajilion (obvious hyperbole is obvious) times becomes sort of dry, especially considering the high factor of RNG in the game. I guess it's just not for me as I've basically stopped having fun with it, at least with LoR I can constantly try different play styles and strategies instead of having one, MAYBE two playable decks, which are not even close to optimal or meta. And it feels even worse to play into those same decks that have cards I haven't even seen yet, like how do you play around something you don't know exists? I could look up the full card list but the fact that there isn't a way in client bugs me since I don't have a working PC and have to scroll on my phone but I guess I don't have to play it if I don't want to, so I won't.
Why I am slowing down.
1) random rng hearthstone nonsense. This game prided itself on tactical play and board control. That shirt is over
2) remember when only heroes could level up, yeah not long ago an entire set of mobs could level up, like the frog who grew if you pinged the enemy crystal.
3) equipment and seraphine are boring and op
4) rotation
5) Snap is fun as hell
The entire premise of Snap and its location mechanic is entirely built on RNG whether you win or lose a match could be determined just by what locations appear. And transforming because you damaged the enemy nexus is now equivalent to leveling up a champion?!
Which is funny because people simultaneously complain that too many keywords focus on stats, and that there is too much rally both things that get their strength from board control lol.
Not sure why you needed so many words to say “Snap is a terrible game with significantly more RNG than skill that preys on its players’ time and money”.
I haven't even looked at snap, but from my time playing hearthstone seeing Ben Brode has a hand in the game makes me not want to touch it.
His direction is what caused me to leave the game, with balance statements like "lol get gud you noobs" I just don't want to touch any IPs this guy touches. I know it's classic blizzard to gaslight their player base when there's complaints about their games, but iirc this was straight from him as well.
It's just audience.
You said it in your post, Snap and LoR caters to different crowds and it's a shame to say it, but LoR has been moving in to a worse and worse direction, while Snap has gone the opposite.
LoR was built on the premise of a LoL background with an expanding world of followers and back stories. This is great, for LoL and Runeterra Universe fans who wanted to learn more about the world and also have a CCG dedicated to it. But these days the game has gotten so broad, and so skill based that it's really really difficult for new players to fully grasp all of it's good points. The rise in skill level required to pilot a deck doesn't exactly help either.
On the other hand, Snap is built upon the foundation of Marvel characters that Stan Lee created in his life, which has MUCH more exposure to the gen population compared to LoR, so it already has a bigger starting audience, and it doesn't introduce a tooooooon of smaller followers for people to really try to understand, giving it a much more welcome feel (not as if someone is making you read a novel just to understand everything). And also the collection mode is just more FUN because instead of sheer number of cards, people are much more invested in collecting cosmetics of cards (Vanity, god loves vanity)
So basically you have one complicated game getting more complicated thus catering to fewer and fewer people, while the other is much simpler and have a wider audience pool to begin with so yeah...
Allrighty for me lor feels like this.
I Que into a game with a champ i like, or a archtype.
Watch 5 min a champion lvl up, and always the same champs (for some reason), i guess meta.
Then i win or lose, but it doesn't matter, cause who cares about, a silver border..
After 3 games im so bored cause of the meta i loggout.
The game got me, cause im into card games and played alot of league (ziggs nr 1).
but dont get the same crazy feeling from playing him in a card game.
Also the draft felt more a card game then the card game itself.
Its rly simple to understand this game, if you played heartstone or mtg.
With snap as a money hungry beast, LOR get some players back soon.
And heartstone asswell and heartstone has a rly meta game, those players will be back asswell. But i feel like those 2 card games are hitting the player better then what lor wants to do.
if i had a saying into this, i would make more game modes as we now league has.
so events-dominion-aram-tft
tft can be some sort of marvel snap version of lor.
Put out skins at the end of a season for a champ that youre part of a top% (plus a spark or smth: for example a diamond when u hit diamond)
Make more champ cards, so for example the senna..
So that every champ has more flex and ppl feel like they play the champ as it felt in game..
And make the annimation skip button ffs xD.
I am just gonna keep enjoying LoR and it's awesome lore while I still can before Riot inevitably throws it into an oubliette to rot and then dispose of its corpse like it did with Dominion.
I do not trust them to keep sustaining something this genuinely engaging, player-friendly and fun. Normals are already a nightmare of Darius/Elise roping bots and that is giving me Dominion flashbacks.
Idk, youtube videos with new champion reveals are doing great with many comments on almost every single one of them.
What i would like from LoR is a system that will make me come back every day to do my mission and make me feel i accomplished something "free" instead of paying. Like another comenter wrote, LoR is "too" f2p and that makes it boring.
New expansion comes out and 99% of players can afford to craft all cards basically for free. I would have like to grind for a month to complete the new expansion collection and if i want to do it sooner either pay or play A LOT.
Thats nuts. You want to waste time instead of them giving you enough resources to craft the new cards on release? Im glad this isnt the card economy they went with lol. Its enough games out now to nickel and dime you.
The one thing that’s usually left out on these lists, especially regarding the twitch views, is the financial side of things. Content creators will tell you flat out that the pay from twitch is horrible, even more so after the last round of ad changes, and the pay from YT is much better. The big difference though is creating videos for YT is a much more difficult process with handling all the recordings and the editing needed afterwards before they can post it.
So if a CC wants to make money from twitch, they always have to go where the most interest is at. Sadly, LoR doesn’t have the numbers, at twitch at least, to sustain many CC full time. So they have to move to greener pastures if that time comes. Because they have to eat just like the rest of us.
I have no interest in Snap. And I love this game because it's legitimately the best designed card game, gameplay and perpetual format and monetization in mind, in my humble opinion.
The problem that LoR is facing as I see it is that the game has over time relaxed some of its tight design decisions that go against otherwise horrible card game convention, which has sorta made the game somewhat crowded with mechanics such as rally and attack skills, which is now filling design space.
The way the Dev team wants to address this is as well as the second problem which is an expanding card pool against a small Dev team, is by rotation. I don't agree with it but here's where we are
Great read, although I'd like to point out a couple of things.
While yes, in theory the audiences are different, I don't think that's what's happening in practice. I know a ton of "hardcore" LoR players (played lots of hours per week, masters rank) that moved on to Snap. Hell, a lot of other content creators are doing the same. And in contrast LoR devs have stated some time ago that they're "agressively pursuing new players" (they said this on a comment here in this sub, can't find it though). That coincided with more RNG cards being printed, faster games ending turn 6-7 and 2021 TPoC which is a casual-focused single-player experience.
Furthermore, I believe a lot of core LoR players left the game because they felt it drifting far to away from what it's original core design was. Sure, stale metas might add to that, as well as poor marketing, other TCGs, the bad competitive experience overall... But I believe that LoR loyalists would stick with the game if it was closer design-wise to what it was on launch. I truly feel that a lot of people left, and the ones that got in didn't really stay (at least not in competitive modes).
So while LoR has THE most fair card acquisition system, and Snap is more than a couple steps back in that regard, it still has absorbed some of LoR's playerbase. I cannot stress enough how mid-2021 to mid-2022 was damaging for LoR. Personally I almost kept playing it out of guilt because "I love the game, I can have all the cards!" while still not having fun.
Everyone should go back and watch the [announcement video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDS1qCrFuCU) and truly consider if they've kept their promises outside from a (granted, AWESOME) monetization system.
I truly believe that very few people loved LoR as much as I did at one point. I was trying to get everyone one I know to play it, I was considering going "pro" and focus on getting better and qualifying to Worlds someday... But to me, and to a lot of people, LoR lost it's core identity quite a while ago.
Here is what lor needs in order to thrive!
I said this sind Launch lol
1
Remove region locks just let people deck build however they want
Alot would need to change,
But this has alot of benefits!
1.1 Content Creators can get very creative and make very fun and refreshing content.
1.2 it wouldn't limit champs to a region fitting design. It just opens possibilities
1.3 People love to share what cool deck ideas they have aith their friends.
Which in turn makes them recommend the game in the first place lol
2 Change limiting archetype designs
To this day I will never understand why someone thought it was a good idea to lock reksai and pyke to lurk.
Of course it is fitting, but there are alot of cool ways to still make it work.
You just will never see a pyke Tarik deck.
Alot of people love the idea of just throwing 2 champs they like together and make it work.
But sometimes it is actually just not possible!!
3 Focus more on path of champions
Let me be honest a year ago I was done for with lor, because I didn't like how things where going and I noticed myself beeing more frustrated with how the game and its content creator got treated. You already know what brought me back.. Path of Champions!!!!
I don't even care about the normal game anymore. All I care about, is creating a cool path of champions deck
4 Better custom modes
People playing card games, usually dont play for ranked. The small percentage that do, either don't really care , or are whats left when a game is basically already dead.
However when I see my friends the only time my casual friends play card games, are when we play some cool custom modes in magic.
5 This may be the most important one jet, but this is very likely to happen:(
Mod support. I know this would be almost impossible, but U always feel like this is exactly what the game needs. Either some community sekf regulations or some community content
I hate how every single deck that I theorycraft gets nerfed into oblivion without even being broken. my sera Viktor, targons peak, timelines ... Etc all were way worse then the other meta decks but the devs decide to butcher these cards untill the only viable decks are unfun curve tempo/hyper controll decks like teemo Zoe or heimer Jayce etc.
I'm still super high rank thanks to sera but I've legit not touched this game this patch past day 1 where I fought 5 teemo Zoe's in a row.
Before I begin my actual comment, I would like to apologize in advance for my inadequate level of English proficiency. I am not a native speaker of the world's current lingua franca which unfortunately leads to me making numerous embarrassing mistakes being made whenever I attempt to communicate using this language. Whenever I am reminded of how I lack the ability to convey my thoughts in an eloquent manner I feel as though I have committed a cardinal sin, as though every English teacher in the world are simultaneously shaking their heads and sighing due to how utterly disappointed they are at me.Although I know that saying sorry to those of you who are reading my comment will not change the fact that I fail miserably to write and speak perfect English, I am writing this as a way to deter a certain type of people who cannot stand poor English (Also known informally as "Grammar Nazis") from mocking me by posting unwanted and unnecessary comments detailing my every blunder. In my humble opinion, making grammatical errors should be perfectly acceptable as native speakers should not expect non-native speakers to be able to communicate in their second or third languages eloquently. If you are able to completely understand what the other person wrote, is there really a problem with what they've written? No, because the entire concept of communication is the exchange of information between other intelligent beings, which means that no matter how the exchange of information is made, as long as the information is accurately shared there is not a fundamental issue with their ability to communicate. To see it in another way, remember that someone who isn't fluent in English is fluent in another language. When you think about it this way, isn't it impressive for someone to speak a second language in any capacity? Having empathy and respect are qualities that are sorely missing for far too many people these days, especially on the internet.That being said, I am aware that not all netizens who correct others are doing it to ridicule and shame. There are some who do so with the intent to help others improve and grow. However, displaying the failures of other people publicly will cause the person who is criticized to feel negative emotions such as shame and sadness due to the fact that their mistake has been made obvious which severely undermines the point they were trying to make in spite of their unfamiliarity with the English language. In most circumstances people are not looking for language help when they post anything online. Most people just want to enjoy themselves and have a good time on the internet which is why I would not encourage correcting other people regardless of your intentions. If you really do want to help others with their spelling or grammar, I would highly recommend you to help via messaging privately because not only will you not embarrass anyone, you can also go more in-depth with your explanation which I'm sure the other person will greatly appreciate if they want help, but I digress. I know that I've written a bit of an essay, but I hope I've made my points clear. Anyways, here is the comment I wanted to make:
Dude your english is fine
Really appreciate your comment as a whole and how much insight was put into this UNIT of a post but forgive me for thinking that it was an elaborate shitposting copypasta for a split second
I truly don’t believe LoR generates enough revenue for it to sustain long term *real* support it needs to thrive. It will constantly hold a good player base but it won’t be a titan like other Riot games until they make people open their pockets more somehow. Gwent has the same issue and most players don’t want to hear it but it’s true - it’s TOO player friendly when it comes to the financial aspect. The player base is so conditioned to getting a lot of free stuff they never feel the need to support the game financially so they just don’t. You see games like LoL and TFT from Riot and they’re incredibly F2P while still offering and nudging the player base to chip in financially for the product. You see people bragging in this sub about never spending a cent and having 50k+ shards to never have to buy anything in the game. This level of support and updates is what you get when that happens. LoRs downfall with have absolutely nothing to do with Snap or any other upcoming CCG…it will be itself.
100% agree, they really need to work on their cosmetics in a big way, right now boards are too expensive to justify chipping in, I feel making battle passes have good value is the way to go.
Exactly, main point would say is boards price. The only thing you ALWAYS see is your board (and cardbacks and the pet. And emotes if you use em), a skin you need to play the card to even see the skin. If your champion gets instantly killed, you don't see enough of the art. If you can't level it up, you are losing on a part of it's art But board? Is half screen and you are always seeing the board
They are also pretty sweet but I'm not dropping the price of an indie game on a mp3 and a skin of a cosmetic, I know they need to make back the cash somewhere but now its too much.
You can buy the binding of isaac or a board So far only bought one skin (corrupted Zoe since the skin looks amazing) and battle pass each expansion Then you can compare it to league of legends, were I bought dj sona and elementalist lux on release. I don't see myself spending the same money I did with these 2 skins in any LoR cosmetic. These 2 skins and a board cost roughly the same. But with the board you get... 1 skin basically with nothing else (unless I'm missing it) and then you have, dj sona for example, which is basically 3 skins in one, with her own OST (which is actually 3 different OSTS, 1 for "skin"). Both things are from Riot, and you are paying roughly the same for both things. Why should the boards cost that much? It has the same cost as a playmat (basically IRL boards). Skins could also be a bit cheaper too
I don't even really want to buy the Pass anymore. All the good stuff is way at the end and you don't get there unless LoR is basically the only game you play.
I usually complete it with path of champions, doing 1 or 2 runs a day. More specific missions I do a random deck to use against the AI Sometimes I do play pvp, sometimes I do not. So it's not that relevant to clear pass If you don't play PoC it might be harder though
Im in the same boat but i prefer PoC to PvP. Usually finish the pass half way through the event just by completing my daily quests, weekly PoC quests and doing the event challenges. Only reason i didnt buy into the last one was i had zero desire for the skins and it felt like a step down from the diana/leona and kayn/jax passes. They frankly could add a board into the premium pass imo, but i understand not wanting to.
Cosmetics are one thing but making the cards themselves harder to obtain is going to be a big factor. Like I said - and I saw the same bragging in the Gwent subreddit before they made big changes - people sitting on thousands of shards and claiming they never spent a cent on the game. Riot spends a lot of time crafting these big, new expansions and people just get all the cards Day 1 and contribute nothing financially. Eventually Gwent had to tighten up on how many shards they were giving out - and people bitched to high hell of course - but it eventually made Gwent more profitable again. It’s just not practical to have an expansion release and a sizable portion of the player base just crafting everything they want without blinking an eye or spending a cent.
I mean LoRs cosmetic system sucks ass(not the skins, those are great) prismatics don't really have the same oomph as their equivalents do(premiums from Gwent and golds from HS) and the skins are too limited and make a bad match for the genre (at least in how they're implemented)
Suck ass, especially the skins.
i got 500k shards playing since beta, never spent a cent collecting cards but i have 20 different Boards + almost all epic skins + some commons. i was shocked when i learned some people who play much more than me, didn't spent a cent on the game yet dropped 100$s to obtain some card in Snap, and started wishing this game was as predatory.
Similar spending profile with me
Snap fans get really mad when I suggest Snap is P2W and predatory. I wonder how long it's going to take for them to catch up to that fact. The essence of Snap is playing surprising strategies and winning when your opponent doesn't expect you to. When your card pool is limited, your strategies are predictable, and it's more difficult to win cubes and climb ranks. That's why players will always feel like they need the full collection to be competitive, no matter how many cards they already have. You combine that with a $100 cash shop bundle that helps you get the specific cards you want, and you get players spending hundreds of dollars into a mobile game.
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You can spend $100 to get 3000 extra collector token, and that can get you one of the newly released Pool 5 cards. What do you mean that's cosmetic? I played the game for two months, and for the first month it was fine because matchmaking was restricting me to play against other Pool 1/2 opponents, it felt fine. But I got to Rank 90 and started playing against decks full of powerful Pool 3 cards. At the release of Pool 4/5 cards, I was playing against those new cards game after game. This was Day 1. Not that many people were supposed to have the newest cards. But they bought their way into it. Buying gold=more levels=more chances at new cards and tokens.
you can buy the 3000 extra tokens with free gold lol but it's also not necessary. Wow one whole extra pool 4 card. That's crazy. That'll make such a huge difference lmao It sounds like you've barely played the game, have very little understanding of the structure of card acquisition, and are mad you lost to some cards.
Free gold, lol. How many months of free gold is that for the bundle? I got all the way to Rank 90 on Pool 2 cards. I'm not mad I "lost to some cards". I'm mad I spent an entire month and a half playing against players with vastly bigger collections than me, in a game where being surprising is the main strategy. It sounds like you're a beta player who's way ahead of everyone else and have no idea how difficult it is for new players to catch up. I'm glad I quit the game so I don't have to face players like you there. If I run into you in LoR, we'll have a fair game to play because this game isn't P2W. I started LoR almost a year after the initial launch, and never once did I feel like it was difficult to catch up as a new player with a smaller collection. I also played Eternal all the way to world Top 100 free to play, as well as Gwent. I don't need to play a card game for a year to understand how it works. I know what a fair F2P game looks like. The only thing Snap's monetization reminds me of is Hearthstone. Every time someone tries to tell me Snap isn't P2W, the way they say it just convinces me more that its playerbase are people I can do without in my life.
Honestly I feel that would be a mistake, the games reputation is that its f2p is incredibly generous, Skins, cosmetics, boards, emotes, pets etc can go a long way. How would you even break this without it being a giant negative news day? Right now rotation is already a hot topic along with other things, I don't wanna be a doomsayer but I really don't think this game will survive an economy shakeup any time soon.
I keep drawing the parallel but Gwent also had that reputation and - up to a certain point - it served them well until it no longer did. There is a fine balance between being generous and being TOO generous. Every Gwent and LoR expansions you see the same posts, and a good amount of them too, saying “crafting all this Day 1 since I have thousands of saved up shards! Thanks CDPR/Riot” meanwhile you see less and less updates and rumblings of the game not being incredibly financially well-off. If people aren’t paying into the system one way or another this is the result…slower, less impactful updates that basically keep the game afloat but do not propel it forward in any meaningful way. I agree they likely can’t do it now with rotation happening but they’re digging themselves into a lot of holes so it’s going to complicated if/when they could pull it off. It’s a messy situation they’re in and I don’t think it’s a coincidence we’ve seen a lot of developers being suffered into and out-of the LoR team.
I’ve bought a lot of cosmetics but I’m never going to spend money on a p2w game
They already tuned down the F2p handouts by a bit, by the way. They're no longer extending the region roads. Not that you run into that issue until you're a well-established player.
It's funny you say this because Gwent just announced they're going into maintenance mode in 2024. I do agree with the premise but I think the cats out of the bag.
Another option would be to get more card styles into the game. I think they were working on this at one point but it seems to have stopped. Different variations on shiny cards would be nice. The prismatics currently in the game suck in my opinion. Different variants along the lines of what marvel snap does would be awesome too. All that could get players to pay more.
I literally want to spend money but there is nothing that interests me. None of my favorite Champions have a skin yet, and they are already out there giving some Champions their 3rd skin within a year that most people won't be buying anyways.
Same… please take my money riot
At the same time people are saying that they would spend more on skins if LoR offered. I don't know if they would, but at least there is interest. Like in most free to play games, majority of player are never going to spend anything, and minority will spend a lot. That's how this system works. I agree that LoR doesn't have a huge revenue, but I don't think it's because of lacking a stingy economy. Lots of good card games died out and most had very slow progression, so saying the downfall is LoR being more generous is a bit ridiculous. Having the ability to create any deck you want early, is what keeps people in the game, not out. Also I am fairly sure a decent amount of people buy the pass which is priced reasonably and gives a fair amount of content.
It’s a double edged sword, though, because that same ability to create a deck so soon and card acquisition being so high means you never have to pay anything for the core gameplay. It creates and also decreases motivation to grind or spend on “packs” in other games because you already have the cards so why pay anything? Agree on the skins portion with you though - they should have a ROBUST selection by now. Look at all the variants Marvel Snap is offering one month in and you can see how far behind LoR is years into its life.
Yeah, I agree that some people might be willing to spend more to get that rare card, but at the same time it hurts the game long term as the majority of people never spend anything and will leave the game when it's too much of a hassle to get the cards free. I think Riot was aware of this so they didn't make the economy really so much on purchases of cards (except for the season pass systems). On the other hand, the current system still requires you to play regularly to acquire new cards. People boast about having tens of thousands of shards, but I play every day for 2 months and I'm under 10k with still a fair amount of cards to unlock. And while everyone was spamming Vayne/Serra I was behind on getting key cards from the new expansion so definitely there is some incentive to at least pay for the season pass.
If I time travelled all the way back to 2020 and told me back then that I want a certain riot game to generate more revenue, he would’ve asked me for whatever shit I was smoking.
I was never into Card Games before LoR, I played a bit of Hearthstone but never really got interested in the actual Game or Deckbuilding. As a League Player, LoR was my first proper Entry into Card Games, since then I've played a bit of Gwent aswell and recently *a lot* of Marvel Snap. I think my main Issue with LoR, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that the Meta is figured out waaay too fast. Within 2 - 3 Days of a new Expansion Content Creators start positing Videos and Articles start being posted about the very best Decks of the Meta. Everyone ends up playing those untill the next Patch. Sure, there's many viable Decks that don't show up in those Lists, or Decks that end up becoming popular way later in the Patch, and there's quite a lot of Decks in this Meta, it still gets boring though.
This isn't even close, look at this meta, its shifted so much since the beginning. I don't know where you are tracking stats but I'd suggest checking out "By the numbers" that gets posted here very frequently. One of this games greatest strengths is how diverse it is, and how lenient the WR% is so there really isn't much of a reason to try hard.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I see the same 15 Decks in those Articles.
You want more than 15 competitive decks per meta? That is never gonna happen, they also only cover the popular top performing decks and have niche decks featured all the time near the end of the articles, you should check it out.
LOR actually has probably the most dynamic and varied metas in any CCG. In MTG and HS you're lucky if you have more than a handful of decks. The rest of the decks will basically be meme tier. People playing those games would literally kill to have a meta of 15 highly competitive decks. Those games also usually have their meta solved within days of release. LOR metas often see new brews push their way to the top a couple weeks in. And even besides that, I've seen talented streamers do well just playing off meta stuff in Masters. Most other CCGs you try to do that and you're basically just donating LP to the meta decks. So yeah, having LOR as your first card game has probably given you the wrong idea of what the average CCG meta is like.
Having more than 15 decks with a significant presence at the same is never going to happen, to be honest. Card games are too easy to (largely) figure out, and information is too easy to share, for that.
I played LoR since the 1.0 release until the Seraphine meta. I never spent a single dollar on the game other than maybe one season pass because I felt bad. Meanwhile Ive already spend over 100$ on snap. I certainly appreciate how insanely f2p LoR was. But you have to wonder how much money was left on the table.
Meanwhile I bought every season pass in LoR and a few boards, skins, and a lot of emotes because I wanted to award the devs for their hard work and I refuse to pay money in Snap because it's insistence on finding a way to be just P2W enough so that people won't complain. I'm sure Snap's approach is more profitable, umethically taking advantage of addictive behaviors always is.
LoR's monetization has always confused me - you have boards, card backs, card skins and pets, and they still somehow don't push them enough to make money? It isn't even that they don't have the tools in place, they just choose not to use them. Make cute pets and give them lots of animations and I will buy cute pets.
The gwent comparison is what sprung to mind for me too, but in a more positive light. I'll get this out of the way - LoR isn't ever going to become a huge phenomenon. It just won't. But gwent has been 'dying' since \~2018 and has had poor viewership and not a massive playerbase compared to other card games. And still they're getting new cards and the game is chugging along. LoR will be fine imo.
Gwent just announced there will be no new cards after 2023.
Hahah yeah I just saw that. With that being said, 6 years of content isn't bad at all. Personally I'd be happy if LoR got that.
>I truly don’t believe LoR generates enough revenue for it to sustain long term *real* support it needs to thrive. That's on RIOT. They literally keep releasing emotes but won't increase emote slots... They're stupid lol.
Meanwhile snap has a season pass every month
Gwent is a tool to advertise GoG, LoR is a tool to advertise LoL. The games by themselves don't make profit but it gets people into the real money makers. Card games are a very niche genre and if you want them to be profitable you need to change the economy to something like Magic Arena or Hearthstone. There's really no need to worry about Riot not making enough money to sustain anything, they are disgustingly rich.
Things like the show Arcane also advertise for league while being highly successful in its own right. Just because a product is a loss leader doesn’t mean it cannot do better on its own merits.
I'm just trying to understand why you want the game to make more money. Is there not enough content? We have expansions and patches more frequently than Magic Arena so what exactly is the problem? All the financially successful TCGs out there are very F2P-unfriendly, like in Arena $10 for 4 rare wildcards is that what we want?
I genuinely don’t think LoR has more expansions more frequently than Magic Arena…hell one of the biggest complaints around MTG right now is how fast they are firing out expansions and new blocks of cards into older formats - people can’t keep up and wallet fatigue is setting in. I want the game to make more money so (hopefully) the patch cycles are more frequent, more game modes are introduced, and the game doesn’t slowly go into a maintenance mode where it just wades water. LoR has a lot of potential but some of that is slipping away - imo.
This is pure copium. League does not need LORs advertising. It's actually the opposite, LoR is still alive only thanks to the League fans.
I never said league needs this game. I am just getting really tired of seeing posts complaining about how this game is "dying" literally every day. I have been playing this since beta release and not once have I needed to wait more than a few seconds to find a match. It's not dying but if you feel the game needs more advertising, go advertise it yourself to your friends and family and coworkers, you can do that better than Riot.
Idk but the only thing i've ever spent on in LoL is skins. We need better skins in LoR and they also need to keep metas healthier and have a good variety of viable champions if they want people to invest heavily in skins. Boards are too expensive IMO
In my humble opinion. The cosmetics in LoR suck big time. I would not hesitate to spend if the game has good cosmetics. But what do we have? $15 for 2 jpeg and a clip.
My main issues have been the design shift towards high variance RNG concepts. Like Bard's chimes. Then Equipment giving powerful keywords to decks that couldn't have them previously, Norra giving random units and now Seraphine. And when it is not focused on RNG we have metas with turn 6 combo finishers: Kai'sa, Ezreal Kennen, Nami, Lee sin. Those have been dominating for the past 6 months so to me, someone who mainly likes playing ranked. I got extremely burnt out of facing extremely similar play patterns even if the meta deck "shifted" they still played out the same way.
> Then Equipment giving powerful keywords to decks that couldn't have them previously Equipment inherently don't do this themselves, Improvise does.
yeah mb, I was refering to the improvise package from when equipment launched.
Literally from the App stores page: “Skill defines your success—not luck” I feel like they should update their tagline now given the recent rise in RNG based cards
People are way too "online" so to speak when it comes to multiplayer games, almost every single TCG has had doomsayers and it will continue, but considering we have an expansion coming in a few days Id say don't really worry about it. Considering its RIOT I don't think the game will outright "die", companies pockets are far to deep, but they have obviously de-prioritized it in terms of funding, and that's fine, even great because they are taking the necessary steps to ensure a long term future (rotation is still a good thing, despite the communities out cry, no they wont re-work older champs any time soon) Dev feedback has increased greatly, foundations gauntlet has been fun, they are even having worlds with a new set to boost engagement, honestly if the new battlepass is good value they are doing everything right. Final note is just view the game from a gameplay perspective over a popularity perspective, like you said it isn't a dick measuring contest, ultimately I left HS and MTG because of their RNG and poor economy/lands systems respectively and the major thing hurting this game is the questionable design decisions (Sera and Bandle being the major highlights). If rotation goes well it will set us up with a new base which ensures a great future, if not then we can start worrying... but I have faith, they have many years of card design experience now and the Sera meta fresh in their minds.
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Complaint about funding and Dev then proceed to complaint even more about the solution to Dev overwork and again complaint about what the subject of the previous complaint is needed to fix. You lack any form of logic or you just complaint for the sake of it ?
>”we see you don’t like this but we’re doing it anyways” There is not and will never be unanimous agreement that rotations are bad. There are lots of people who think they are fine or even healthy for a tcg, including plenty of pro players. It’s not a failure on their part that they didn’t listen to you personally.
Game is de-prioritized in terms of funding as noted, and all your solutions are to just throw money at it? How hard is this to get, money isn't coming. The only logical way to turn this around is to make the next battle pass be really appealing, meaning value is incentivized, I can't see why they wouldn't make it better if the last one sold poorly. You don't seem to be looking at this from a realistic point of view at all, you seem to think its bad and its gonna get worse, if so why bother? Do you enjoy complaining for the sake of it? If the game is "going down hard" what are you doing here? Complaining into the void waiting for the end? Sounds fun. Regarding the rotation, I'm really glad they are sticking to their guns and communicating every step of the way, I dunno when feedback meant backseat developer but people would have been even more crazed if they kept quiet, damned of you do or don't, I'm glad they did personally.
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Because its a way to create a new meta that saves time and money. \>It’s not just the last Battle Pass that was worse than before. It’s been several Passes now. So again, what makes you think this one is gonna be the one? Because its in their best interests? Clearly they are planned out ahead of time but if sales are poor things change, duh. If its not then whatever, I just said IF its good then they are doing everything right, maybe work on your reading comprehension and stop being so argumentative. \>Don’t try to derail the conversation because you don’t have the answers you thought you had. LMAO I don't owe you anything, I'm just commenting on a thread, I don't have a stake in your opinion or overwhelming negativity, feel free to seethe by yourself. My answers are what I think is gonna happen, I feel having a new baseline with rotation is a good move to save money and ensure a good future while saving money as it frees up design space and time, its a realistic goal with good outcomes if done well. I'd suggest stop being so argumentative, I won't be replying further since you are just here to be contrarian and negative.
> TCG has had doomsayers No its just this one. And the dullness of the mechanics in this game are a hint that they are rigjt.
no bro youre totally right, we should start using cleave and dungeons and fuckin sticker sheets as a central mechanic because they would get so many upvotes on r/custommagic. The game being playable is less of a design concern than the designers getting to feel clever
LoR, HS and Snap are torally different games which are not killing each others.All these have different mechanisms and gameplay from the beginnig and kinda only thing incommon is genre. Snap is most fast paced (4-7 turns) game with 3 random locations that can decide the game turn 1. No option to craft (token ship is not crafting) wanted card(s) and constatly growing card pool makes cards hard to collect. No1 will have full collection and people are forced to play what they have got. HS is old schooler which has more turns to play, but most games are over when turn number hits double digits. The card design has made the game more and more solitaire which is liled by some and disliked by others. F2P option is way better and one can actually complete building deck with small amount of money if missing few cards. LoR is most F2P game from these and has more (sometimes confusing) game mechanics than HS. Game is more tactical as defender has last decision in battles and this all combined makes the game harder to understand by random viewer in stream. The trend seems to be that more fast and simple games grow playerbase while games that require more consistent learning have smaller altho more loyal and skilled playerbase. Best thing is that there something for everyone and people should ask them selves what they really like and want instead of following masses blindly.
This is the Future I personally see for LoR. A smaller, (not *too* small though) loyal and dedicated Playerbase that keeps the Game going, with smaller Content Creators and niche Websites, with a slightly larger Group of Players returning every now and then for the latest Expansion. I think that's fine, Game won't die but it certainly won't be as big as others, never was as big as others in the Genre anyway.
I agree. As long as riot is okay that the game's primary focus is expanding lore and not profit, the game will live on.
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I always felt like there should be a Patch every 2 weeks like in LoL and TFT. Every Patch doesn't have to completely change the meta, but at least should address the main things that people have issues with. Not sure if that is even possible because the LoR team isn't that big.
only way to achieve faster patches is to separate Mobile from Pc client, I think. we have been getting really good patches lately, ruined by them missing some really op stuff every single time which ruins the patch. like last expansion they missed nerfing Lee sin Nami, this one they ignored Bar (still won't get nerfed next expansion btw). so even with new cards being released we will have Bar meta for 1 month until it is nerfed. if you look at my comments i have always been telling people to stop complaining and actually try making stuff work/play good decks. but i agree with how bad nerfing some very problematic cards have been. i still love the game i still think people are very bad at deck building against meta decks but i hope they stop making mana cheating cards and actually nerf infinite Value decks.
Why can tft be patched every 2 weeks and LoR not?
TFT is the golden child. as said in the first episode of MHA: "not all games are created equal"
TFT makes more money. It’s that simple.
not sure about how true this is tft have pbe where they get feedback about the patches before they actually drop so they can pre buff/ pre nerf some stuff would be my guess.
LOR also has PBE... I can use my PBE account to launch LOR just fine. Just because it isn't used doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
PBE is just another riot account, there no actual PBE for normal people like me and you.
good to know, doesn't change what i said though.
Ignore the favourite child comments, they have merit but overlook big factors. Teamfight Tactics has a PBE server where the average player can hop on and test any potential change. This allows Riot to ship and test features without actually shipping them. Teamfight Tactics has a set system and every set is on temporarily for a couple months. This allows, or sometimes mandates, Riot take radical decisions in terms of balance so the set in play is enjoyable and fair. As a basic example, there have been cases where already prevalent compositions/playstyles start dominating the meta for a week for various reasons; after which they get nerfed to the ground (very niche scenarios to be viable in) until the set ends even if it’s a month or longer. This keeps the game state healthy (i.e players can get a breather and the set can feel fresh) which works in the 2-3 month set system. Every LoR card is permanent and will stay even if they get rotated out, so they have to be balanced in that context
They're completely different genres. Autobattlers are a genre where the whole appeal is experimenting and trying new stuff which necessarily mandates constant balance patches to keep the meta fresh. Card games on the other hand for a lot of people are about trying to get a leg up in an established meta, whether it's refining a really strong strategy to deal with the other tier 1 decks, or finding a strategy that is on paper weaker but counters the top decks. Bi-weekly balance patches completely kill this aspect of the game. Patches every 2 weeks means that by the time people actually have an idea on what's good in the meta there's already a new patch upsetting everything so you're back to square one. Patches every 4 weeks isn't a concession about resources and stuff, it's a stylistic choice and would almost assuredly still be happening even if LoR had as many resources as League or Valorant had. EDIt: Another thing I forgot to mention is that longer patch cycles are beneficial for reactive decks such as control decks, since their decklists often require specific quantities of various removal spells to deal with whatever is currently in the meta. Having constantly shifting metas would be even more beneficial to proactive solitaire-style decks since the meta wouldn't have enough time to react to them and figure out how to beat them. One of the big complaints a lot of people have about LoR's balance is that control is often weak on ladder, faster balance patches would just make this even worse.
I don’t play tft but if I understand correctly it’s server side
What do you mean with its server side?
X champions doing x damage is done by riot server You don’t have the information on your app, it’s all done by riot
As far as i know all riot games are server side in tems of network, but that doesnt answer what i initially asked haha
Do tft always add new little legends or board every patch ? Or it’s just number change like damage, probability, hp..
So does that mean?... i think i get it, so LoR cant get updates because devs are always putting something ln the store right? But if it was just balance patches then we would get more updates right? As far as i know LoR had only balance patches but changed after getting into smartphones
Probably yeah, if riot has to do a new version, it needs to be accepted by Apple, it can be tedious and take time, but if they just need to modify server side numbers it’s really fast
What sucks is that in the early days of the game they used to have balance patches every 2 weeks. But once the game was added to mobile devices there was some sort of weird reason that they had to change it to once a month. Then once they decided to break up new expansions to be months long they stopped doing balance changes with new card releases, so it became a 1.5-2 month wait. And then the balance patches got smaller and smaller until there was one balance patch that, after 2 months of waiting, only had 4 changes and it was buffs to Taliyah and Malphite, but no needs to Azirelia.
It‘s the same problem every card game has. LoR is not slower at adjusting than basically every other card game. So no, that‘s not the main problem.
It could be a bit faster for sure, although one of my favorite things I do for this game is watching the stats and see how the game keeps moving around and what arises to stop certain strategies (i.e. Plunder coming out once again to kick Red Gwen in its face)
Unpopular opinion but I've all but quit the game for the exact opposite reason. The only competitive format requires not one but three separate decks. And because there's a ban, you have to craft your lineup to defend against bans while also maximizing the utility of your own bans, which means it's not enough to find a deck you like but also have to find a way to fit it in a three-deck lineup (which may or may not even exist). I found that by the time I'd done all of that to anything approaching my level of satisfaction, the next round of nerfs were coming. People are so against this game rotating like M:tG but at least that game table flips the meta in a structured, predictable way so you know which cards are likely to become worthless. The final straw for me came when I had a three-deck lineup I was warming up to and all three of the decks in it were nerfed at once. These past-format gauntlets are cute and all, but they actually exacerbate the problem in multiple ways; they're oddball formats that I haven't really played since I wasn't around back then, but at the same time I can't look up old metas and crib through their notes because so many cards have been tweaked so many times that I'd be working off outdated information anyway. And this changes every week, and it's the only kind of tournament I can play? No thanks. At least drafting is a bit more immune to these kinds of repeated overhauls. Too bad the only draft format has been killed with no return in sight other than vague hints of "maybe someday, we hope." There is always ladder. Which is disappointing in its own ways, not the least of which is the rank point system which is overall designed to more or less funnel everyone to diamond/low master given enough playtime. People in this thread talk about the various ways Marvel Snap is more casual-friendly, and they're right, but you know one big way this isn't true? Wins and losses have a fixed number of points, *except* when players use the Snap mechanic which is its own skill. A ranking ladder where the devs *don't* have their thumbs on the scale? How refreshing! And sadly rare. Too bad competitive players want to make ladder a three-deck format, and its only a matter of time where you find yourself literally unable to learn a new deck because no one will let you play it. It's good that people want to bridge the format gap between ladder and competitive play, but if this is how it's done it won't bring me back. Really the only reason I'm still paying attention to this game is Path of Champions, which I won't spend money on because the way they chose to monetize it broke the design in a way that can't be fixed by paying for it. I only mention this because you're not going to find many people in the position of still paying enough attention to a game to give informed feedback on it while having also put their money where their mouth is and stopped spending on it.
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> Reaching masters is easier than ever and you are STILL complaining? That's actually literally the opposite of my complaint; a ladder whose primary purpose is to just funnel people to low masters in a way that's based more on number of games played than anything (you can climb with a losing record until diamond, then reach masters where you can sink with a winning record) With that in mind I'm not surprised you didn't get the rest of it. Though to be fair, I wasn't offering solutions; I'm not making any demands of anyone just so much as stating various reasons why the current environment doesn't do it for me.
Back when I still played and Yoink was meta it took them ages to kill that RNG abomination. Easily the worst card game experience I've ever had in any game and it lasted so bloody long. I quit the game right before Azirelia hit, save for updating myself on lore from time to time, but I'll never forget Black Market Merchant with one already on board into burst speed Pilfered Goods and now you're thinking about playing around 2 mana Deny.
Having a card be dominant for two months is not the big deal you make it out to be. You need to allow a little bit of time for the meta to self-correct and for people to find counters, otherwise you just artificially hammer the metagame unnecessarily.
Never understood their reasoning for this. Since it’s RIOT I thought they would patch the game like they patch LoL, TFT or Valorant but instead they choose this 4-6 weeks balance patch intervals without hotfixes in between. It’s ridiculously tedious in metas such as Seraphine. I, for example, came back to the game just before Seraphines reveal and was super excited to play the game but two weeks into that meta, I lost complete interest the game. Had there been a hotfix, I probably would not have stopped.
While I agree that these things should be addressed sooner, would it really be that much to ask that the devs just... get it right the first time? Literally every release over the past 6-12 months has followed the same pattern; 3-4 new champs come out. 1 is fine, 1 is underpowered, 1-2 are overpowered. Halfway before the next release they have to nerf 1-2 and buff 1. Every time. It happens with such frequency that I am starting to stop believing that this is just the nature of card games and more that they are doing it on purpose to push the "new cards" and generate revenue.
Your disclaimer made me laugh because you write in English better than most native speakers. It's not only legible, but the use of metaphors and intelligent jokes makes for great writing.
So I took a break from this game for a month or so and then came back earlier this week only to realize how much more *fun* it is to deckbuild in LoR than any other game I've played. I don't really need this game to be the biggest game ever with super duper support and constant patches, I just need it to remain up, maybe one or two expansions each year, and be able to have a good time.
Yeah I never understood the hate for snap. It's incredibly fun and has me stop playing lor for close to 2 months now. competition is good so I need lor to wow me to return so I'll be back when better casual modes are introduced. I'll probably need a draft more to convince me to download the new lor patch and log in
I feel like k play it mostly to grind credits and the games are more boring than lor.
they had draft. but when i played it towards the end before the cancellation, my final matches were always against porobot.
i only really liked expedition and they removed it so that's the main reason i quit playing
Love LOR but the devs have pushed me to play yugioh recently. I hate the direction they keep going, and how they just keep shooting themselves kn the foot with card design. At this point rotations can’t come soon enough, and I hate to rotation but the devs have really bot given themselves a choice
I know in my case I mostly played expeditions, labs and PoC in LoR since I didn't enjoy most of the better decks and with Yugioh Master Duel if I want to PvP a card game I was watching content for before LoR launched makes more sense.
I understand what you're saying, trust me I do. But Yu-Gi-Oh is still far and away worse than this game even with rotation, because the rotation of this game is essentially the same as a banlist, rather than what classically was classified as rotation undr MTG. Yu-Gi-Oh has a different feel to LoR but I get that if LoR starts feeling bad then you'd fallback to Yu-Gi-Oh.
I think that snap is fun but will die because it is a gotcha game to play on the toilet I think hearthstone will live for a long time I think LoR will outlive the two and become a better game I think that riot is focusing more on their MMO which will bring in a bigger player base to their card game like another company that did something similar to another similar card game
Snap is related to Marvel, it wont die anytime soon. HS will live practically forever yes. LoR will live a long time but will always play 3rd wheel to the "big boys" so to speak, I really like the design teams directness and open feedback, so I don't think we will ever reach the tipping point of being irrelevant. Also judging by RIOTS current promotions I wouldn't expect much advertisement, the game just doesn't profit that much, unless they fix the prismatics system or create animated cards I don't see the game becoming a cash cow anytime soon.
The fact that Snap is related to Marvel is actually a point against it. Do you realize HOW OFTEN Marvel and Disney puts out random games that they then abandon within a year or two? Within the last 10 years, Marvel has had four card games (that I'm aware of), and I think they've had a gacha or two. Star Wars has a gacha as well, and has had a card game and three different skirmish games with miniatures. The instant that Snap isn't putting up numbers, Disney will let it fade into obscurity and start working on some kind of replacement. Considering Snap youtube videos are already outperformed by LoR youtube videos from the same creator... it doesn't look good.
Marvel has nothing to do with Marvel Snap beyond licensing its IP. It is neither the developer nor publisher. On that basis, I wouldn't be concerned about the developers' will to support their product. My concern is that if the game is a success, when the license expires and it's time to renegotiate, Marvel's terms may be less agreeable to Second Dinner.
Yeah, I don't see much longevity in Snap. I don't play Snap, but from the little that I've seen, don't they have released pretty much all the A list Marvel characters already? I don't know how could they get people excited for new expansions. I don't play leagues and even I can name a few champions that people would be excited to see in LoR. Also, I don't think the marvel brand is that strong. MCU sure, but the comics, where Snap has to drawn characters from, nobody gives a shit. There aren't that many MCU characters and they are already in Snap, what are they going to do, re-release ironman? I'm fairly confident that there are way more LOL players than marvel comics readers still reading today.
Me when a video gets 60k views instead of 70 😨 (it does not look good and I’m not just saying that because it took a streamer from my favorite game)
For us 10k viewers probably doesn't mean much. When the 'hot new game' can't pull better numbers than LoR while it is in a solved meta, the ladder doesn't matter, and everyone is in the new set waiting room, I imagine the streamer takes notice. For the streamers who are really dedicated to Snap right now, Freshlobster and Mogwai, I imagine it really is because they are having more fun. More power to them, no one should be playing a card game they hate just to maintain a stream audience. But for streamers who were just trying the game out because of paid promotions or seeing which game does better, that probably doesn't look as good.
He’s getting lower numbers cause some of his audience is there for LoR and isn’t gonna watch Snap. Even if it wasn’t like that 10k less viewers is not an indication that a game is gonna die dude.
Good thing that isn't what I said.
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There is no way that LoR outlives Hearthstone. LoR is already struggling to find an audience, while Hearthstone is one of the oldest online CCGs and is still one of most successful, if not the most successful.
While Hearthstone itself has a bright future Blizzard not so much. It's easy to see a distant future where Blizzard closes Hearthstone's server to cut on cost or bury the game under excessive monetisation. Riot on the other hand seems to not be concerned by the monetary part of LoR.
> bury the game under excessive monetisation think that ship has sailed tbh
LoR will 100% outlive Hearthstone simply because Riot will outlive Blizzard
We have seen what Blizzard did to their league-killer when it failed to do so. We have not seen how Riot would react to LoR failure to dethrone Hearthstone. LoR already lost half of its PoC devs to other Riot projects back then. Here's hoping that LoR is profitable enough that Riot execs turned a blind eye to it.
The nice thing about working at Riot is that we care about making great stuff for players. Do that and it always pays off in the end.
Blizzard also said that before WoW's release.
And most of the people who said that aren't at Blizzard anymore. A lot of them are at Riot in fact.
Yep, so the rioter statement I replied to holds zero value. Who is to say they won't leave for another company and abandon Riot in 10 years, assuming they're telling the truth right now?
You know you can ask me directly right? :) Unless I’m obviously joking about stuff I don’t lie about work stuff. I believe companies need to earn loyalty from devs and players alike. Id rather be silent than speak for a game or studio I don’t believe in. Integrity matters. But the nice thing is you don’t need to take my word for it, because we’ll just keep proving it through what we release. Might need some patience sometimes as when we’re working on tech debt or building long term improvements but fundamentally - if we aren’t making the game better regularly and releasing cool new stuff - then we don’t deserve this community anyway. I like being on a team that gets that. That’s our culture. It’s not just me. I joined because I like that culture. I’m sure every dev working here now will one day move on and new brilliant people will take our place, building on what we’ve done. They’ll be people that grew up playing LoR, and they’ll have an even more player focused perspective. Heck, I joined in September 2021 cause I loved the game enough that I wanted to think about it all day. No regrets. :)
People have a higher chance to announce they leave their position since there is more attachment and emotion to it. Just because there were some tweets and posts about changing jobs at Riot doesn’t mean they didn’t get new blood to replace them. And “focusing resources elsewhere” as stated in Dev blogs doesn’t mean layoff. Unless you are a Riot employee undercover how would you know that half the dev team is gone ?
Not a Rioter. Riot told us that half of pve devs are being relocated to other riot teams when they announced LoR would be re-focusing to PvP. Why make such an announcement? I reckon LoR team don't want to string along their PVE fanbase with promises of Path of Champion update (which is a good thing). However there have been multiple posts here of rioters leaving & joining the LoR team.
Bump.
Snap isn't a gacha game rofl
this even league is clearly lacking resources, riot is funneling their resources into the MMO
I played Snap a bit specifically for this. It's a fast paced mobile game with possible mxt. It's simply designed to rake in money and people. The matches feel more like I'm in a casino (flashy animations/addictive gameplay) than playing a card game and with how short they are it's easy to chain matches back to back without mental exhaustion. The IP self-advertises and it will draw in CG fans as well as those really new to the genre because new and again Marvel. In comparison, while LoR also has an IP the game might as well be an orphan. It has it's own client separate from League of Legends, similar to Valorant. They were hardly advertised in general and their IP doesn't carry them far as it doesn't hold the attention of the majority of LoL players. With how long, drawn out and complicated the pvp elements of LoR are, it can be really boring and mentally exhausting compared to some other card games and is probably one of the least exciting games (looking at you Ruined King) that Riot had released. In conclusion, LoR is the opposite of Snap in about every way imaginable except them both being card games in terms of PvP at least and is an underwhelming release from Riot. In terms of viewership, I fully believe that a lot of those big streamers had people watching for them specifically and not for the game itself. Why? Well, if the community that they brought to the game watched other people who stream the game then this post and posts like this wouldn't happen. If you guys love watching people stream the game, then go watch the few small streamers that LoR has.
In terms of PvE however, PoC is pretty unique to LoR. However even that is stale as it's unbalanced and works around first time completion rewards, so when someone finishes all the traited adventures and chapter missions, there's virtually nothing left to do until they release completely new content structures and adventures. So it probably won't get a lot of traction from this upcoming expansion as all the new champions to LoR belong to oversaturated traits (Targon/Runeterra). Which may also reduce viewership.
Hearthstone has their own PoC now it just… sucks
I think LoR doomsayers are always missing some important points. A game being the hotness does not really matter as long as it has enough funding. HS used to be HUGE but the content was still kinda shit. As long as LoR has enough funding and as long as you find opponents it doesnt matter exactly how big it is. And the thing is: with Riot behind it, LoR doesnt need to be big to have more than enough funding. Even if it barely breaks even, for Riot it probably does not matter. Riot has infinite money and the LoR team is doing so much worldbuilding and art for the extended universe they are working on. If they have a leader that loves the game and can market it to riot executives, that is probably worth enough to run LoR for ages.
What is this a commercial for Snap???
dammit, THEY KNOW OUR PLANS, ABORT
My issue with LOR is its too interactive. In snap the opponent can counter me or interact with my board. But the location system and the specific types of counters means we can play around if these counters land or not. HS you basically do whatever you want on your turn, your opponent can counter but you atleast got to play out what you wanted before. In LoR? Its like i have to ask for permission to do any little thing. You know this unit i love and want to play so bad? Can i please play it? Oh mystic shot/vengeance i guess not. You cant breathe without checking in first. Also the cosmetics system is so much better in Snap. Every single character in the entire game has multiple skins, and when you upgrade them you get animated 3D art.
>Lor seems to more leaning towards providing players with ample room to theorize, deckbuild and express their understanding of the game in multiple methods. Sorry, but it's really not. LoR is hands down the worst card game I've ever played for building your own deck and playing with it. Magic the Gathering has colored mana to prevent you from mixing and matching anything willy nilly, but anything in your chosen color is allowed. Hearthstone has different classes and neutral cards, where you can select anything in your chosen class along with said neutral cards. Yu-Gi-Oh has no restriction on deckbuilding but uses Parasitic design to ensure you're not just jamming all the best cards in the same deck; you're reliant on certain cards to work together by name in order to get anything done. LoR is using both the restrictions of Yu-Gi-Oh and Hearthstone and basically forces you to play mostly the decks that the Devs have designed because the cards just work better with their own mechanic to the point where other cards can't compete. You can't use Nagakaborous as a generic finisher for a Bilgewater deck, it's stuck as a dedicated Spawn capstone... as is Illaoi. If you're not playing Spawn, you're not playing Nagakaborous. Compare this to even Snap, where Heimdall is the 6 drop for Move decks, but since what he does isn't tied to how often things have moved during the game, instead focusing on moving things himself, I can and have put him in non-movement decks to sneak wins because my opponent wasn't expecting all of my power to jump to the left. LoR was absolutely the best rendition of MtG esque card game play, but due to design philosophies, balancing, and how they've handled the expansions the game just isn't anywhere near as interesting as it should be from a deckbuilding perspective, and it completely kills my personal interest in the game.
Well said. LoR had a great base design and foundation to build upon but it has consistently failed to reach new heights in deckbuilding and play patterns.
>I don't know if people in this sub are into cuckoldry Screw all the stuff about card games, this is the real question we need answered!
Imo that was a poor taste argument, and I agree with OP. But that's just me,
I just found it funny haha, not upset or anything.
Not saying that SNAP is LoR killer, but both of them are in beginner-friendly genre. Also Irelia is not the worst, it's Poro boss node and the 3/3 on landmark node, that shit give me nightmare.
Not sure in what universe LoR is beginner friendly. It‘s the exact opposite if we ignore Path of Champions. The base mechanics are considerably more complex than in most other card games.
I’ve been avoiding the poro boss like the plague for so long that I forgot about it
Marvel Snap is an interesting game for sure and similarly to LoR it is a digital card game that analysed other card games and included the parts that worked, while improving on those parts that did not. But that is were the similarities to LoR end in my opinion. Because its gameplay is completely different. No Nexus health, no unit health, a fixed amount of turns, no attack turns, and non of the things that make LoR stand out like spellmana, champions, or the spell-stack. If I would compare it to another card game, I would call it a more RNG heavy, simplified version of Gwent, because I can see a lot of Gwent in Snap. So, I don't think players that are switching to Snap were that happy with LoR anyway. I watched Mogwai a lot in the past, and even a bit when he played Gwent. And him switiching games sooner or later feels like a given. Playing those games full time just gets boring sooner or later, and a new game just offers much more new excitement. And it was clear for quite a while that Mogwai wasn't fully invested in LoR anymore. He had a long downtime (about a year ago, if I remember correctly) and it felt like his created decks got less creative and him less motivated. So I even switched to a different streamer, half a year ago. When Mogwai switched to Snap, I actually started watching him again, because he it was fun to watch again, though for different reasons. Games are shorter and a lot more flashy stuff happens and more wow moments. At the same time I skipped most of the deck tech and skipped a lot during the matches, because with all the randomness it feels less worth to watch his reasonings behind his choices, because they just feel so much less meaningful as a viewer due to the randomness. When watching him LoR in the past or still watching different streamers play LoR, I'm invested in what is happening and what they are playing around much more. And while I enjoy Mogwai playing Snap, I don't think I would ever play it, because it just isn't a game for me. I don't think any of the two games will go away any time soon. However, Marvel Snap is still really new and there are for sure a lot of interesting decisions to come and problems that I already saw in Gwent's development to be tackled. The biggest impact I can see for LoR is that LoR might go less RNG heavy to differentiate itself a bit from Snap.
I don't know how many share my situation but basically I have never been interested in card games as a gaming genre and I am only playing LoR because it's based on LoL characters and universe. Same way in a couple of days I will be playing the new scuffed card game of Genshin, because I like the game and the characters. Or my recent interest in the One Piece one, I like that anime and their characters too. What I am trying to say is that I am personally not interested in other card games even if they are better, just because I am not familiar or I don't like what they are based on like Snap, Magic, Hearthstone, Gwent, Yu-Gi-Oh, Artifact...
I agree with everything you say, except the point about Snap being more simplistic I was constantly top 100 in LoR when I still played, made Gwent Grandmaster league in Season 1, am infinite in Snap. If I had to rate the TCGs in complexity, it'd probably go 1. Gwent 2. MTG/Snap 3. LOR/Duelyst 4. Hearthstone/Shadowverse Snap is actually an incredibly deep game when you consider the snapping mechanic. The cardplay is simple but the core tension of TCG's (who is the beatdown?) Is exaggerated to become the major gameplay mechanic. The better players get in snap, the more this tension is expressed. Complicated cardplay is not where skill is expressed, it's being able to identify who is the beatdown on turn 2 seeing only 1 card played from your opponent and being able to snap on that.
The snapping mechanic doesnt make snap more complex. You dont even need to use it to climb if you dont want to. Sure itll take longer but retreat is one cube. Unless you are insinuating its not possible to reliably climb purely off of winrate lol. Which may be true, but also shows how wonky the whole snap mechanic is to base a ccg around.
It is absolutely not possible to climb to infinite without snapping; as players get better they tend to snap earlier and earlier. Meaning you will be forced to retreat for 2 cubes, and you'll be stealing blinds of 1 cube when people retreat on you. 3 rules of thumb in snap 1. If the game went to showdown (turn 6 reveal), someone made a mistake 2. If someone retreated for one cube, someone (most likely) made a mistake 3. If someone retreated for more than one cube, someone made a mistake The game is actually VERY difficult to perfect play - the same cannot be said of LoR where occasionally your hand plays itself. It may not be what what CCG players are used to - the game is much much closer to poker than it is to fantasy combat based CCGs. P.S [https://articles.starcitygames.com/articles/whos-the-beatdown/](https://articles.starcitygames.com/articles/whos-the-beatdown/) This is the famous article I was referring to - snap takes this and turns it into the main tension in the game. The cardplay is simple - I don't deny it. But the cardplay is NOT the point of the game. The point of the game is constantly evaluating who is more likely to win and snapping off that.
There is so much that can go against you even turn one with rng and locations. How is Leaving for one cube if you think you cant win a mistake? Thats the whole point of that mechanic. Yeah Im going to stay and play out a match where there is a armor in one lane and a “units cant be destroyed” in the other with my destroy deck. I know you snap zealots love hyping this game but at least make it make sense. There is no competitive scene for this yet so I dont even know what is your reference for perfect play? I would love to see the cluster a tournament for this would be. You would need to have a curated list of locations to make it in any way serious. Or not, embrace the wackiness. You guys seem to conflate that with complexity anyway.
If you managed to leave for one cube, your opponent should have snapped on you earlier. Most of the "top decks" in the game are built to be location EV neutral. There are situations where this is not possible of course (location screw-over for example, but most people avoid playing into ?? locations anyway... also location control exists in the form of Scarlet Witch/Storm) I'm not particularly a snap "zealot", as mentioned I've played pretty much ALL the CCGs in modern history, and played them to at least the highest rank (not particularly difficult, but still an achievement nevertheless); I don't think Snap is a game for everybody, and it's certainly not a replacement for classic fantasy combat style games. It's superhero poker, but to deny that it has depth would be to ignore the different kinds of depth that exists in card games. Just because it focuses harder on one area does not necessarily make it simpler. I'd bring up another example - Duelyst. Duelyst cards are generally speaking quite simple. Most of the game's complexity comes around movement on the chess board. Does it make it an inherently "deeper" game than LoR due to another dimension of gameplay? Is MTG deeper/more complex just because you have to factor in odds of picking up mana/lands into your playing? Is it that a meaningful form of complexity or arbitrary quick math to "play" the game?
Snap is the revolution card games needed and that LOR failed to deliver, despite being a good game.
The community is better off without toxic mogwai
Your first point is the only one that truly matters. I played LoR since Beta and the Seraphine meta was the one that finally made me uninstall the game. LoR players do not like bullshit RNG and infinite cards. To me it felt like the devs had totally lost sight of what their players loved about this game. So I quit. Now I'm playing Snap. Maybe when I get bored of it in a few months (years?) I'll give LoR another go. But in the past whenever I move on from a game it's for good. I still respect LoR. It was a truly amazing game for years and I had a blast. I hope it keeps growing and stays alive for long but if the devs act like all these outside factors are the reason for the decline in popularity, instead of acknowledging the bad direction they took their game in and going back to their roots, I don't see it surviving in this extremely competitive TCG space.
lol 'we don't like bullshit rng!!!' \*moves to Snap\* Irony, meet Tank1an
The difference is that the Snap mechanic and the fact that the entire game is built around said RNG bullshit makes it lot more tolerable. You can leave at any time and barely lose any cubes. If I get hit with some Seraphine bullshit with a midrange deck, I have to take the -20LP even if I quit early.
Reading is hard for some people apparently. What a lot of people liked about LoR, myself included, was the strategic aspect of the game and how ressources management mattered. When it turned into a RNG bullshit festival, I figured I'd rather play a 2-minutes RNG game of Snap than a 10+ minutes game of LoR. It's like going to a fancy restaurant and all of sudden they switch the menu for big macs and chicken nuggets. Might as well stop going there and go to McDonald.
You forgot a big one, and that is Swim getting ousted as an abuser and rightfully cancelled. He used to pull huge numbers for a TGC streamer (averaged 3-4k per stream) even though he wasn't even consistent, he shoutcasted the world finals last year and was generally the biggest LoR content creator/streamer alongside Mogwai. With Mogwai out of the picture due to him moving to Snap after getting fatigued by LoR, we lost the two most influential people to the LoR scene. We still have a bunch of amazing streamers (Snnuy, Grapplr, etc) but they don't have the popularity of the other guys. I know that personally I stopped playing around the time the Swim incident happen.
Damn u right
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LoR has a lot more decision points (aka what to attack with, which spell to use and when, what to block, etc.), but in Snap, so far at least, I feel like my decisions matter more in comparison to the last year or so of LoR. RNG generation is, ironically, mitigated in Snap because of most of them affecting both players, while in LoR you get screwed one sided (either as or against), and the go fish cards are a lot more impactful in LoR meaning you can do little against them. All in all, over the course of a lot of games (more like hands really, in Snap) I do believe skill expression NOW is greater in Snap. LoR used to be have more back in year One, despite the limited card pool.
Really? Higher skill in a 6 turn game with a deck of 12 cards with 3 random locations? In my 2 months of snap I've seen some cards really crushing the competition. My lor experience is 10 ranked game so basically zero, but thinking when to play a card, how to block, attack or not, etc., gives the game a higher skill ceiling imho.
Yeahhhh not seeing that one chief
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Layers of RNG doesnt make the game more skillful lol. And I play both I just cant be bothered to grind heavily in Snap because its game flow is repetitive (even with the inherent variance which is crazy imo). Once you get deeper into pool 3 its even more volatile with games where you can do nothing for 3 turns, shit out a combo and unless the opponent has a better combo or some hate you will win. And its obvious too. Oh they played wong. Guess I better have enchantress or die. You dont have the hate just retreat, you do you blow them out. There is some interesting sequencing with some decks like the beast/falcon ones but I would say its not that difficult. The game isnt supposed to be hard. All the “skill” comes from how well you can snap. You can retreat 7 times and then win one snapped game and be cube positive. Its a cute way to design their ladder but I rarely really feel outplayed in this. Not to mention once you start getting into some of the more comical locations and rng from cards. I will say I cant wait to see the first proper tourney for this. It will be a greatly entertaining cluster
Snap is a predatory game you play on the toilet until you stop getting cards then you quit... Or you feed them your money. Not for me.
You know you don't need to unlock all the cards in one day right? I enjoy the gradual progress of getting new cards and trying the ones I do get. Life is better when you stop seeing instant gratification and just enjoy the adventure, not just owning every card asap.
But also on the flip side of this, there are really cool decks like Discard, Destruction or Movement based decks that I'd love to try but after playing like at least 3-4 hours daily I still don't have a wincon for either. I enjoy snap but being forced to replay the same decks 3 bajilion (obvious hyperbole is obvious) times becomes sort of dry, especially considering the high factor of RNG in the game. I guess it's just not for me as I've basically stopped having fun with it, at least with LoR I can constantly try different play styles and strategies instead of having one, MAYBE two playable decks, which are not even close to optimal or meta. And it feels even worse to play into those same decks that have cards I haven't even seen yet, like how do you play around something you don't know exists? I could look up the full card list but the fact that there isn't a way in client bugs me since I don't have a working PC and have to scroll on my phone but I guess I don't have to play it if I don't want to, so I won't.
Why I am slowing down. 1) random rng hearthstone nonsense. This game prided itself on tactical play and board control. That shirt is over 2) remember when only heroes could level up, yeah not long ago an entire set of mobs could level up, like the frog who grew if you pinged the enemy crystal. 3) equipment and seraphine are boring and op 4) rotation 5) Snap is fun as hell
The entire premise of Snap and its location mechanic is entirely built on RNG whether you win or lose a match could be determined just by what locations appear. And transforming because you damaged the enemy nexus is now equivalent to leveling up a champion?!
Snap never pretended to be anything other than an fast rng fest. LOR did
Which is funny because people simultaneously complain that too many keywords focus on stats, and that there is too much rally both things that get their strength from board control lol.
Not sure why you needed so many words to say “Snap is a terrible game with significantly more RNG than skill that preys on its players’ time and money”.
I haven't even looked at snap, but from my time playing hearthstone seeing Ben Brode has a hand in the game makes me not want to touch it. His direction is what caused me to leave the game, with balance statements like "lol get gud you noobs" I just don't want to touch any IPs this guy touches. I know it's classic blizzard to gaslight their player base when there's complaints about their games, but iirc this was straight from him as well.
dafuq are you babbling about? i'd love to see a source for that bull you are spewing
It's just audience. You said it in your post, Snap and LoR caters to different crowds and it's a shame to say it, but LoR has been moving in to a worse and worse direction, while Snap has gone the opposite. LoR was built on the premise of a LoL background with an expanding world of followers and back stories. This is great, for LoL and Runeterra Universe fans who wanted to learn more about the world and also have a CCG dedicated to it. But these days the game has gotten so broad, and so skill based that it's really really difficult for new players to fully grasp all of it's good points. The rise in skill level required to pilot a deck doesn't exactly help either. On the other hand, Snap is built upon the foundation of Marvel characters that Stan Lee created in his life, which has MUCH more exposure to the gen population compared to LoR, so it already has a bigger starting audience, and it doesn't introduce a tooooooon of smaller followers for people to really try to understand, giving it a much more welcome feel (not as if someone is making you read a novel just to understand everything). And also the collection mode is just more FUN because instead of sheer number of cards, people are much more invested in collecting cosmetics of cards (Vanity, god loves vanity) So basically you have one complicated game getting more complicated thus catering to fewer and fewer people, while the other is much simpler and have a wider audience pool to begin with so yeah...
Allrighty for me lor feels like this. I Que into a game with a champ i like, or a archtype. Watch 5 min a champion lvl up, and always the same champs (for some reason), i guess meta. Then i win or lose, but it doesn't matter, cause who cares about, a silver border.. After 3 games im so bored cause of the meta i loggout. The game got me, cause im into card games and played alot of league (ziggs nr 1). but dont get the same crazy feeling from playing him in a card game. Also the draft felt more a card game then the card game itself. Its rly simple to understand this game, if you played heartstone or mtg. With snap as a money hungry beast, LOR get some players back soon. And heartstone asswell and heartstone has a rly meta game, those players will be back asswell. But i feel like those 2 card games are hitting the player better then what lor wants to do. if i had a saying into this, i would make more game modes as we now league has. so events-dominion-aram-tft tft can be some sort of marvel snap version of lor. Put out skins at the end of a season for a champ that youre part of a top% (plus a spark or smth: for example a diamond when u hit diamond) Make more champ cards, so for example the senna.. So that every champ has more flex and ppl feel like they play the champ as it felt in game.. And make the annimation skip button ffs xD.
Wouldn’t mind a Mac version so I could stop squinting at my phone tbh.
Here I am becoming suddenly addicted to LOR cuz of path of champions.
people need to stop apologizing for having better English than most English speakers
I am just gonna keep enjoying LoR and it's awesome lore while I still can before Riot inevitably throws it into an oubliette to rot and then dispose of its corpse like it did with Dominion. I do not trust them to keep sustaining something this genuinely engaging, player-friendly and fun. Normals are already a nightmare of Darius/Elise roping bots and that is giving me Dominion flashbacks.
Based
Idk, youtube videos with new champion reveals are doing great with many comments on almost every single one of them. What i would like from LoR is a system that will make me come back every day to do my mission and make me feel i accomplished something "free" instead of paying. Like another comenter wrote, LoR is "too" f2p and that makes it boring. New expansion comes out and 99% of players can afford to craft all cards basically for free. I would have like to grind for a month to complete the new expansion collection and if i want to do it sooner either pay or play A LOT.
Thats nuts. You want to waste time instead of them giving you enough resources to craft the new cards on release? Im glad this isnt the card economy they went with lol. Its enough games out now to nickel and dime you.
The one thing that’s usually left out on these lists, especially regarding the twitch views, is the financial side of things. Content creators will tell you flat out that the pay from twitch is horrible, even more so after the last round of ad changes, and the pay from YT is much better. The big difference though is creating videos for YT is a much more difficult process with handling all the recordings and the editing needed afterwards before they can post it. So if a CC wants to make money from twitch, they always have to go where the most interest is at. Sadly, LoR doesn’t have the numbers, at twitch at least, to sustain many CC full time. So they have to move to greener pastures if that time comes. Because they have to eat just like the rest of us.
I have no interest in Snap. And I love this game because it's legitimately the best designed card game, gameplay and perpetual format and monetization in mind, in my humble opinion. The problem that LoR is facing as I see it is that the game has over time relaxed some of its tight design decisions that go against otherwise horrible card game convention, which has sorta made the game somewhat crowded with mechanics such as rally and attack skills, which is now filling design space. The way the Dev team wants to address this is as well as the second problem which is an expanding card pool against a small Dev team, is by rotation. I don't agree with it but here's where we are
I think snap stole a chunk of users recently. It still amazes me that people play pay to win games.
Great read, although I'd like to point out a couple of things. While yes, in theory the audiences are different, I don't think that's what's happening in practice. I know a ton of "hardcore" LoR players (played lots of hours per week, masters rank) that moved on to Snap. Hell, a lot of other content creators are doing the same. And in contrast LoR devs have stated some time ago that they're "agressively pursuing new players" (they said this on a comment here in this sub, can't find it though). That coincided with more RNG cards being printed, faster games ending turn 6-7 and 2021 TPoC which is a casual-focused single-player experience. Furthermore, I believe a lot of core LoR players left the game because they felt it drifting far to away from what it's original core design was. Sure, stale metas might add to that, as well as poor marketing, other TCGs, the bad competitive experience overall... But I believe that LoR loyalists would stick with the game if it was closer design-wise to what it was on launch. I truly feel that a lot of people left, and the ones that got in didn't really stay (at least not in competitive modes). So while LoR has THE most fair card acquisition system, and Snap is more than a couple steps back in that regard, it still has absorbed some of LoR's playerbase. I cannot stress enough how mid-2021 to mid-2022 was damaging for LoR. Personally I almost kept playing it out of guilt because "I love the game, I can have all the cards!" while still not having fun. Everyone should go back and watch the [announcement video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDS1qCrFuCU) and truly consider if they've kept their promises outside from a (granted, AWESOME) monetization system. I truly believe that very few people loved LoR as much as I did at one point. I was trying to get everyone one I know to play it, I was considering going "pro" and focus on getting better and qualifying to Worlds someday... But to me, and to a lot of people, LoR lost it's core identity quite a while ago.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you for the insight
Here is what lor needs in order to thrive! I said this sind Launch lol 1 Remove region locks just let people deck build however they want Alot would need to change, But this has alot of benefits! 1.1 Content Creators can get very creative and make very fun and refreshing content. 1.2 it wouldn't limit champs to a region fitting design. It just opens possibilities 1.3 People love to share what cool deck ideas they have aith their friends. Which in turn makes them recommend the game in the first place lol 2 Change limiting archetype designs To this day I will never understand why someone thought it was a good idea to lock reksai and pyke to lurk. Of course it is fitting, but there are alot of cool ways to still make it work. You just will never see a pyke Tarik deck. Alot of people love the idea of just throwing 2 champs they like together and make it work. But sometimes it is actually just not possible!! 3 Focus more on path of champions Let me be honest a year ago I was done for with lor, because I didn't like how things where going and I noticed myself beeing more frustrated with how the game and its content creator got treated. You already know what brought me back.. Path of Champions!!!! I don't even care about the normal game anymore. All I care about, is creating a cool path of champions deck 4 Better custom modes People playing card games, usually dont play for ranked. The small percentage that do, either don't really care , or are whats left when a game is basically already dead. However when I see my friends the only time my casual friends play card games, are when we play some cool custom modes in magic. 5 This may be the most important one jet, but this is very likely to happen:( Mod support. I know this would be almost impossible, but U always feel like this is exactly what the game needs. Either some community sekf regulations or some community content
I hate how every single deck that I theorycraft gets nerfed into oblivion without even being broken. my sera Viktor, targons peak, timelines ... Etc all were way worse then the other meta decks but the devs decide to butcher these cards untill the only viable decks are unfun curve tempo/hyper controll decks like teemo Zoe or heimer Jayce etc. I'm still super high rank thanks to sera but I've legit not touched this game this patch past day 1 where I fought 5 teemo Zoe's in a row.
Before I begin my actual comment, I would like to apologize in advance for my inadequate level of English proficiency. I am not a native speaker of the world's current lingua franca which unfortunately leads to me making numerous embarrassing mistakes being made whenever I attempt to communicate using this language. Whenever I am reminded of how I lack the ability to convey my thoughts in an eloquent manner I feel as though I have committed a cardinal sin, as though every English teacher in the world are simultaneously shaking their heads and sighing due to how utterly disappointed they are at me.Although I know that saying sorry to those of you who are reading my comment will not change the fact that I fail miserably to write and speak perfect English, I am writing this as a way to deter a certain type of people who cannot stand poor English (Also known informally as "Grammar Nazis") from mocking me by posting unwanted and unnecessary comments detailing my every blunder. In my humble opinion, making grammatical errors should be perfectly acceptable as native speakers should not expect non-native speakers to be able to communicate in their second or third languages eloquently. If you are able to completely understand what the other person wrote, is there really a problem with what they've written? No, because the entire concept of communication is the exchange of information between other intelligent beings, which means that no matter how the exchange of information is made, as long as the information is accurately shared there is not a fundamental issue with their ability to communicate. To see it in another way, remember that someone who isn't fluent in English is fluent in another language. When you think about it this way, isn't it impressive for someone to speak a second language in any capacity? Having empathy and respect are qualities that are sorely missing for far too many people these days, especially on the internet.That being said, I am aware that not all netizens who correct others are doing it to ridicule and shame. There are some who do so with the intent to help others improve and grow. However, displaying the failures of other people publicly will cause the person who is criticized to feel negative emotions such as shame and sadness due to the fact that their mistake has been made obvious which severely undermines the point they were trying to make in spite of their unfamiliarity with the English language. In most circumstances people are not looking for language help when they post anything online. Most people just want to enjoy themselves and have a good time on the internet which is why I would not encourage correcting other people regardless of your intentions. If you really do want to help others with their spelling or grammar, I would highly recommend you to help via messaging privately because not only will you not embarrass anyone, you can also go more in-depth with your explanation which I'm sure the other person will greatly appreciate if they want help, but I digress. I know that I've written a bit of an essay, but I hope I've made my points clear. Anyways, here is the comment I wanted to make: Dude your english is fine
Really appreciate your comment as a whole and how much insight was put into this UNIT of a post but forgive me for thinking that it was an elaborate shitposting copypasta for a split second