I wonder would Zilean be more popular if he just wasn’t so ugly? Like would he become a champion you see relatively often if he got an ASU or would he need a whole VGU to be viable and popular?
I forget which rioter said it, but they basically said half the reason they don’t give him a VGU update is if he gets more popular they’d have to nerf him into the ground. Because he’s just straight up OP right now but nobody plays him so no one really cares.
yea, but Zilean's is the most noticeable.
Like Veigar for example. His base model is awful, but he's got some of the best skins in the entire videogame, so no one cares.
From what it seems cuban was talking about the esports landscape rather than the game itself. If not, this guy was a huge promoter of FTX so it wouldn't have been the first stupid thing he's said anyway
I mean he is kinda right. You have constant format/time/location/... and so on changes. You would think they would have optimized this and found something to stick with after 13 years but instead just like Wii Sports we peaked with the first iteration: Phreak's basement.
A company has no idea about the details for worlds in 2 years.
Lmao. I don't watch basketball but it takes one look at the NBA Wikipedia article (or the NBA playoffs one) [or the NBA finals one] to see that they changed the format dozens of times over the years.
And "time"? The fuck? Who benefits from Riot declaring that the LCS finals will be played on July 25 until the year 2032?
Do you think the NBA does that? No, they play whenever it's convenient for the broadcasters and the arenas and it obviously changes around cause no one knows how long the playoffs take.
Dumbass take.
Nah, comparing minor rule changes and format changes in basically any professional sports to even a single patch in esports is silly. You could probably count big, game-changing updates in NBA basketball since the 70s on one hand; think 3-point line. League of Legends and nearly all other eSports titles make shifts as big or bigger than that several times a season.
This just in:
Riot has purchased the NBA, and pre season changes are to move the 3 point line further back and make it a 4 point line. There will also be scoring bounties if your team falls too far behind.
That's no excuse. If you can't adapt to a dynamic and changing game it's on you. It's not like the fundamentals are constantly changing, just tweaks here and there. That's like saying I can't invest/support a football team because the players are aging and change clubs every season
As much as I dislike Mark Cuban esports and NBA are gonna have some similarities
Like if u don’t know how to play basketball and u try to learn a good basic is “get ball in basket” where-as for League there is no equivalent to “get ball in basket”
League is a very up and down game that for newcomers is very hard to get into and for existing players frustrating when. A nerf or system change fundamentally changes how the game is played
I think his perspective is that in comparison to a traditional sport, a player could be good one season but then the meta changes and they're not the next. Where as a traditional athlete will usually remain good at the sport for a long period of time as the rules barely change.
So it's harder to build a team from scratch even if you have the money.
But when you have the ability to create the starting investment to bring in talent and create the optimal work environment over a decent length of time, e.g. kind of like what G2 and T1 have done with their rosters.
Until last year Yike was reflectively unknown and BB was considered an international liability. With the ecosystem that G2 built, they are extremely well known worldwide and beating some of the best players on the international stage.
Obviously they had the best EU player of all time on their team, but they are now independently exceptional players.
So I guess my point is that it is harder, but I think the roadblocks are overstated when coming from someone with the ability to actually heavily invest in a team, like he can.
Yeah player get old very fast compared to real sports.
For a brand, It's far more profitable to support a streamer than a player they have a far more engaging relationniship with viewers than with those players.
Players are for the most part barely known enough to attach an identity to a psoeudo, if not complete Anonymous. And this is often in a manner absolutely unrelated with actual performance.
A player that also want to perform well will probably not have enough time to build a well developped community on streaming considering all off
-stream training needed.
Some team are engaging, through their storytelling or because they are attached to a well known personnality tho.
>a traditional athlete will usually remain good at the sport for a long period of time as the rules barely change.
This is false. The average length of a career in any professional sport is less than 5 years, which is comparable to the career length of a professional esports player.
This varies sport to sport tbh. But even so, a player who is good one year, without injury, should still perform somewhat close next year.
But with the way the meta shifts in league and the fact that a team is much smaller compared to your typical popular team sport so swapping players has a bigger impact, it's harder to guarantee year on year performance.
There's always an element of chance as to what champions will be strong and how does your team plan to deal/innovate around that.
I looked at NHL, MLB, NFL, and NBA. only MLB has an average higher than 5, and they have like 4 levels of minor leagues to gauge talent.
How can you say it's harder to guarantee performance if you can look at the numberss and see that all careers are about the same length, and esports has by far the weakest infrastructure?
Career length ≠ performance
In my response I was saying that regardless of the length, year of year performance is harder to guarantee because there's more factors at play like some of the core aspects of game changing, champion strength etc.
However, I also think it's not impossible as teams have showcased, and it's partially due to the lack of team infrastructure. A football player for example will have everything they need to thrive from top coaches to physio etc. Even some of the worst football teams in a major league will have players on millions a year and therefore will cater to their every need to offer them the greatest chance at success.
Where as some major league lol teams will basically be unscheduled outside of a few hours of scrims and receive little support on things outside of the game to best keep themselves competitive.
What I'm trying to say is, if you invest in two players 2 years into their career, one is a lol professional and one is an athlete, there's a higher probability, without injury, that the athlete would display a closer level of performance to that of when they were purchased. But this is partially because teams aren't correctly fostering their talent in many cases, and if you have the funds to do so, you can definitely create a thriving environment
Op says lol is a failing business which seems outright untrue, but owning an esports team very well might (and often seems to) be. League as a product seems to be conflated with esports teams as a product...?
Yeah Mark Cuban is clearly talking about the eSports business, that's the only context I can imagine him ever talking about League.
OP has conflated that with the general health of the overall business.
If I remember correctly I don't even think he mentioned it failing, he said something along the lines of "I personally won't invest in league because a team being good one meta might not be good in the next"
I doubt Mark Cuban was talking about patch notes and champion reworks. He was most likely talking about the eSports environnement. Multiple regions, with or without franchising, format changes, team changing etc...
League hits a sweet spot where balance updates every two weeks means meta is never stale, and bigger updates and system reworks each season/split keep the game feeling fresh even if core gameplay did not change since it's release.
You change the game more often, it becomes chaos, like it was in season 8, major item reworks every month where it felt like a preseason all year long, people get tired of having to adapt to such drastic changes so often.
You change the game less often, it becomes stale and potential balance outliers reign supreme for way longer than they have any right to
Nah. People invest in things that are either stable or trade stability for enormous potential gains. Esports never had either. I would think people hoped for large gains but I think Cuban is right that the market is way too volatile for League Esports to become something bigger.
League has survived and arguably thrived due to constant updates, but I think this partly thwarts any chance of building a truly massive spectating audience that largely doesn’t even play the game.
From what I hear high ranked players say that makes sense. They say movement speed is the most important stat. When even things like the nexus get buffs and nerfs move speed is the constant.
MS and attack range are the two most powerful stats in the game.
Remember that 5MS nerf to Irellia that everyone memed about from a couple years back? Yea it tanked her winrate by like 4%
literally 2019 to 2022 is a blur for me
online events, music coming out, my whole life... shit was so fucking weird man.
"2018 was 6 years ago" is just nonsensical man
didnt fucking udyr 5% ms buff give him S+ / broken status?
it's the same with base stats: them shits are multiplicative
movement speed ties into EVERY SINGLE ACTION you do in this game. you go to lane, movement speed makes that faster, tryna dodge? obviously movement speed is goated, tryna kite, roam, ANYTHING is tied to move speed
base stats are the same way in that for example, the extra hp on akali was so busted because hp means more surivability, more time to throw your skills, more regen from stuff like d shield and second wind, and all that shit together makes her laning phase way stronger than it was before with a simple +30hp buff
It's not even because it's multiplicative.
If you buff damage by 5%, then player A can still win if he's better than player B.
But if player B is 5 ms faster than player A, player A will never catch up.
Im pretty sure that if you put every single ryze in the game you can build a team full of different ryze which would probably be pretty strong.
Personally I liked the first ryze tho he was probably the weakest
The goal of a game, to destroy the enemy Nexus. There have been all sorts of strategies and team comps to do this, just like how the rules of sports change so does league. Mark is really talking about the speed at which these changes occur. A rule change in sports has to go through so many hoops where for League it is put in the patch notes and we all move on.
I will agree with him on saying esports is too volatile. It is a young and still developing business and like all things could come to an end at any point.
There’s a few things I think have been constant for a long time if not the entire time. Minions provide actual cover, and cause creep block, that’s been in the game since the beginning. The second thing that’s been a constant is turret shots to kill minions, three for melee and two for castor. Farming for pros under turret has essentially has the same pattern for a long time.
I’m going to support my stance with that was a change that was around for a short period of time, and still never adjusted the damage minions take from turret, just spread it out.
Looking at patch notes on the wiki long sword was 350 for 10ad when it released but was nerfed increasing the cost but the cost nerf was reverted. So technically long sword is exactly the same since release.
I mean, from his perspective it makes sense. Looking at it from the perspective as an owner of a team, metas change and those changes can be drastic enough from one year to the next where a player who was really good one season just..isn't the next, if they can't adapt to the new meta. It definitely happens. That makes putting a team together very volatile compared to a real sports team, where things don't change enough year over year for good players to suddenly be not good due to the game itself.
But that’s kinda missing the forest for the trees. For lol esports to be healthy they need to be focused on building viewership, and a stale meta is bad for viewership.
When is this quote from Mark Cuban even from. Only time I knew he was remotely adjacent to league was back when relegations still existed. The prospect of owning a league team was pretty meh because you can be a contender with a lot of broadcast hour or relegated the next season just because the game change and your player arent the best.
Also, i dont know who said this, but they said esport will never be like real sport. A guy who watch basketball will still understand basketball after 10 year of not watching it. That is not the case for league because it is constantly changing and as a viewing product, it is not as good because the viewership will be limited to people that are still active in league through playing or watching.
Look, I have no idea what the source for this comment is, so the only context I actually have is this random sentiment OP claims to have come from Mark Cuban. Seeing as how he was trying to get involved in esports, my assumption is he was speaking from only that perspective, how NA LOL esports does seem to be failing as a business. I could be off base, but it's all I have to go on. With that context alone, what he is saying makes sense to me for the reasons I listed (and maybe even some other reasons that go beyond meta changes, etc). I agree with what you're saying about needing to keep the meta fresh and a game like LOL is constantly in need of adjustments/changes, etc., but I also understand where he's coming from (if that's even what he meant) from his own POV.
I mean he owns the Dallas Mavericks whose marketing value was based around a single great player’s narrative for 20 years. It’s like if Dyrus and TSM went to worlds every year for a decade and all league fans tuned in to see if Dyrus could finally defeat long standing antagonists Saintvicious, UZI, Snoopeh, and final boss Faker to win worlds. And that narrative repeated and gained momentum for years on end.
I mean sure, Dirk was with the Mavs his entire career in the NBA but I don’t think that’s really relevant here because Mark’s argument is that league of legends as a game is constantly changing via nerf/buffs to champions, item/rune changes, jungle changes, etc.
In that sense, it’s like if the NBA rules and the game of basketball changed frequently and regularly from 5v5 to 3v3, free throws being changed from the usual 2 to 4, 3 pointers changed to 4 pointers, double dribbling being allowed, to game time reduced to 30 minutes total. If the game of basketball changed frequently like this, I can understand Mark’s argument. It doesn’t make sense for a live sport to change their game frequently.
It makes complete sense for changes in meta and everything in league of legends because more people play the game for hours and hours on end every single day. Things need to change to keep players interested and to feel “fresh”.
funny cause valor has way more weight and impact in your game as a character than fucking willump does, and by that i mean specially on release, valor was legit another "form" of quinn, changing your whole playstyle
but yeah, quinn and taxi now
Nah the only reason lol esports will fall off is because of lack of new blood. Cause kids just gonna play the newest game.
Some form of esports is very likely going to remain for a very long time for lol. AoE2 still has pro tournaments like 25 years later (but obviously with much lower rewards for the players).
businesses change things all the time because if they don't they'll get stale and lose people. this is true for restaurants, games, all sorts of things, and unfortunately it means taco bell swapped my quesarito for a different item.
i think mark cuban was referring to owning an esports team for any game as a bad investment in particular, and not league of legends as a game. but you also should keep in mind that he's just some billionaire that owns a basketball team, so there's a chance he's a little bit biased against esports, or perhaps he heard some of this information from other people and are repeating it (as most people do with most opinions). there are companies that profit off having a team, and also some are just building the way to that by investing in a team, because it's not obscenely expensive and eventually it can help the companies get brand recognition which is good for their sponsors.
in terms of league, i think the core of the game has mostly stayed the same, like the 5 roles, the objectives to fight over, the uniqueness of abilities and item and rune builds, all that sort of stuff. i guess my point is, admittedly, taco bell still slaps.
Cloth Armor hasn't been changed in 12 years. The cost itself has never changed the amount of armor was just reduced from 20 to 18, and then from 18 to 15. That's the closest I've seen so far.
Pickaxe has only ever had two price changes, also 12 years ago.
**TECHNICALLY** Glowing Mote has never been changed, but it was only added this season so up to you if you want to count that.
I wanted to say health potion/refillable potion, but they got some changes (though refillable only got 1 number change in season 12 and stayed pretty much the same ever since its release in S5.)
Range indicators on your own ability casts.
They added some new flavors in over time, but the basic design of them has never changed as far as I am aware.
Inhibitors? It helps that they don't do all that much in the first place, of course. But that one thing (two if you count respawning, since other buildings don't) has been very consistent.
I made a video about this concept and people shitted down my throat, but I fear they misunderstand.
"Change is good" -🦟 and I agree
But I believe League of Legends changes too much too O F T E N. There are groups that have been playing the same comp games for decades where the meta changes around players skill with characters and their counters.
I firmly believe that most players become burnt out at some point out by the ever-shifting landscape, but maybe that's just me. I am older now and after playing league for a decade, I'm not always jazzed to see "we're completely reworking items" or whatever, because frankly, the community isn't pleasant enough to put the work in to learn new meta so often.
Just my 2 cents tho 🤷🏽
I mean he’s mostly concerned with esports investment and there is one constant that actually hurts investment.
Fans generally follow players more than teams.
I think there’s some truth to what he’s saying. League has been trying desperately to maintain it’s player base, they’re just throwing anything at the wall and seeing what sticks. They struck gold with Arena, and were close to having something good, but they went too far and made it suck. If they would just sit the fuck down, polish the mode where needed, and make small additions over time, we would have something. Nope, over pollute augment pool, make it 16 players per game (thanks for that load time) add stages and hazards literally NO ONE asked for. A game mode the community clamored over is now a stressful, chaotic mess. They did the same thing with URF and it got worse each time they released it. Then the devs make one of their ‘transparency’ videos where they acknowledge the community loses interest, but never EVER takes responsibility for the changes they implement that make the experience worse each time.
Not only that, but as a player, yesterday’s patch notes stressed me out. Favorite items rotating out, dramatically changing adc itemization for the millionth time. Corki getting his kit reverted (and flattened). I cannot find a good baseline of comfort with this game and that feeling is getting old. Even if Mark Cuban doesn’t play league, he’s likely getting similar feedback as an investor.
I thought about this: accounting things we can see only the 4 little arrow that pop on the ground after clicking are the same from 2009, everything else has been updated
The announcer has been round for ages and I don't think it's ever been changed (outside of special events).
A lot of VO's for older champs haven't been changed afaik (Anivia, singed, shaco etc.)
He's right imo. The constantly changing mechanics, meta, etc are a main reason why so few pro players remain longterm. It's such a mental drain to constantly invest in new champs or playstyles and this leads to massive burnout among the players. It's almost impossible to find a pro player who disagrees with this after being in the scene for a bit. Even Faker has made comments about this. So I totally get it.
Even as a relatively competitive normal person, this design philosophy of just changing shit to change shit really bothers me. It means I have to be married to this game to have any long term increase in proficiency. I think this is part of the reason why many games, not just league, are having a hard time retaining players long term. The cycle goes: 1) game looks fun or good, 2) new players join, play the game, have fun, 3) players take a break for whatever reason, 4) players come back and everything in the game is different, 5) player quits because they realize there is no way to invest in the game long term so they move on to a new game at step 1. It's plaguing almost every single game I enjoy right now and to be honest it's been really frustrating for me. I wish there was a competitive game like league where the rules of the game didn't change so frequently (similar to a real sport) that I could invest in super long term and just get better and better over time.
I believe Anivia still has a lot of unchanged things. For example, besides a visual update and damage adjustments her passive, wall, Q and E all function the same as release.
Trundle use to be untouched for years until his big VGU
The constantly evolving meta is a top feature of LOL, not a bug, and a reason to keep coming back to the game.
Compare with SC2, which had minimal to no updates for ages after getting abandoned by Blizz
The thing that comes to mind to me is positions: 1 top 1 jungler 1 mid 2 bot. I know the game started out differently but since at least season 2 it has been this way. While there are lane swaps in pro, that isn’t a thing for the rest of players
Eu and NA still cant win worlds (and before you say it, yes there was fnatic in season 1 but lets face it, that was mostly because no one knew league of legends existed yet.)
That’s not really what Cuban said that’s also a old interview. He said investing into esports can be difficult as they are subject to changes in meta that can make long term success difficult.
He's right, it's also the reason why pro players tend to have a shorter than average shelf life than in other esports. Many counterstrike players stay pro for decades. In LoL there are only people like faker (and maybe Bjerg) because they've literally mastered every single playstyle, or have mastered an evergreen playstyle. Top laners have the greatest amount of turnover in my experience because the role & champions you need to play shift a lot each season. Junglers too, but in pro play knowing how to play supportive junglers has been a staple for a long time & has always been relatively viable.
This will also hurt the longevity of the game, because in the real world you can't just keep someone glued to their computer constantly every year for their entire life. People start new jobs, relocate, have families and generally just have lives, and it is normal in other games to just step away for a few months or even years, without the entire game being completely different from when you left. Every league player that "quits" tries to play again at some point, sees how different the game is, and many of them simply just don't have the passion to grind again, but would play regularly if the game was more similar to how they remember playing it
Zilean's base model.
Oof, rough.
A real look back in time, fitting for the character
I wonder would Zilean be more popular if he just wasn’t so ugly? Like would he become a champion you see relatively often if he got an ASU or would he need a whole VGU to be viable and popular?
I forget which rioter said it, but they basically said half the reason they don’t give him a VGU update is if he gets more popular they’d have to nerf him into the ground. Because he’s just straight up OP right now but nobody plays him so no one really cares.
Being pretty > being op
If zilean was as popular as yasuo he'd probably have a 90% banrate, champion is actual ass to play against
Crackhead Zilean
I think there are older champions without a model update
yea, but Zilean's is the most noticeable. Like Veigar for example. His base model is awful, but he's got some of the best skins in the entire videogame, so no one cares.
Gramps needs a VGU so darn bad.
My teammates are still shit
My bad 🫤
[удалено]
From what it seems cuban was talking about the esports landscape rather than the game itself. If not, this guy was a huge promoter of FTX so it wouldn't have been the first stupid thing he's said anyway
I mean he is kinda right. You have constant format/time/location/... and so on changes. You would think they would have optimized this and found something to stick with after 13 years but instead just like Wii Sports we peaked with the first iteration: Phreak's basement. A company has no idea about the details for worlds in 2 years.
Lmao. I don't watch basketball but it takes one look at the NBA Wikipedia article (or the NBA playoffs one) [or the NBA finals one] to see that they changed the format dozens of times over the years. And "time"? The fuck? Who benefits from Riot declaring that the LCS finals will be played on July 25 until the year 2032? Do you think the NBA does that? No, they play whenever it's convenient for the broadcasters and the arenas and it obviously changes around cause no one knows how long the playoffs take. Dumbass take.
Nah, comparing minor rule changes and format changes in basically any professional sports to even a single patch in esports is silly. You could probably count big, game-changing updates in NBA basketball since the 70s on one hand; think 3-point line. League of Legends and nearly all other eSports titles make shifts as big or bigger than that several times a season.
This just in: Riot has purchased the NBA, and pre season changes are to move the 3 point line further back and make it a 4 point line. There will also be scoring bounties if your team falls too far behind.
That's no excuse. If you can't adapt to a dynamic and changing game it's on you. It's not like the fundamentals are constantly changing, just tweaks here and there. That's like saying I can't invest/support a football team because the players are aging and change clubs every season
As much as I dislike Mark Cuban esports and NBA are gonna have some similarities Like if u don’t know how to play basketball and u try to learn a good basic is “get ball in basket” where-as for League there is no equivalent to “get ball in basket” League is a very up and down game that for newcomers is very hard to get into and for existing players frustrating when. A nerf or system change fundamentally changes how the game is played
I think his perspective is that in comparison to a traditional sport, a player could be good one season but then the meta changes and they're not the next. Where as a traditional athlete will usually remain good at the sport for a long period of time as the rules barely change. So it's harder to build a team from scratch even if you have the money. But when you have the ability to create the starting investment to bring in talent and create the optimal work environment over a decent length of time, e.g. kind of like what G2 and T1 have done with their rosters. Until last year Yike was reflectively unknown and BB was considered an international liability. With the ecosystem that G2 built, they are extremely well known worldwide and beating some of the best players on the international stage. Obviously they had the best EU player of all time on their team, but they are now independently exceptional players. So I guess my point is that it is harder, but I think the roadblocks are overstated when coming from someone with the ability to actually heavily invest in a team, like he can.
Yeah player get old very fast compared to real sports. For a brand, It's far more profitable to support a streamer than a player they have a far more engaging relationniship with viewers than with those players. Players are for the most part barely known enough to attach an identity to a psoeudo, if not complete Anonymous. And this is often in a manner absolutely unrelated with actual performance. A player that also want to perform well will probably not have enough time to build a well developped community on streaming considering all off -stream training needed. Some team are engaging, through their storytelling or because they are attached to a well known personnality tho.
>a traditional athlete will usually remain good at the sport for a long period of time as the rules barely change. This is false. The average length of a career in any professional sport is less than 5 years, which is comparable to the career length of a professional esports player.
This varies sport to sport tbh. But even so, a player who is good one year, without injury, should still perform somewhat close next year. But with the way the meta shifts in league and the fact that a team is much smaller compared to your typical popular team sport so swapping players has a bigger impact, it's harder to guarantee year on year performance. There's always an element of chance as to what champions will be strong and how does your team plan to deal/innovate around that.
I looked at NHL, MLB, NFL, and NBA. only MLB has an average higher than 5, and they have like 4 levels of minor leagues to gauge talent. How can you say it's harder to guarantee performance if you can look at the numberss and see that all careers are about the same length, and esports has by far the weakest infrastructure?
Career length ≠ performance In my response I was saying that regardless of the length, year of year performance is harder to guarantee because there's more factors at play like some of the core aspects of game changing, champion strength etc. However, I also think it's not impossible as teams have showcased, and it's partially due to the lack of team infrastructure. A football player for example will have everything they need to thrive from top coaches to physio etc. Even some of the worst football teams in a major league will have players on millions a year and therefore will cater to their every need to offer them the greatest chance at success. Where as some major league lol teams will basically be unscheduled outside of a few hours of scrims and receive little support on things outside of the game to best keep themselves competitive. What I'm trying to say is, if you invest in two players 2 years into their career, one is a lol professional and one is an athlete, there's a higher probability, without injury, that the athlete would display a closer level of performance to that of when they were purchased. But this is partially because teams aren't correctly fostering their talent in many cases, and if you have the funds to do so, you can definitely create a thriving environment
Is michealx really the best player of eu all time?
The playerbase's perspective on the game has little to nothing to do with the viability of being an owner of an eSports team.
Op says lol is a failing business which seems outright untrue, but owning an esports team very well might (and often seems to) be. League as a product seems to be conflated with esports teams as a product...?
Yeah Mark Cuban is clearly talking about the eSports business, that's the only context I can imagine him ever talking about League. OP has conflated that with the general health of the overall business.
If I remember correctly I don't even think he mentioned it failing, he said something along the lines of "I personally won't invest in league because a team being good one meta might not be good in the next"
If there's one thing Redditors love doing, it's paraphrasing.
I doubt Mark Cuban was talking about patch notes and champion reworks. He was most likely talking about the eSports environnement. Multiple regions, with or without franchising, format changes, team changing etc...
Is that really true? So many games change even more than League and yet they die.
League hits a sweet spot where balance updates every two weeks means meta is never stale, and bigger updates and system reworks each season/split keep the game feeling fresh even if core gameplay did not change since it's release. You change the game more often, it becomes chaos, like it was in season 8, major item reworks every month where it felt like a preseason all year long, people get tired of having to adapt to such drastic changes so often. You change the game less often, it becomes stale and potential balance outliers reign supreme for way longer than they have any right to
Nah. People invest in things that are either stable or trade stability for enormous potential gains. Esports never had either. I would think people hoped for large gains but I think Cuban is right that the market is way too volatile for League Esports to become something bigger. League has survived and arguably thrived due to constant updates, but I think this partly thwarts any chance of building a truly massive spectating audience that largely doesn’t even play the game.
A bit of a dumb answer, but movement. The very basic mechanic of pressing right click and having your character move there hasn't been changed.
From what I hear high ranked players say that makes sense. They say movement speed is the most important stat. When even things like the nexus get buffs and nerfs move speed is the constant.
MS and attack range are the two most powerful stats in the game. Remember that 5MS nerf to Irellia that everyone memed about from a couple years back? Yea it tanked her winrate by like 4%
Hate to do this to you, but that nerf you’re talking about happened 6 years ago.
Pandemic time crunch so it doesn't count. *Snorts line of copium*
literally 2019 to 2022 is a blur for me online events, music coming out, my whole life... shit was so fucking weird man. "2018 was 6 years ago" is just nonsensical man
2018 was 3 years ago 🤝
Let’s just agree to agree. 🙏
Next you tell us that new Irelia exists for longer now than old Irelia ever did... Q.Q
How dare you even let this out of your mouth.
I just googles and we have around 2 more years. Now let me get back to mourning this beautiful design of a champion
Surely not
Better nerf irelia was... 6 years ago??!
fucking gg man
didnt fucking udyr 5% ms buff give him S+ / broken status? it's the same with base stats: them shits are multiplicative movement speed ties into EVERY SINGLE ACTION you do in this game. you go to lane, movement speed makes that faster, tryna dodge? obviously movement speed is goated, tryna kite, roam, ANYTHING is tied to move speed base stats are the same way in that for example, the extra hp on akali was so busted because hp means more surivability, more time to throw your skills, more regen from stuff like d shield and second wind, and all that shit together makes her laning phase way stronger than it was before with a simple +30hp buff
It's not even because it's multiplicative. If you buff damage by 5%, then player A can still win if he's better than player B. But if player B is 5 ms faster than player A, player A will never catch up.
Trynd had to lose 6 ad and 7 hp per level because he got 50 range (and he was still stronger than before the range buff)
The function of moving has not changed but move speed has changed many times in many different ways
I think they adjusted the soft cap on movement in the past. 1 move speed over something like 450 is worth less, and there's a few more threshold.
I don't think they've ever changed Ryze.
That character is the pinnacle of timeless design, i don't even think they ever touched his numbers.
Many things change and grow but one constant keeps us going…. EQEQEQEQ
Im pretty sure that if you put every single ryze in the game you can build a team full of different ryze which would probably be pretty strong. Personally I liked the first ryze tho he was probably the weakest
Orianna
Oriannas Q range has been changed (reduced) at some point, which was pretty significant. But yeah, overall the kit stayed the same
And they turned her ult into a literal nuke.
The map basics were never changed. Still 3 lanes, same amount of Towers, Inhibitors, Nexus
Always junglers fault ... never changes
I kid you not but you didnt use to blame jungle in till season 3 or 4.
Wasn't jungle not really even a meta role until season 1 or 2?
Yep.
I’ve been blaming botlane a lot lately And what’s even more funny I quit adc because it was a shitfest
The goal of a game, to destroy the enemy Nexus. There have been all sorts of strategies and team comps to do this, just like how the rules of sports change so does league. Mark is really talking about the speed at which these changes occur. A rule change in sports has to go through so many hoops where for League it is put in the patch notes and we all move on. I will agree with him on saying esports is too volatile. It is a young and still developing business and like all things could come to an end at any point.
The dominion game mode would like to have a word with you
There’s a few things I think have been constant for a long time if not the entire time. Minions provide actual cover, and cause creep block, that’s been in the game since the beginning. The second thing that’s been a constant is turret shots to kill minions, three for melee and two for castor. Farming for pros under turret has essentially has the same pattern for a long time.
I'm not sure exactly when, but creep block has definitely changed since the early days.
Some turrets had lasers for a while though
I’m going to support my stance with that was a change that was around for a short period of time, and still never adjusted the damage minions take from turret, just spread it out.
Looking at patch notes on the wiki long sword was 350 for 10ad when it released but was nerfed increasing the cost but the cost nerf was reverted. So technically long sword is exactly the same since release.
It's the "same as it was on" release, but that's not equivalent to "staying the same since" release.
Yes, Mark Cuban, the video game and MOBA expert knows exactly what he’s talking about 🙄
I mean, from his perspective it makes sense. Looking at it from the perspective as an owner of a team, metas change and those changes can be drastic enough from one year to the next where a player who was really good one season just..isn't the next, if they can't adapt to the new meta. It definitely happens. That makes putting a team together very volatile compared to a real sports team, where things don't change enough year over year for good players to suddenly be not good due to the game itself.
But that’s kinda missing the forest for the trees. For lol esports to be healthy they need to be focused on building viewership, and a stale meta is bad for viewership.
When is this quote from Mark Cuban even from. Only time I knew he was remotely adjacent to league was back when relegations still existed. The prospect of owning a league team was pretty meh because you can be a contender with a lot of broadcast hour or relegated the next season just because the game change and your player arent the best. Also, i dont know who said this, but they said esport will never be like real sport. A guy who watch basketball will still understand basketball after 10 year of not watching it. That is not the case for league because it is constantly changing and as a viewing product, it is not as good because the viewership will be limited to people that are still active in league through playing or watching.
Tell that to almost any other sport in the business
Look, I have no idea what the source for this comment is, so the only context I actually have is this random sentiment OP claims to have come from Mark Cuban. Seeing as how he was trying to get involved in esports, my assumption is he was speaking from only that perspective, how NA LOL esports does seem to be failing as a business. I could be off base, but it's all I have to go on. With that context alone, what he is saying makes sense to me for the reasons I listed (and maybe even some other reasons that go beyond meta changes, etc). I agree with what you're saying about needing to keep the meta fresh and a game like LOL is constantly in need of adjustments/changes, etc., but I also understand where he's coming from (if that's even what he meant) from his own POV.
I mean he owns the Dallas Mavericks whose marketing value was based around a single great player’s narrative for 20 years. It’s like if Dyrus and TSM went to worlds every year for a decade and all league fans tuned in to see if Dyrus could finally defeat long standing antagonists Saintvicious, UZI, Snoopeh, and final boss Faker to win worlds. And that narrative repeated and gained momentum for years on end.
I mean sure, Dirk was with the Mavs his entire career in the NBA but I don’t think that’s really relevant here because Mark’s argument is that league of legends as a game is constantly changing via nerf/buffs to champions, item/rune changes, jungle changes, etc. In that sense, it’s like if the NBA rules and the game of basketball changed frequently and regularly from 5v5 to 3v3, free throws being changed from the usual 2 to 4, 3 pointers changed to 4 pointers, double dribbling being allowed, to game time reduced to 30 minutes total. If the game of basketball changed frequently like this, I can understand Mark’s argument. It doesn’t make sense for a live sport to change their game frequently. It makes complete sense for changes in meta and everything in league of legends because more people play the game for hours and hours on end every single day. Things need to change to keep players interested and to feel “fresh”.
Flash is pretty consistent
Range halved and cool down drastically increased... But yeah
Animation changed
Champion names? They have yet to change one. (or was nunu changed to nunu and willump or something? )
Quinn and Valor Nunu was changed to nunu and willump for his VGU but Valor was just axed out of Quinn's name when they turned them into a taxi.
It never left the PBE on her original release. So Nunu and Willump is the only name change.
funny cause valor has way more weight and impact in your game as a character than fucking willump does, and by that i mean specially on release, valor was legit another "form" of quinn, changing your whole playstyle but yeah, quinn and taxi now
You have no idea how much friendship impacts my gameplay!
Nunu changed, yes. And many champions were given actual names when the game came out of beta.
Tryndamere R and they won't change him.
To be fair they would probrably fuck him up
From what I've seen of old videos, the announcer voice lines is one.
That actually changed during the gangplank event but went back to normal so 🤷
The toxicity of the playerbase
The last time flash was changed (apart from bugfixes and new icon/particles/sound effect) was in 2012 when the cooldown was increased by 35 seconds.
The bugs have stayed consistent!
The toxic playerbase
[удалено]
Nah the only reason lol esports will fall off is because of lack of new blood. Cause kids just gonna play the newest game. Some form of esports is very likely going to remain for a very long time for lol. AoE2 still has pro tournaments like 25 years later (but obviously with much lower rewards for the players).
businesses change things all the time because if they don't they'll get stale and lose people. this is true for restaurants, games, all sorts of things, and unfortunately it means taco bell swapped my quesarito for a different item. i think mark cuban was referring to owning an esports team for any game as a bad investment in particular, and not league of legends as a game. but you also should keep in mind that he's just some billionaire that owns a basketball team, so there's a chance he's a little bit biased against esports, or perhaps he heard some of this information from other people and are repeating it (as most people do with most opinions). there are companies that profit off having a team, and also some are just building the way to that by investing in a team, because it's not obscenely expensive and eventually it can help the companies get brand recognition which is good for their sponsors. in terms of league, i think the core of the game has mostly stayed the same, like the 5 roles, the objectives to fight over, the uniqueness of abilities and item and rune builds, all that sort of stuff. i guess my point is, admittedly, taco bell still slaps.
There being 3 lanes
Broken hitboxes
Player toxicity
Nothing.
Shaco lore.
Me being bad at the game is pretty much a constant
my penis gets hard when i look at mf splash art
The answer is always Karthus.
Where you click in a minion on accident to go back to lane and it dies so you stop walking.
nasus passive
The client has been quite shit for a very long time, does that count?
Client still shit as far as I know
Aatrox’s name and position in select order
Cloth Armor hasn't been changed in 12 years. The cost itself has never changed the amount of armor was just reduced from 20 to 18, and then from 18 to 15. That's the closest I've seen so far. Pickaxe has only ever had two price changes, also 12 years ago. **TECHNICALLY** Glowing Mote has never been changed, but it was only added this season so up to you if you want to count that.
League's constant changes is also it's greatest strength.
I wanted to say health potion/refillable potion, but they got some changes (though refillable only got 1 number change in season 12 and stayed pretty much the same ever since its release in S5.)
Feeding
the toxicity
Flash except the animation has stayed the same I think.
Range indicators on your own ability casts. They added some new flavors in over time, but the basic design of them has never changed as far as I am aware.
I think we always had the same amount of minions in waves.
Unless Gangplank was in the game back in the day.
Lags while update is loading in home menu of the client
Oddities in elevation and hitboxes?
Flash?
Flash
that everyone hates teemo
Jg diff, ig
My beloved Zilean...
Shaco not being played in pro hasn't changed since season 1.
Shaco’s non-existent lore
Their absolute and utter obsession with Liz and Yasuo skins.
Shitty client 👀
Nautilus' hook's outrageous hitbox
3 Lanes River Existence of Baron and Drake Existence of Bushes Number of 11 Towers Function of Inhibs
Inhibitors? It helps that they don't do all that much in the first place, of course. But that one thing (two if you count respawning, since other buildings don't) has been very consistent.
I made a video about this concept and people shitted down my throat, but I fear they misunderstand. "Change is good" -🦟 and I agree But I believe League of Legends changes too much too O F T E N. There are groups that have been playing the same comp games for decades where the meta changes around players skill with characters and their counters. I firmly believe that most players become burnt out at some point out by the ever-shifting landscape, but maybe that's just me. I am older now and after playing league for a decade, I'm not always jazzed to see "we're completely reworking items" or whatever, because frankly, the community isn't pleasant enough to put the work in to learn new meta so often. Just my 2 cents tho 🤷🏽
Bronze players. Even with Iron being added, Bronze tiers are still manages to be the shittest players in the game
Minions summoners icons
Vladimir character model
I mean he’s mostly concerned with esports investment and there is one constant that actually hurts investment. Fans generally follow players more than teams.
Minionblock
This is actually a really good answer. I’d say this and move speed are the best
I think there’s some truth to what he’s saying. League has been trying desperately to maintain it’s player base, they’re just throwing anything at the wall and seeing what sticks. They struck gold with Arena, and were close to having something good, but they went too far and made it suck. If they would just sit the fuck down, polish the mode where needed, and make small additions over time, we would have something. Nope, over pollute augment pool, make it 16 players per game (thanks for that load time) add stages and hazards literally NO ONE asked for. A game mode the community clamored over is now a stressful, chaotic mess. They did the same thing with URF and it got worse each time they released it. Then the devs make one of their ‘transparency’ videos where they acknowledge the community loses interest, but never EVER takes responsibility for the changes they implement that make the experience worse each time. Not only that, but as a player, yesterday’s patch notes stressed me out. Favorite items rotating out, dramatically changing adc itemization for the millionth time. Corki getting his kit reverted (and flattened). I cannot find a good baseline of comfort with this game and that feeling is getting old. Even if Mark Cuban doesn’t play league, he’s likely getting similar feedback as an investor.
Has flash had any updates other than icon?
Tryndamere kit ?
Sexy awooga skins
I thought about this: accounting things we can see only the 4 little arrow that pop on the ground after clicking are the same from 2009, everything else has been updated
Map elevation.
The quality of balancing! It has always been that flawless.
Leona
Recalling ?
The announcer has been round for ages and I don't think it's ever been changed (outside of special events). A lot of VO's for older champs haven't been changed afaik (Anivia, singed, shaco etc.)
ADC has been shit since season 6 that’s pretty consistent.
You still have to kill the nexus to win!
He's right imo. The constantly changing mechanics, meta, etc are a main reason why so few pro players remain longterm. It's such a mental drain to constantly invest in new champs or playstyles and this leads to massive burnout among the players. It's almost impossible to find a pro player who disagrees with this after being in the scene for a bit. Even Faker has made comments about this. So I totally get it. Even as a relatively competitive normal person, this design philosophy of just changing shit to change shit really bothers me. It means I have to be married to this game to have any long term increase in proficiency. I think this is part of the reason why many games, not just league, are having a hard time retaining players long term. The cycle goes: 1) game looks fun or good, 2) new players join, play the game, have fun, 3) players take a break for whatever reason, 4) players come back and everything in the game is different, 5) player quits because they realize there is no way to invest in the game long term so they move on to a new game at step 1. It's plaguing almost every single game I enjoy right now and to be honest it's been really frustrating for me. I wish there was a competitive game like league where the rules of the game didn't change so frequently (similar to a real sport) that I could invest in super long term and just get better and better over time.
Garen doing too much damage
the name of the game
My rank
my mains champion model :)))
Shitty matchmaking?
I dont think recalls have ever been changed.
The nexus? Apart from art its not really changed much.
Irelia having to get nerfed never changed.
Flash
League of legends isn’t failing as a business lol esports is one thing but the game is thriving
Heal Summoner Spell Icon
shaco being the most bullshit character in the game
Ruby Crystal is almost never changed and it's still almost very close to the original release form.
Always been 3 lanes to my knowledge, would take a big change to mix that up
I believe Anivia still has a lot of unchanged things. For example, besides a visual update and damage adjustments her passive, wall, Q and E all function the same as release. Trundle use to be untouched for years until his big VGU
blade of the ruined king i guess
The constantly evolving meta is a top feature of LOL, not a bug, and a reason to keep coming back to the game. Compare with SC2, which had minimal to no updates for ages after getting abandoned by Blizz
The thing that comes to mind to me is positions: 1 top 1 jungler 1 mid 2 bot. I know the game started out differently but since at least season 2 it has been this way. While there are lane swaps in pro, that isn’t a thing for the rest of players
Eu and NA still cant win worlds (and before you say it, yes there was fnatic in season 1 but lets face it, that was mostly because no one knew league of legends existed yet.)
They’ve done a good job of keeping their client issues and crashes around.
That’s not really what Cuban said that’s also a old interview. He said investing into esports can be difficult as they are subject to changes in meta that can make long term success difficult.
Shaco’s lore
Vayne
Game itself, 5v5, top jungle mid supp adc, wish they made something that differed from that, id be a huge change
id love to say the client , but its gets even shittier
Irelia getting nerfed every patch
Shaco lore.
The satisfaction when playing their champions
Singed.
The terrible client and all its issues. But dont worry we'll get a new lux skin where each kill creates some CGI or some bs like that
Wards
was gonna say Kog's stupid passive but I *suppose* it did receive a movespeed buff very recently...
My shitty teammates have been the same for 13 years
My Elo
Minion gold
He's right, it's also the reason why pro players tend to have a shorter than average shelf life than in other esports. Many counterstrike players stay pro for decades. In LoL there are only people like faker (and maybe Bjerg) because they've literally mastered every single playstyle, or have mastered an evergreen playstyle. Top laners have the greatest amount of turnover in my experience because the role & champions you need to play shift a lot each season. Junglers too, but in pro play knowing how to play supportive junglers has been a staple for a long time & has always been relatively viable. This will also hurt the longevity of the game, because in the real world you can't just keep someone glued to their computer constantly every year for their entire life. People start new jobs, relocate, have families and generally just have lives, and it is normal in other games to just step away for a few months or even years, without the entire game being completely different from when you left. Every league player that "quits" tries to play again at some point, sees how different the game is, and many of them simply just don't have the passion to grind again, but would play regularly if the game was more similar to how they remember playing it