Slowing feature releases hurt League of Legends
I think it’s safe to say that the League of Legends community is as restless as it has ever been. It has been more than half a year since the last major feature release, and promised feature updates remain unreleased months after their announcements. Several high profile players have made long forum posts with titles like, “@Riot why I’m losing interest in your game,” and, “Riot’s downward spiral.”
The thing is, I still have a lot of fun with League of Legends. My personal beef with Riot is that a game that once had as active a development cycle as I’ve seen has grown stagnant, relying on bi-weekly champion releases to keep the game fresh. I started playing the game in December of 2009. Just three months later there was a new map, not just in development, but in the matchmaking rotation. Somewhere along the way there was a client revision. Four months after the Twisted Treeline release came Season One, complete with ranked matches and a new client experience.
It has been more than six months since Season One launched. In that time, there has not been one major feature release to the game (sorry, tutorial modes don’t count). Magma Chamber was announced in September, as was an upcoming graphical overhaul. Both features remain unreleased. There is still no team/clan support. We still don’t have normal stats available, despite the fact that they’re being recorded. The achievements pane, which was introduced last July along with the Season One release, remains unused.
In short, it’s time. In fact, it’s past time. A major content update is long overdue for the game. Riot has had a lot of opportunity to expand the game and stay at the forefront of MOBA design. Without a serious release in the near future, I think we can reasonably expect the game to start bleeding players, either to other MOBA franchises or to different games altogether.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Fearless Gamer, Jeff Morgan. Jeff Morgan said: The slowing pace of League of Legends development: http://bit.ly/hj0tCP – major feature release is long overdue #leagueoflegends #riotgames [...]
Totally agree. I like new champs but after a while it feels like a grind. Honestly I’m not caring too much about balance; just make it new, haha.
Just curious, what the hell is that dog thing in the above picture? Is that Magma chamber?
Yeah that is supposedly one of the boss mobs from Magma Chamber.
And here I thought that it looked like an objective of sorts…
I’m one of the players that left LoL for HoN. Mosly because RIOT doesnt even care about quality. I’ve been wating too long for MagmaC. The latest heroes are boring as hell with the same mechaincs reworked. Sad because LoL was a great game.
Would the graphic overhaul or achievement system raise interest in the game? I’m not sure it would.
New champions doesnt make the game much more interesting to me. A real new map is long due (TT can’t be counted as a valid map… :)
“A major content update is long overdue for the game.”
Maps have much more replay value. Champions get old after a while, which is why Riot has to keep releasing new ones.
I look at Riot the same way that I’d look at an old high school friend who I hadn’t seen in years after running into him and finding out that he’s bald, fat, broke, and divorced. There was so much promise with this company, but they lacked leadership and focus. I love LoL and I put an unbelievable number of hours into it, but I remain shocked and confused by the lack of interest that the devs and designers have shown in releasing new content. It’s mind boggling. Their business model cannot survive on a new champion every 2 weeks – well maybe it can, but not with me paying. That said, I still hold out hope that they will do something awesome soon . . .
I don’t think the graphical overhaul would do much. Achievements? Definitely, but it needs to be a robust system. There should be skins for difficult achievements, maybe IP rewards for the best.
I love it when games have little things I can shoot for. It gives a little bit of flavor to the experience. If these kind of updates were happening every 3-4 months, it would make a BIG difference.
I’d love skin/ip rewards for achievement, one would be:
“The Wiggin Boy Achievement”
During a monday night match, escape from combat 5+ times with less than 50hp.