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I've been playing Legends of Runeterra since it came out. I've had so much fun with it over the years. Truly an amazing game, and I mean this. But this game is starting to lose its identity.
As you probably guessed already, this is going to be a bit of a rant. TL;DR at the bottom for the busy people.
Oh my god, another rant 🙄 Let me guess, Kaisa stole your highroll?
I am a pretty competitive player, I usually hit high masters. I've qualified and competed in seasonals before. I am that sweaty tryhard nerd who always netdecks the best decks. The guy who abuses the latest broken combo to get that sweet LP. It's what I usually do. But not this time.
Before you report my account and send me death threats, know that this degenerate is on your side for once. As much as you might find it hard to believe, I am not a robot that plays the best cards just to see some number on his screen increase. I, too, find joy in the actual game of LoR. In fact, the reason why I got so competitive is because I wanted to fully experience the game. To get that peak experience against best of the best. That convoluted game of outhinking, outsmarting, bluffing... The resource management, and the nerve-wracking, game deciding decisions. I rarely get that experience nowadays. Simply said, LoR is not what it used to be.
Adapt. Interact. Overcome. And if you can't interact? Then adapt. Now you don't interact. Just overcome. That's how you improve.
I swear I must've ve read this on a loading screen or something. This is what the game incentives me to do in order to get better. Whatever happened to interaction?
Now, you should understand one thing. Interaction, or lack thereof, is the name of the game. Your final goal, as a card game player, is to bring a game to a state where your opponent can't interact with you either bringing his health down to 0, or achieving you alternate wincon. That's how you, well, win.
How you reach that state of the game, is entirely up to you. Aggro decks will try to kill you before you can interact, and you can't interact if you're dead. Control decks will try to milk you out of resources, and you can't interact without cards. Midrange decks will try to push the tempo with value trades and their strong units, before launching an uninteractive overwhelming attack. Combo decks will try to get their uninteractive game-winning combo set up.
Notice how I said "try"? Aggro will "attack button go brrr" and "topdeck decimate" you to death, control will drown you in value, Midrange will "rally" their troops to victory. Combo will play Ionia.
This is how certain archetypes will try to outplay their opponents. But, what if you didn't need to outplay at all? What if, instead of outplay, you could just... Play? You play your cards, and you win. No interaction, no outplaying, and ultimately, no fun. Just overcoming.
Why think when you can just vomit a bunch of stats on the board? "Well, you must have gotten those stats from somewhere, right?" Ah yes! I did this genius thing called "literally just putting 3 cards in my deck"! You wouldn't understand, only masters players know this trick. Oh, you think stats are boring? How about a combination of game-winning keywords on a beatstick? You get it just by literally playing any unit with a keyword from your deck. And then, if you are a true gamer, you can copy those keywords on another beatstick for 0 mana at focus speed. And that beatstick even has a machine gun!(this all is an exaggeration, of course)
You want to win, right? Then this is great news for you! No more thinking! No more planning in advance! You simply. Just. Play. Cards. I want to win, too. But I want to have fun while doing it, I want to feel like I've earned it. I want to feel the rush, but, nowadays, it gets denied.
The worst thing is, this isn't an oversight. For the past several patches, this kind of gameplay has been increasingly prevalent in the meta. And why is that? Because it's good. Because Riot is actively supporting it with every new release of cards. We keep getting yet another tool to help us turbo out our uninteractive gameplan.
But when was the last time a card got released and you thought to yourself: "Oh my, this will work great im my Shadow Isles/Freljord control deck"? Exactly. This is why I think that developers are consciously making a decision to push the game to this new state. I seriously hope that I'm wrong.
And if that is the case, then I have a message. I don't want it. I don't want this. This is not the LoR I fell in love with.
Don't take this rant as another instance of "doomerism". Don't take it as a knock on the LoR's developers and its balance team. This game is still amazing. It's not dying any time soon. It's still fun, just, not as much as it used to be. Take it, instead, as a sign of good will. A message to the developers as well as the community in order to help make this amazing game as best as possible.
That would be all. Keep being awesome. Godspeed.
TL;DR: As an experienced player, I am concerned about the direction LoR is headed in. I believe that uninteractive "win before your opponent" gameplan is going to negatively influence this game. I want what's best for the game, and that is the sole reason why I decided to voice my opinion.
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