Legends of Runeterra

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raisinbman
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Joined: September 8th, 2020, 12:22 am

Legends of Runeterra

Post by raisinbman »

I jumped off the LOL train a long time ago, in part because of the design ethos behind that game, but also because my taste in games was changing, period. But to focus on the relevant parts of that, I jumped off of LOL and went to DOTA 2 and never looked back – with Riot’s design, it was publically known that in looking at the more complex designs and mechanics of DOTA(where some of the staff originally branched off from) they stated they’d never have something like Pudge’s hook, and their characters for a longgggg period were of similar design -I haven’t followed it for a long long time but you would know EXACTLY what an ADC would do before getting your hands on them, what a midlaner was, etc. This was done to the point certain characters were nerfed to the point they’d fit in the prescribed boxes Riot wanted them in. Where DOTA was freeform and encouraged the player to discover and innovate, and offered flexibility as the game went on, LOL asked players to conform to their role and made SURE that happened(Remember AP Yi?). On top of it all, LOL has something called flash, which is basically a get out of jail free card. With Flash, some characters already have a ‘flash’ in their arsenal, so that means they can flash twice. In many, many games, but for this example, in DOTA 2, if you are a certain character and you’re caught out of position, you’re dead. It’s up to you either to have a character that has another escape or to make up for that or watch your positioning. This means a ganker is rewarded for taking that risk, or using your ultimate to go for the kill is worth it. But Flash was SUPER popular, and really, essential for a number of things. What that all meant is that you had to find a way to make sure your opponent exhausted their flash or force them to, or even pack your own flash to counter someone’s flash. It was ridiculous. Really, you’d have to assume the entire enemy team may have flash, just making some situations not fun and unrewarding unlike DOTA 2.



I don’t say all that just to get on my soapbox about LOL, but to say after that, I didn’t think I’d ever touch a Riot game again. But as they say – the only constant is change: Valve released a bad companion card game and Riot released a good one. There’s no flash, design isn’t uniform or predictable, and most importantly of all, playing is fun. I do have some reservations about the most recent set’s power level(Call of the mountain), but we’ll set that aside for now. While I can’t give a comprehensive overview of the game because it’d take much more time and effort, I can say it’s a pretty sweet deal. It’s full of personality(though unit quotes are, disappointingly, regurgitated, and there’s at least 1 case of bad voice acting), it feels good to draft(before call of the mountain), and as an eternal fan of CCGs, most mechanics and things were easy to pick up. I do have a slight issue with, as a MTG player would say, ‘phases’(and I’m not 100% sure if this is on me or there’s some setting in the game to check) where a MTG player would pass the phase and then you’d do something. Where I run into issues with this is if my opponent doesn’t attack on their turn, and I do something, they can still decide to attack. They’ve slimmed down a number of things to make the game work more smoothly on mobile than MTG proper would, and that makes sense. As with all card games, this may just be part of the bluff, but it makes certain cards super unwieldy to play(The Box, I’m looking at you).



What I do want to give praise for without reservation is the implementation of champions(which I’m gonna call planeswalkers, because yeah). In MTG, planeswalkers are super powerful, but your ability to play them is very low – they’re so powerful they must be dealt with immediately or, in many cases, their opposer is dead. And if I had a dollar for the amount of times I had a planeswalker in my draft/sealed pool but couldn’t use it, I’d be a rich and less disappointed man. Here, every planeswalker is usable, and most importantly IN your deck. As with all games, some aren’t great, but whether you want to revolve your entire deck around them or just have them be a nice bonus, you can do that. And even the ones who aren’t great surprise me with their performance in the ‘sillier’ game modes(Who knew Katarina could do ANYTHING resembling a win?). Their power level feels appropriate. I did not play a ton of artifact, but the balance of planeswalkers there was almost the opposite – if someone saw you were playing a certain one, or you unleashed yours, they’d immediately fold. Lots of games try to implement planeswalkers but this is definitely the best way I’ve seen. I will say it is a bit silly having them level up, and there be no real change to their art – you’d think with all the LOL skins(and rapidly expanding lore) they’d have the ability to make level 1 distinct from the leveled up incarnation, which you only really see in say, Elise.



Prior to call of the mountain, I felt pretty confident in my ability to do expeditions(draft) and there were an alarming number of strategies that felt viable. And on top of it all, there’s INFINITE drafts, which is pretty much my wet dream. I was starting to get a bit tired of trying to get t 7 wins and failing, but the content drip seems to be at such a pace that I can just come back in a week or so, and have a new target. It came to my attention that open drafters are paired with ‘paid’(whether they’re using real money or not) which is something that needs to be fixed(people can just reroll until they get a perfect deck in that case, and it’s not fun.). It does seem like certain draft archetypes are complete jokes or a pure coin flip(Why won’t you give me a shark chariot!?!?!?).



Now onto call of the mountain – I do think this set is way, wayyyy above the power level it should be. Daybreak units(wait for it) break the game, and I think there need to be more caveats on invoke/accessing celestial cards. Take Deep for instance, yes you can access a bevy of abilities and creatures through it, but there’s a cost and flow to these things. While most daybreak/celestial stuff is ‘slow’ and you’re able to react to it, making celestial the de facto best cards and giving access to them so easily really breaks draft. Over many different games, the strategy that works time and again is no frills power levels and value, and that’s what targon, and to a lesser extent, celestial cards do.



I actually really like targon and some of the other newer cards added, because I think they plug in some gaps with previous archetypes and such that work well. Spell Slingers/Lee Sin was really hurting with his only real support being fizz, and although you could basically do a bilgewater-despite-fizz build that works well, the constant barrage of created, cheap cards really make lee sin work a lot more solidly. That’s just one example I think cards like gems, duskpetal dust, and invoke really help to provide more juice to old archetypes. Problem is, targon is best in class – popping out a 3/3 or a 3/7 as your first move has created a gameplay flow of just passing the turn or taking the damage, as opposed to the previous meta where there’d be combat tricks or even after combat tricks. It’s non-interactive, one of the greatest sins of card games but also video games in general where you are , effectively given the only choice of putting down the controller. And it really seems that the nerfed Demacia has been replaced wholesale by Targon, and most old aggro strategies are dead by the same result. Riot has been pretty good at balance prior to this, and patching on a near weekly basis so I’m pretty confident either the gameplay will develop or it’ll get fixed. Previously, Heimerdinger was a win condition with 3 mana, and it did take them some time, but they fixed it.



Of course Riot is known for looking at the industry and iterating, sort of like what blizzard used to do, and that’s evident here too – call of the mountain is a little iffy, but other than that, many pain points of card games have been addressed. With MTG, I don’t remember the entire list, but at one time Mark Rosewater established a couple of the things people liked least about magic: Not getting to do/play anything(noninteractivity, counterspells), mill, land destruction, and a couple of other things. While there is a counterspell, you can tell Riot has been very careful not to give “Blue”(as magic players would call it) too oppressive tools. Burst spells themselves are uncounterable. Land destruction and mana issues as a whole are dealt with by mana being a reliable resource that grows up to 13. I’m glad to see this refinement.



It is free to play and has lootbox concerns. But as I’m mostly focused on drafts, it’s not something I have to worry about. There’s plenty of ‘free’ currency and cards thrown at you, which is pretty much the norm nowadays, and everything you need to play can be earned for free. Most cosmetics are paid, though

Edit for most recent expansion(12/19):

LOR Expeditions


So, as I pretty much thought the targon stuff(Leona/Aurelion sol) in my initial impressions, its super duper powerful. Its effect is dulled a bit now that they’ve brought down the drop rates of those decks it’s a bit more under control, but definitely still present.



I didn’t really write about the intermediate stuff because it seemed fine.



But with this new expansion, Viktor immediately is sticking out as WAYYYYY too powerful. I think he released in LOL around when I stopped playing, but he’s basically a factory – he can sit there, powering up his side of the board, while pinging you and stalling if necessary. Sure, like many things, you can just go faster/go under with elusive/etc but it feels pretty hopeless as is. I’m already seeing Viktor spammed. There’s a wealth of things in his favor: his color(P&Z) had VERY good planeswalkers who were nerfed and others who are just bad, his teammate colors(Targon) are ridiculous, he creates value on top of value, his tribe(2 cost pinger that grows, elusive whenever you want) is ridiculous, his stats make Viktor himself hard to remove. I think the costing of his stuff is a bit too low, and his 2 drop robo-AHNOLD is a problem.



-Vi, Jinx, Fizz, GP Naut are all pretty lacking, and others in this grouping only benefits from a new consistant partner.

-Targon is stupid OP nuff said.

-His creation cards have such a limited pool(supercool starmap, the one that lets you choose to augment, the ‘copy a unit for 2 and improve it’(which renders shady character obsolete, really, death ray being recurring), he’s going to be one step ahead of you.



Riot didn’t adjust Targon much so hopefully their immaculate balance pre-targon(and post-making-targon-less-common-in-drafts) holds true, but geez, Viktor is too much. Like I said before, I think much like I commented about the ‘deep’ mechanic, this isn’t completely broken and can be adjusted to be reasonable.



Also, Riot, side note – why is OP stuff making games take longer? Can we get some more powerful turn 5 GG stuff introduced? Just sayin’.
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