Real Talk - Is Anyone Playing Runeterra?

So its well known that Runeterra is the most balanced card game in the genre.

It does this by sacrificing powerful archetypes with unique flavor upon the nerf cross over and over again until everything is essentially equal.

Case and point, I look and see what Graplr the only streamer still supporting the game daily is playing and its Heimer Zoe with Whiteflame?

So basically infinite value soup with zero synergy or deck flavor. I don't know about you guys but when I see that I'm just craving the days when I could get rushed down by pirate aggro, or Azir sandman, or a Zillian Ekko deck went infinite on me, or Ezreal burned me down, or Poppy built an insane board or a million other unique and interesting independent deck builds existed and were sucessful.

They were sucessful not because.they were balanced but because.they weren't, and that's the real story here, "synergy" means when I run this card with that other card they are better than than both those cards alone...without synergy you don't have decks, and you dont have a card game.

I know I've been harping on this but it seems like people are starting to agree with the whole do the regions, Champs, followers, and spells have enough flavor. The answer they did before.that flavor was nerfed out of existence.

Riot stop nerfing and start buffing seriously, we get roughly 20 nerfs to every single buff on average and it's killing the "synergy" it's killing the "decks" its killing the "fun" in your game.

Real talk : Do you even know what you want at this point? Game being balanced is bad now? It wasn't that long ago were you would spam new threads non stop to complain about Azir/Irelia and the Turbo meta in general demanding nerfs and now you miss them?

Or do you need a little reminder perhaps?

https://outof.cards/forums/legends-of-runeterra/runeterra-general/10147-riot-made-a-huge-mistake

https://outof.cards/forums/legends-of-runeterra/runeterra-general/10774-is-fixing-the-turbo-meta-possible

https://outof.cards/forums/legends-of-runeterra/runeterra-general/11002-soooo-azir-irelia-is-still-dominant

https://outof.cards/forums/legends-of-runeterra/runeterra-general/10716-waiting-on-changes-promised-on-reddit

https://outof.cards/forums/legends-of-runeterra/runeterra-general/10784-still-no-news-from-riot

I wonder how deep the player pool is myself sometimes :) I've mostly stopped now, and that was in large part because when i DID play, i would get matched, over and over, with SI/Nox bots. Not the most fun way to pass the time.

Nifty kinda has a point when he says that nerfing specific archetypes out of tier 1 status often results in just 1 deck less being viable without improving the rest of the metagame.

The thing that riot has to be aware of is: what archetypes are oppressive and completely devalue a legitimate strategy?

What I mean by that: should a meme deck get crushed by tier 1 decks? Most of the times it should. So if the majority of meme decks loose to a certain tier 1 deck that's not a problem. If strategies that proven itself in the past or that are overall 51%+ winrate strategies and if those can't win a certain popular matchup it's something you have to keep an eye on.

If a matchup is so polarized because 1 deck does exactly which is the weakness of the other deck it's more tolerable than a deck just doing it's thing leaving the other deck no chance to stop it.

Examples of problematic decks were therefore: Go Hard, Azir Irelia P&Z Noxus burn and TLC 

Decks not being that problematic were Shen Fiora(although Fiora herself is problematic)

Quote From OldenGolden

I wonder how deep the player pool is myself sometimes :) I've mostly stopped now, and that was in large part because when i DID play, i would get matched, over and over, with SI/Nox bots. Not the most fun way to pass the time.

I can't comment on how many people are playing, except to say that I recently dipped back into playing. It had been long enough that I was in the bottom of Iron IV. And none of my opponents have been even remotely what could be called "bots." Most of them have been playing shockingly well for being in the bottom of Iron.

(Former Masters player here)

Quote From TheTriferianGeneral

Nifty kinda has a point when he says that nerfing specific archetypes out of tier 1 status often results in just 1 deck less being viable without improving the rest of the metagame.

The thing that riot has to be aware of is: what archetypes are oppressive and completely devalue a legitimate strategy?

What I mean by that: should a meme deck get crushed by tier 1 decks? Most of the times it should. So if the majority of meme decks loose to a certain tier 1 deck that's not a problem. If strategies that proven itself in the past or that are overall 51%+ winrate strategies and if those can't win a certain popular matchup it's something you have to keep an eye on.

If a matchup is so polarized because 1 deck does exactly which is the weakness of the other deck it's more tolerable than a deck just doing it's thing leaving the other deck no chance to stop it.

Examples of problematic decks were therefore: Go Hard, Azir Irelia P&Z Noxus burn and TLC 

Decks not being that problematic were Shen Fiora(although Fiora herself is problematic)

If memory serves Fiora was nerfed because of the mono Fiora deck which depending on the match up could be an auto win or an auto lose, Fiora/Shen was a balanced deck with mostly 50/50 match up into the rest of the meta.

Now when it come balance nerfing tend to be more healthy than buffing, just look at recent buff to Dragon and daybreak what did those accomplish? Making the decks meta for 2 weeks? After the resent nerfs however many deck stated being more competitive just recently an EU player managed to reach rank on masters with Ekko/Zilian deck in previous meta that wasn't even a tier 3 deck.

That being said you are right when say that decks shouldn't be nerfed just because they are strong and that should be reserved to problematic ones.

The reason why even in iron there are quite decent player is that the wast majority of players don't play ranked at all. 

If there is no real reason to play ranked casuals won't do it. They will play some PvE some normals and be fine with it.

Ranked is for those who want to prove to themselves that they are decent players so don't expect iron matches to be that easy.

Quote From minuano28

Quote From TheTriferianGeneral

Nifty kinda has a point when he says that nerfing specific archetypes out of tier 1 status often results in just 1 deck less being viable without improving the rest of the metagame.

The thing that riot has to be aware of is: what archetypes are oppressive and completely devalue a legitimate strategy?

What I mean by that: should a meme deck get crushed by tier 1 decks? Most of the times it should. So if the majority of meme decks loose to a certain tier 1 deck that's not a problem. If strategies that proven itself in the past or that are overall 51%+ winrate strategies and if those can't win a certain popular matchup it's something you have to keep an eye on.

If a matchup is so polarized because 1 deck does exactly which is the weakness of the other deck it's more tolerable than a deck just doing it's thing leaving the other deck no chance to stop it.

Examples of problematic decks were therefore: Go Hard, Azir Irelia P&Z Noxus burn and TLC 

Decks not being that problematic were Shen Fiora(although Fiora herself is problematic)

If memory serves Fiora was nerfed because of the mono Fiora deck which depending on the match up could be an auto win or an auto lose, Fiora/Shen was a balanced deck with mostly 50/50 match up into the rest of the meta.

Now when it come balance nerfing tend to be more healthy than buffing, just look at recent buff to Dragon and daybreak what did those accomplish? Making the decks meta for 2 weeks? After the resent nerfs however many deck stated being more competitive just recently an EU player managed to reach rank on masters with Ekko/Zilian deck in previous meta that wasn't even a tier 3 deck.

That being said you are right when say that decks shouldn't be nerfed just because they are strong and that should be reserved to problematic ones.

As far as I remember, she was nerfed because of how she would always go between the ability of meta dominating to being tier 2 in most patches for a year. Fiora Shen was fine up until Golden Aegis appeared and people suddenly realized they couldn't really deal with it.

Quote From TheTriferianGeneral

The reason why even in iron there are quite decent player is that the wast majority of players don't play ranked at all. 

If there is no real reason to play ranked casuals won't do it. They will play some PvE some normals and be fine with it.

Ranked is for those who want to prove to themselves that they are decent players so don't expect iron matches to be that easy.

 

Well, I'm not saying that I would be a Masters or Diamond player (or even Plat) but I have been playing since day 1 of the beta and never touched ranked. I imagine that it's not that uncommon for someone like me to appear and try out ranked once in a while. I also imagine that there are players who has played for a long time but never committed enough to ranked so they never really get anywhere in ranks.

That is true a lot of people enjoy Runetrra in a non competitive capacity. It's actually possible the game functions better in that light with their current design philosophy.

For me, I vary if the meta is good yeah I'll hard climb diamond dont have the patience to go further. If the meta feels too grindy and samey I literally just won't play till the next expansion.

Not like I gotta stream or anything.

Quote From Nifty129

I look and see what Graplr the only streamer still supporting the game daily

I just popped into Twitch to check. Majinbae has over 700 viewers right now. I checked his schedule - technically, you're right that he doesn't stream daily. He skips Friday. And the weekend is not listed in his schedule, but he often streams on weekends as well.

Looks like Jason Fleurant took a break for the holidays, but he also streams basically every day.

And then you have European streamers like Alanzq and Freshlobster.

I have no idea where you got the idea that Graplr is the only streamer left.

Alanzq might stream daily but to me he is not an option worth mentioning.

I only were 2 times on his channel and boy was he arrogant towards his audience.

Sure some might think different on him but to me he is just a douche and I won't watch him even if he is a good player.

However Snnuy and Freshlobster I can recommend since they are decent players and nice at the same time imo.

If you're just going on aggregate streaming numbers, I'd say the game was never really all that popular but has seen a sustained dip over the last several months compared to the last year: https://twitchtracker.com/games/514790

I appreciate the way the game is balanced now... I can see why people would prefer Metas like azirelia threshus and lisstrundle for the rock paper scissors gameplay and not having to worry about losing to meme decks, but for me I prefer to be able to use all factions and have half the cards in the game be useful enough to go in a competitive deck I can play on the ladder/gauntlet.