What Can Game Designers Learn From Legends of Runeterra?

An Indie Dev and a AAA Dev discuss Legends of Runeterra. In this second of three series we discuss Runeterra's systems design and what designers can learn from it.
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[@tinfoilslacks3750]

I think the round pass system is the single best aspect of LoR. In every other card game players have their turn and their opponent's have their turn. The shared rounds meant that players had attacking and defending turns, which I felt added far more depth and texture to the game.

[@girugamesh9001]

I think the big reason why spell mana is specifically for spells only is because most spells tend toward being reactive. If spell mana could be spent on anything then players could spend the first two turns passing and then play any 6 mana unit, which heavily restricts the design space of higher cost units since now you need to balance them around being consistently playable 3 turns before they otherwise would be.

[@tristanescure7384]

Yep, spell effects only happen once while units stay on the board and can snowball quickly if you get a big thing out early. The fact that spell cost and unit cost are balanced independently in LoR may also be a reason why even experienced card game players feel off when playing it for the first time.

[@jaeger7243]

I was about to comment the same thing, you put it very well. I found LoR extremely easy to pick up (i only played hearthstone and yugioh before). The distinction between Spell Mana Cost and Unit Mana Cost became confusing only when I tried playing magic for the first time and someone told me every cards a spell somehow?? Like no sir this is a dragon, not a spell

[@ladygeneveve3805]

​@@jaeger7243creature spells used to be referred to as summon spells if that makes it clearer

[@tarmoboyf]

Funny you say that because there was actually a Jayce Heimer deck that passed turns 1 and 2 to play a turn 3 6 drop spell that created a bunch of token followers. It got nerfed.

[@kateslate3228]

@@jaeger7243 It's a summoning spell. The SPELL summons the DRAGON.

[@tulicloure]

One difficulty in getting past that initial systemic complexity and mental load for LoR that wasn't discussed here is the lack of social elements and systems in the game. Think of when you first started learning Magic. Did you grab the manual or a guide and started learning from that on your own? Or did you have someone else either teaching you or learning together with you? I believe most people get into complex games together with other people. Either learning from a more experienced player, or getting together with a friend and learning step by step while making mistakes, or even watching a streamer play it and talk about it. Those social interactions are fundamental to make it possible for "kitchen table" to thrive, otherwise most potential players would just start reading on the rules and give up ten minutes in. Meanwhile in Runeterra (and with many other digital games, to be honest), social interactions are put behind multiple barriers. Try to get a friend into LoR, and for the first hour or so they get locked into an endless tutorial against the AI while you just watch and comment on it. After that's all over, you might find out that you are in different regions so you can't even play together. Then, of course, there is no way to share or "lend" a deck so your newbie friend can play with you with something other than the first terrible starter decks. The whole process is a drag, and the only people I've managed to get to try the game never really got into it enough for me to be able to play with them more than once. And all that IF you have a friend who already plays. Good luck if you just downloaded the game on a whim and are trying to understand it while playing in the matchmaking queue without any useful means of communication.

[@distractionmakers]

Great point. This is a real challenge for digital games. Tutorials aren’t a pure solve because you’ll have to make sure any possible question could be answered. Probably another reason digital games should be simple.

[@tristanescure7384]

I'd love to hear your thoughts on card games evolving beyond their original format. Specifically, things like Path of Champion, EDH or Battlegrounds effectively taking over the game they originated from. I feel like giving players the ability to create their own formats is a really powerful way to give your card game longevity and broad appeal but as a designer there's also this sense of wanting to protect the original intent.

[@RasmusVJS]

Saying that Battlegrounds has "taken over" Hearthstone is wild (Not talking about Wild, the format). Battlegrounds coexists with Traditional Hearthstone, and has its own separate design team, but is still smaller than it, and definitely nowhere near the reach of EDH or PoC.

[@tristanescure7384]

For me spell mana serves to rewards correctly bluffing with passes. For instance, if my opponent has the attack token but passes to me because they expect me to play something, I can pass back to deny their attack and I still get to keep some of my "wasted" mana for the next turn. In competitive LoR, passing is a very powerful action. But it alsp creates the feeling of leaving mana up. When you have no spell mana in LoR, it's kind of like being tapped out in Magic: you can't do anything if things don't go as planned. On the other hand, when you have spell mana you can respond to your opponent or bluff that you have a response.

[@Yesnomu]

I really like LOR and play the PVE mode a lot, but I definitely agree that there was no way it was ever going to become a mainstream hit. Card games are already a niche, and a complex design like spell mana adds more confusion and complexity even though it reduces variance a lot and makes the game more fair. Honestly what I like most about it is how generous it is, especially in letting PVE players complete daily quests and get all rewards--however, considering how it's losing money, I don't expect this to spread to other games, sadly.

[@byeguyssry]

6:54 There's a setting in LoR that auto-passes if you have no possible play. I don't think anyone uses it Also there used to be a mechanic in LoR called Burst passing. Now if you pass priority and your opponent also passes, the round ends (or the stack/attack resolves). In the past, if you cast a Burst spell (which doesn't pass priority) then pass priority, and your opponent passes, you get one more turn because you did do something the last time you had priority. However, this was deemed as only lengthening the game; most of the time, it can be used to sort of trick opponents or give your opponent more opportunities to make misplays, or to artificially increase your turn timer, and the cases where it was a cool mechanic was too rare to be worth it in the dev's eyes. This seems relevant to your discussion about priority passing. I also think that the reason why spell mana is because, 1. You can cheat out champions if it was any mana, 2. You can design high mana spells to be cheated out early via spell mana while still designing high mana units and ensure that they can't be cheated out early, basically controlling what you can ramp into, 3. It gives the control player an advantage; aggro decks are less likely to have spells. I think most aggro decks only use spells for burn (or at least, a decent portion of them) making the control player more easily handle the board. This would thereby allow for removal to be priced more expensive, which I personally prefer since I don't like my big threats getting Doomblade-d, 4. It encourages you to think about why your opponent is saving the spell mana; it might be that he doesn't want to play anything this turn, or it could be that he's saving up for Ruination. I also don't know about new players now, but even as a new player it felt consequential. You only need to get Avalanche-d twice to remember it's a 4 mana spell that always gets played on turn 3, or Ruination is available starting Turn 6; but if you opponent maybe wants to clear your board or put up more blockers and does not have 3 unspent mana, he no longer has that threat. And as a Fiora player, you always need to leave 8 Mana up to threaten Unyielding Spirit against the opponent's 7 Mana Vengeance, and Anivia players for example can play their 6 Mana win con Anivia while still leaving mana up for Vengeance.

[@distractionmakers]

It’s interesting that mtg arena chose to turn that on automatically and advanced players could turn it off vs runeterra reversing that set up.

[@byeguyssry]

​@@distractionmakers I was actually editing my comment as I went along the video lol, I don't usually comment on multiple parts of a vid so I didn't think about watching it through first; I would love it if you could provide your thoughts on my other comments

[@goncaloferreira6429]

can you clarify your point 1? what champions do you cheat out with spell mana? agree that most cases the spell mana is a tool that control decks benefit more. still, like you said, decks like fiora use it as well. On the other hand you mention that direct removal tends to be more expensive that in other battling card games. When you combine both things we get a game that often favours midrange/control decks. Overall spell mana, as an evolution of what Hearthstone created, gives players agency and that is a good thing.

[@MIKAEL212345]

@@distractionmakers when I started playing I'm pretty sure it was on by default. I think the difference is that in MTG arena, a lot of decks basically just curve out and there isn't much to gain from bluffing a card unless you are super high rank. However in LoR, because of spell mana you are way more likely to be holding a card you can cast but choose not to, so the benefit of bluffing is more worth it than in mtg arena. This is true even in lower ranks of LoR. So, a lot of people turn off autopass whereas in mtg arena it isn't as neccessary

[@throstlewanion]

@@goncaloferreira6429i think the point they’re trying to make is that IF spell mana could be used to cast anything, then players would constantly use it to cheat out champions early

[@jaeger7243]

Fun fact: LoR is played in Rounds during which players take their turns passing priority after every action (excluding blink and burst effects). As you said this way it is more symmetrical, but that doesnt necessarily makes it bad. I see it as an opportunity to interact with my opponent rather than sitting around for 5 minutes waiting to do my single action in yugioh

[@otterfire4712]

I love Dragon Ball Super's card game for this. When a player attacks, their opponent has a couple options to respond before resolving the attack. There was some seriously cool stuff you could do with sequencing in the older sets that was fresh. One Piece kind of has this, but it's not quite as explosive as DBS, BUT it's a more manageable system as cards in hand lean towards defense while DON!! Leans towards offense.

[@mattbell888]

The priority passing stuff in LoR is the most fun part of the game for me. The mindgames of "oh you want to play reactive to me by passing before attacking or playing a unit? Psych, ill pass back and we both waste all our mana, then i go right into open attack." Sniping people with a pass, effecient, effective use of mana each turn, I WANTED that interactivity in my digital tcgs. Some games it feels like you dont have to pay any attention to your opponents turn and you both just race solitaire.

[@UniquelyAwful]

Yea some people forget that MTG even has a priority system lmfao that’s how irrelevant it is

[@vladsalbatecu5337]

See, that is specifically why I like HS and could not get into LOR. I enjoy ignoring my opponents turns, I usually play a HS game while I also watch a yt video, I eat or I do stuff around the house. My gen z titk tok attention span cannot handle just playing a game.

[@akorthouwer]

​@@UniquelyAwfulI have that come up a lot it's really important for mtg the priority system. Never played magic before ?

[@UniquelyAwful]

@@akorthouwerI have played for a long time. A new player can completely grasp casual mtg without really learning what priority is or how it works. I’d argue the stack is far more important. This is not the case in LOR

[@TheLastCurryRice]

I thought the point of spell mana was that sequencing involving the starting hand randomness would potentially be in your favor even if you failed to draw the “perfect” curve. In mirror matches it would take early game disadvantages of missing an 1,2 drop and snowball it for a later turn to make a more potency play, which I though along with the turns playing out together was something done to turn variance into a skill-testing system. By making the stored mana be only eligible for spells, it incentivized the inclusion of spells in decks as well. Designing some spells that would make followers to be slightly below curve was another interesting design space the game had access to.

[@ThatSkiFreak]

my favorite part of lor is that constant changing of board state and plans, i think its way more interesting and fun than sitting there planning out all the cards i want to play and then after that playing them onto the board

[@humbiglio]

I agreed with all of this until the spell mana part. I am a very mid level ex lor player and the way spells are designed spell mana is a massive deal for a lot of decks to play their gameplan.

[@distractionmakers]

Can you elaborate on this? Are spell strategies saving up their mana to go off in one turn and the extra 3 mana matters somehow?

[@yuseifido5706]

@@distractionmakers there are some champions that level up after you've spent spell mana or played a certain number of spells. plus spells start to get really good at around 6 mana, so playing a 6 drop spell turn 3 is very good

[@humbiglio]

@@distractionmakers boardwipes coming online sooner is huge as well as there being massive buff spells that give you extra combats on key turns you really need spell mana for. Also just spell based champions like nami and samira. Cards/followers also gave you spell mana so you could do cool spell chain turns that you had to order correctly and use your actual non spell mana correctly. Its not a perfect system but i thought it was cool.

[@mor4439]

​@@distractionmakers Yes, there are certain decks(warmother's call + feel the rush) that are trying tramp into 9 mana as quickly as possible to play their 12 mana spell win con. Spell mana is also huge for cheap removal spells like ravenous flock and vile feast that were rotated due to how powerful they were at 1 mana. Also, to add to the whole discourse of spell mana, outside of aggro decks, most decks are fine with burning to bank spell mana due to how valuable it is for bluffing and essentially holding up mana and never truly tap out even if you spend all your main mana.

[@mor4439]

To further elaborate, spell mana effects the actual economy and design of spells specifically. It's why something like vengeance (the only hard unit removal spell) costs 6 as opposed to mtg where the baseline is 1-2. This leads to a lot removal leaning more towards damage and burn spells as opposed to effects that say "destroy x". Saving mana early can also allow you to play a six drop card like spirits unleashed that buffs your cards everywhere on turn 3. And obviously spell mana isn't just extra mana for the same reason allowing players to cast 6 drop creatures on turn 3 without ramp in mtg isn't healthy.

[@stripe62]

Tldr Spell mana solves a real competitive problem and no you shouldn’t be able to cast anything with it. I really like spell mana from a game tempo pov. In magic (especially recent sets) if you don’t have a 1 or 2 drop in limited or constructed you are very far behind and your win % goes way down (see 17lands and Serkowitz for stats). This leads to a lot of feel bad games where bc you didnt get your fastest aggressive or defensive speed draw the game is already heavily weighted before you play anything. Saving up spell manna to be able to play creatures and interact on a later turn helps allow for comebacks and catching up on tempo though casting multiple cards. Its also good that this cant be used for creatures, in LoR creatures are a lot more powerful than spells compared to say magic where for 2 mana you can kill almost anything and wrath all creatures for 4-5 manna. In LoR creatures are often bigger removal is more limited and wraths cost 6-9 mana with substantial downsides such as turning battling followers ephemeral so it misses champions and creatures held back and they still get to hit you first. This means that getting 3 mana ahead on a spell is not an overpowered option as you wont be able to efficiently clear the board of your opponents plays with one big spell on turn 3(i do think this is a reason bigger spells are nerfed or very expensive though). If you could play a 6 drop creature on turn 3 that would be more problematic as their are bigger creatures that produce many followers or can kill creatures turn after turn and often offer better removal than most spells. This gives it a nice catch up mechanic that limits the detriment of not being completely mana efficient every turn and (as you say) an interesting tactical option to hold up interaction while making later plats but the primary goal as i see it is to catch up for lost tempo while also occasionally being a tactical play of playing off curve and rather than being a feel bad and losing mana you save it up for a key play later. I think spell mana solves a real problem and manages to avoid being overpowered in competitive play quite narrowly acting as a tempo catch up option rather than free ramp for your first 2 turns. If it was just like being able to make a free treasure for each unused mana of the first 2 turns that would break a lot of systems where ramping into a game-warping threat or sweeper that invalidates early plays without needing to invest resources in ramping. It feels less demanding to always use all of your mana every turn and gives more benefit to awkward hands or tactical choices to play off curve.

[@MIKAEL212345]

100% this. Spell mana is there so every deck doesn't have to be a "curve out or lose" deck

[@Big_Dai]

@1:08 Uh!? Can one really say "drawing a card" at BoT in Magic is not a "system", and not just part of the turn structure? I call a system element interactions, rules and limitations. Whatever the frame the designer put in place for the game to function In LoR, the turn structure + combat capability/timing + the mana (carry the 3 for spells, which the Player DOES have control over) .. those are systems.

[@thefaintsmilesanctuary1618]

Spell mana was one of my favourite mechanics from Runeterra, one that allowed so many choices and enabled some cool mechanics. An example; Play a creature this turn for the board presence leaving zero spell mana. Alternatively don't play that creature, so the next turn when your able to play a better creature (such as a champion), you have spell mana to protect it. The priority system is great in theory, but if someone is roping on every decision, games that should take 4 minutes become 15 minutes. That gets frustrating after a while. Other issues include decks building themselves (parasitic mechanics. I love Lurk decks, but that deck built itself) and later champions having similar payoffs (keyword soup)

[@charlesthacker2384]

I think the reason why spell mana can only cast spells is because the spells on a whole are a lot less impactful than the creatures. This means you don't have the speed of the game drastically increase because your opponent did nothing on the first 2 turns to cast a 6 drop on turn 3. The 6 drop spells are a lot less impactful

[@thomasclowater9471]

While passing priority it is a bit more intimidating compared to MtG for brand new players, I think it does something really important that MtG doesn't, which is make the basic rules more clear. In MtG, a lot of new players feel sour when they play a creature, then before they attack, their opponent kills it with an instant, something they didn't know they had to worry about. It feels like your opponent is cheating, because they're doing something you didn't know was allowed until now. I know a lot of people that gave up on the game because every time they thought they understood the simple rules, their opponent would beat them by using the more complex rules. Basically, when you're using shorthand for rules without realizing it, it feels miserable to find that out the hard way. LoR removes the possibility of shorthand, which makes it take longer for a new player to get the rules, but it never makes you relearn the rules.

[@chibiraptor]

I think one of the biggest issues is that magics "Declare attackers then they declare blockers" system is insanely difficult to deal with. Magic bypasses this by making declaring attackers/blockers relatively simple by making sure that creatures generally have similar stats or obviously kill each other, or by putting in a lot of removal. Legends of runeterra wants creatures to survive for multiple rounds, which means more complicated blocker math, and a lot of situations where a complicated calculation results in... the board doesn't change much. I think if you ask players to make complicated decisions, they should get to see a lot of cards leave the table. Keeping a bunch of creatures on the table except now with damage on them gives this feeling that nothing is being accomplished.

[@tldreview]

14:00 i think that's exactly it. The stress of not knowing if you can even piece 2 cards together was so overwhelming when starting LoR. It never feels like you have room to breathe because outside attacking your opponent can always do anything at anytime. It's exhausting and very frustrating: Exhausting because you always need to think of offense/defense simultaneously, there's never a window of "ok now I'm trying to assemble my board; now I'm responding to my opponent". And frustrating because you're never in control, even in your turn it's never really "your" turn. I remember at first, I loved the whole champions and level ups and whatnot but it was like "brother, i can't do anything in peace. Please let me play". It's not too disimilar to mtg if your opponent is playing super reactive but the fact LoR lays it all bear for you to see just made it more eggregious as a player experience and at first it was hard to keep on playing. Eventually I did get past that hump and ended up sticking with LoR for hundreds of hours but the onboarding experience is quite something.

[@goncaloferreira6429]

i believe that LoR was not exactely designed as player 1st game of the genre. Still as with mtg or pokemon, new players can stil enjoy the basic gameplay, usually just playing units and bashing. With that said what you say about it being stressful is mostly felt by experienced card players. It is a game thta demands constant atention from the players because of this kind of focus on interaction.

[@DoctorOaks]

Maybe it's because I came into LoR from playing Yugioh, but there's a lot of "Interruption" in Yugioh that comes from the hand. Meaning you just have to play like they have that card, lest you run into it. A good example is there's a card that, if you Summon 5+ monsters in a single turn, can get rid of your entire field of monsters to summon itself. It's a pretty popular card to play, and it's something people have to be cognizant of the entire time. Something similar in LoR is understanding that my opponent is playing Shadow Isles, so I have to remember that if they have 6 mana available they can use Vengeance. If I have a card I want to play, but it dies to Vengeance then I should wait for them to have less than 6 mana. I can definitely understand why it might feel frustrating starting off, and especially if it's your first card game. It's also the main thing that caused me to like LoR when I first played the Beta. You're also right about "your" turn not existing, but LoR never calls it "your" turn. It's just do you have the attack token or not. I also think that it's important for people to realize that the earlier people got into LoR the easier it was to adapt. It'll be four years soon since LoR released. The card pool has more than tripled in size, and with regular balance updates if you put the game down for a couple months it could feel entirely different when you came back. This made the difficulty of getting new people involved a compounding problem. As such I only ever recommended people play LoR for the PVE mode after a couple years.

[@goofball3158]

A big part of spell mana is spells are balanced around being able to utilize spell mana and their mana cost reflects that. For instance, in magic, doom blade and a lot of other removal spells that can be cast during combat are likely very cheap. In runterra, a non conditional "kill a creature" spell called vengeance is 6 mana, and is still a good card. Another important thing for is many spells when played go on the 'stack' like in magic, and can be reacted to before the spell resolves, while units in runterra are played instantly. TLDR: Units and spells are designed extremely differently and imo need that addition of spell mana to support the ways they are different

[@bennyharvey8436]

LoR was my first card game and I got deep into it. The systems were not intuitive at the start but I didn't mind because I expected to suck at a new kind of game (and it had lots of flavor for LoL fans). I'm glad one of the hosts pointed out Magic is more complicated. In Magic, you're often free to target any unit with an effect (even negative effects on cards you control), and the sheer number of cards and mechanics in rotation are greater than Runeterra's.

[@Yous0147]

I don't really buy the notion that initiative passing or spell mana made Runeterra difficult to adopt for new players, I'd argue it's what made it stand out in a legitimate gameplay sense. Initiative passing is the single best mechanic in card games in newer times, it completely transforms a solitaire experience into a genuine back and forth with your opponent, and with that comes a completely different and more organic environment. Just imagine how Yugioh would fix their modern 1 turn problems using a system like this. Yes, I agree that having to pass initiative makes the game feel more stally at times, but this in my view is less a problem with the system and moreso a difficulty of it being online and having to leave ample time for a player to act, as you stated this is a problem in Magic Arena too, I feel the solution here is moreso soft refining the timings people can react to keep initiative or let it pass automatically. Spell mana is a bit wonky in theory but in execution it works really well in Runeterra. What it does is multifolds; It soften the punishing blow of having a bad hand by giving you more fuel for later turns. It makes it so that rush strategies with lower cost cards aren't inherently at an advantage. It makes it so that you can play more passively and ramp effectively using your mana; It makes the whole initiative dynamic and metagame behind it more tense in that there's more opportunity and more complex moments that allows responding with Fast or Burst spells. It's a massive thing in Runeterra, the system is set up to facilitate a less predictable play pattern and open up to a wider range of gameplay while retaining the most important aspects of the MTG/Hearthstone-esque mechanics that most card gamers know. In general, Runeterra is actually very easy to get into in terms of mechanics, in many ways it's very similar to MTG and Hearthstone especially (Power and Toughness) and they did that on purpose. In terms of playing the game, it's all very intuitive without being yet another rehash of those games, making just enough high impact mechanic differences (such as the attack tokens, attack sequencing, etc.) that it feels completely fresh even though the average card gamer knows how to play intuitively. The real reason why a player might have a tough time is moreso the social aspect. There's a harsh obscurtiy between players, you can't even chat to players in the client, you can only use stickers in a match (on account of them wanting to reduce the toxicity LoL is known for). As a casual player especially, that means you're sort of in the deep end when it comes to learning strategies, discussing ideas or themes. Some people end up copying a net deck, or watching a video if they're more engaged or even discuss the game on reddit if they're really in the thick of it, but most people don't find or seek that organic relation out which is otherwise the most powerful thing to make a player learn and engage with the game.

[@luminous3558]

Only issue with LoR was the badly managed monetization. There wasnt much stuff you wanted to buy at q price you would pay for it. Boards were way too expensive, skins often useless after the champ disappeared from the meta. The battlepass was the only thing really worth buying especially after adding exclusive PoC content to it.

[@RedWurm]

Yeah, it was in a weird spot - it was generous with the basics required to play, other than maybe access to champions, and that was great - but it makes the relatively expensive and underwhelming cosmetics look worse in comparison.

[@Yous0147]

Exactly! Very well put. According to the devs on reddit, the game was in the red from the get go. Necrit, a LoL lore youtuber, also stipulates the initial point of LoR wasn't to make profit per se but to act as a vector to broaden the Runeterra lore and make LoL into multimedia IP, so Riot was more open to subsidize it for that purpose. The problem is then that, once the money tightened and they wanted LoR to be in the positive they hadn't set up any good monetization structure or incentive for purchase, before we even talk about the marketing. It's weird that the narrative then became that the generous model was to blame, I'd argue it's one of the main reasons why LoR succeeded in bringing in genuine initial hype and a core consistent playerbase.

[@alexmoskowitz811]

Baldurs gate 3 is a good example of this tabletop /digital issue. It takes good advantage of the computer’s tracking to run 5/6 times the number of enemies that you can run as a gm. But when you have reactions from four party members, all of which can have lucky / that one wizard subclass, almost every roll can prompt a decision. It’s not an issue in tabletop because it takes enough time to perform a roll (even on vtt) that a player can decide to use their reaction, whereas in bg3 if rolls took that long an encounter would last hours

[@andrewhartman1131]

Man, I have no idea how LSV’s game, Eternal, is still kicking along. I love the game, but 250 peak players in the last 24 hours (according to Steam stats) is just mind-blowing.

[@00101001000000110011]

so game systems as a whole are the OS. mechanics are the apps running on the OS. and narrative is the boss/manager leading you through the project I guess

[@lynnbowers4722]

I only play the solo mode Path of Champions. I think it is an amazing roguelike deck builder. That is LoR for me, not the competitive mode.

[@RedWurm]

Yeah, it's hard for me to weigh in on the competitive side of the game since I'm not a terribly competitive player - I've only played a handful of games versus other players, and if there was a good solo option in the official mtg or ygo clients I'd probably play much less pvp in them too XD. That said, having a systemically complex game with a (relatively) strong pve makes it vastly easier to learn.

[@danielzamboni3630]

For me, I dislike chess because my decisions matter too much and I dislike dominos because my decisions matter too little. That is why I like card games, hearthstone and magic for me are a good balance between luck and strategy. Legends of Runeterra is too much on the strategy axis.

[@CinderellaMan941]

Personally, this exact reason is why it is my favorite card game

[@yuseifido5706]

For competitive play, runeterra always felt better to me. It felt like skill was the determining factor in most games (especially after rotation) and deckbuilding was challenging and rewarding. When I lost games, most of the time I could identify what I did that made me lose instead of just getting unlucky. However, magic is more enjoyable at the casual level. With commander and so many alternate formats, there is endless content and the randomness of games make playing more exciting

[@SeniorAdrian]

@@CinderellaMan941 same

[@lancesmith8298]

It’s why I liked it. For a while. The more I played all my favorite decks, the more apparent it felt that those decks all played the same. You play a really big board of good statlines, maybe throw in a reactive spell here and there when the opponent does interact, and then pulverize them in a couple of swings. If you can name a strong Demacia deck, I played it. Targon Grand Plaza. Sand Scouts. Quinn/Fortune. Gwen/whatever. Taric Poppy. I got to watch all my favorite decks leave the meta, and then I was given Vayne. No more making me work for my BS, just have a Rally on a stick. The sense of being directly pandered to, eventually, killed my interest in the game. It was too easy to win with “fair” beatdown.

[@TobeydoSomething]

legends of runeterra is high variance with perfect play, where your starting hand matters the most.

[@E_M-real]

in arena if you hold control or click one of the phase icons, it will stop there to bluff having something to play.

[@gizel4376]

exactly, the amount of interaction in runeterra give manycasual player anxiété, that's what prevent the game from reaching everyone, because for those who the competitiveness, it'S the just the best

[@compacta_d]

great discussion! i've often said in recent years-for all that games that have tried to "fix magic" i think runeterra actually did it best ever. but good points about players being anxious about instant speed interactions as well. runeterra is basically ALL that always. "opponent gets to cast a creature in response to my creature?" is a weird feeling on the note about casuals-the number of times i have had to explain the full combat steps and when exactly i am casting the instant speed interaction is like too much. basically "before damage" has become shorthand for "during the declare blockers step", which I'm not a fan of.

[@stevenclark2188]

Taking the overprompting and making it into a system of mini-rounds within the normal round structure sounds like it would drive me up the wall. I hate it enough when say Ascension asks me "Do you wan to do that optional thing now? How about now?" and that game's a PvE deckbuilder where it usually doesn't happen and stuff just resolves entirely on your turn because there's no inter-player combat.

[@TobeydoSomething]

Turns are very assymetrical due to the attack token and various incentives on cards to attack. all the keywords are combat based

[@Yous0147]

Yeah, this is true. The some of the earlier champions (except the foundation ones) weren't entirely combat focused, or at least they didn't rely on attacking as much specifically. The problem the devs found because of this was a more stally and drawn out games on average, sometimes reaching 30-45 minutes, which really put off a lot of players. It's why they stopped designing more defensive cards like Braum and set the focus on making game states that by turn 8-10 one players should have the ability to overwhelm a stall and press the "red button" so to speak. I'm not a fan of it either.

[@Maddmike]

This is why I prefer some of the old retro Yugioh games that deviate from the traditional rigid turn phases. Phasing and response plays so much better when half of it can be implied, but in digital it just gets annoying.

[@williamzinedineh]

There are SOME problems with LoR's systems imo. The fact that certain effect applications are seemingly random can very much mean the difference betweenwinning and losing. especially in path of champions with the round start, and round end abilities. the order with which they are applied is seemingly in a random order. sometimes my round end buff power will activate before an enemy's round end damage ability, causing my 1 health unit to live, other times, it's the other way around. In a PvE mode, why does the player not choose the order in which these things are applied. sometimes additive abilities that are supposed to trigger at the same time as something else, go AFTER the multiplicative powers, meaning you don't get as much out of it as you could have and this is endlessly frustrating me

[@Flamewolf14]

Is grok? Understand or graps? Idk if i spelled it right but they said that word a good bit

[@distractionmakers]

Yes. Grok is game design lingo for understand. Sorry for the confusion!

[@filipelinharesplus]

the biggest problem with runeterra is the league of legends ecosystem, i dont want a lux trashing my game again, but now in cards mode instead of the moba.

[@thomasfavrot4987]

Oh boy, LoR discussion time ! Agreed that the onboarding process is complex. Though I'd nuance it a little. You said it's unintuitive to have priority passing back after every action. I'd generalise and say this is probably true for card gamers, but there are so many tactical games that are built on that premise (like, yeah, chess). As a chess player, the priority passing felt just right. Now spell mana. I could talk for hours about that system, but I'll be short. Spell mana is absolutely crucial for the entire tempo of the game. Whoever has spell mana has an increased reactive potential. it allows and incentivizes assymmetrical plays because it enables playing at different tempo. Remove it and slower decks will mechanically collapse. Allow spell mana to cast followers, and aggro will exploit it aggressively. It also creates space for bluffing. Your opponent is keeping 3 mana on turn 5 ? Maybe they have The Ruination, 9 mana spell that kills all followers. Then, are you risking to play more units to stay ahead in tempo, knowing that they might die to that spell next turn ? Or are you calling their bluff, pass back and make them lose the opportunity to play a follower / champion ? LoR is failing because it's disguised as a card game. At its heart, it's a tactical vs game. It brilliantly succeeded at that, but that's not what it was marketed for.

[@DanielRedMoon]

EDIT : Spare mana is such a good idea! But I too wish it was regular mana.. and that Units could be replaced if you play a new one. Interesting that Star Wars Unlimited has such a similar mana and turn passing-structure, but allows players to WASTE resources and possible attacks without a tangible advantage. Runeterra is considered complicated? That's interesting. I feel the reduced-player-involvement in the "system" makes it more straightforward and understable! But I'm one to think that Magic is "poorly designed" because it can be played "poorly"! You start Magic with a basic understanding that can get TOO complicated, but only during certain high-level interactions. You can scratch your head and keep playing poorly without understanding it fully. I really like Runeterra's design, fixing most everything I dislike about Magic. Sad to hear it isn't as popular.. but the no table/casual play, or real-collecting does hurt its popularity.

[@user-fr9sm3it1k]

would you say the mana system in magic the gathering increases the skill floor and maybe too complex for the average person to learn, or do you guys think it is reasonable. I'm very deep into competitive and i want to make a card game that can have both a low skill floor and high skill ceiling, but im too deep into mtg to really look at the skill floor of mtg in an unbiased way

[@distractionmakers]

Mana both lowers the skill floor and raises the ceiling. It lowers the floor by adding variance to the game so that players of higher skill don’t always win. This way more players can have meaningful games against each other. It also lowers the floor because it puts cards in your deck that do only one thing. This removes cognitive load when you’re deciding what to play. A land is a land or at least it should be for new players. It raises the ceiling by making deck building more complex and robust. Before players had an agreed upon amount of land for each type of strategy (ex. 17 lands for draft) balancing your resources vs cards that win the game is a way to add skill to deck building. Even now, a more skillful player will know when to cut a land or add a land to a draft deck.

[@furion179]

as someone who never played magic , going from legends of runeterra to mtg arena was so helpful and enlightening for me to understand my real problem with runeterra. in short it was pacing of the game. in runeterra not only you get to play every card you want on opponent turn , but you get full mana for that turn,this throw you to intense space of decisions all the time in a monotone way. it's not about decision space is big, I love big decision space, but it's about the game doesn't give me time to breathe or giving me different problem to solve, in mtg my turn and opponent turn have different taste and different intensity, a match have cycles of high and low intensity. in legends of runeterra it's monotone.i am fan of back and forth game play, but also want variety (in system level) in a match itself. also reading the card explaining the card was real in mtg at least for me, and I don't believe runeterra had inherently more complex mechanics. as digital card game they believed it's ok if you need to play a card to know how it works.

[@misomiso8228]

4:10 I much prefer passing priority for digital games. Artifact did it best imo!

[@WildspeakerYT]

completely unrelated but also related, can we have a couple of episodes on Marvel Snap, I can talk about magic or lor or hs or many other cardgames but I have already talk a lot of them from this more like a design perspective, but marvel snap feels, even when it have already more than a year almost year and a half of existence, that no many people talk about the design of it, and it revolutionized so many core systems that I always want to see what more people think about that

[@vladsalbatecu5337]

As someone who played Hearthstone for 10 years and it was my very first TCG, I personally cannot stand any back and forth priority, which is why I don't play LOR or MTG. Being able to watch a video, eat or do anything else during my opponents turns works so well for my tik tok gen z attention span. It also makes it perfect for streaming, because streamers get to naturally take breaks from playing and talk to chat.

[@sithapprentic03]

do you think instant anxiety is why alot of comander games end up being solitare matches with the most broadest interaction only being used

[@distractionmakers]

I think that’s part of it. I also think that casual players enjoy decks that do a thing rather than decks that stop someone else from doing their thing. It ends up becoming a race of who can do their thing first though.

[@miceatah9359]

dont make 20 dollar skins for a card game would be a start

[@badwithnames5180]

sad to see the game is killed now, atleast pvp wise i really wish riot had done more advertising for it

[@maximuscesar]

Have you guys ever played Warhammer Champions?That game was so good.

[@distractionmakers]

We haven’t. We’ll check it out!

[@TheMinskyTerrorist]

please stop saying grok

[@jovannivillaroel5560]

Sucks that it came to an end. I've been playing for years. To finally make it to master and this happens I didnt mind paying at all of skins or emotes

[@distractionmakers]

Aw man, congrats on master though!

[@goncaloferreira6429]

This needed more experience or research in order to allow a deeper exploration. On both players drawing cards simultaneously: it is part of Lor´s idea of parody and interaction. Player see more cards and always have decisions to make- until one of them takes the advantage. spell mana opens design space that most games dont explore. It is a step up to what Hearthstone does, a diferent take on the concept of ramping- some spells cost more that the maximum of 10 "mana" so players need to store spell mana in order to be able to use them.

[@kateslate3228]

That no matter how good your core engine is. If you are completely incompetent at card design, your game will still suck.

[@tineye5100]

It loses the casual people because it’s more complex than Hearthstone. It loses the less casual people because it’s less complex than magic. It occupies a weird place where being in the middle is actually a detriment.

[@Yous0147]

I think that's a strength personally, in fact I'd argue it's a huge possibility space. You wouldn't really be able to make a card game that competes with MTG or Hearthstone on their turf either, they're just bigger IP's in the space with more nostalgia behind them

[@mor4439]

NGL this analysis sucks

[@Yous0147]

I think it lacks someone who is more knowledgable and deeprooted on LoR for sure, f.ex. the talk about spell mana definitely seemed more like a surface level look at its effects in the game proper

[@Uri6060]

Runeterra makes me so sad, since like I always wanna love the game, and I do love parts of it. But like, I just dont love the gameplay outside of teemo.

[@gianlucacagliari4327]

I think the problem with Runeterra is it's too complicated for new/casual players, but too simple for competitive players. That's what made me stop playing, it was way too simple with too simple mechanics and interactions

[@mor4439]

I really don't understand the argument of it being too simple? Like is it the lack of combos or not being able to vomit your whole hand out on the first few turns?

[@gianlucacagliari4327]

@@mor4439 Its more the fact that you don't have (or at least didn't have when I played) activated abilities, only triggered or static abbilities, and because of that they ended up very limited in scope, usually being either a combat related keyword, or being enter: Do X, with the exceptions usually being the heroes, but not a lot of synergies, or cards that triggered other cards. I think because of the mana you naturally gain every turn all decks ended up as midrange decks with a different look, even the aggro and control decks were very simmilar in terms of numbers of 1 cost, 2 cost, 3 cost, 4 cost, 5 cost creatures and distribution of spells. Basically most, if not all games were down to who got the board advantege first, just like hearthstone or playing limited. You usually either had creature based aggro or creature based control, you didn't have soimething like a spell-heavy control deck, or spellslinger deck, or a landmark deck, or an extra-turns deck, or a chaos deck, or a reanimator deck, or a discard deck, or a burn deck. Even the "instant speed" spells the game had (the ones you could actually use to respond to another thing as it gets played) where not very powerful or common, therefore not used so much. Aparently researching there is a "new" thing called equipments, but when I played you didn't even have those, no permanents that could attach themselves to other permanents like auras or equipment in magic. Now, don't get me wrong, I think runeterra is the best digital-only card game I tried and I really like the game, but it was just too simple to play for months or years or decades on end. Tl;dr: Basically most games boiled down to: Get more creatures on the board than your opponent, just like hearthstone, but with some instant speed stuff mixed in, which is a big plus over hearthstone, but not enough to really make the game interesting for competitiveness.

[@tinfoilslacks3750]

​@@mor4439as someone who played Runeterra for 4 years, one of its biggest problems is that its *individual cards* never pushed the envelope and delivered really intense gameplay. Both Hearthstone *and* Magic, despite one having insanely simple systems and the other having insanely complex systems, had plenty of crazy bonkers cards like Yogg Saron and Murazond or Obeka and fires of innovation etc respectively. Runeterra by comparison is a game of "deal 1s, +1/+1s, and draw 1s". It plays its card design aggressively safe, and boring. Even worse, the few cards that break the mold generally aren't good. Doing a cool synergistic combo like Headmistress Telsi + Trevor Snoozebottom to summon 2 huge mumblesprites is generally worse than just playing big well statted guys on curve. I personally think the initiative pass, spell mana, shared round system is better than any other card game's core system. And it's squandered because the individual cards are so boring. LoR was a game which was too cowardly to ever trust its players with something explosive, cool and exciting despite its visual design trying to convince you otherwise. LoR, unlike MtG or HS, would never let its players have a card as awesome or as unorthodox as Ojer Axonil or Kazakus. It reminds me a lot of League itself. For all its spectacle its a very low power "fight with toothpicks" game. League balance updates would be like "changed Irelia's movespeed from 355 to 350" and DotA's would be like "Invoker can kill you from full health with a single sunstrike now".

[@blanktrigger8863]

The main problem with LOR that I could see from the very beginning was that it was made by folks card battler fans who made the mistake of creating crunching various card games down to their most reductionistinistic understanding and then putting all those traits into one card game. I think it's the same flaw that's ruining various art forms, which is the same flaw that causes the "meta" in any game, movie genre, etc to ruin the base product. There is a kind of brain that does not understand that the skeleton of a thing is not the thing. LOR is a pure skeleton of what card battlers are, but it doesn't capture the nature of it at all. It has all the tropes but none of the essence.

[@mor4439]

I don't think you've played LoR to be quite honest