Why Giving Players What They Want Destroyed Legends of Runeterra

[@zestyflamingo]

One of the best things to come out of LoR was the visualization of passing player priority they used. I used it as an example when teaching people yugioh before master duel came out. One of the biggest questions a lot of newer card game players (not even just yugioh) is “when am I allowed to activate these cards?” Having a template where you can physically see the windows of interaction was just huge and not to mention does a subtle amount of heavy lifting when it comes to readability from a spectator perspective.

[@Mirro18]

Honestly the priority system and how it handled attacks was one of the coolest things about the game without a joke. It made aggro use brain and it still kept control in check. It was awesome!

[@gryfyn71]

Man , the print outs taped to the wall really got me

[@MP-sh6ct]

It's blue painter's tape too 😂

[@phillcampora6451]

Runaterra gave me alot of cards and the f2p experience was great so I ended up spending money on the game. Mtg arena never gave me anything and its awlays trying to make me spend money , so I never payed for anything ontg arena.

[@garabartero]

Exactly the same for me.

[@SK-do5rv]

+1 I k now alot of people who are in the same boat bad take lol lor was done by riot

[@Someone-lg6di]

Same

[@christianokoye9491]

@@SK-do5rv Who cares what like 2 or 3 of you do. MTG arena makes gangbusters on packs, LOR makes basically nothing on cards, and loses money overall.

[@letsmakeit110]

@@christianokoye9491 found the whale

[@BiggysLetsPlays]

One other important caveat is that they did not have any incentive for players to play or win PVP, and players can farm daily quests and battle passes in PVE. Hearthstone has the "three daily PVP wins" quest that kept players logging in daily.

[@dieptrieu6564]

I mean you still have to do some quests in pvp mode. And before the pve come out. That's the only way you can do quests.

[@KaiserMate]

They did had (and still have) daily quests for pvp. Whar type of quests were you expecting?

[@bmorr]

I wish that you guys had podcast episodes that are over an hour long so I could easily listen while driving or doing chores. I also love these "shorter" single topic videos as well.

[@tldreview]

I don't think "being too kind to players" was what caused the issues. It's just like you mentioned at the end of the video, the game didnt properly account to the monetization system they created. And it saddens me that the game wasn't able to pull it off because everyone will just look at LoR and conclude that "see? We need to be scummy otherwise we'll fail". I love _love_ card games. Most of my phone's storage is packed with card games, but most PvP ones have such horrible monetization that I just resort to single player ones

[@distractionmakers]

To be clear, being scummy is NOT the answer. This is the hard part of the intersection between CCGs and monetization. Marvel snap has done a decent job of retaining the chase without being scummy.

[@MosesSuppose]

@@distractionmakerslmao what? Marvel Snap absolutely has not done that, Snap’s business model is significantly more scummy than any other digital card game I have played, and I have been infinite multiple times in snap, mythic multiple times in MTGA, and legend multiple times in hearthstone. You can literally get like 1 NEW t5 card a month in snap, many decks do not work at all without their key t4 and t5 cards

[@ashtongaskill3980]

Logging in to Snap felt like strapping on the milking machine every time lmao Not the example I would use.

[@distractionmakers]

@@MosesSuppose I haven’t played Snap since launch. Do they require you to spend money to get the cards? From what I remember you can earn all the cards without paying money, but it takes quite a while

[@tldreview]

@@distractionmakers they changed how the higher tier drops work. The system is _phenomenal_ to begin with but as you attempt to get the rarer cards on higher tiers it becomes pure hell. I dropped the game because at some point they just released a bundle for like 40 bucks that would let you get the best card in the game. The alternative would be to grind for months or get extremely lucky with caches

[@00101001000000110011]

i think they solved 2 matters (1 potentially) but were not able to grab the playerbase valume they needed for the gamble to work long term. i absolutely am in the same mindset as gavin that, digital, can do a lot to evolve the card game space that is yet to be explored. not just patches would bring a lot of life and dynamism, but also pve type game modes, seasonal 1v1 modifier games etc. it would be feasible to make a card duel game that actually evolves with type and the players, in the sense that demons gain new powers (new mechanics) since they dominated a meta and angels then get new cards to match evil forces on the battlefield. those kinds of dynamics would not just be more resonant with the community, and organic, they would also be more resonant with lore and diegetic. now, i realize this is a bit of a large scope ofc. but the number one problem i see within ALL games space is that there is a finite amount of player spending, player time, and especially, a very elusive and shifting player interest. you can make the best game in the world but if nobody hears about it, no success comes. in the same manner, even if ppl hear about it, since most are already invested in x or y things they may not have enough time to give you a shot. videogames are ever-filled with crowded spaces, from MMOs to shooter subsets... it's easier for a game in a new genre or subgenre to establish itself since the novelty gameplay experience is conducive to rooting a new core audience - people like new things, it solves the fatigue of playing too much of a genre - but the counterpoint to that is humans naturally also resist unknown experiences. lowering costs in terms of assets and having a very agile crunchy side is imho where the gold veins lie currently but with all the backlash and fear around AI of late we might not see anyone in a position to properly take advantage of all the available strategies in the market for a while.

[@byeguyssry]

One of the LoR content creators, GrappLr, put it well when he said that LoR is not a Collectible Card Game, it's just a Card Game, because you get all the cards so quickly. I left the game for half a year and could still craft every single card when I came back. I think this is especially a problem because it's framed as a CCG, so your expectation is different from the reality. My expectation, like in every other CCG, is that I'm gonna open packs and get excited when I get that high rarity card and try to decide what deck I want to make without spending that much time (this does face the problem of the optimal solution being to wait for the meta to settle, then netdeck, but choosing which deck you want to play is still a commitment), but in LoR, the excitement is experimenting with the new cards because you already have all of them.

[@dieptrieu6564]

That is the reason why they now put more focus on pve. Since in pve you don't need to care about meta. You don't need to get the new OP cards as quickly as possible. And they can now simply gated your progressions with other currency. So now you gonna have to throw money to advance faster or grind like hell.

[@Kaisingsens]

as your average joe small spender I felt I had to grind mtgarena and hearthstone daily for prolonged periods of time to somewhat keep up which ultimately drove me away from both games. they are both still around and probably profitable so good on them but for me I didn't like that the thing I did for fun wanted me to engage with it as almost a job or drop some serious money consistently. nowadays I just play paper mtg in my lgs and love marvel snap on mobile

[@distractionmakers]

Marvel Snap solution to this problem is very commendable. They retained the chase for cards, without being scummy.

[@openit125]

Snap is ridiculously grindy with timers that go off multiple times a day to keep you grinding. And the grind is super deceptive with how they start you off with the rush of cards and slowly turn it to a drip.

[@DrisothLOR]

Interesting to see the alternative monetization efforts seen as good from outside the space. I was one of the competitive players (won ~20k over the games lifespan). It was pretty apparent inside the space that they were bleeding money, and weren't really making efforts to fix that. Obviously a more standard monetization scheme could have helped, but also it felt for a long time that the cosmetic monetization was also rather low on the priorities list. Felt like they launched without a monetization scheme, and were perpetually behind on getting one rolling. Ideas would happen, but years later than they really should have (skins not existing for almost 2 years into the games existence for example). Definitely think the community is kinda silly for thinking the generosity was a true positive (obviously good for players in the abstract, but also makes profitability much harder), but also think monetization kinda never got the attention it needed.

[@distractionmakers]

Experimentation with CCG monetization strategies other than Magic: The Gathering’s is a good thing I think. We need exploration in the space to find ways to retain players and make money that isn’t pay to win or predatory.

[@DrisothLOR]

@@distractionmakers Definitely happy to see an attempt at cutting back on the barrier to entry for CCGs. I think LoR went too far, and would have had difficulties regardless with monetization, but I also feel the industry got less information than they could have. Had they had tons of variants, and way to spend money for players who wanted to, I think the industry would have gotten a better read on what level of monetization is needed / is successful. Data availability and card acquisition doesn't feel fully cursed to me, but does feel like it approaches that label. I hope someone figures it out eventually.

[@Yous0147]

I agree with your second point on their monetization scheme being perpetually behind, but I don't think having cards cost money would've kept the game afloat. More than likely it would've tanked the game faster given the nature of the game itself, you as an avid LoR player already know how most people absolutely hated playing subpar decks because it made such a huge difference when playing others, ranked or casual. In reality those cards should've been vectors for people to customize them, but as you pointed out, the customization was half-baked and late, and beyond that it was way to expensive to justify for anyone who wasn't fully commited to the game. Spending 10 or so bucks for 2 jpegs and an animation that amounts to a champion skin just doesn't add up for most people. The generosity was a true positive in my view, the problem wasn't in the generostity of the gameplay of the game, it was in so many other aspects of the game that just didn't build upon that advantage at all and instead parroted FOMO strategies used in LoL such, as event passes, which just doesn't work for a card game like LoR. I would agree to the idea that it might've been too easy to get cards, and therefore lacking the chase-aspect, but that's a different thing from monetizing the cards altogether. Just look at any other card game released that doesn't have nostalgic backing of a 90's or early 00's IP, most if not all of them fail because they try to use the same monetization strategies that the bigger card games do. You could say LoL has that nostalgic backing so it could feasibly do it too, but I argue it can't because LoL despite Arcane just isn't that culturally entrenched for most millenials who make the backbone of the monetization these kinds of games utilise. LoR absolutely needed the cards to be obtainable by a casual player fairly because that was the vector by which you could've made those people invested in the game without having the IP nostalgia yet, and that absolutely did work for the players that are a part of the game including you, What they failed on is then turning that investment into profit through genuinely good monetization options.

[@DrisothLOR]

@@Yous0147 I wouldn't really disagree with you, but I have a different framing. LoR had issues with monetization, and locking off the most reliable method CCGs use to successfully monetize couldn't have helped. I agree that with a better alternative method, the loss of direct card sales might have still worked out, but we simply can't know for sure. If you want to take an optimistic framing (saying the issue was with poor alternative monetization), I don't have any objective reason to say you're wrong. I have a less optimistic view, and would criticize locking off the main way CCGs have successfully monetized. There's a huge middle ground between what LoR did, and what the industry standard is/was, and I wonder if it was still generous, just to a less extreme level would it have been a more successful product. As much as people want to deny it, success as a product is dramatically more important than success as a game, a great game that is a bad product will fail, a terrible game that is a great product describes most mobile offerings.

[@Yous0147]

@@DrisothLOR I think that's a really reasonable take. Even if we see things a bit differently I'm very much inclined to agree with you given any new card game would try to do something similar.

[@Leviathan_XO]

For me the visual elements of LOR. The tiny flairs on the cards, the love put into each level up animation, allowed me to fully invest into the game. I felt awesome everything I leveled up and I got a sense of awe whenever a card had an animation attached. Mechanical it's not adding any value but the value of a game should be in the impact and feeling of it, not just if the game is fun to play.

[@ashtongaskill3980]

LoR did not launch knowing what they were doing with cosmetic monetization lol. It's crazy that they launched a League Card Game without skins or foil equivalents, took then way too long to try and monetize the game.

[@byeguyssry]

I believe that LoR mentioned they wanted to prioritize getting people to play LoR before starting on the monetization. Which they managed to do, but seems like it wasn't the right thing to do. So in a sense they knew what they were doing, but what they were doing just failed

[@ashtongaskill3980]

@@byeguyssry If that's true then it runs into another issue where the game at launch was extremely boring which caused all the big streamers to bounce off of it. The general consensus seems to be the game got good with its first set release in Rising Tides (plus all the ways the game was slow that got visually sped up later) but the marketing push / budget was already shot by then and they made too many dull first impressions.

[@openit125]

When they launched their foils (prismatics) it was such a bust lo

[@throstlewanion]

One of my least favorite decisions was when they chose to start making all new champions with hyper-complex level up animations. Not only do I (personally) find those new animations less interesting than the ones for the older champions, I imagine they must have signified a HUGE increase in costs for little gain. Those fully 3D rendered 10 second animations were a mistake

[@TeaRektum]

Devs said that the old animations had to be prerendered everytime you load a match so if they kept doing animations like that it would eventually overload the game with animations that you had to load every match. So they pivoted to those videos to make it more compact.

[@zander2758]

​@@TeaRektum couldn't they just pre-load only the animations of cards that are in the players decks? Seems weird that you'd need to pre-load ALL of them every match.

[@TeaRektum]

@@zander2758 i guess its because every champion in the game can be created by certain cards randomly so they have to be always loaded?

[@FG-ww8rc]

It isn't super popular but I would LOVE for you guys to look into the game stormbound. It is kind of a chess/tcg hybrid and I really think it deserves more attention.

[@ForrestImel]

I've actually played a little bit of Stormbound and it's definitely interesting, I'm not sure if we will do a whole video on it, but there are some interesting design decisions in that game that could be brought up for a broader discussion.

[@ashtongaskill3980]

I'm super tuned into LoR but I'd never heard those art prices. That's insane.

[@Lando-My-Love]

The only thing I loved more than LoR's gameplay was its community. Im so sad to see it go, and for reasons that felt so avoidable. Other riot games have proven rhat desirable cosmetics will milk the whales and keep the game afloat, i simply dont understand why great efforts to monetize were never made :( A favorite game died for it

[@benpuffer7891]

Played Runeterra for hundreds of hours. Never spent any money on it.

[@PixeletDan]

Im really excited to watch this. This is my favorite game in the world and the way Riot treated it has disappointed me beyond belief. I have uninstalled the game because it makes me too upset now... I will edit my reply with some more thoughts after I watch, but thank you for making a video on this topic. edit: yep, just finished. was a great chat between you gents. I'd love to hear you talk more about LoR in the future. The game was so damn generous and fair and it should be in such a better position than it really was. I've been a dedicated community member for over 3 years, playing the game since beta. I've spoken to many, many community members. Everybody has, at some point, begged and pleaded for more ways to spend their money. Literally. We've also begged Riot to actually talk about the game and promote it. They haven't. And they don't. At the end of the day, Riot has the single greatest CCG created, with beautiful art, rich characters with voicelines, and deep complexity when it comes to deck building. The sad reality is that, with the recent news that they are shiftnig to a PvE focus, many of the beautiful intricacies of the game are going to be lost. It truly depresses me. I wish Runeterra could be in a better spot and I wish they did not fire over half the team. The game of Runeterra, the game I love and adore so much, is not and will never be the same again. And that is enough to depress the hell out of me. Cheers again for the convo.

[@SeniorAdrian]

The main reason why Lor didn't attracts more players is because it requires more attention, on the screen. Priority system turns a lot of card gamers off, but i love it.

[@marczwander893]

Runeterra seemed like such an amazing game. I enjoy deckbuilding more than anything else in card games and that game lets you do that... until you realize that all the obvious strategies, the things the designers put there on purpose, the things that arent creative, are the most powerful - by a long shot. Very tempo focused game. It surprised me to hear they made this game for deckbuilders. The potential is clearly there, I just wished they let us experiment a little more.

[@nikoratzu6844]

I think you don't understand how absurd monetization is in LoR, all online card games give players enough resources to make a good deck but if they want variety they have to play a lot or put in money, while in LoR their economy It's so inflated that you can have the COMPLETE COLLECTION for free, I love the game but they were overly optimistic believing that selling splash arts for $15 would keep the game going.

[@adamcosper3308]

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the two of you decide to discuss Marvel Snap. I've never played a card game whose design intrigued me so much before playing that I fell off of faster.

[@mindlessmonk3322]

LOR had terrible metas that killed the player base. The economy was salvageable, if the developers made better decisions.

[@akorthouwer]

One thing I find interesting is that there is a player organized mtgo format Penny Dreadful(PD). Which says that any card in a week of rotation is below 0.02 tickets is legal. customization happens quite a bit in this format too. Since if any copy of the card is legal any art of that card can be played and with player avatar. Since there are free loan programs available until 5 tickets. So any deck is available right away to the players. The format does get solved sometimes, but we don't always succeed at that. This format always rotates a week after a standard set releases. I am wondering whether adding aggressive rotations for a game like runeterra would keep that game interesting as well without having to put an unfair system onto the players and still keep the game interesting. You can get perhaps some artificial rotation by randomizing the cardpool a little bit.

[@distractionmakers]

This is a model I am very interested in exploring. 😊

[@openit125]

The Meta shifted a lot and there were usually tons of viable decks. They also addressed stale metas with balance changes pretty well.

[@mawillix2018]

@@openit125 The current Standard is also very well balanced.

[@nuparuchi]

I think runeterra's monetization is interesting to think about in comparison to league of legends'. In league, you don't need to pay anything at all, although you can pay to more quickly unlock champions or get skins. Overall I don't think their monetization is that different, but it failed in runeterra's case while it's one of the most successful games ever in league's case.

[@distractionmakers]

Contrasting the two might make for a great future video.

[@azraksash]

Runeterra was dying in terms of popularity way before people left en masse after RIOT's last announcement. I think the biggest problem was the lack of quality balance. All the cards were supposedly designed to be competitive playable, so no "draft fillers", unfortunately, the power level was not equalized and some stuff was straight up unfun, while being too strong - getting attacked several times by your opponent when you have the attacked token by Azir-Irelia was probably the most miserable thing in the game and lots of players simply stopped logging in. Currently, Elder dragon decks have too high win % since release even after nerfing the card slightly and RIOT is not patching it - I guess they didn't learn from Magic that free value effects are broken and have no place in a game with resource. Additionally, they started introducing more and more RNG a la Hearthstone which probably had no place in the game (back and forth nature of the game was not liked by casual gamers and it was not popular among them, so most of the Runeterra's playerbase was more competitive minded and there is nothing more annoying than losing to RNG for such players, imo).

[@distractionmakers]

Their monetization structure is a huge contributing factor to how quickly these dominant strategies take over the meta unfortunately.

[@darkskyxgames]

Completely agree with you, but they also forgot quests to get cards for casual players and that their monetary f2p model was too bad.

[@mindlessmonk3322]

You're 100% correct azir- Aurelia made me quit the game. I started playing the game during COVID. The devs basically ran the game into the ground with insane balancing decisions.

[@darkskyxgames]

@@mindlessmonk3322 The issue with Azir-Irelia was not only that the deck was very strong but that made the turn system useless generating free stuff each turn that you had to deal with or you would die very fast. I couldn't generate decks back then, it was ridiculous. And they thought it was fine... I started to move on from LoR from that. The powercreep and the constant addition of keywords was insane. They didn't know how to properly balance their game.

[@Mastertoa3]

I don't know if I agree with your assessment that price and availability are major factors in slowing down the development of the meta. I've never played Legends of Runeterra, but as a longtime magic player, the speed at which the meta develops is very much decided by evolving options and archetypal balancing, plus new sets and rotation. Red Deck Wins, or other similar aggro strategies, are dominant in the early days of a new set not because they are inexpensive, but because they are simple. They rely less on knowledge of the metagame and the opponents decks than something like control. As people figure out what to expect from the meta, aggro loses some of it's edge to more midrange strategies, and control generally appears last, as it requires the right answers, which can only be known once the meta has settled a bit. At the level at which meta decks are being played, money really is not the deciding factor. making cards more available wouldn't stagnate the meta, as it's almost always shifting as decks rise and fall by beating the top decks, and being beaten in turn by new tech. From the very little i've heard about runeterra, it seems like their metagame is becoming stale not because the cards are available, but because there are too few of them, the game is too new, and the options are too limited. Being forced to play exactly two colors in MTG would be brutal, and that's a huge restriction to place on a game. I Imagine that many of the problems you're attributing to monetization are actually issues of scope and flexibility.

[@distractionmakers]

What you’re saying is correct, but what you’re missing is how quickly the meta is solved by the top tier of players, that information is spread, and then the lower tiers of players chase the cards. Runeterra shortens that chase, which is commendable, but allows meta to homogenize faster.

[@00101001000000110011]

well control is a reactive archtype. you can only control what you understand/know in a broad philosophical sense. so in a new set/meta, control type players can just cram a bunch of removal and couple big hitters in a deck but the amounts of each type of removal or the right removal is gonna be where their decks see problems. so the progression you describe makes perfect sense, aggro always being the most active at start since it's the easiest to work against anything. just doing it's thing and especially killing any nasty thing before it can fully show its colours. but these days a meta can be solved in a day or a week. then another week to fully spread, and that is ridiculously fast.

[@ashtongaskill3980]

Based on how metas settling has felt to me in MtG, HS, and LoR, I'm going to need some actual data to convince me it was faster in LoR. Digital card games that allow for endless grinding and lots of data being gathered just solve metas faster than in the old days, that isn't an LoR issue as far as I ever felt.

[@openit125]

Lors meta was typically extremely diverse because it was balanced so well. When it got stale we got balance patches. When I looked at our meta compared to other major card games it kicked ass. I played it at a pretty high level (hit top 30 players on NA server often) and I played off meta decks to get there often.

[@Kirito-sv2gg]

The thing that keeps players in rank is the amazing rotation system I think. To figure out how to build your decks with new cards is so much fun

[@dutssz]

I think one of the notable things to point out is that it took them a full year to release the first batch of their most succesful microtransaction type that is the skins, before that all you could buy were card backs, emotes, boards and guardians, with the two latter ones selling so poorly that they entirely stopped doing them, describing how much debt they generated

[@tinfoilslacks3750]

I have over a thousand hours in LoR easily, played it since beta. Only spent about $20 on it total. I've played every big TCG and CCG, and I firmly believe that from a design standpoint, LoR is the best, period. Easily blows all of the others out of the water from a gameplay perspective. BUT, LoR's biggest, most damning downfall was simply this; it was too late to the party. Players have a finite amount of time, money, energy, and attention. Trading card games especially demand an above average amount of it from players than other games. Plus, trading card games are niche, and there's very few people who are interested in TCGs but aren't currently playing one. The game was, in essence, for nobody. If you're interested in TCGs, you're probably already playing one. And if you are, you're probably not either going to give up the TCG you already play for a new one, or have the time and energy to play two. The game also, despite being excellent, struggled to court any particular kind of player. The game was a happy medium between Hearthstone's simplicity and brevity, and MtG's competitive nuanced back and forth nature. Turns out that people who prefer something closer to the former will simply play the former and vice versa. The devs went "if we just iterate on top of and learn from our predecessors and build a fun high quality polished game, people will play it". And it's a bummer that isn't true.

[@goncaloferreira6429]

1- if any game deserved to charge money it was Lor. Visuals, sound and client are The Best. 2- good use of the digital space. showed once again that balancing card games is a super hard work. 3- introduced important innovations to the genre. 4- unfortunatey it seeems Lor will come down in history as a justification for the mtg business model in digital.

[@Yous0147]

All great points. Number 4 is my fear too, but anyone who looks at the game's history with perspective will understand that the monetization wasn't really what brought LoR down. It's just the easiest thing to point to, but I think had the monetization been stringent we would talk about Runeterra the way we talk about Artifact.

[@goncaloferreira6429]

@@Yous0147 thank you. In these world Looking at things with perspecive is something hard to ask, specially as time goes by. Can i ask youto clarify some points? you dont think it was the monetization model and the way the game lost millions a years since the beginning is the main cause for it failing? what other reasons would you bring up? what was that about Lor and Artifact?

[@Yous0147]

@@goncaloferreira6429 Sure, I'll try and clarify as best I can. There are other online card games that have tried a tighter monetization of cards, all of them except games that have a monumental nostalgic backing (Hearthstone, MTG, Pokemon, Yugioh etc.) fail, because it's not a sustainable model for most to buy into especially in our economy. Artifact which was a card game based on the Dota2 MOBA, a mirror counterpart to this game, tanked hard primarily because of this exact kind of strategy. When Yugioh Master Duel, Yugioh's digital client, was announced, every single Yugioh player never dared dream that its monetization would've been anything but harsh in monetization, it was a standard, and yet it is released as a game you can concievably play F2P and still develop a good library of decks, and I would bet their reason for pursuing that strategy is directly tied to seeing the trend LoR had set in the industry. We're talking Konami here, probably the worst card game publisher when it comes to choking a game for profit, still eyeing and taking this approach which speaks volumes. According to the devs og LoR, the losses to gains on this game are on a factor of 10x. No amount of card monetization would've fixed that, instead it would've strangled any and all momentum the game gained throughout its life time. There are absolutely other more core problems at stake. The DLC of LoR itself wasn't the problem in and of itself, rather it is how it's mostly its price and secondarily how its advertised that is the problem. No one (only people invested in the game) will spend 10 bucks for a champion skin, amounting to, at best, 2 images and an animation. Generally speaking, the DLC is overpriced for a casual and up-and-coming games' market. In the other main Riot titles they sell DLC at premium prices, banking on whales subsidising the game, but that doesn't work for LoR, for various reasons including its size and scope and the fact that it's a strategic card game (I recon this is another reason why they're pivoting to PVE with Path of Champions taking center focus in future development). But! You absolutely could've made good money if the DLC was more appropriately priced. A lot of it is genuinely excellent and high quality, as is the game, the cards and the Champions by themselves, you just need to hit supply with demand more squarely instead of betting on keeping your portfolio premium. Sell 100 skins at 5 bucks instead of 10 at 10 bucks, and it absolutely would've made the difference. If your DLC, your main way of earning money, is too pricy, no wonder no one's buying 'em. The Foundry, a system that rotates legacy DLC for purchase, is a great idea with a bad execution that completely misses the point of it. The foundry should've been a rotating marketplace, with a week at a time instead of a month, where you can purchase legacy and non-legacy DLC at discounted prices, that way you utlise FOMO in a reasonable way to actually give the potential buyer cause for purchase, without diminishing the value of your portfolio further. LoL already does this with their skins. There's a lot of initiatives you could go about doing to make buying something easier and smoother to do for a player, f.ex. let them earn a discount through play that they can then use when purchasing certain things. The only DLC that was consistenly well priced was the event passes that unlocked more loot the more you played, but their problem was in forcing the buyers in to having to grind the game to achieve it. This leads to many people not purchasing it out of insecurity, just that split second of doubt is usually enough to halt the whole thing, and many players ended up just burning out after each event because of this too. It's really no wonder PoC became popular, it's the easiest way to clear and engage with the games core progression system (the challenges). The problems with LoR are a mix of various things, including the engine/coding of the game making it difficult to produce monetizable material easily (such as card borders) as well as a DLC model that focused on selling highly priced premium DLC banking on whales subsidizing the game when that doesn't work for an up and coming card game, starting off in the red and yet scaling up production in an effort to dig out demand, marketing issues, the fact that the lowest tier to purchasing currency is 5 then 10 euros (where I live) etc. etc. None of it would've been fixed by a less generous card collecting model, and LoR would've likely been way worse off today had it not run with that approach. The 3 core aspects that defined LoR was its monetization, its sensible card balancing and meta adjustments (before they stopped doing that) and the excellent presentation and art.

[@maoulegna]

I heard that contrary to common beliefs that LoR was overstuffed costing way too much. Yet, the art cost info is so wild. No wonder it sunk money I wonder how much the overall cost was being behind the runterra ip

[@distractionmakers]

It seemed astronomical honestly.

[@forlexer]

7:13 I think the meta point is extremely undersold as you said before the reason to get people to keep playing. Energy invested is a big part of the casual experience, but the customer isn't always right in what they want, in this point the customer is hurting themselves by wanting more sooner, as the meta is settled earlier, and gameplay becomes stagnant faster, devs have to create faster and revenue suffers for the dev content cycle, and monetary extraction from the customer. Funny comparison but I think is apt, the streaming services pivot on release schedules for their shows demonstrates a portion of this monetary problem. The release of whole seasons in one go does not incentivize continued subscription service, and it doesn't encourage customer excitement for new product. Subscription depends heavily on time, time that you maintain a customer throughout the current cycle towards the next month (if they aren't annually paying this is). I don't have a ton much else to say right now, but it's crazy to see erroneous business decisions not taking into account the psychology and mechanics of certain practices.

[@distractionmakers]

Streaming services dumping whole shows at once is the perfect example!

[@RikuTheFuffs]

Ariokan has a similar "fair" monetization system, but it also has the added value of "you can create your own balanced cards from scratch" to create something that didn't exist before.

[@distractionmakers]

Love the idea of a customizable cards system. Something only digital could do.

[@RikuTheFuffs]

@@distractionmakers indeed! And the best part is that it helps with the "plateau effect" you mention at the end of the video, as you can invent (not only "find") the counterplays for the 5-8 meta decks :D

[@chammy2812]

I recently tried Marvel Snap but burned out quickly. I progressed faster in ranks than I did in collection. Meaning I was playing against cards I wouldn’t get to use for months. It also didn’t feel like I was collecting but rather unlocking. I had no control in the cards I got, the decks I could build, or how I level up. This lack of player agency just made me stop caring. Why are some cards locked behind months of playtime? Do you really think that little of me that I couldn’t understand how to use them until I spent that much time playing? The gameplay is fun enough, but everything outside of it: no agency in collecting, real time gated progression, getting match against decks that have much later cards, and it being a bad PC port of the mobile app just made me quit playing.

[@distractionmakers]

I agree on Marvel Snap’s distribution model. I think the idea was to lengthen the time cards are viable without boosters. I’m not sure it worked.

[@Yous0147]

You're probably right about the chase aspect, that is something that could've been worked upon a bit better but if you look at the comments made in Reddit from devs about how the game was in the red for all of its runtime and they kept the game running through subsidising from other games, so much so that they apparently spent 10x what they made in revenue, I can't really imagine that alone would've rescued the game or been a big factor. LoR had other problems.

[@bashfulpanda2596]

Going from LoR to MTGA and immediately seeing tons of cosmetics Id WANT to buy was extremely disappointing. They did not monetize well at all despite player feedback. I was probably a whale just because I bought the passes that came out. There was just not that much else Id want to buy. I didnt even want most of the stuff in the pass. I just wanted to support a game I liked. Now they are leaning it into a half baked deck builder.

[@John-gn5fx]

Great video. I thought monetization through restricting access to cards was just making the player's experience worse to get more money out of them, I didn't think about how making the player gain cards more slowly might give them more deckbuilding puzzles to solve. For context though, when did you play Runeterra? You mentioned playing a FR/SI aggro deck, but that's generally a control/ramp region combo, the only aggro deck I can think of in those colors is They Who Endure, which was nerfed out of relevance in 2020.

[@Yous0147]

Apparently LoR was in the red from the very beginning according to the devs on Reddit (in the QnR stickied in the main LoR sub). If you think this game would've done better with a monetization model similar to Hearthstone or Snap, I assure you it would've tanked before the first couple of sets had finished. A prime example of that is yet another card game made by yet another prominent MOBA which tanked within the year because they didn't embrace this model, Artifact. The reason why LoR kept being in the red is manyfolds, but the card monetization is not it, and people saying it is don't really look at the bigger picture here. You only need to imagine the game had the cards cost money or been more restrictive and you'd clearly see how that would simply shut of any engagement the game otherwise had.

[@mawillix2018]

If I could've gifted (or mystery gifted) starter decks, skins, guardians, arenas, or card backs in LoR, I would've happily paid 500 euro, Riot would've happily accepted money, and other players would've been happy to get free stuff. Instead Riot "lost" ~480 euro that I spent elsewhere. I was unhappy paying ~20 euro for an item that could only be bought in a bundle of garbage. Players on my friends list didn't get any free gifts, and I didn't get to invite new players to the game while paying for their starter decks.

[@Yous0147]

@@mawillix2018 I'm not sure I understand, are you saying if the game cost money for cards, you would've gladly paid not only for yourself but also for your friends? But since it doesn't, instead you now won't want to? If that's true, then you do know you can actually buy the cards outright still as it is now

[@mawillix2018]

​@@Yous0147 I already have a full collection. There's no gift feature in LoR (unlike in the other Riot Games title "League of Legends", where I've used that feature a lot.) I've twice asked Riot to implement a gift feature in LoR, because it is difficult to spend money in the game. Cardbacks are very popular, they don't cost Riot as much to create as a skin, and players like getting them for free. I don't need to buy more than one cardback for myself, so Riot should allow me to buy them for people on my friends list. Most of those players are completely F2P. My friends would have cool cardbacks. I would've had a way to spend excess money on a game I like. Riot would've had more money. I actually agree with your original comment, but I think that the reason that the game wasn't making any money is because Riot wasn't letting players who would've liked to support the game spend their money in the reasonable ways that had been requested.

[@SaberToothPortilla]

Huh, it's interesting hearing some numbers put to the illustration commissions. They don't put out as many cards of course, but even with it being around 100 per set, if the average is... let's say 5000 a pop, that's around 500k just on art assets each set. Maybe that's typical (at least for games that big), but it did kinda catch me off guard. I would've imagined it being 20% or even 10% of that, but I guess that's just me thinking of, say, a small to moderately sized developer sourcing art for their game.

[@ashtongaskill3980]

Based on research I'd done before I dont think it's the norm. That's why higher than I've heard anywhere else.

[@codebracker]

To be fair, each of their cards (except spells) has full-screen art of the card which are gorgeous enough to be a wallpaper

[@Phoenix42.0]

Where do I find the ben brode ad where he talks about not being able to buy every card in Marvel Snap? I want to seee it!

[@ashtongaskill3980]

Ooo boy I'm ready to have some emotions based on whether or not our hosts agree with my LoR takes 😂

[@Yous0147]

Your discussion here is really interesting. I don't agree with your conclusion that this monetization goes against what the player wants in terms of gameplay, and I'm not keen on the title of the video being what it is, but in general you bring out a lot of good points. In general I feel people want the chase but I feel like you forget how it feels to collect cards within the context of the LoR launcher, how it feels to play against other players (which in contrast to TFT and LoL is an almost solitary experience with some stickers to make you feel you're not isolated), how being part of the LoR community is something you do outside of the game and not inside of it. All of these and many more factors detriment what otherwise should've been a social hub making people buzz about their deck building and games played. This is the real thing LoR needed, some kind of way for people to communicate and have fun similar to how in fighting games you can be around other people in a social hub choosing who to fight. LoR's main game mode was only two things mostly, Ranked and Deck-exploration, to sustain that, you need an active community, a way to belong to people who're interested within the context of the game, otherwise people will congregate outside of the game on Reddit and KZbin etc. and unless if you're competetively minded or someone who really likes tinkering with decks, which is the minority mind you, then you won't feel the urge to start up the game knowing the social aspect is fragmented somewhere else completely.

[@GiganticPawUnit]

I think it would be interesting to get a bit more granular with that casual description of "tiers" of MTG decks as a player learns more about deckbuilding. When I got back into the game after many years, the "first tier" for me was green stompy instead of red aggro, because I never had much of a taste for playing red, Gigantosaurus and Ghalta were in Standard at the time, and I was like hey, wow, huge green creatures, just like back when I was 13. I'm sure there are other interesting examples of easy to understand "first tier" decks, which are less popular but which certain players instantly gravitate towards. Beyond that, I feel like the mention of midrange as a "second tier" before meta decks collapses a few things that have some interesting distinctions. For me, the "second tier" was more like "naive" midrange, where I have some strong ideas about how a deck COULD work against aggro and control, but I can't really calculate how to assemble a deck that will function properly by giving me the cards I need at the right times in the game. I think the next "tier" after that, before getting seriously into meta, has a few different aspects - coming to understand control, midrange that works properly, and more resilient aggro that's better at surviving if it doesn't win in the first few turns. Of course, maybe you have a video about this already and I just didn't get far enough into your backlog, haha.

[@distractionmakers]

We did breeze over this concept in this video and it is worth a video specifically about this. We discuss it in other videos, but it hasn’t been the sole focus of one yet.

[@FuriousScribe]

Interesting conversation. I'm hoping the fantasy novel series I'm writing about my card game will be the income generator, so people playing the game itself will be able to get cards fairly easily like LoR did it 🤞

[@tineye5100]

The problem is it hit the middle ground between Hearthstone and MtG and ended up being neither. It was too complex/lengthy for the former, and not enough for the latter.

[@Conduit23]

Title is so true it hurts. P.s. Excited for Snap talk, but even more excited for Netrunner talk 👀

[@Syp.D]

Couldn't help but associate the tension/problem with the "race to get players the cards" and "the competitive nature once the meta is solved" wich is faster in the net decking era plus the amount of experimentation, with the tension in MMO's between leveling and endgame, specially the modern ones where they try to rush the leveling, failing to perceive that is part of the game, and not a chore

[@distractionmakers]

Great comparison. It does feel like that has gotten worse over time.

[@darkskyxgames]

There were a lot of bad decisions around Runeterra, but you can't blame the f2p model. It was a bad f2p model. I'd prefer free cards (most of the cards) once a new season starts and then you pay to get all cards than the current model that makes you than just playing a lot you can get all the cards (by quests or what they want, but allowing players to get like a 80% of that season. Do you want all the cards? Well, pay). This would help casual players with a lot of decks while making it more pay to win if you want all cards. The EXP system was also bad, it didn't reward you to play longer games. If you play faster game you get more resources. There a lot of wrong things that I can say about, but the game was good. Overall good. There were good and bad times but the overall experience was good and that's why I played a lot. My main reason to drop it was about when they created Azir-Irelia and they though allowing that was completely fine (also with the constant powercreep and the addition of in each big patch). Basically balancing issues. You can't put too much RNG and free resources like that in this game. If you make it like that, give players more HP or something... That's also another bad thing in the game... You can't get more than 20 HP and there were so little heal mechanics for the nexus. Remember when they destroyed the arena mode? I had a lot of tokens and I didn't want to play that mode because I didn't like it. It was the best way to get the cards, but it was so bad made... MTG Arena mode is much better. Another unnecessary thing was the skins, the level up animations... That makes the cost of the game much higher. More basic animations like the Teemo or Darius would be enough for this game. They went too crazy, it is not the players' fault. Basically Riot had the fault for balancing bad their game and monetary system, and it is not something that can be fixed easily.

[@00101001000000110011]

i LOVE not spending money! better than that, i adore having others spend money (whales) so i don't have to but can play that game! but short of that, i really love spending a (fair) amount of money and then being able to play that game as long as i want to!

[@ThatSkiFreak]

Or maybe the real problem is trying to monetize via microtransactions & hoping whales fund your game... What I want is to have all the cards and I know that's what I want because I have experienced it. I don't at all buy into this idea that restricting players' ability to access cards is good for gameplay. At least if other players are anything like me which they may not be, but I am myself so I'm the most important :) Also deckbuilding in LoR was unfortunately way less interesting than in magic the gathering for me, largely because of the focuses on more midrangey decks & champions and their packages. It's really insane to me how many people I have seen who have been like 'oh well lor just wasn't mean enough', instead of questioning the methods they used in the first place.

[@derGlasdrache]

So yeah, I like this monetization through skins better than, for example, how it was done in Hearthstone when I was still playing and it really annoyed me that you were reset to zero every season. The expansion PvE quests were cool but I eventually stopped playing because of the money gate or progression gate. That was years ago, maybe they've changed their concept since then but probably not since it probably works for a lot of players. Of course, whales don't mind monetization and it's fine that they are a company's primary target group alongside other focuses. I think Legends of Runeterra copied the successful model of League of Legends, where skins are the main source of revenue, even though it didn't work so well for LoR.

[@sweetphoenix5386]

It is very interesting to see, they tried to essentially do everything against what most folks view as scummy (Overpriced FOMO, essentially Pay to Win, low effort design to pump out more and more content) All of the cosmetics were very reasonably priced, and the battle passes for events contained immense bang for your buck, both for players who wanted to play the included champions, and those who just wanted more materials to get more cards, sadly Riot doesn't seem too keen on upholding that moral standard Capitalism ruins another good thing

[@NotRegret]

In games were you compete against other players whether it's directly PVP or competing to get the raid-slot/cosmetics player wants are always the same. They want to get the thing and they want no one else to have the thing. Once everyone else has the thing they don't care about it anymore. That is why for instance meta games even more. They want to have the deck that beats the other players, but they don't want anyone else to have it. So they all run and look up what the best ones are. Than become miserable when everyone else is running this stuff.

[@openit125]

Lor was possible the best at having a diversity of meta decks and new decks popping up out of nowhere.

[@autopsipath]

I like to come back to lor occasionally like if I can't make it to magic on a Friday mainly. Eternal only-shadow isle only-Thresh and Kalista only, couldn't care less about anything else in the game learning just enough to beat it. So essentially i play LOR the same way I played LOL back in the day. (I preferred dota 2 anyway).

[@bulkbogan6235]

I played LoR on and off for a total amount of about a month. In that time i managed to: build a meta deck and get bored of it within 3 days of making it, go 7-0 (or the equivalent amount of wins for a perfect trophy) in a draft with a deck built around highly parasitic mechanic (it both drafted itself and played itself), and get several champions leveled up in its PvE mode by grinding the same campaign over and over. Last point hurts the most because I feel like they looked at Slay the Spire and learned all the wrong lessons from it. Because it wasn't roguelike, it was a roguelite, with static enemy encounters you have to play over and over again in order to level up your champions. Monetization is the reason LoR failed, however I believe there's more to the games core design that was also somewhat at fault. Either its lack of focus between PvP and PvE modes, or notorious for Riot "yes man" attitude in the development team made them too braizen for that "Hearthstone killer" or "Magic killer" status.

[@lUndercoverGamerI]

Very generous monetization killed Gwent as well. Great game that you never needed to spend money on to get a tier deck and a non rotational format killed its monetization. They tried solving the problem in a few ways but...well...we know what happened to it.

[@DanielRedMoon]

I played LoR until I was done with it. The most recent set changed the game into a direction I wasn't having fun with. I also managed to beat Sol a couple of times and felt like I was done.. without spending a dime! Almost bought a board, but ultimately didn't support the company that probably deserves it!! Considering they do everything Magic does, but better (even game design-wise, IMO).

[@connorpena373]

Runeterr's NUMBER ONE issue, is that it's owned by Riot Games. If an Indie company was in charge of this exact game, it would have the attention it needs to thrive, instead, riot has buried this game in the back next to twisted treeline because it doesn't make enough money.

[@lololllololololol]

Man, I wanted to get into Runeterra but it has some kind of issue with my tablet and wifi. I'll agree that it has a much easier beginner curve than Magic Arena has

[@mehmetozturk771]

Lor didnt fail because its monetisation, it has great monetisation, all they needed to do was copy the good parts of the popular card game HS just like any other Riot game, copied and made better monetised game, it would be more successful but instead they tried to re-invent the wheel made a complicated unfun gameplay

[@KKJazz]

The gameplay was the best part wdym lol

[@mehmetozturk771]

@@KKJazz Yeah bro its so good that even riot gave up on it

[@mercier390]

I wonder if Riot moved to the battle pass system like Marvel Snap if that would be a good middle ground on monetization

[@Someone-lg6di]

They did move to it

[@rokmare]

I would have brought LOR as a single player game if it wasn’t a F2P mobile game it help expand the lore of the characters and universe of LOL the only other game to do so besides ruined king

[@Thomazbr]

I just do the sensible thing and play fanmade sims for card games.

[@skyguytomas9615]

How many LoL players have been introduced to the game through LoR? LoR never has to turn a profit as long as it onboards enough players to Riot's flagship game. The first hit is free as they say.

[@acie782]

if the meta gets "solved" in a digital card game seems like they can just nerf the best decks if it's not balanced

[@distractionmakers]

Most of the time you’ll get diminishing returns from nerfs/buffs because they don’t really change the play patterns of the meta. It does help though.

[@verdiss7487]

Could you actually explain to me why "You determine your play tier based on how much $ you want to spend" is something we want? Because you've just described pay to win. Like in a single sentence, that's pay to win. How is that a good thing. All you really express in this discussion is that this happens in MtG and other CCGs, but don't interrogate whether it's a good or bad outcome.

[@distractionmakers]

Oh we’re not advocating for pay to win as the only option or even a good option. We even discuss Marvel Snap as a more fair alternative. The tension of gating cards and pay to win is a very hard thing to reconcile in a CCG and, as we see with Runeterra, is directly connected to a CCGs success. A game that can solve this issue without exploiting players will likely be in a great position to succeed, but we’ve yet to see it.

[@shawnjavery]

From a product design you just want multiple options provided to consumers at large because there is always going to be a variety of demands on the part of consumers. Like it makes sense to have cheap options, mid expense options and expensive options because there's different brackets of buyers who want each product sub set.

[@PirateCptn]

Marvel Snap is similar in progression just gives you all the cards from playing

[@kjmsoulja]

They just had an update why is the game destroyed??

[@bananesalee7086]

they ended up making it more of a PvE game, and selling boosts to progress faster

[@lucasmano8187]

great video!

[@OanhHoang-up3uj]

Lor - Best card game I have ever play

[@SkeletorsRightHand]

have you guys talked about duelyst before ?

[@00101001000000110011]

don't think they have

[@distractionmakers]

We will soon. I love duelyst. That’s actually what I was thinking about when I mentioned pixel art. 😄

[@sigurvit9689]

Will you ever talk about the Pokémon card game?

[@distractionmakers]

We will. Pokémon is a bit hard to discuss for us because neither of us played the game extensively, so it will require a lot of research or an expert to guide us through all the years.

[@alexmoskowitz811]

Thought you hated commander most I jest. Keep up the good content!

[@warpsterdash5420]

Haha, ❤ the vid, but boy I tell you what I wasn't really ever a fan of Riots games due to how they balance long term with whackameta style of balancing

[@ekolimitsLIVE]

The problem with runatera is that there really isn’t anything groundbreaking new in their design. From a design perspective it’s kinda bland. So once everyone has the cards, there is no wow that would be cool to build feeling

[@TheL0rd0fSpace]

You guys mentioned "People are here to play the game, not to watch animations", but I think you're missing the mark a bit. As someone who watches a lot of card gaming content online, I see tons of situations where HS streamers are frustrated because their opponent conceded, rather than let their win condition resolve *specifically because* part of the gratification in doing cool stuff in digital ccgs is seeing the cool animation that results from it. It's also why virtually every digital ccg I can think of has intricate and visually engaging animations and sounds for every time you open a booster pack: part of creating a video game of any kind is using visuals and sound to invoke the feelings you want your player to experience. It's also part of why different cards have different animations. Compare Hearthstone's Fireball to its Pyroblast: not only does the difference in animation "sell" the relative power of those two spells, but it also makes winning with a Pyroblast feel that much more kickass. You feel like you nuked someone from orbit!

[@distractionmakers]

Great point. I think some amount of game feel is important, but full screen takeover animations that last more than a few seconds seems excessive to me. The first few times you see them it is really cool, but the 20th time? I dunno.

[@blanktrigger8863]

Tbh, the disappointment about conceding has more to do with the desire to abuse. Quiting cuts that desire off for many, so that leads to the disappointment.

[@jb3947]

Love you guys, but I can't stand when you talk about magic as the perfect example of something being solved.

[@CyrisAeon]

For the love of God, hearth is pronounced HARTH. Please. For reals.

[@00101001000000110011]

in what english version? uk? US? ozzy, sth african.... i blame english honestly. english taught me earth is pronounced in a way but then add an H to the beginning of the word and instead of just doing what it normally does, now it is supposed to change the entire word pronunciation??? reform english and establish an universal version. make english great, not again ahahah

[@CyrisAeon]

The American pronunciation is HARTH. The British pronunciation is HAATH. Knight is pronounced NITE. So is night. No idea what other English dialects do.

[@CGoody564]

​@@CyrisAeon No, it isn't. It's hurth.

[@00101001000000110011]

it's funny but i think most HS players that are not into fantasy deeply or medieval stuff don't even know what an hearth is lmao. especially internationally

[@kevin_horticulture]

no, it's heerth.

[@MosesSuppose]

I’m not sure why exactly two artists/illustrators think they have some immense insight on why a game would have failed?

[@ashtongaskill3980]

If you don't care about their opinions then why are you here? Just scroll past lol

[@PixeletDan]

based ashton@@ashtongaskill3980

[@FluffySpikeM]

I disagree. I dropped Runeterra because of two things: the art direction got significantly worse and Riot changing their single player mode (the Path of Champions) for the worse before getting it out of beta. They overcomplicated the single-player resource system, but also kept no save points before bosses (did NOT change that). So you could keep winning your battles, spend an hour to get to a boss and then lose all that progress in a minute. After going through that a few dozen times, I got fed up.

[@darkskyxgames]

I also liked their old Path of Champions model and they made a new whole game out of it, making it too important. As a casual player I didn't like it.

[@dominicktalley9800]

So much RDW hate…. RDW is the best and Blue White controller is bottom tier! 😂

[@distractionmakers]

RDWs is for smart people who want to win and not spend any money on cards. XD