LoR, a League of Legends strategy card, was one of the most influential projects in the recent Riot layoffs, with several developers leaving the company and the game director transferred to the R&D department. The focus of the game's development has also changed from PVP to PVE, and the reason for this disposal is simple, that is, the game has never been able to make ends meet. LoR is Riot's first large-scale game released outside of the League of Legends body, which opened its open beta overseas in April 2020 and has been in operation for nearly four years, and the game has undergone many changes in the past few years, including a major adjustment in the direction of the game's production, PVP and PVE trade-offs.
In this week's developer video, Riot founder Marc shares his thoughts on how Riot has a lot of card enthusiasts who decided to make LoR in 2011 and wanted to bring a card game that allows them to build decks without having to buy them with krypton. Therefore, the positioning of LoR from the early stage of the project is that cards can be easily started, and the revenue depends on personalized accessories, this business model is very successful in League of Legends, but it does not mean that it can be successful in LoR. Because there are very few krypton gold points in card games that don't sell card packs, the skins and props made by Riot don't sell well, and I spent less than 2,000 yuan.
This creates a vicious circle, because the new skins don't sell well, so they can't afford to develop more and better accessories, which in turn leads to lower revenues. LoR jewelry is mainly reflected in the back of the chessboard pets, as well as the different paintings of the hero card, micro krypton players generally only buy a few board pets, the hero card different paintings may not be drawn in the game, and many are just different paintings without special effects. So Riot started focusing on PVE last year, and they launched the new Hero Dragon King Pack, which turned out to be the best-selling item in LoR's history, and the other PVE Spider Pack also sold well.
The global economic environment is not good, and LoR loses money every year and is supported by other games, so Riot decided to stop losses and adjust the way it operates, but they don't want to go against their original promise and don't decide to launch the card pack purchased by Krypton. The first is to abandon the development of the new expansion pack, they currently only have the last pack in stock, because the new card basically serves PVP and does not have a dedicated balance for PVE, but the data shows that 8% of players prefer PVE. The future release of new cards for LoR is uncertain, and it is likely that it will be bundled in PVE bundles as an incidental product of the Hero's Path.
Riot confirmed that all of the new heroes in the future were designed for PVE, so they didn't necessarily support the old ideas, but instead used the fun gameplay of the new heroes as a selling point. Due to the temporary suspension of the development of the PVP mode, all official tournaments have been cancelled, ranked match rewards have been cancelled, and support for the community has been lost. PVP only retains the three modes of ranked matchmaking and man-machine battle, and the balance frequency will definitely be further reduced, because no one will mind if those cards are too strong in PVE. LoR no longer independently produces new accessories, and future kryptonite projects are mainly PVE, related content designed around the Hero's Road mode.
Since LoR is currently merged into the League of Legends studio, when the League of Legends IP is heavily linked, it will be brought with LoR to play together, and it is estimated that the new skins and expressions are transplanted ontology, and the LoR team will not spend money to re-produce, and the event materials can also be directly used with the resources of the ontology. There will be at least one crossover of Two Cities 2 this year, but other content before that cannot be determined, because PVE will launch a new hero Ice Girl in the middle of the year, and some heroes will be upgraded to 6 stars in the second half of the year, and the heroes of the future PVE mode will open 6-star levels, so that players who like PVE can continue to liver.
Except for the two PVE trailers of Ice Girl and 6-Star Hero, only the 2023 champion and runner-up will receive exclusive cards, and the rest of the content in 2024 cannot be determined. Because LoR has streamlined its personnel and only retained the basic operation staff, now this game is in a state of stagnation in PVP, and all resources are smashed into PVE mode. Riot is betting that this operation can reduce the revenue deficit of LoR, after all, development spending has been several times the revenue in the past four years. This is a good opportunity for LoR to recognize the positioning of the game and focus on PVE development content and paid gift packages to make the game sustainable.
Riot also explained the reason why LoR did not have a national uniform, and they spent a lot of effort trying to enter the country, but were forced to give up for various reasons. Not only because it was difficult to get the version number in the past few years, but also because there were a lot of things that needed to be modified for harmony, and they decided to give up the national service after weighing the pros and cons. In fact, LoR launched the PVE model in the early years, which was the result of Tencent's repeated suggestions, and they once formed a LoR national server team, but it was disbanded at the beginning of 2021. After all, Riot and Tencent have found that Genting Game has greater prospects in terms of commercialization, and the mobile game Golden Shovel Battle is more profitable.
The goal of the game company is to make a profit, LoR has never solved the problem of income and expenditure, and Riot has made this game live until 2024, and has not directly cut the project, which is already a very generous thing. Both LoR founders have left Riot, and they were originally positioned somewhere between Hearthstone and Magic, with good entertainment and depth, but it proved difficult to do both. LoR's PVP mode focuses on strong interaction, pays great attention to rhythm and resource operation, and is not very cool and entertaining. The ladder system lacks rewards, and it is difficult to e-sports without a national server, making competitive games die in competition.
As things stand, by going all-in on the PVE model and no longer spending time developing expansions and skins, LoR should be able to reduce losses in 2024 and alleviate the deficit that is on the table. After all, there are not a few people who are willing to pay for PVE, and it is also attractive to spend some gift packs on the liver, and to experience new heroes for the first time. Only in this way can LoR survive, and there will be a chance to restart the PVP mode in the future, so that the two can go hand in hand. Although PVE Moonbook is very challenging to play, the lack of a national server leads to a poor live broadcast environment, and there is no community atmosphere like Abyss Racing.
Finally, some of sara's personal thoughts, although I can play any game, but I always only like MOBA and cards, RTS shooting fighting is really not good at it, so Riot's main promotion of Valorant can't be played, and the future League of Legends fighting games will not be played. I've been playing card games for more than 20 years, and I've seen the rise and fall of many games, including my favorite matrix and COC, these two LCGs have been in operation for a few years and are gone, and even the Hearthstone that I play every day has abandoned the pit after it has no national server, but the Baiwen card that was played at the same time as LoR survived, which is one of the few NetEase plans that are not so bad.
The turnover of Baiwen is not much better than LoR, but the planner has done a lot of ways to save himself, listened to the opinions of many communities and players, and dared to admit improvement when he encountered mistakes, even if I don't like the current new version, I feel that they are much better than LoR. Because I brush the LoR Twitter forum every day, Riot is always a change attitude, just that balance the frequency and the speed of feature development, and even the plan that won't even make money, sara really feels that iron is not steel. I haven't recorded a video playback of a game for four years, I don't even have a friend to borrow a deck, and the achievement and collection systems are basically not touched.
Sara is well aware that card games are very niche and that Hearthstone's success was a fluke, even after Magic's success in Baldur's Gate 3 was a few months ago, laying off a large number of employees. I once said that LoR is one of my favorite games, when the server opened and the first expansion pack came out, this game was indeed very fun, but many of the heroes in the back are piled up with body entries, plus the balance speed is too slow, there are always a few dominant-level mainstreams in the environment, and the mainstream decks are boring to play too much, and many heroes are thrown aside after playing a few times. It's not cool to win in PVP, but I'm very depressed when I lose, and I feel that I'm too bad.
I used to think boredly, if LoR is lost to Tencent planning to operate, this game may be sprayed like Three Kingdoms, but it can live quite well, after all, there is a League of Legends IP, and the quality of the game itself is very good. But considering Honor of Kings' latest Krypton, and the new heroes actually have to buy a paid Battle Pass, I think it's not bad that LoR is half dead. If there is no ladder, I will play matching, and if I can't match people, I will play man-machine, 1615 kinds of cards are enough for me to try for a long time, and when I am bored, I will pick up some old card decks, such as Spider Attack and Titan Tree, and play a few games to relax.
As for the PVE promoted by Riot, it really has nothing to do with me, I rarely play PVE after the Road to Heroes 2.0, and I'm not interested in the meat pigeon gameplay that is repeatedly brushed, even if I get powerful props, it may overturn, or traditional battles are more suitable for me. But the official said that the story will be stuffed into PVE in the future, and a plot party like me may play a low difficulty. LoR belongs to the kind of game that has nothing to do every week.,I'll play a few games to clear the task.,As long as the client can continue to connect.,The impact on me is not too big.,The only regret is that there are fewer and fewer new cards.,It's not as fast as the matrix that died in 2018.。
Matrix Runner ceased publication in 2018, and the community spontaneously formed a next-gen team in the week of the announcement, continuing to run the game and design new cards, publish the game, and hold various tournaments. Every year, 2 expansion packs are released on time, and more than 100 are added to the game, including Chinese in multiple languages. Last October's Worlds saw more than 230 players fly to a small venue to compete, and the store prizes continue to be on sale each quarter. The design team is not just fans of whims, many of them are part-time game practitioners, and the former game master designer is a Riot employee.
Maybe I'm not a big fan of LoR, and even though the game has come to this point, I don't feel sad. Over the years, the community has provided a lot of feedback to Riot to optimize the business model of LoR, but Riot always said that it was not enough, so I knew that there would be a day when it would be too late and I had to make a decision to turn to PVE. However, from Meddler's recent active participation, sara still sees some good signs, LoR should survive for a few more years, and will not repeat the tragic fate of the A card, not only questioning understanding and then becoming, but it can't become popular without a national uniform.