Hello everyone, readers.
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News that Suning E-sports Department may be sold
So today I want to talk to you about topics, and from time to time everyone will see topics in various online communities - "LOL competitions are getting more and more boring."
1. Players' reading level improves the game
Most of the people who say "LOL competitions are getting more and more boring" are "old audiences" who have watched the game for several years, because new audiences often use words like "can't understand" when they express that the game is not good, and they cannot compare the exciting level of the current game with past games. Among these "old spectators", I personally think that "the competition becomes boring" is a very normal phenomenon for them. This phenomenon is actually not entirely a problem of fists or all parties in the competition. The most fundamental reason for
is that the "old audience" have become "strong". This "strong" does not simply refer to the game level, but more importantly, their level has reached a considerable level in the "reading competition".
First of all, most of the "old audiences" have the identity of "old players", so they themselves have sufficient gaming experience. A typical example is that when observing the lane-to-line, most old audiences understand what kind of soldier lines can be pushed and what kind of soldier lines cannot be pushed; which heroes can allow small disadvantages in the lane-to-line period, which heroes are anxious to gain advantages in the lane-to-line period; which heroes will experience qualitative changes when they produce which piece of equipment and how many levels (equivalent to them being very clear about what the "strength threshold" is). On the contrary, which heroes rarely do things before reaching the "threshold". They know the hero's "kill line" and "key skills", so during the laning period of the game, if one side is hit by a key skill (such as Zoe's sleep bubble), they know that the killing is about to be born.
In short, years of game experience makes the arena no longer "changeable" for them. If the jungler cannot successfully interfere with the online, then the laning period of the game will mostly follow the script in his heart, unless the player can win the best through his outstanding personal ability, or the party who should have the advantage made a major mistake on the online side, but as the professionalization of LOL becomes increasingly higher, this situation becomes rare.
Second, there are also many people in the "old audience" who are basically "just watch but not play", but improving the "reading ability of the game" does not actually require playing many games per season . Just like there are a lot of fans who analyze and evaluate the game well-known in the fields of basketball and football. They themselves do not play football or play. The "old audience" have watched a large number of competitions over the past few years, and most of them will also go to relevant communities to conduct related discussions. you can understand it as "commentary, netizens' remarks" and "the experience and understanding accumulated by watching the game itself" also affect the audience's game reading level.
Even those old audiences who are now "just watch but not play" will make "BP predictions" when watching the game, and will pay attention to "whether the first-level team design is there" and "the early trends of the jungle" at the beginning. When neutral resources (such as Canyon Pioneer and Elemental Dragon) are refreshed, they will also predict which side will take based on the current online situation of both sides. After one side falls into a disadvantage, the "old audience" will not blindly accuse the poor vision like many years ago, because now they "understand" the game and know how much risks the worst party needs to take to look out. Therefore, the curiosity of the "old spectators" about the game has now been reduced to the point that affects the viewing experience, and it is completely understandable that they complain that "LOL competitions are getting worse and worse".
Third, the increase in various review content. must admit that LOL events are a very successful example in the entire game field, and are definitely a great contributor in exploring the potential of the e-sports market.Due to the large market and numerous audiences, many event-related content producers have sprung up like mushrooms in recent years. Some have made mistakes in the players, some have ranked OB players, some have leaked gossip news, and some have reviewed the competition around the word "hard core".
Search for "LPL review" on the headlines to find a large amount of content
As the increase in "review content" on the Internet, more viewers will inevitably have high-level LOL competition reading ability, because many of the review contents are indeed of high quality, and even things like "at what time is the top order better choose to miss the knife and keep the health of the health" will be analyzed in detail. To be honest, in the era of paper media, in the "popular" pictures and text reports of "Starcraft" and " Warcraft 3" that were "in the picture" and a lot of space were limited to "talking when looking at the picture", and the depth of the situation analysis was obviously not as good as the contemporary review content.
However, as we all know, things basically have two sides. Although the professional review content further increases the audience's spare time in a short period of time, it also does "consuming" the audience's "curiosity" about the event, and the suspense of each event in the future will be further reduced.
Finally, there is no explanation in LPL that can effectively drive the atmosphere. I still remember that in the years around 2013-2015, most viewers’ demand for LPL commentary was “I hope they improve their game understanding”, such as “Wow wow wow wow” and “leading endless”, so you can say less meaningless words, and don’t “speak with pictures” and “speak with pictures”. You should make more predictions about the direction of the game. Now the audience hopes that the commentary can be more "interesting" and mobilizes the atmosphere. On the one hand, it is because the LPL commentary game understanding has indeed made progress in recent years (some of which may not be obvious). On the other hand, it is mentioned earlier that the "old audience" have the ability to read and interpret the competition, and are not as "relying" as they were when they were still "new audiences".
So you will find that some old commentators have gradually improved in recent years. The reason is that their game understanding may not be the best, but it must be the one that will make the audience feel the most pleasant and not sleepy. After all, the purpose of most viewers watching the game is to "look for fun".
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In short, the current game reading ability of the "old audience" has long been different from the past. They have left the stage of only looking at "heads", "KDA" and "economic comparison". They will pay attention to the vision of both sides, the situation of the soldiers, the cooling status of the summoner skills, the lineup and equipment at the appropriate time in the game. When the battle is about to start, they will quickly estimate the outcome of the team battle based on the terrain of the battlefield and the formations of the two sides; which elemental dragon should be fought for, which disadvantage should be given up, etc. They are clear about the situation, and have a long-term lack of "suspense". It is reasonable for old audiences to experience "aesthetic fatigue" when watching the game.
2. It is difficult for the "League of Legends" game to make subversive changes
Here it needs to be noted that almost all games cannot make truly "aversive" changes, otherwise it will become another game.
In the previous part, I mentioned that many viewers think that the fundamental reason why the competition is getting boring is "their ability to read the game has become stronger, so the suspense of the game has dropped too much, and aesthetic fatigue has appeared", so some people may ask, "Then why don't the game company make some changes to make the game full of suspense again, "reset" the audience's judgment of the event, and ignite the audience's curiosity? ”
The answer is that this is not possible.In fact, LOL has undergone many so-called "big changes" in its development in recent years. For example, the "Little Dragon" mechanism has been reworked, the "Salary Installation" has been reworked, the "Jungle Zone and Jungle Props" has been reworked, the "Defense Tower" mechanism has been reworked, let alone a large number of heroes who have been reworked, , but this has not had much impact on the audience's "match reading ability" , because LOL The so-called "basic template" has not been greatly improved, and it is impossible to make a subversive major change - neutral resources, economy, vision, and military line conditions are all constant in LOL. Even if the "green jungle knife" is deleted, the number of real and false eyes on the field is restricted, the "visual competition" matter is still retained, and the two sides in the battle are not completely "dark" in the battle. There is even an option of "zombie guard" in the rune to strengthen the vision ability for the hero. So no matter how LOL makes adjustments, a lot of the audience's "watching knowledge" will not be outdated, and the "dynamic information" such as "version heroes" is actually relatively "fixed" in the eyes of old audiences - because each version will have "version heroes". As each season's competition progresses, the audience will sooner or later understand which heroes the "version answer" are. (Although during the S game, the strong teams in major competition areas are constantly upgrading their game understanding and hero selection, it is also one of the highlights, but the leagues within the competition area rarely reach such intensity)
No matter how the version is iterated, the old audience has accumulated a lot of watching knowledge to play a role
. In addition, many clubs in the top leagues currently have quite professional logistics teams, including analysts and coaching teams, so the time it takes for the team to find out the "version answer" is getting more and more time. The shorter it is, the more regular BP routines are often fixed (sometimes the audience basically knows the end of the game after the BP is over), and the progress of the macro-strategic level in the game will become solidified (for example, there are heroes like "Spider/ Olaf + Jess/ Crocodile " in the lineup, so they will tend to attack in the early stage, and they will also take the initiative to obtain map resources such as Canyon Pioneer and enemy outer towers). Under such a general premise, old audiences will of course think that the game is "more and more boring".
3. The off-field operation methods lack novelty
In addition to the LOL's are no longer "changing rapidly", off-field operation also has a strong "process" flavor.
For example, the most typical example - "Star Creation". This is really familiar to old domestic audiences. From the WE team in the "ancient period" to "Planet Light", and then various "world firsts", the "Star Creation Movement" of LPL has actually been "failed" more than "successful" for so many years. Of course, the "failure" here is a failure in the eyes of the audience, because only IG in 2018 won the S championship, and I don't think I have obtained any resources to "Star Creation" in 2019, but for all parties in the event, the standard for measuring whether "Star Creation" is not "achievement", but traffic and economic benefits. Therefore, even though many old players are numb to "Star Creation Movement", the event parties are still happy.
"Planet Light" is an early off-site operation activity.
They will formulate different types based on the appearance, "background experience", performance of the field and the funds the club is willing to invest in it, but the star-making program is well known to old audiences, such as the following:
- Before the game, some of the players' previous results (such as rank results or secondary league results), saying that they are extremely talented and have a promising future;
- As a player, he has a brilliant operation or a gorgeous battle in a certain game. When you are in the game platform and media, you use a large number of press releases to bombard the game platform and media;
- subsequently reveals the bitter stories behind the contestants through documentaries or an interview, such as injury training or hard family background, and the relationship with your family was tense in order to fight for the profession;
- When a contestant achieves certain results, publishes a large number of press releases to increase popularity
This "process-based" operation method may be a cost-effective method for the so-called "e-sports practitioners", because they can operate with ease, and efficiently harvest traffic and economic benefits. But the problem is that LOL events are different from traditional sports. In traditional sports, as long as athletes who perform well in the field will compete to report and package them. The off-site operation system of e-sports is not yet perfect. Tencent and riot enjoy the highest voice. Therefore, how to lead the trend of mainstream game media basically depends on their instructions (in China, I basically listen to Tencent. There should be no club that can bypass Tencent and pay for marketing by themselves). Most self-media lack first-hand information, and basically "reposted" information from mainstream game media. You can pay attention to the fact that there are no real funders, no investment, and non-company game media. How many of them can directly contact the players and interview and talk to them?
So far, old audiences should understand what I mean - in recent years, the "focus players" that deserve attention are not chosen by ourselves, and the players' performance in the arena is not a decisive factor . For example, SNG's mid laner player "Angel", actually has a stable and outstanding performance in the team, but you can feel that no one has guided traffic to him. There is also WE's jungler Beishang, the English streaming commentator gave him a high evaluation last year, but this player is not favored by the media and traffic. Many old audiences missed the era when they were able to participate in the popularity of contestants in the community in their early years, such as "Emperor Yao Yuan", "Old Pi", "Cat Superman", "Da 7", etc., and many memes can be born even if the contestants beat the food to make everyone smile.
But now it is different. The players and teams that the audience is following have long been led away. Players who performed poorly in the past would be regarded as "Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors". Now, after the game, it is basically the community scolded "XXX to find a factory to work", and then it is drowned in the rolling information flow (for example, the AD player "Little Durian" last season also had many famous scenes, but how many people remember him now?) Many old audiences have vaguely felt this feeling of "manipulation". They don't like it, so they expressed it in more straightforward words - the game is getting boring.
At the same time, such an off-site operation model can easily lead to the "Matthew effect" of traffic - high traffic and attention teams are more and more traffic, while low traffic teams are less and less concerned. In the long run, the investors behind low traffic teams will reduce their investment due to the lack of profit prospects, or even withdraw from the league; secondly, the number of "redundant games" that are not paid attention to will increase, which can be seen in the barrage of many live broadcast websites. For example, the first game of a certain day is V5 vs ES, and the second game is a confrontation between two high traffic teams. Then, in the barrage of the first game, you can often see "Hurry up, hurry up and next game."With the increase of "redundant competitions", the corresponding decrease is the decrease of "high-viewing competitions". In the end, many viewers will fall into a state of "however they toss and turns, these teams are always playing", but in fact, they themselves "filtered" the competitions of many teams.
Last year, the V5 team with low traffic could only use cold compresses as lottery prizes
or above is an analysis of some viewers' voices of "LOL competitions are getting more and more boring". briefly summarizes the fundamental reason lies in the fact that with the growth of the audience and the increase in knowledge, the situation in the competition and the operation outside the field have gradually begun to make them easy to predict, so they lose their curiosity . When there is no suspense in the competitive competition and can be predicted, it is reasonable for the audience to feel "bored".
