League of Legends

This page provides an overview on the ongoing study of digital games related to the game League of Legends. After giving a short introduction about the game and its core mechanics, the first research approach to be covered is about metagaming. As metagame is a popular terminology in the gaming culture, without having a consistent definition, a more structured compilation and detailed elaboration on the various forms of the League of Legends metagame will be presented.

About the Game

League of Legends is a Free-To-Play MOBA-type game available for PC. Published on 27 October 2009, the game of the american developer studio Riot Games has gained “a level of academic attention appropriate for its significance on both the eSports industry and the contemporary game culture.” According to PC GAMER in a press release to the 10th anniversary in October 2019, League of legends reaches about 8 million player logins everyday and is therefore one of the most popular and relevant games throughout the gaming culture these days.

Core Game Mechanics

Summoner´s Rift

Standart Game on ‚Summoner´s Rift‘

In a standard game, which usually lasts between 15 minutes and one hour, two teams composed of 5 players clash on the battle arena called summoner's rift, each of them controlling one of 148 currently available champions (January, 2019). The rift is a square area with a diagonal riverbed dividing the pitch into two halves. Those separated sections are in control of each team: In the bottom left corner lies the base with the so called spawn point (starting point of the player´s champions) and the nexus of the blue team. The upper right corner is the base location of the opposing team red. As shown in the picture on the right, there are also the three lanes top, middle and bottom, which connect the team bases and by intersecting with the riverbed frame the four remaining zones: known as the jungle.

Nexus, Turrets, Minions and Monsters

To win the game, the opponents nexus must be destroyed. Deep in the center of a base it is protected by two heavy turrets, which have to be demolished first. The way to get there along the lanes is fortified with further turrets, three of which reinforce the entrances to a base and two more are positioned on each lane, to control a certain area and provide visibility and protection for the player´s champions. Once the second minute mark has passed, the actual game begins with the spawning of minions and monsters. These npcs (non-player characters) are mainly intended to generate gold for the players if killed by them. While monsters are placed in their fixed positions in the jungle and only engage in the game when being attacked, the minions spawn in waves of 30 seconds in the bases of both teams and march in groups along each lane towards each other to meet in the middle of the field. They attack enemy minions, turrets and champions in their way and, as the game progresses, slowly make their way towards the enemy nexus.

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Champions, Items, Runes and Summoner's Spells

The gold gathered by killing monsters, minions, turrets or enemy champions is for the item shop, which is available as long as a champions stayed in his spawn point area. Those items provide buffs and other abilities for the champions, on the way to get stronger an in a advantage position against their opponents. Each champion comes with a uniq ability kit of normally five abilities. Runes and summoner's spells are pre-game selectable abilities, that can be chosen with all available champions, but are depending on their mechanical designs more or less useful.

Research-Relevant Topics of the Game

Playing the Meta - The Mategame of League of Legends

Using the typology created by Michael S. Debus in his elaboration of a metagame ontology in this chapter various aspects of the LoL-Metagame will be discussed.

For more information on this research approach, see: Metagaming

In the era of digital video game distribution services, such as Steam and early access games, the industry has shifted increasingly from finished games as closed systems, to open ones that are been developed continuously even (or especially) after their release. League of Legends is no exception, rather a prime example: Developer Riot Games releases new patches every month to provide new game content (like new or remade champions, skills, skins or map changes), balance changes, bug fixes and other technical issues. As a result, the game can never be considered complete and has been developed steadily since its release. This has a great impact on the surrounding metagame, which constantly changes and transforms with the game itself. During this act of game transformation, different forms of play are shaped over time and geographical and social domains. Debus points out for rule metagame case studies (but arguably for metagame case studies in the same way) that it's important to “[...] explicitly state what timeframe and geographical location the research covers.”

Metagame Environment: The surrounding Game Culture - Social and Added-Material Metagame

Picture Section of the Recommended Aatrox Rune-Build.

Picture Section of the Win-Rate Statistic of Aatrox

Keeping in mind that a large part of this culture is located in the asian hemisphere, this elaboration only covers data of the english speaking areas, however the league of legends culture has always been internationally connected. To start with the network of theorycraft, there are some types of websites and softwares to cover. One is the League of Legends meta board on reddit, as a forum created in 2011, were players engage with each other in order to exchange views and discuss the game, its mechanics and current metas in every imaginable form. Related to this there are softwares like discord, were communities can create servers for similar reasons. Scott Donaldson underlines the fact, that this shows metagaming as an collaborative group activity, despite metagaming can be an individual subjective practice. Another type of external resource are youtube videos, or video content in generell. The So you want to main- playlist (2015-2018) of the youtube channel bricky serves as a good and popular example. In his video series the youtuber gives an entertaining but still informative overview about specific champions, their lore, strengths and weaknesses and how to play them, by sharing his own experience and referring to what can be called the champion meta at this time. When it comes to third party software and websites which gathers statistics and information about the game, among several other providers, a significant website is op.gg. The website provides for instance statistics about win/lose- and pick/ban- rates of and rune- or item-builds for champions on the different game roles (e.g. top-lane, support or jungle), statistics about every player account or the overall current leaderboard of the ranked play.

Third Party Applications – Modifications, Hacks & Cheating

A stance of Riot says: “No software should interfere directly with the in-game player experience, from when you press ‘Play’ to the end-of-game screen.” Modding is a pupular practice in the context of digital games, which connects to the added material metagame. For League of Legends, as a competitive e-sport game, it is more problematic than to other games (e.g. Minecraft). What is meant in this official stance of Riot is that competitive play is designed to ensure that every player starts with the same basic conditions and while their are modifications, that surely doesn't intercept with that concept and free to use, others does: “We don’t like applications that provide measurable player advantage. We’d like to set fair expectations by calling out some features that definitely aren’t okay.” One specific website for League Of Legends modifications is, for instance https://lol-mod.com. Compared to the number of players of league of Legends, however, the number of users of such modifications is very low.

Worlds Championship & Championship Series - The League of Legends E-Sport Scene

As a closer to season one in 2011, Riot Games organized the first Worlds Championship of League of Legends. While there were other competitive tournaments even in this early years, the Worlds Championship set the start for the history making e-sport story league of legends has written. Starting in 2012, Riot Games in corporation with third parties, also launches the League of Legends Championship Series, firstly limited to North America, but till 2020 expanded to Europa, Korea, China and other nations and regions. Also more regional leagues has been launched over the years and created huge connected structure of international competitive league systems. A great sports culture has emerged over nearly a decade (status 2020), and continues to transform itself as what some would call a game around the game – with processes of commercialization, sponsorship, journalism and many other cultural implications, which aren't closely related to the game itself, but still can be traced back to it and frame the social metagame environment.

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The toxic Community & the Summoner's Code – Strategy Metagame

The League of Legends community is known for its toxicity. Reasons for this are much discussed on the community platforms. As in other competitive games, LoL has an in-game chat function that enables players to communicate with teammates and supports the ping system that provides the possibility to place symbols on the map to share certain information about players own or enemy actions. The game also has an All-Chat feature to communicate with the opponents. Not only used for team coordination, a lot of trashtalk and verbal harassment takes place within this chat function. This can be linked to what happens during the game, other than the game itself, from Garfield's definition and is localized within Debus ontology as a strategy metagame. Psychological demoralization of the opponent is possible, but each player can manually switch off the All-Chat, as well as the in-game chat with team players. It is fascinating that insults and harassment of the one's own team players seem to be the case more often, when it comes to players that are not playing as the meant to, depending on how the game should be played (rule metagame). Riot Games developed the Summoner's Code and a reporting system in cooperation with the community to address this issue. This can be argued as another metagame process.

A prescriptive Metagame Grid - Rule Metagames

From a competitive perspective, the metagame is the best approach to win a game, depending on the current conditions of its mechanics and their players understanding and actual utilization. In Debus ontology this refers to the rule metagame. It can be described as an ever-changing multidimensional prescriptive grid that regulates the practice of play at different times and spaces – as real life domains, but further as the different segments or aspects of the game itself. For a nearly complete understanding of this League of Legends (rule) metagame grid, it is necessary to invest hundreds of hours of study, like the Gamepedia, a fandom wiki, states. It is subdivided in various forms and magnitudes, which are interwoven with each other and subsumed under terminologies like assassin meta, jungle meta, split-push meta or late game meta. But to illustrate this, every aspect of the game has its own metagame, and the term meta is used fluently and could be used in all circumstances to describe the how-to of something: Speaking about a recommended item built or rune built one could speak about an item or rune meta related to class X or champion X. Same goes for every available champion – if one describes how to play a specific champion, than he refers to the champion meta. This could be combined with a role, for instance the Aartox Top Lane meta or the Lee Sin Jungle meta, and so forth.

In a more general form, the role meta as a whole has shifted once significantly: In the early years most of the games were played with two champions on the top lane, with the consequence that there was no jungler role selected. Simply because the jungle monsters in the early years were to strong to gain gold from them as efficiently as by killing minions on the lanes. With several patches and reworks of the jungle and of thereby fitting champions and related items, the role of the jungler became a fixed position in the overall meta, and the top lane transformed into a solo lane.

Split-Push Meta

But there are also other types of rule metagames, when it comes to the actual utilization of such recommended built-ups. Terms like lane-swap meta or the before mentioned split-push meta, for example, are covered within this categorization. It connects to map control, positioning and how to behave in team constellations and in-game situations. In an article on mobalytics.gg Split-Pushing is defined as “[...] when you move to a weak or undefended lane to apply pressure by pushing the wave in attempts to gain a tower advantage. It’s usually associated with the later stages of the mid-to-late game where it is easier to push effectively. There are a few reasons for this, such as death timers being longer and champions being able to push quickly.” The author Picklepants rolles out a detailed analysis about what splitt-pushing is, when to use it, when not to use it, what should be prepared before splitt-pushing, reasons behind the split-push, whats the difference to similar gameplays and summarizes the positive and negative effects that are associated with it. For example, an important preparation for an efficient split-push is wave stacking: Briefly explained it is a lane set-up through killing whats called caster minions (the ranged units of minion waves), that leads to a slow push of one wave, while at the same time the following wave closes the gab between. Doing this more than once stacks up a bigger group of minions, which can provide a huge amount of pressure, while the rest of the team pushes another lane, if successfully communicated and timed.

Counter Meta - Pick & Ban Phase and Item Built Counter

As there are champion metas combined with classes and roles on the field, which also can be combined with other champion metas, one important metagame is the pregame pick and ban phase. Due to the fact that champions are selected alternately, this pregame phase is important, when it comes to countering metas. Debus states: “This system, combined with the suggestions of the metagame, result in a game-like situation of picks and counterpicks, as both teams are pursuing the goal of picking a (according to the current rule metagame) superior team.” The second counter meta to mention here is the counter items. Depending in the opposing champions constellation, if it is for example more focused on magic damage or resistance, players can buy defensive or offensive items that equals the strength of the enemy. But compared to the often decisive pick and ban phase and the resulting match-ups, such item counterstrategies are less important.

Rule Metagame of less skillful Players

For the most part rule metagames derive out of the professional e-sport competition. The math is simple: The best players provide the best approaches and how they play influences the whole scene. Debus points out, that this observation could exclude the existence of rule metagames for less skillful players, that aren't affecting professional game conditions or evolving out of them. As an so called hyper ad (attack damage) carry, the champion Master Yi serves as a good example for a less skillful player rule metagame, which is not evolved out of the actual elite. While this champion is almost never picked in those professional tournaments, he is quite common in the lower rankes of the league system. The reason for this is his mechanics: Simply put, this champion is designed to create a snow-ball effect that, unless stopped early, will be unstoppable in the late game and can take on several, if not all, opposing champions at once. He is easy to play, but, in contrast to this, higher mechanical skills are required to take him out effectively. However, if he gets taken out soon enough, Master Yi can't become a real threat.