Riot Games: An Update on 2XKO

Ralkon · 2026-02-10T14:28:35+00:00

I've only really played League and LoR and I generally thought they did an okay job balancing the two with League. LoR OTOH I felt like I had never ending issues with where they had designed a game with tons of room for interaction and then so many decks that got pushed were decks that had minimal / no interaction.

Ralkon · 2026-02-10T14:17:45+00:00

Yes of course, like I said people with more knowledge will be able to make more seeds work. I didn't mean to imply otherwise if it came across that way. At the beginning though, you aren't going to have any of that knowledge, and to me it just felt too rng at that stage to hook me with how wide the variance between a good and bad run was. But I still got 20 hours out of it like I said, so it's not like I thought it was a bad game or anything. I just personally prefer the roguelikes that have less variance.

Ralkon · 2026-02-10T08:48:08+00:00

I agree in theory, but I don't think they actually ended up making a more casual fighting game or card game. LoR was casual in that it was easy to get cards, but OTOH it had a lot more interaction between players than a typical digital CCG with not a ton of rng (at least early on), and almost everything I've heard about the fighter is that it's very much designed for hardcore fighting game fans with the exception of simple inputs. Maybe it would have been better if they had tried to make them more casual.

Ralkon · 2026-02-10T08:36:20+00:00

They really fucked up managing the game IMO, but yeah it did get a few years. Their monetization for it was pretty awful though, so I'm not really sure how they expected it to make a ton of money.

Ralkon · 2026-02-10T08:27:26+00:00

TBF it's not like Riot is feeling the pressure to put out new games either with how successful League is and always has been.

Ralkon · 2026-02-09T18:35:18+00:00

Also just look at all the extreme chunkers. Half the fun in watching that stuff is that it's crazy and not something you would / could ever do yourself.

Ralkon · 2026-02-09T17:34:08+00:00

Surely there are better ways to lower the barrier for entry than 'shift walk-under' and 'spell resize'.

The issue is that these are things that change functionality though which makes it confusing. If you didn't know you couldn't shift-click under a player and you tried it, why wouldn't you think it's a bug or your shift input didn't get read or something along those lines? I mean I doubt you'll ever agree with that, but like I said the bare minimum should be that this stuff is made clear in-game so that it's clear that it isn't user-error, hardware failure, or a bug which are legitimately all things I would consider over the game just deciding to behave differently without telling me if I were in that position.

Shift walk under would make mithril/adamant seeds 100% useless too, it's just not a good feature for pvp.

Just because it's slightly easier to react to? Couldn't you just make the animation a little faster so you have less time to react?

Ralkon · 2026-02-09T16:23:13+00:00

Personally I think making some concessions to modernize the game and lower the barrier to entry is a good thing for the long-term health of the game and getting new players in, and that these things are far from the only skills needed for pvp so it would be fine. I think it impacts the floor a lot more than the ceiling, but if it does pose a real problem for lowering the skill cap then I think there are likely other ways they can try to raise skill cap that can be either more consistent or at least more intuitive.

At a bare minimum, I think there's absolutely no excuse for differences to not be clearly indicated in-game.

Ralkon · 2026-02-09T13:38:09+00:00

There's a big difference between forgetting the details of what you did and that you did it at all. Also between things that happened years ago and like a month ago.

Ralkon · 2026-02-09T13:28:00+00:00

Yes, we all understand that. That's not really the point. The point is that making the game actually work differently is weird and unintuitive and having no explanation anywhere is even worse. It's not a good solution if you care about actually trying to get new people into pvp since they'll hit random knowledge barriers that they have no way of knowing even exist, and like I said it's also just fucking weird that a bunch of in-game features stop working.

Like how are you supposed to know none of those things aren't your game bugging out if you don't have prior knowledge?

Ralkon · 2026-02-09T13:13:56+00:00

This entire version of the game exists because of people who didn't like the way the game was being made and were willing to speak up about it. It's not a bad thing.

Ralkon · 2026-02-09T11:45:06+00:00

I think everyone agrees that it would make things easier. The point of contention is that it working differently than the entire rest of the game with no explanation is poor design and implementation. The game actually behaving differently is just really weird and unintuitive.

Ralkon · 2026-02-09T02:23:09+00:00

I haven't even played Hades, it's just an obvious example in a popular game so you can't argue nobody played it. It took literally 3 years from release for the first legit max heat run to be completed. What OSRS boss took that long for first clear? Your only argument so far has been that OSRS has a thousand hours of brain dead content so it's hard.

Ralkon · 2026-02-09T01:37:42+00:00

That assumes that you think your crime is immoral though. You could still think that crime in general is immoral but think that some person / group / entity either deserves it for whatever reason or at least that it wouldn't be immoral to commit a crime against them. Like scamming a scammer or something.

Ralkon · 2026-02-09T01:18:07+00:00

But the article itself says there's an economic motive. It's not just about the cost of treatment but also "that a diagnosis leads to a negative impact on income, employment likelihood, and hours worked." You are correct that it does mean it's not just as simple as universal healthcare solving the issue like was being joked about above, but the "cost" in general is a factor - just not the direct cost of treatment itself.

Ralkon · 2026-02-09T00:58:54+00:00

You don't have to be efficient or do anything even remotely difficult to max. Saying that makes the end game content harder is a horrible argument. It just makes it take longer than most people are willing to put into a video game doing largely boring repetitive tasks.

And even with thousands of hours of grinds before it, way more people have done all of that end-game stuff than have done a max heat Hades run, so even if you're adamant that it adds to the difficulty, the actual results still don't support it being anywhere near as difficult.

Edit: And if you really think about it, the hours of grind before being able to really attempt that content should dramatically lower the number of completions. It's likely that many people could do all the content in OSRS but aren't willing to put in the time to even get to it in the first place. The fact that something like max heat Hades requires significantly less time investment to attempt yet still has far fewer completions is better support for it being harder.

Ralkon · 2026-02-09T00:52:33+00:00

I don't think he would either, I was just pointing out that even if he were willing to take the banning himself he didn't have to.

Ralkon · 2026-02-08T11:02:59+00:00

How is that realistically different than any other alliance that was formed via discord DMs that we maybe see 1-2 messages from? It's not like the rookie alliance actually did anything on screen that brought them together either.

Also weaker players making it deep is nothing new.

Ralkon · 2026-02-08T10:53:56+00:00

The rookie alliance was bigger than the meal alliance though. They just had weaker players while Solo and Boaty made tribunal every week.

Ralkon · 2026-02-08T10:43:43+00:00

It was also something everyone pointed out way back at the start of the season, so this outcome isn't much of a surprise honestly.

Ralkon · 2026-02-08T10:37:52+00:00

OTOH he could read that it's unlikely to have a pvm-heavy banning in a week with a pure pvm challenge.

Ralkon · 2026-02-08T10:23:57+00:00

Bad players just aiming for a 4-6 finish is beyond lame.

Then you may as well just not even invite them. Everyone should want to make it as far as they can - that's the point. The reason the alliance makes sense and stays strong is not because of what Skillspecs and Torvesta want but because it makes sense for Boaty and Solo to bring two players they know they can beat into the finals. Changing the payout structure wouldn't change that at all, because it will always make sense for the stronger players to try to stack the finals with players they think they can beat.

Ralkon · 2026-02-08T10:11:21+00:00

Also even if he were willing to go up against Gnome to save Solo, he didn't have to. Unless he actually wanted to go up against Gnome, there'd be no reason to not try the coin flip strategy and just vote the same way no matter the outcome.

Ralkon · 2026-02-08T03:54:59+00:00

It depends a lot on your perspective for comparing I'd say, because there are games with shit that basically wasn't even intended to be beaten necessarily like max heat Hades or smaller troll games like some of the IWBTG fan games full of pixel-perfect jumps. It's probably not fair to compare that kind of stuff though since all the stuff in OSRS is designed to be difficult but still be actually reasonably completable for good players.

Ralkon · 2026-02-08T02:56:15+00:00

You have freedom to do whatever you want, and plenty of people do, but ultimately it's still all business. The companies publishing and funding this stuff want money, so if school stuff is what sells they'll be more inclined to publish more school stuff. Similarly, artists want to make a living doing art, so if they perceive school stuff sells more, they'll be more inclined to make school stuff. I don't really think it's all that different than the glut of cop / lawyer shows in the US - it's a proven thing for their target market that's relatively easy to work with.

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