The title is rhetorical. Of course the reason why no one is discussing it is because the game is still yet to be announced and even I do not expect it to be announced until at least next year at the earliest.
But rest assured, a spectre is haunting the FGC — the spectre of a League of Legends based F2P fighting game. For those unaware, Riot Games acquired Radiant Entertainment, the developers of the game Rising Thunder which was a critically acclaimed F2P fighting game that was designed with simplified controls to appeal to fighting game newbies. As soon as Riot Games acquired Radiant they promptly shut down all development of Rising Thunder and got the team (including Seth Killian) working on an unspecified new game. Now it does not take a genius to guess that Riot Games saw the potential widespread appeal of the simplified mechanics of Rising Thunder, particularly combined with a well known popular IP like League of Legends, and that the unspecified new game Radiant Entertainment is working on is a League of Legends based fighting game designed to appeal to those new to fighting games.
So what are the implications of this? Well, if Rising Thunder is anything to go by then Riot’s League of Legends fighting game will have pretty good gameplay. Given the immense popularity of League of Legends, if even a fraction of the League of Legends userbase tries out and sticks with the League of Legends fighting game it will become immensely popular and dwarf every other fighting game on the market today. With Riot’s backing, you can be sure that a lively competitive scene pops up that will put to shame every other competitive scene in the FGC right now.
Clearly, the implications of all of this are huge. There will be two periods of the FGC: pre-LoL fighter and post-LoL fighter. Get ready.
Here’s how we can easily shut down your theory: The League of Legends community is filled with casual gamers, many of whom are toxic players who don’t like fighting games because they require…oh what’s the word…oh yeah, skill. I don’t doubt that the game itself will be halfway decent, maybe even pretty good. Especially with Seth Killian at the helm of production. The interest will be there at launch perhaps, but most of the LoL community is not going to gravitate towards that fighter. They’ll think of it more as one of the side games like that Blitzcrank app or the Cho Gath flash game and then go back to playing regular LoL.
A.) Rising Thunder was a bad game.
B.) Whatever LoL fighting game made by that studio will no doubt just be Rising Thunder with a LoL coat of paint.
C.) That LoL game will also be a bad game.
I think a LoL fighter that plays like Rising Thunder sounds pretty awesome. Kick out one of the Smash games or Pokken from Evo and put that in instead. That would also bring more people to watch the other fighters as well.
My only concern for a LoL fighter is that it would be P2W using a gem/rune system or something similar. I could totally see that happening, which would make it not even worth playing.
It’s definitely a possibility, but realistically it may end up like Mortal Kombat X. A game that sees a lot of casual appeal, but just won’t have huge tournament turnout that surpasses SF.
I don’t see a situation where a ton of people who never played fighting games before end up picking it up and making it THE eSports fighting game. A lot of prominent fighting game players probably won’t touch it.
Nobody’s talking about it because, if it IS a LoL fighter, we don’t know anything about it. It will probably be a while before we get any real details about the project, and it will almost certainly be a F2P game. Even if it IS great, it will still be a very long time before the rest of the FGC takes it seriously. (If ever!)
And yea, LoL players are going to keep on playing LoL.
While I agree with this post, I don’t think we can bar future MK titles from possible E-sport greatness. Nether realms has only been at the helm of mortal combat for 2 iterations and already managed to pull it out of a nasty maelstrom. No offense to Midway, but they didn’t do the MK brand any favors in their later years.
Rising Thunder was, for all intents and purposes, a dud. The concept was interesting and the overall execution of the game was fine but it fell off the face of the Earth for several reasons. Riot acquired the makers, yes, but those reasons are unspecified. We can strongly assume they were fans of Rising Thunder’s simplicity and plan to implement that with League of Legends but we don’t know that.
You clearly liked Rising Thunder considering you said Rising Thunder had pretty good gameplay. I know people who felt the OPPOSITE way. So even if it is a Riot IP, they can still potentially be turned off from the gameplay. Prime example. Marvel. Marvel is incredibly popular. I know many comic book fans who love Marvel and the characters in it BUT they HATE the Marvel versus series. The same presents itself here. I know LoL players who don’t care for fighters, let alone, ones like Rising Thunder. A LoL fighter existing won’t just magically make people like fighting games, especially if it plays like Rising Thunder.
So Riot is creating a fighting game and you expect it to magically make fighting game fans of existing LoL players? That’s a stretch.
I don’t think it’s gonna be like Rising Thunder whatsoever. Even though I played the game running at 15 fps on my subpar laptop, it felt too derivative from street fighter IV. I thought crow was kinda baller tho.
The game dropped off the face of the earth after like, a month and a half. If they couldn’t get people continuously playing, then why would riot buy them for that? I think they probably bought Radiant just for ggpo 3.
If seth were to work on another fighting game like RT I’d rather it not be SFIV, there’s a hell of a lot more simpler fighting games that does simplicity better then SFIV and RT did imo.
but to the main point, I don’t think riot is gonna take over the FGC, IF they were to make a fighting game. really depends on player turnout tbh.
The main reason is that the FGC has never taken well to heavy corporate control. Even Capcom with the Pro Tour is still leaving alot of control in the hands on the community via TOs and what not.
I think it’s good that Riot designs a fighting game.
Brings in lots of new blood. People who only play free online games and shit and don’t even know what a fighting game is.
If we can get only a small percentage of the LoL playerbase to watch EVO, it’s already a huge win for the FGC as a whole.
Like @Ukio said. Since fighting game is a 1v1 game, you’re taking away their one excuse of why they’re bad at this game. Mind you there are people in our own Community to this day they still find ways to complain or have an excuse on why they are bad at fighting games.
All in all my own opinion is this I don’t want none of these guys in our community they can create a one themselves but they can stay the hell away from us.
Good move by the Cannons. If there are any dudes smart enough to tap into the LoL market ($$$) then it’s probably them. Granted, I would never play their game lol. The easy mode street fighter games of today can barely keep me interested. I’m old and refuse to change lol.