League of Legends is getting a bit long in the tooth at this point, and the community is divided on whether or not Riot should put the effort into creating a “sequel” in the vein of Counter-Strike 2 that brings the game into the modern era.
CS:GO is one of the only esports titles that can stand on even footing with League of Legends, as both are absolute titans within the space. In a world where many live service titles don’t stand the test of time, both have been around for over a decade.
However, that puts both games in a spot where they’re aging and falling behind newer titles. Valve has chosen to release Counter-Strike 2, a “sequel” that had the main goal of polishing the game that CS:GO was to an even greater shine and adding a few small yet meaningful changes to the formula.
The strong reception and greatly improved graphics of Counter-Strike 2 has left many in the League community wondering if the game would benefit from a ground-up rebuild the likes of which CS has undergone.
Counter-Strike 2 leaves League community wanting full refresh
While League of Legends certainly looks a lot better than it did in the past, the game is still built upon the very same engine that the original 2009 release was crafted on, albeit with some heavy modifications to keep the game current.
However, players have pointed out shortcomings of the game’s technical foundation for years, especially when it comes to the client.
Even pro games have had to be paused and remade due to technical problems like players being unable to swap champions in pick/ban, and some bugs have led to pauses that can last for an hour or more and spark controversy in the community. Not to mention, average players don’t have ways to solve these issues in their matches.
Many players seem to agree that League could use a Counter-Strike 2 refresh, but the debate is how feasible it is for a League of Legends 2 to ever come out.
The original post that sparked this conversation claimed that, while the graphical aspect of League isn’t nearly as important as it is to Counter-Strike 2, the game could use a new client and a drastic cleanup of its “spaghetti code”.
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Some players claimed that they were satisfied with the refreshes League has had over the years, though they wouldn’t mind another one bringing the client up to date.
Meanwhile, others feel like updating League of Legends is a nigh impossible task. Though members of the League community have been critical of devs in recent times, this is an issue many were willing to defend Riot on.
“If you want 5 years of complete silence from Riot with a total of 8 patches over that time sure… I think none of you actually comprehend how big a game like League is and how much work it would be to remake.” claimed one Redditor.
A rather sarcastic reply added some more context: “Hey man, just redo the code but cleaner… It’s that easy! According to a post 7 years ago, the current Tech Lead at the time said there were over 1mil lines of code excluding blank spaces and comments, and well over 150k lines of comments. We fast forward 5 years and we’re probably nearly double that?”
Others pointed out that Valve has a massive revenue stream outside of their games and that Counter-Strike gets updated much less than League considering the MOBA gets patches every other week. Releasing a League of Legends 2 with every champion, item, and cosmetic in it would be nothing short of a herculean task.
Meanwhile, others feel as if League of Legends could be a ticking time bomb depending on how much “tech debt” the game has in terms of loose ends in the code. Although fans of the game aren’t convinced it’ll ever happen.
“I mean League really needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, like what Valve has done with CS2, but they never will, it would be a huge amount of effort (and money) spent and in the short term they’d get very little out of it, but it would make improvements in the long term much easier to make, and ultimately result in a much better game, rather than the spaghetti they have now.” said one Redditor.
Though many would like to have a greater version of the game they love, the general consensus is that Riot may never have enough time or money to follow in Valve’s footsteps.
