The client is essentially the interface of League of Legends, where players perform actions before actually entering the game, such as communicating with friends, adjusting runes, finding matches, and more. This is the first place players interact with League of Legends before truly starting to play and exploring other aspects of the game.
Like every product, the League of Legends client also has many bugs, the simplest being the somewhat sluggish skin selection, which can frustrate players. While small bugs might not be a big issue, the League of Legends client has far too many bugs that have persisted for years, leading to extreme frustration within the community regarding Riot’s handling of it.
Yet, a year ago, Riot Games provided their first official response to this issue, promising to address these bugs, but it seems like everything was just a drop in the ocean. The peak frustration occurred during the recent preseason, where client errors became so frequent that Riot launched a campaign to clean up the client. Riot continues to make promises, while players can only shake their heads in disappointment, admitting that DOTA2 has a much smoother client with far more features.
A year ago, Riot provided the first official answer after years of player complaints about the League of Legends client.
League of Legends might be the only MOBA where players complain more about the client than the game itself.
Is there any other game like that?
The DOTA2 client is many times better than League of Legends, and that’s putting it mildly. I don’t know how the clients of SMITE, HoN, Heroes of the Storm… are since I’ve never played those games.
What I like most about the DOTA2 client is that it allows players to do everything while searching for a match. Want to watch a replay? Of course. Want to see how your friends are doing? Just do it.
This is the best thing about the DOTA2 client. Let me explain, pro player Eternal Envy, aka EE, wanted to check a special interaction to see if Troll Warlord’s ultimate can dispel Batrider’s Flaming Lasso. Troll’s ultimate dispels normal effects, but with the level 25 talent, it becomes capable of dispelling heavy effects.
He exited the game he was playing, went to the hero demo section, used commands to get the level 25 talent, created a Batrider bot, and tested the interaction. The result was that Troll Warlord’s ultimate with the level 25 talent can indeed dispel Batrider’s Flaming Lasso. After testing, he exited the demo, reconnected, and played the game as usual. The DOTA2 client is incredibly smooth, and that’s extremely beneficial.
He did all that in just 20 seconds, what the heck? That time is even shorter than the time it takes to open the hextech crafting section in League of Legends.
The fact that you can open the practice section while in-game blows my mind.
I think my League of Legends client crashed 5 times while watching that clip. Riot, please copy Valve’s client; it’s worth copying, and we can all celebrate that.
When you think of League of Legends, what comes to mind first? Definitely the music videos with hundreds of millions of views, the flashy signature skills, and the Hollywood-level cinematics. However, isn’t it extremely wrong since the creator of League of Legends – Riot Games is a game developer, and gameplay and interface upgrades should be prioritized?
Yet the truth is that the League of Legends client is considered one of the worst in the MOBA genre; lacking features can be overlooked as players don’t always need them, however, the current features continuously having issues is hard to accept. This is just the client issue alone; problems with game balance and in-game bugs persist, leaving players shaking their heads in disbelief.
The complaints from League of Legends players are more than enough to illustrate the game’s reality; developers focus on marketing and commercial products. Meanwhile, the in-game content falls far behind competitors. It may take a long time before Riot Games sheds the label of “The game developer that makes better movies than games,” or the mocking title “Riot Studio” given by the community.