Lien Quan Mobile (LQMB) has many serious problems, causing many long-time players to want to leave. Let’s find out these issues through the confessions of gamers with more than 2500 hours of gameplay.
LQMB has made continuous progress after nearly 6 years of launching in the Vietnamese market in terms of both graphics and gameplay (See more here). However, it is not by chance that LQMB is assigned the title of “junk game” by MOBA players in Vietnam. To delve into this issue, Game4V had an interview with an anonymous gamer, who has more than 2500 hours of roaming on the continent of Athanor as he revealed:
Reporter: Hi, as mentioned earlier you have more than 2500 hours of gameplay for LQMB, can you introduce Game4V readers more information about yourself:
“I want to remain anonymous for this interview, but I can talk about where I am playing in LQMB as support.”
Reporter: How did you come to LQMB by chance?
“That time I was busy with work, so I couldn’t use my personal computer often, and my close friends just liked to play League of Legends. One day, when we met, our group of friends discussed the Overclocker that year’s “backdoor” won backwards. It sounded good, so I downloaded LQMB to try it out, not to mention the game also plays quite quickly, without investing a lot of time, so I decided to stick with it.”
Reporter: How many hours on average do you play LQMB each day? How many hours have you played so far?
“When I played the most, it was 2 hours a day, and on weekends, if I don’t go out with friends, I play almost all day. My playtime falls between 2000-2500 hours of play if only in-game time is counted.”
Reporter: To evaluate a game of the MOBA genre on mobile phones, most players in Vietnam will evaluate it through 2 criteria: Balance and graphics. How much do you think Lien Quan Mobile gets on a 10-point scale with these 2 criteria?
“To be honest with you, from the moment I started playing, I always kept the lowest configuration, until the Bat Guardian update was moved to Caesar street, then I had a better phone to experience. Regarding graphics, I will give LQMB 7/10 points. The game’s models, if considered separately, are very well crafted, especially the champion’s model. However, when entering the game, the monster model encountered some problems, so it did not look like one with the overall surroundings, some costumes also made the same mistake. However, this is an unavoidable problem in the design, so I temporarily ignore it.”
“In terms of balance, the game is not too bad in terms of balance if you consider each version separately. Anyway, having a group of minority generals stronger than the rest is not something too strange for the MOBA series. In my opinion, when LQMB players complain about the game’s balance, it’s because of the same few strong champions over a long period of time. Quote from League of Legends player Thebausffs, “I like to go with strong champions, but I don’t like to go along with strong champions throughout many versions”. At this point, LQMB is quite unbalanced so I will give the game a score of 4/10.”
Reporter: What do you think is the imbalance of LQMB?
“In my opinion, the game puts a lot of effort into guessing what gamers want based on stats without really looking at individual matches. I agree that weak characters need to increase strength and strong characters need to decrease, but sometimes it is necessary for players to find out for themselves where the strengths and weaknesses lie. With the number of players and the number of matches increasing day by day, the game production team has more than enough information about the champion’s win rate for each ally, opponent or equipment win rate. However, LQMB is largely balanced by efficiency in the tournament, based on parameters such as pick rate, win rate, which generally leads to unnecessary changes for amateur players. To take a simple example: Let’s say champion A has a 47% win rate and a 0.2% pick rate (both very low), but when this champion uses a different build than usual, the win rate is back. up to 70%. That’s not because champion A is weak, it’s just that most players didn’t choose the right items to buy. I haven’t seen anyone say Toro is weak because spells aren’t strong.
Looking at League of Legends, the balanced team allows champions, especially newly released champions, to exceed the balance level to increase the pick rate, thereby knowing where the champion is strong, strong when building come on, strong when fighting against which bet… Then the strength of that champion is gradually reduced, until Riot is confident that they understand the champion, then they start trying to push the champion to a fully balanced position. In contrast, LQMB uses a quick fire fighting method in the game balance. The goal is to reassure players in time, through massive nerf updates.
Of course, after such times, the champion that is targeted will definitely reduce the win rate. But most of it is not because the tweaks make the champion more balanced, they just reduce the champion’s pick rate down, making it take longer for the player community to unlock that champion’s maximum strength. In my opinion, the fact that Florentino has been strong for such a long time is due to this point.”
Reporter: What do you think about LQM’s massive release of new champions? Particularly the old generals when remade are not too prominent?
“In my opinion, it is not very reasonable to release new champions massively. Anyway, the game makes money mainly thanks to the skin. Speeding up the process of creating new champions gives players less time to prepare. There are generals that can’t be mastered on day 1 or 2. The player community needs a lot of time to try a new champion. When you create a new champion, assume that champion is an AD carry. In 1 million plays of that champion, how many people will take it to a position other than dragon lane? Then how many of them will get a non-sniper item like the Longinus spear or the Frost Cloak? In case that champion has the potential to completely change the meta like Zip, players also have to get used to an almost completely new game, as the list of strong champions will change according to that new meta.
Regarding the problem of old champions when remaking, it is difficult to catch up with new champions, the reason is that Timi Studio has changed the nature of new champions quite a lot. The LQMB generals born in 2021 are all quite perfect, different from the early champions. ADCs like Thorne are easy to kite, have easy-to-activate controls to escape assassins, and have a dash that comes with a poke. There is no single stage of Thorne that is easy to exploit because despite possessing the assassin’s skill set, Thorne does not have to sacrifice damage output. Bright can defeat your entire team as an ADC with his extremely safe ultimate and effective hand-attack in a wide area.
Meanwhile, the old champion is revised, it is difficult to be so perfect. Every time an old champion gets their skill set modified and becomes strong, it’s because the damage output of those champions is too high. After those numbers are down, those champions will often be in a more “sane” state than they were initially, but not as much a “hot pick” in the meta as before. I don’t like Airi’s tweaks, but this is the only time that Timi Studio has done a good job of tweaking the old champion’s kit, giving that champion a solid foothold in the game.”
Reporter: If possible, what would you like to change most about LQMB?
“I don’t need the game to be balanced, because there will always be strong and weak champions in each version. I want the generals in the game to give different values. Xeniel is a top lane split push champion that helps the team always have an advantage in teamfights. Mganga is a short ranged mage with good timing. Natalya is very strong in the early and mid game and very strong in the odd catch. I want to have champions with different gameplay because the game is in a rather boring state right now. The generals increase their strength evenly according to the amount of equipment the player has and in general perform well in both teamfights, small skirmishes or clearing lanes.
Unfortunately, LQMB’s champion development team is trying to do the opposite: Editing to remove the unique things of each champion to become more comprehensive. Yorn used to be a sniper who got stronger through armor penetration and physical attack, not from crit and attack speed. Omega is a very early game pressure card that can be used passively to stun turrets with high base damage to take down opponents in turrets with a level advantage. Arthur is a high-damage fighter with a low cooldown that puts a lot of pressure on the main player if he has a certain amount of equipment. Instead of keeping those points, the game maker deletes them to make up for the weak parts. Yorn can shoot true damage, but loses stack damage. Omega is safer, but the pressure is gone. Arthur became stronger, but couldn’t chase the main force like before.”
Reporter: What do you think about the quality of LQMB’s clothes, is the quality and price similar?
“I’m not someone who spends too much money on skins in LQMB, most of the S tier skins and above I’ve tried are in friends’ accounts. Beautiful or not depends on each person’s aesthetic taste, but in my opinion, changing the effect of the skin is quite uninteresting. Skin LQMB is quite expensive compared to League of Legends. I also don’t like recharge events to get skins. If players find the skin really worth the money, they will also deposit money, not necessarily creating lucky spins.”
Reporter: What made you leave LQMB?
“LQMB has a point that very few people know but I often notice that there are changes that are not written in the updates. I noticed that after the map update 4.0, there were a lot of interactions that were changed that were not recorded. I was also hoping it was a game bug so I gave the developer time to fix it, but a few months went by with nothing happening. Talking a little about myself, my champion is Y’bneth. This champion I have played no less than 800 games throughout the accounts and I affirm that Y’bneth must be at least in the top 5 difficult champions to play at maximum strength. After the 4.0 map update, I noticed 2 points: First, the moves to repel the target no longer make the player free from control of Dieu Chuan’s freezing move. What’s more is that knockbacks will now have an incorrect interaction with crowd control, meaning that just by putting on resilient boots, Y’bneth’s 1st and 2nd moves will become nearly useless. Y’bneth is doing fine right now, but for a completely different reason: Y’bneth has too much damage. Many of the champions that I love to play like Y’bneth, Yorn, Arthur, Azzen’ka have been disappointingly modified.
Now I only play LQMB a few matches a week and almost no longer have ranked matches, except when pulling friends’ ranks. I hope LQMB makes the necessary changes in the way the balance and design team operates in time to be able to compete with the increasingly strong competitors.”
Game4V would like to thank you for your valuable sharing regarding the meta game, your perspective on LQMB is really different. It shows how seriously you played for 2500 hours. Wishing you good health and success in the future.
See also: Lien Quan Mobile and the successful ‘puberty’ journey, approaching the level of the world’s MOBA ‘king’ (Part 2)