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Response to Meddler on "PBE Balance"

AirKingNeo·May 30, 2018·17 votes·5,502 views

I understand that the community generally isn't very smart and will say things like "use the PBE for balance" despite common sense saying that isn't possible, but there's something I want you, Meddler, to understand.

People are saying this stupid shit because they have a problem with balance. Yes, you can disprove them and tell them their complaint isn't valid, but at the end of the day they still have a problem with balance and that problem wasn't solved. The same thing with "The balance team is silver"; nothing is done to fix why people are mad.

Instead of wasting time covering an flawed argument, I would much rather you discuss actual game balance with people, like me, willing to actually talk about the game. These marksmen changes? I think it was a poor decision making to not touch Rageblade users, Kai'sa and Ezreal (who are already top tier). I think Crit is overnerfed by a small amount, but I think LW is overtunned as fuck (so welcome to ban Zed/Talon mid lane 100%, no longer an exaggeration). Melee Fleet Footwork will probably be an issue now. Let's talk about that.

45 Comments

Slice n Dice emMay 31, 20189 votes

poor decision making to not touch Rageblade users, Kai'sa and Ezreal (who are already top tier).

Yes.

I think Crit is overnerfed by a small amount,

Nopes.

Melee Fleet Footwork will probably be an issue now.

Nopes, way too many better keystone options. Which champion in your opinion will abuse it? Will it be used by some champions in certain scenerio's yes, will it be abused nopes.

AirKingNeoMay 31, 20183 votes

Nopes.

300 gold on every upgraded Zeal item. 300 gold on IE. That's a lot of gold to be hit with.

Nopes, way too many better keystone options. Which champion in your opinion will abuse it? Will it be used by some champions in certain scenerio's yes, will it be abused nopes.

Kayle bot lane abusing melee fleet in lane coming near you.

SalsonMay 31, 20182 votes

Kayle bot lane abusing melee fleet in lane coming near you.

Good.

statelesskillerMay 31, 20181 votes

considering crit itemization used to be the extremely cheapest end game build of all builds even duking it out with SUPPORT for cheapest itemization, im willing to wait till i see a new chart of its end game cost before i think its overnerfed. its cost increase is probably fine

AirKingNeoMay 31, 20181 votes

cool but making every crit item hell as fuck expensive instead of reducing the power of Crit just means the game is very much less fun.

Slice n Dice emMay 31, 20181 votes

300 gold on every upgraded Zeal item. 300 gold on IE. That's a lot of gold to be hit with.

well crit is supposed to kick in late game, so the purpose of them getting it a little bit late isn't an overnerf by a small amount. Their early power got hit both in base stats and items, which is reasonable, and their late game got buffed.

Kayle bot lane abusing melee fleet in lane coming near you.

Come on man, not gonna happen, kayle has so many other issues to be mitigated by a fleet keystone. I would be surprised to see bot lanes picking it up, and is it a bad thing IF it gets picked 5 times out of 50 games? nopes. If she abuses and it becomes highlighted they will either hotfix or fix it next patch....

D357R0Y3RMay 30, 20185 votes

{quoted}

These marksmen changes?

Happy to be able to play Rengar ADC, if anything i'm just fine with melees able bot now without getting outlaned by ranged adc+sup so hard Happy to see Rengar actually having more AD, armor, MR, movement speed, health regen, health than marksmen who have range

I think it was a poor decision making to not touch Rageblade users, Kai'sa and Ezreal (who are already top tier)

Ezreal issue is starting to get on my nerve, with how riot tries to pretend he isn't .

I think Crit is overnerfed by a small amount

i think so too, but since PBE cannot be used for balance we have to wait and see how it turns out on live

but I think LW is overtunned as fuck (so welcome to ban Zed/Talon mid lane 100%, no longer an exaggeration).

Jhin

Melee Fleet Footwork will probably be an issue now. Let's talk about that.

boards wanted bot lane Mordekaiser to return, let them experiment the cancer for a while

AirKingNeoMay 30, 20181 votes

i think so too, but since PBE cannot be used for balance we have to wait and see how it turns out on live

I think anyone can say that Zeal items don't need to be 300 more gold, plain as day.

D357R0Y3RMay 30, 20183 votes

yea, but you get 20% more crit at the end of the day, and more AD in late game

i guess riot really really wanted to put a difference between early and late game adcs

i think it's still terrible, but as i said i need to test it IE+2 zeal items for sure got gutted

but i think IE+RFC+stormrazor on cait/jinx/trist will be good

Irelia BotMay 31, 20181 votes

{quoted}

I think anyone can say that Zeal items don't need to be 300 more gold, plain as day.

Given that they are intended to combine with IE and in turn be stronger once the target has 83.3 armor before inclising the 10 more AD it is not that crazy.

600 more gold for what will become an effective 950 gold value when IE is finished is really not that much of a nerf in the slightest.

AirKingNeoMay 31, 20181 votes

except for how delayed your powerspike becomes.

Irelia BotMay 31, 20181 votes

{quoted}

except for how delayed your powerspike becomes.

3 minutes if you are at all decent at farming?

AirKingNeoMay 31, 20183 votes

and with 5 minutes (something more realistic) we lose a teamfight and an objective because I picked Tristana like a moron because the boards said the ADC nerfs aren't bad while the enemy picked a meta champion like Varus or MF.

When BoRK becomes unviable due to a 200 gold nerf, you might want to consider how bad a 600 gold nerf is.

AyzevMay 31, 20181 votes

Take into account that you have to recall to buy your stuff, you don't just get it immediately as soon as your gold counter hits a goal, and you can't really afford to recall at any random moment, there might be a fight around dragon coming up or you may need to defend your turret. So those 3 minutes will likely be more than 3 minutes, and even if they won't, that's actually still a very significant amount of time.

Giga BaboonMay 30, 20185 votes

Meddler and ghostcrawler would be destroyed if they actually engaged with people interested in discussing their terrible decisions, like real honest to god back and forth discussion where you actually have to answer questions instead of saying nothing in 2 paragraphs and pretending like you did your job. So instead they hide behind gameplay "thoughts" where they effectively talk at you, and then once in a while ghostcrawler will make a twitlonger on reddit strawmaning the entire board as just being mean stop being so mean can't work when you're so mean.

Madsin25May 31, 20181 votes

Agreed.

I wish I could say they are extremely busy to talk to us and balance at the same time but they are not even balancing so yea.

AirKingNeoMay 31, 20181 votes

It's true that 'Gameplay Thoughts' just talk at you. There's no actual discussion.

THE RlVER KlNGMay 31, 20185 votes

yeah i agree.

those posts should be about balance issues, not owning the boards about the semantics of what the purpose of the pbe is (which literally IS to test balance changes?)

AirKingNeoMay 31, 20182 votes

Disproving idiot's doesn't solve the problems we all face.

DoktorKaiserMay 31, 20182 votes

Crit overnerfed? Its literally the only viable build for any ADC or melee hypercarry... Thank god that Ezreal exists, he is the only ADC that doesn't blow people up in 3 autoattacks and actually uses skillshots aka brain. Every other ADC is pure cancer to play against...

AirKingNeoMay 31, 20181 votes

guess you've never heard of rageblade

thaBeastMay 31, 20182 votes

the balance team is beyond high rn actually riot is beyond high as a whole tbh

cocacolalipsMay 31, 20182 votes

This is the most pretentious and naive post I've read today.

Wtf would they would to talk to you when you are a gold 4 nobody?

You realise they have plenty high diamond master and challenger players already working at riot they talk to on a daily basis right?

Plot twist: balancing a video game like league of legends isn't easy no matter how competent you are, theory can only get you so far, and live games data is your most reliable and valuable asset and objective source of information, that was the point of meddler's post.

Madsin25May 31, 20181 votes

I don't want riot to listen to anything I say.

I want to know exactly why they are doing the things they are doing. Just answer the questions everybody has.

AirKingNeoMay 31, 20181 votes

Because I'm a smart person and I am fundamentally correct in this case. That's why they should talk to me.

Riot doesn't listen to their high elo players. Being high elo doesn't automatically make someone right.

Balancing League is fairly easy, but Riot chooses the hard way. Also, Riot doesn't even use live data to balance otherwise Irelia and Kai'Sa would be nerfed this patch.

ZephyrDrakeMay 31, 20182 votes

yeah we should listen to you and people that want to talk about balance... which is essentially every single person here who thinks that because they either have a high rank or listen to people with high ranks that means that know what is better for the game and know how to actually balance it. Every single time Riot does something that is balance related on the boards everyone still cries because "this is not what we wanted!" except that it was but now nobody can own up to the fact that they have no idea what the hell they are talking about and much rather complain that "riot did it wrong!" instead of their ideas of "balancing" being completely dumb and worthless.

Having a high rank doesn't mean you are good at balancing, it just means you are good at playing the game which kudos to everyone who has achieved a high rank in the game but sorry that doesn't mean jack when it comes to actual balancing. Everything can sound great on paper but most of those great sounding ideas instantly burn up in flames into nothingness when it's applied to something because something went horribly wrong when implementing them.

Madsin25May 31, 20181 votes

However not blowing up in 1 rotation would be nice. Having meaningful gameplay where the guy that uses his combo the fastest wins doesn't happen.

The game is turning into call of duty, and I would like to know why.

AirKingNeoMay 31, 20181 votes

You should listen to me. I look at stats. I take time to make and reinforce opinions. I refuse every slapstick 'nerf yasuo' post.

I actually want the game to be a better game, not a game where bias rules (like boards wanting a tank meta).

Madsin25May 31, 20181 votes

Fleet will be amazing on Tryndamere .

The sad part it will still be nowhere near the level of conqueror.

HügöMay 31, 20181 votes

Crit overnerfed? Getting true damage to shit is overnerfed?

AirKingNeoMay 31, 20182 votes

I guess you forgot that Crits are no longer 250% AD anymore, and instead 200% AD, where you deal 30% AD as true damage and 170% as physical damage.

HügöJun 1, 20181 votes

Wow.... That makes it so much better to get fucked by damage I can do against it: "but but you can build hp bla bla" Yeah and the sudden cost reduction of bork.

IcyPepperMay 31, 20181 votes

I understand that the community generally isn't very smart

I like to think we can be

Pika FoxMay 31, 20182 votes

No. The community really isnt.

IcyPepperMay 31, 20181 votes

Well that's a pessimistic view of things. Does that mean you or OP aren't smart, or are you exceptions to the rule?

I like to think we're capable of being smart, but things like mob mentality or whatever else makes us sell ourselves short. We're capable, but we don't always do.

Pika FoxMay 31, 20181 votes

Group thinking and collective intelligence stuff doesnt really lend itself to solving these types of problems such as game balance. Unless riot were to release a mod system for LoL where you could test your own balance changes and game types, community balance suggestions can never be worthwhile.

Pika FoxMay 31, 20181 votes

First thing to note about balance; balance sucks. No one wants a balanced game. If things seem slightly overtuned, either youre missing something and are wrong or thats the point.

AirKingNeoMay 31, 20181 votes

People enjoy balanced games more.

Pika FoxMay 31, 20181 votes

This is proven to not be the case. Balanced games become stale, the meta becomes solid and nothing changes. Players that like off meta things or theorycrafting no longer have a place in the game, and the game dies out.

Players think they want a balanced, solved game, but when given such a thing theyll often pick the one thats constantly updated and adjusted.

AirKingNeoMay 31, 20181 votes

No, games with nothing new become stale. You can have new things and still be balanced.

Pika FoxMay 31, 20181 votes

Even rock paper scissors isnt a truly balanced game, and a coin flip isnt 50/50 either.

ModKnightsKemplarMay 31, 20181 votes

I will always have a problem with trying to tell the balance team how to do their jobs ahead of incoming changes. Their responses to balance should be data driven, and the whole point of his post was that PBE data sucks. Feedback is good, but they also need data to know what is actually powerful.

Feedback from players tells you how the game feels, but it doesn't tell you what is powerful and what isn't. Sometimes individual players can tell, but we all disagree with each other so much that it's impossible to know who is right until you see data. If you've missed that argument, then you've missed the point of his post.

The same is true of your points here. We don't actually know if rageblade users will be OP. It's somewhat likely, but not certain. Patch hasn't been live for 24 hours yet, and most players haven't touched it yet. It takes time to see how these things shake out, and more time to analyze why, and more time to address the problem intelligently.

The armchair game designers will always make this operation sound easier than it is. There's a reason that League continues to be hugely successful; it is not an accident.

AirKingNeoMay 31, 20181 votes

Problem is balance isn't being data-driven. Champions who are blatantly overpowered are kept overpowered for months on end. Irelia and Kai'Sa haven't been nerfed this patch, so they'll stay above 50% banrate.

The whole point of the post was to tell the community to shut up. It doesn't fix the issue that people had in the first place that made them say something stupid.

There's a lot of balance that can be told by common sense. It's better something be underpowered than overpowered.

AptestMay 31, 20181 votes

IMHO the core problem with players talking about balance is that generally players only look at balance through the narrow lens of their champion and their role; They do not think about other lanes in their consideration of whether a change is good or bad and they do not think the health of the other lane is as important as the health of their lane.

Take the recent scuttle discussion as an example. How much of the scuttle discussion is done by non junglers? i do not know if scuttle is overall good or bad but i do know that it is supposed to be bad, from the narrow view of the jungler's role. But are a lot of top laners and mid laners and bot laners in the discussion? a small amount, but the big noise is done by junglers, and the points raised are jungle diversity and jungler disapproval of having major objectives that coerce them.

Moreover. We know more or less, that people need a certain amount of agency over the game to feel "sufficiently in control"; That is to say, to feel that their lane and role and champion is in a good spot. But actually this amount (approx 30% of the influence, if we take mice experiments as a good indicator) is HIGHER than what a well balanced game will provide (20%). This means that if players feel their champion is in a good spot, it's a good indicator that it's overpowered massively. And players who seek to bring champions into a good spot can be expected to desire changes that push the champion into an overpowered spot...

...especially if their view is narrow, and not "holistic".

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