The "Balance" Debate and the Not So Simple Fix

I read a lot on these boards, way more than I obviously post. Besides all the fun posts like the memes and the champion concepts, there always seems to be an extreme amount of posts on discussions ranging from clearly thought out ideas to inane rants and joke balance threads. The common thing between them is not the context, it's the differing opinions: players wanting nerfs on one champ, buffs on another, changes on another. No one can really agree on a majority ideal for any given mechanic or champion.

So, we can establish that currently, the playerbase can't define what the game balance is since we essentially agree to disagree. This puts the devs in a position where they eventually consider looking at something if the outcry is big enough, and I mean big. This has happened many times in the past, more recently better clarification on Rengar's ult (even if you still die, you got a bit more time to drop a pink and pray), Urgot changes on the pbe, and Zhonyas getting a small buff. This is due to the community feedback, but that's only after everyone sifts through the balance suggestions, which I honestly think the devs do. I also believe they're trying to find some middle ground between what they're trying to do with the game, and what the players want.

Now how do we go about fixing all of this? Well, there needs to be a way for the devs to know what a majority of players want, while also giving the players what they want and keeping their goals intact. That sounds impossible, there are even clear contradictions in that sentence alone. Well if some of you have caught on, I'm talking about Sandbox mode. Sandbox mode will solve most of the issues, and bring in more as well. For now, we'll focus on the positives (I'm sure commentors will provide the negatives).

1. By giving the playerbase a tool to make their own game balance, you solve the issue of players having different opinions. (How could they when they can just do it themselves!)

2. If there are ways to share these changes, you get clear data on what the majority of players want (MM's Meticulous Morde Mayhem mod might be extremely popular, where as xxx420blaze360noscopexxx's onlyassassinsaregods mod is somewhat popular)

3. The devs might even get some ideas on where to take the game (Lots of mods seem to be using this tool that involves towers. We should probably look into that a bit more. Also, one mod has an interesting champion rework. Maybe some testing should be done there.)

4. Isolating it to custom games, or another launcher will keep it out of Normals/Ranked, and allow everyone to easily switch between the two. (This mod was fun, but I kind of want to do some ranked with Vanilla Riven)

Of course getting a team on Sandbox Mode will require resources, time, and a lot of brainstorming. It isn't as simple as "take like three people and put them on it." The devs need to be able to delegate time since this resource will need a bit of power behind it: Stat changes, custom assets, changes in code, new scripts, optimized scripts. All of those need to be able to fit seamlessly into the tool which would then have to transfer to a game environment where everyone needs to have the same mod to play, which means a way to detect that every asset is the same for any given game. That's a lot of things to address for what can pretty much fix this balance cacophony we're all going on about. So, if the devs want to get a sandbox mode out, they need to do it during a significant downtime with the game itself in order to focus the right resources to it. It can't be done in a day.

But that's it for now, if you made it this far, have a cookie