The community is a reflection of the game

LastManOnEarth··4 votes·455 views

Hi everyone,

I am a rager. I hate losing just like the rest of us. I hate losing because of an imbalance in the game, an exploited bug, or just being stupid..ly unlucky. I feel that there are many other fans of the game out there who are discouraged by the lack of meaningful impacts in the game with regard to fairness. Is it fair to have a meta that shifts constantly, but brings no lasting balance to the game - especially regarding new champions and a loss of respect to old ones (or even old ways of making champ kits). I want to fight for fairness, but all I see is power picks and the exploitation of one champions abilities to avoid having to lose. If is frustrating to see the same old champs be played again and again and again without consequence just to get a win rate while the meta favorable winds flow. I want a champion pick to be nuanced and mesh with other champions so well it becomes a strategy to pocket pick an out-of-meta champion to add that synergy. I don't want raw stats or simplicity to rule over my decisions like it has for most others. I feel left out by playing champions that are literally bottom 10 on the most played champs ever list. I think that in any part, the community that hates losing the most has been built into the code to lose particularly by picking subpar champions.

Let me throw and example at you based around the law that some champions have self stuns and some do not. Yasuo can use abilities will stunned - Anivia cannot. Yasuo can be stunned during an ult and yet still continue - if Anivia is displaced by her own wall her ult ends. this is just one example. Many other champions can ignore abilities (and sometimes damage) and cc and walk away like they're boss players when instead the code would prove them insanely lucky. I hate Yasuo and love Anivia, but one is more played than another for the obvious reasons that Yas is meta and will most likely stay meta forever pending no meaningful change.

As a side not, this applies to most assassins as they most likely have priority in the game to execute abilities and escapes to prevent their instant demise (as it should be based on what an assassin means).

I believe that since the game is broken and unfair, the community is broken and unfair and that a cleanup of said fairness amongst champions will alleviate some of the toxicity that plagues our large community.

tl;dr - fixing the game helps fix the community just as much as fixing the community fixes the game

4 Comments

Rito Staff3 votes

I believe that the fine line of balance they try to achieve by constant tweaking, mainly the nerfing, ends up making things worse when it comes to balance. The pool of relevant champions is worst then in DotA and when it comes to picked champions it's even worse as there's that top-pick pool that you see frequently.

Since everything is sort of even, a small buff makes x champ stand out. A nerf makes it fall into oblivion.

I'd vote for buffing slightly every champion that needs it. Leaving Rivens and Katarinas be. (Check my account, I don't even play them)

I'd rather see my Aatrox, Vel'Koz get some love then to see the obnoxious ones get gutted.

LastManOnEarth2 votes

Some champions may need to be buffed then nerfed, then buffed, and nerfed relative to other champions. But the slow going that we have now leaves many to wonder if they'll ever get around to their favorites. I don't agree that everything is even and I don't believe there will ever be a power balance. But the more that changes, the more likely to not see a problem and the more people will experiment and try to get ahead. The community is great at making champ data especially centered around specific interaction bugs. I haven't played DOTA much, but it doesn't seem like it wants to change where as Riot seems to strangle change in league with unchecked over-reaches and the lack of widespread meaningful buffs. I would think the community would jump on positive change if it meant that some part of the top tier was knocked down a peg because those underrated champs became a little more potent.

MAN OF INTELLECT2 votes

Some champions will have their turn to get some love... hopefully. ;)

I anticipate the day that Zilean and Veigar get buffed.

I remember the good 'ol days when Zilean mid used to be a thing...

I think Riot can only do buffs/nerfs one step at a time, so they can assess how each individual change impacts the game. When a new champion emerges, extra attention needs to be paid to this new champion in terms of gameplay/balance in order to keep the game from being completely ruined by a single character.

And Riot doesn't always release broken champs. I mean, Bard is pretty new, but I don't think anyone is saying he's OP. Thresh W versus Bard Portal? Thresh has a shield + escape. Bard Portal even enemies can walk into...

I will agree that assassins make the game of League incredibly difficult to balance since they have so much mobility and damage. But isn't this the tank meta? Yasuo beats Anivia because she has two projectiles. Pick someone like Malz or Morde or Cho against Yasuo, and then see how things work out ;)

LastManOnEarth1 votes

I agree that Riot releases many champs that come out of the gate and need to be reared back. And they release some that need more tweaking to have their strengths become apparent. But when the meta constantly shifts and some reign supreme, that's when you nail it to the wall for rework - and vice versa if consistently poor performance.

In light of my original point, let's look at the recent addition of Ezreal Ezreal back into the pro-players mix because of 1 new item. He was picked up pretty quickly by many challenger teams and then filtered down to ranked, normals, and then to bot games as flavor of the month. This shows a direct line of community succession that feeds off of the game additions like wildfire. The ez I knew used be be a slow skill-shotter that required clever positioning, precise mana management, and finesse that now leans more on mobility and raw power. These same items have affected champions unequally providing mobility having champions more boons than their slow counterparts. As a slow champion lover, I like the cleverness of being slower and having to time everything so well - which has become so much harder. Now even the tanks have no problem just jumping into play because they run so much faster (not to mention the glut of tank supporting items). I feel slow, especially to the big tanks that can jump with their increased range (due to the realizable affect ms has on effective range) and stay on top providing cover to their damage teammates. This speed meta-meta makes the game so much easier for assassins because now they can just rely on their plethora of base stats as well as the increased mobility, AND the tanks that they can hide behind. The game shifts giving assassins more opportunities indirectly while preventing a good counter other than even more cc. The community eats up the big damage dealers and the big tanks and the middle ground is covered by mobility. And this leads to a small champion pool that's incredibly competitive on average that have those above average stats and abilities. The champions that we pick are our votes to where the game stands in fairness.

Riot is not beholden to our demands, but they are part of the community, and they dictate what we play when we want to win by making calls for item, champion, and skill stats. They should see the shifts the community makes and immediately counteract because the longer something goes unfixed, the more obvious the problem, and the more obvious the solution comes.

tl;dr, many people want to play what they want without fear of losing to a meta-power pick all the time regardless of patch. More flux means more experimentation and less obvious problems to fix asap.

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