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Musings on Fun and Clunkiness

RiotNot Surrendering·12/19/2016, 5:52:51 AM·128 votes·69,576 views

So fun has been a hot button topic over the last few days, I thought I'd give my opinion on what fun is and preserving fun after reworks.

Generally speaking, when Fizz could WQ and just instantly kill people that was fun and as a Fizz Enthusiast, that was some of the most fun I've had in League of Legends. Unfortunately, that has consequences.

If playing Fizz like that is a 10/10 and assuming everyone else on your team is having 10 amounts of fun. If Fizz having 10/10 fun is causing everyone on the enemy team to have 2/10 fun, then your holistic fun is 60/100.

Now imagine if Fizz post rework is 6/10 fun, but everyone on the enemy team is having 3/10 fun, then you're having more fun 61/100. Obviously a very contrived and marginal example, but that is the holistic benefit of doing a game health driven rework. In this case, if the thing we were trying to fix was both unfair and fun it's going to be very difficult (but still possible) to replace that "thing" for the Fizz player to give them 10/10 fun - the rework has to be exceptional in that "doing a fair thing" can produce that extra 4/10 of fun.

For this reason, reworking popular champions is always going to be difficult - if they're popular and need a rework, they are almost certainly doing something that's unfair and you'll have to add something exceptional to make them equally fun. If they are less popular, mains will almost always have more fun after the rework, because their gameplay was probably just bad and unfun to begin with and anything will be better - eg. Taric.

This is one of the reasons why I personally think the Katarina rework was good (some of it still needs ironing out, but I believe it can be solved) because the daggers system added that 4/10 fun back for Katarina, while increasing fun and play against for the opponent.

Now to the clunky argument, this is more of a theoretical discussion, so bear with me.

The reason why clunkiness exists is because we can't have 133 Lucians. If we keep making Lucians and Yasuos who are extremely smooth, everyone will only play Lucian and Yasuo and every other champion will feel clunky and bad by comparison. Lucian and Yasuo are both amazing and unique designs, but their mere existence can cause us problems.

Do you remember the time 6 months ago where there was a Yasuo and Lucian on both teams in every game in blind pick (no bans)? Because I surely do and it was horrible - not because Lucian is awful to play against - he's pretty fair, but just because there was no variety in the games. The bad thing about that situation was that Lucian wasn't even powerful by any objective measure (he had a sub 50% winrate and subsequently drew relatively few bans). People eventually just started banning him, because they were so sick of seeing him in every game. Some of my friends who only play normals even stopped playing as a result.

If Jinx and Lucian are the same strength, who would want to play Jinx who is slow and has no escapes when they can play Lucian or Ezreal or any of the non-"clunky" characters? The thematic or alternate gameplay hook has to be really strong to overcome this for Jinx to get played (and luckily it is). This is why designers get triggered by people complaining things are clunky, because they know clunky = sustainable. Imagine if Jinx (our most popular marksman by thematics and gameplay) was also the least clunky character. You would see Jinx in every single game.

Imagine if the game had no cast times on all of our champions (of course that would make every character more fun to play and less clunky), but suddenly half the roster becomes unplayable because they have no dash so they can't dodge any abilities. Lucian suddenly becomes picked every game, because he's the only character with an instant dash that can dodge Malphite ultimate or skillshots without flash or maybe tanks and AP mages become the only things that are playable, because even Lucian can't dodge the damage that Annie can shit out in 0.05 seconds flat with no cast time on QW or R - she wouldn't even have to aim.

As a lot of people know, Dota has turn speed. Turn speed is clunky as hell, but you know what? In TI6, 104/114 heroes got picked. The very first thing that would go out the door if turn speed got removed is hero diversity, because Garen (and melees) can actually be played in high ELO in Dota to great effect - in part because their ranged carries cannot fluidly auto attack and move at the same time. There is a movement cost to be paid every time Drow Ranger attacks.

And even after having played Dota for so many years of my life, I simply can't go back to it without craving the smoothness of League again.

My worry is that having clunk-less champions is just not sustainable and the game will eventually die or become a shell of its former self. Maybe this is a pessimistic outlook and maybe there's a way to make every champion not clunky without alienating half the roster, but I don't want us to take that risk without knowing exactly what we're doing and see the game I love die.

So yes, just general musings. As always leave comments.

EDIT: Of course where optimal, we'd like to add gameplay without clunkiness. Cast times and projectile speeds are a way that we can add gameplay without making the character feel overly clunky and unresponsive.

Camille is a good example of where we can have a lot of gameplay without having the kit feel unresponsive using travel times and lockouts (on Q) that feel natural and Jag did a good job on those.

363 Comments

Mokkun12/19/2016, 6:55:16 AM65 votes

I'm going to go with the idea that much of the rest of the design team doesn't share your fears, or Camille wouldn't exist. She causes massive mobility creep by herself, regardless of any actual power. She's a new fluid, mobile champion with abilities that get to ignore many "clunkier" champions through a combination of high mobility, and the fact that dashes aren't stopped by things like roots.

Of course, making new champions generally asks that you make something different. When you get this many champions, something that hasn't been done before, has a tendency to = overloaded as fuck, simply to be different. The alternative tends to be gimmicky as hell, with either binary success champions, or kits that have to be kept weak to keep them from being broken, see: Kled, and reworked Yorick recently, or old problems like Eve.

At some point though, you might almost consider the Soldier 76 answer. Make something so generic that it hasn't actually been done. Because currently, even truly basic things like Annie and Garen, have weird aspects to them.

Otherwise, Riot has already slowed down champion releases, and so should be able to spend some more time on balance. It could slow down yet further, and I think it would be OK.

And finally, to date, all computer games die, or at least dwindle down to the hardcore or nostalgia fans. Even long-running things like Starcraft Broodwar are essentially gone. Doom2 lives on only through its modding community, and the behemoth that is WoW is largely running on inertia and nothing else. LoL may be able to pull WoW's trick for quite some time, but eventually it too must fall. And you know what, sometimes that's OK. There's a healthiness to that as well. It allows innovation and growth in the gaming industry as a whole. And Riot, if it plays its cards right, can survive the death of their original game, by having something new when that finally happens.

Akali is SO HOT12/19/2016, 6:25:07 AM51 votes

Just because you don't want there to be a whole bunch of Yasuos and Lucians in the game it doesn't mean you should keep clunkiness in a champions kit. Champions should always have a kit that feels smooth to use and play with. Wanting to avoid making more Yasuos and Lucians shouldn't come at the cost of hurting other champions. A good example of this would be Akali. Akali's kit has felt clunky since forever and every time she gets changed it just makes her kit clunkier and clunkier which isn't fair to the Akali players. Not wanting there to be more Yasuos and Lucians in this game does not mean you should intentionally keep Akali's kit clunky. It's incredibly biased and unfair to the players of other champions that don't get the "honor" of being Yasuo or Lucian.

HowPlayGAEM12/19/2016, 11:13:57 AM38 votes

I think you're applying "clunkiness" too broadly which makes it harder to pinpoint the actual things that make champs less fun to play. I wish I played more champs so I can elaborate, but no IP lol.

First, let's start off with this: Mobility ≠ smoothness. Telegraphed skillshots ≠ clunkiness.

Yes, in general mobile champs feel smooth, aka non-clunky. However that's because you deliberately designed them that way, it has little to do with their actual mobility.

Jinx gameplay feels smooth even though she is immobile and slow. What IS clunky about Jinx is the cooldown on her form swap. It's a skill that doesn't feel like it should have a cooldown, but it does (I assume for balance reasons). So what ends up happening is I swap to rockets, but circumstances quickly change and I press Q again. Oops! sorry it was on cooldown. I'm still shooting rockets even though I desperately need attack speed ASAFP. Fuck me.

Soraka is smooth. Good animations, skills used when button pressed, etc. She's immobile, not clunky.

Vi is smooth. Her gameplay is satisfying, skills used when button pressed, etc.

Katarina is generally smooth. This rework IMO is a massive success, and she is very fun to play and much more fair for enemies. What isn't smooth about Katarina gameplay is minion collision. It has less to do with Katarina and more the fact that minion collision has been clunky ever since you guys "fixed" it many months ago. Very often there are situations where you're caught on minions and Kat starts spazzing out, then of course the dagger expires and you're a fish out of water.

I'll contrast Katarina with Leblanc, because in my opinion the Leblanc rework is the very definition of clunky.

Old Leblanc was speed. You pressed buttons and shit happened. The speed was similar to that of Katarina.

New Leblanc is the complete opposite. You now have a 1.5 second delay to account for, plus the snapback delay on W. You can't use skills when you want anymore, you're held hostage by the new passive.

Yasuo and Lee are not clunky, but again, its not because of their mobility. They don't have any delays on their skills, everything is instant. When Yasuo knocks someone up, he isn't required to wait 1.5 seconds for a passive or a hidden .4 second cast delay. He can just instantly use his ult and jump on someone.

When Lee tags someone with Q or W, he doesn't have a 1 second cooldown like Jinx Q or Leblanc's snapback delay or passive. Lee Sin can instantly use his skills. Q Q R instantly, no delays or cast times.

The difference between League and Dota is that in Dota, the "clunk" is consistent and part of the game.

I can accept Skeleton King having a .5 second attack point because I know the enemy Lina has it worse, that it takes over .5 seconds for Leshrac to cast his spells, etc.

I cannot accept Yasuo being able to instantly dart all over the fucking place while the champ I play gets smacked with delays because "muh counterplay"

Why does he get to have the luxury of smooth gameplay and mobility while I don't? Why is my champ forced to be clunky while he isn't? We're both playing League of Legends, but the balance approach is unfair; one champ gets the luxury of playing League, while another gets kicked in the balls/ovaries and hobbles around. Hell, Yasuo is completely unfun to play against even if you're playing a smooth champion.

What it comes down to is some champs are exempt from the normal "rules" and get to play an enhanced version of League while others get smacked with "muh counterplay", and this feels like shit if you're not one of the special snowflake champs.

Sohleks12/19/2016, 7:12:30 AM21 votes

No actually Lucian was completely ridiculous when people started spamming the crap out of his armor pen build that made him a snowbally pretty much target agnostic duelist hypercarry in a very tank versus super carry meta. He was the most efficient adc with an armor pen build that let him just cheat the way things are for adc since last whisper nerfs (he killed tanks and could still roll lane and other classes). He had a good everything with the armor pen build and could just swap it out for crit later. I was seriously considering giving up any other adcs bot lane like Corki to try Lucian for the first time in so many years (and I stubbornly refuse to play him) because he with the items and options he had were that imbalanced. He wasn't just "really cool at the time", you're talking about a character with a notorious balance history. Of course he stopped being powerful being balanced around very powerful items that no longer exist. Now armor pen items at best teeter at average with only extra strong characters having any prevalence with them. Ohh I'm triggered.

As for Fizz maybe life can be better for Fizz by sorta pulling back on the W delay thing reducing it later game perhaps by making cdr reduce the arm time. Not really elegant though and probably doesn't really get anyone what they want. Me and some of my friends miss his on-hit dps build possibility, not to play tank fizz (that sunfire/gauntlet shit was gross, only played it once. I personally liked roa-nashors-ap-onhit jungle fizz at some point) but tbh dps builds take great advantage of extra beef. I understand the point of the W rework is to move him away from that so tank fizz doesn't crop back but at the same time I felt like with fervor nerfed for non-ad champions and with Fizz top already not prevalent in serious elo it wouldn't be needed. For the moment. Maybe if certain on-hit items got some love they deserved back it could be risky.

Also the mechanics of the fizz W feels contrived but I guess it just seems that way if you played him before. Fizz didn't have that much of a rotation before it's what made him great though and gave him freedom to use his mobility to greater extent.

Brutalitops0112/19/2016, 6:04:07 AM18 votes

I made a post a little bit ago about how boring playing with/against Yasuo and Lee Sin is becoming after seeing them in so many of my games. If they aren't banned, they're picked, nearly every game. They have very obvious and viable counterplay, and more often than not, with Yasuo, the person playing him feeds every single game and I either take the free win or the enemy team does, depending on which one has the 0/15 Yasuo. Lee Sin, on the other hand, I often see getting incredibly fed very early on with constant ganks and ending the game within the first 25 minutes, before I'm able to scale up into my pure evil Late Game Twitch and crush everything. What do you think can be done to champions who are both highly picked and balanced to stop them from alienating the rest of the roster (like Lee Sin and Yasuo are doing now)?

Edge of Daybreak12/19/2016, 7:16:39 AM15 votes

Except in some cases champions get to keep their 10/10 fun for years while others get their 10/10 fun reduced to 2/10 or less with no further changes even being considered when both champions cause the enemy 4/10 fun or less. Why the favoritism? When a 10/10 champion is seen as unfun to play against or overpowered then they should be nerfed just as hard as the other champions who were also seen as oppressive and nerfed for it or at the very least have some of their raw power shaved off until they aren't seen as oppressive.

When champions like ahri get to be a midlane badass for years while champion's like aatrox get neutered and left there for years why does ahri's 10/10 get to stay there but aatrox's doesn't? I wouldn't even bother asking if you guys actually attempted to fix the champions you are making unfun to play but well it's obvious you aren't as some champions get compensation buffs for their nerfs and lots of changes over the course of the season while the ones left to rot are just stuck there. What's the point of having them be in the game if their only supposed to be there as placeholders to say hey we have a lot of champions.

As for clunkiness when the only way to balance a character is to make them clunky then I would say that balance has failed in that case. If Having characters not be purposefully clunky results in one being better than all the rest then clearly the champions don't have enough unique strengths. An akali player shouldn't have to worry about clunkiness in fact no one should because for how much people hate yasuo right now clearly he isn't being made more clunky and I could almost guarantee no change he would receive in the future is ever going to make him more clunky so why do it to other champions ever?

Penns12/19/2016, 8:16:57 AM15 votes

Well its not like Fizz could just casually oneshot people with WQ. He needed like 4+ levels on someone with 0 MR and 75% of that damage came from items and masteries anyway.

Also if Fizz was 2/10 fun to play against for "casuals" before, he is 0 or 1\10 now, looking at how many people complain about his ult or even call it bugged. While being less fun, more clunky, telegraphed and binary to play for many Fizz mains.

Even tho I think the rework is "okay" by now, I still dont get why it was necessary. Q, E and R were all dodgable and E and R had a ~1.5s delay already. His only reliable damage without a delay were.... His auto attacks.

Quepha12/19/2016, 7:46:32 AM11 votes

I think you need to define "clunkiness"

The context within which you use it does not seem to line up with my view of that word.

Big Lincoln12/19/2016, 6:21:40 AM10 votes

because their gameplay was probably just bad and unfun to begin with and anything will be better - eg. Taric.

Old Taric was much better and played far smoother; I don't like him one bit currently, and I've lost one of the only two supports I can tolerate after his rework.

To me, there is a difference between clunky and weighty. Since you point to Lucian and Yasuo as being very smooth and fluent, I will say that you are mean 'weighty' when you describe the opposite of that, which I think can still feel very good in its own right. An example of a weighty champion would be Sion. He's slow, he's a little less fluid in his gameplay, but he has very high impact spells, with how hard he hits people, his many knockups, etc. He feels good to play as a result of this. I think Darius fits this bill quite well, too.

In the same vein, I would call someone like Mordekaiser to be clunky. His damage is tied up in his third Q, but he has no means to stick to you long enough to get it, until he acquires items. His W requires an ally, which on its own just feels wholly unsatisfying, especially after the overlap damage was removed. As a result, the champion feels very flat and one-dimensional, and generally doesn't feel very satisfying for most players. Additionally, enemies still dislike dealing with him; I would say that overall he has held a net negative in terms of being 'fun' for everyone involved.

Teridax6812/19/2016, 7:45:14 AM8 votes

Thank you for posting on here! It's rare to see red posts on Gameplay, and even rarer to have a proper, meaty discussion on the subject where the dev also legitimately invites conversation. Here are some opinions on specific points you bring up:

[{quoted}](name=Fizz Enthusiast,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=6EEk9efX,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-12-19T05:52:51.980+0000)

Imagine if the game had no cast times on all of our champions (of course that would make every character more fun to play and less clunky), but suddenly half the roster becomes unplayable because they have no dash so they can't dodge any abilities. Lucian suddenly becomes picked every game, because he's the only character with an instant dash that can dodge Malphite ultimate or skillshots without flash or maybe tanks and AP mages become the only things that are playable, because even Lucian can't dodge the damage that Annie can shit out in 0.05 seconds flat with no cast time on QW or R - she wouldn't even have to aim.

Instead of removing cast times and stopping at that, what would you say to shifting those times to, say, delays and projectile speeds? Suppose we have a League where everyone can cast abilities without it interrupting their movement, but all of those abilities take about 0.25s or even 0.5s more to land: what would be the tradeoffs to that? Would low-mobility champions still suffer? It feels like the finer points of counterplay tied to those cast times make the most difference at higher elos, and aren't as relevant at Gold or below: would such a shift help equalize balancing at different levels of play, make it worse, or simply make things different?

[{quoted}](name=Fizz Enthusiast,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=6EEk9efX,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-12-19T05:52:51.980+0000)

As a lot of people know, Dota has turn speed. Turn speed is clunky as hell, but you know what? In TI6, 104/114 heroes got picked. The very first thing that would go out the door if turn speed got removed is hero diversity, because Garen (and melees) can actually be played in high ELO in Dota to great effect - in part because their ranged carries cannot fluidly auto attack and move at the same time. There is a movement cost to be paid every time Drow Ranger attacks.

Why not just buff the movement speed of melee champions and balance them around that? Melee vs. ranged has been a pain point in the community for quite some time now, and one of the reasons is because quite a few melee champions can't adequately get within range of ranged targets -- in the worst cases, some melee champions can't get within range at all without dying, depending on the comp they're up against, which is why the performance of some juggernauts is so volatile. Melee champions also lack a definite advantage over ranged, whereas ranged champions obviously have significantly better attack range, which gives them far more options than, say, stronger overall stats, including in lane, where melee champions feel like they have significantly less agency when faced up against a ranged opponent. In a League where every melee champion had drastically increased movespeed, say, +15, +25 or even +50 across the board, and had deflated stats and power elsewhere, how would that change overall game health? How would that impact on design and balance?

I agree that not every champion can be as graceful and smooth as the likes of Lucian or Yasuo, and I understand that cast times, basic attack animation lockouts, etc. are there for a reason, but I still feel like some of those systems feel like one not-so-fun balancing point propped up against another not-so-fun balancing point, with the result being lessened fun for both the caster and the cast-ee overall. When I first started playing League, one of the things that tripped me up the most was the relative difficulty of orbwalking: I had no experience with Dota, so I didn't know how blessed I was to have no turn speeds, but it still felt frustrating to stop, auto, move, stop, auto, move, etc. when an enemy was moving just at the limit of my range, as I was constantly negating my attack commands. I've gotten better over time, but often it still feels like a lot of busywork, when I'd rather be spending that mental effort on outplaying my opponent more directly.