Riot's overall balancing approach. (Would Marc Merrill And Brandon Beck agree with this?)

I have not proofed this as I have to go to work. I also live in Australia and we use UK English. Also, to keep your ears entertained: Here's a link to some music while you read: http://bit.ly/1suDEBt

A brief background of myself: I've played cs for 11 years as a competitive player. I've been a competitive wow arena player since 2008, and an adopter of good PvP games. (a.k.a... league) I have two accounts at diamond and recently hit platinum for the hell of it on my 3rd account. Yes, I finished uni and have two jobs.

Props to you RioT. Your game design approach has been the best I've seen in any good pvp game. (This stems from your ability to completely recreate and rebuild champions with their core design philosophy intact) no one can argue with that and that's a big f@#ken achievement in and of itself.. so props to you. Are you going far enough though? I hope some of this information will be used to make League a better game than it already is.

Old-school/super experienced game design mentality - CHECK So you've mastered the mechanical side of "learning" how to design a game. You've arguably obtained some of the best game designers in the world like GhostCrawler from other popular games and such. We're all new to the club with this thing we call (MOBA) and have no F*%king clue what we've just stumbled upon. As we all know, the MOBA genre is still in it's infancy with respect to it's game design philosophy. Thus, it is logical to obtain designers with at least some professional experience in the area of designing big games and making sure LoL is enjoyable and co0l for self identifying Gamers. - CHECK

• Number game design philosophy (World of Warcraft) VS mechanical game design philosophy (Moba) (NEW TREND) Currently, you're treating the game as a mechanical machine rather than a living organism. World of Warcraft is a mechanical machine because it's focused on PvE efficiency... rotations and cool downs, ect ect.. To play the numbers game is fine and is important. However, we're not playing a PvE game anymore, we're playing a dynamic (every game on SR is different) PvP game and hence to primarily focus on numbers from a design perspective (to the extent I've witnessed) is to submit that your designers are dinosaurs. (no offence)

Simple analogy: A living organism adapts and changes according to different scenarios and environments. (PvP) This is how you are supposed to play league of legends, through logical feelings, decisions making, logical rotations based on variable map-positioned opponents ect. However, once you start to treat a game like a machine, you start building rotations, cool down efficiency. Attributes that work very well for a PvE environment, where the entire scenario is pre-determined.

1. Example from a recent change:

** Number game design example:* Ryze is arguably currently the strongest top laner in the game. In patch 4.19 went from 160 to 120 Q damage. This doesn't solve his issue as a top laner and just ruins the player exp. The player feels, "I'm doing the exact same thing as before but worse, this isn't fun." Ryze Mechanical game design example: We feel Ryze is a bit too dominate at top lane (because that's his main position now), so we've changed his Q mechanic to not completely destroy his opponents in lane. Q - Overload: Now starts off with 300~ range and gradually increased as Ryze levels so he will still be viable late game.

Obviously PBE testing will be in place for exact ranges, however you see the different approach in game design. Not to simply reduce the output numbers. But to change the mechanic, the decision making for the player.

(Yes, I can seen you've also implemented a singed update with the mechanical approach. GREAT! However, you've been trying to adjust the numbers on Ryze for 2 years now as a mid laner and your design team has unwillingly created the arguably strongest top laner in the game. This isn't simply a number efficiency game. It's a mechanical, decision based one. "When do i go in? Is there counter play? How do i figure out the counter play?" Riots game design (from what i can see) answer to this is to simply adjust numbers. I don't think that's the correct approach most of the time in the new MOBA genre.

Rioters should be living and breathing this game. And If they are and not simply seeing this as a job. They should be leaning towards the more difficult side of game design. That would intern make the game better in the long run. Mechanical design. Again, i'm not bashing the numbers approach, it needs to be used. However, just give it some more thought in your game design approach.

See you in Africa Vidic