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Too much times passes between patches and between seasons; the game is stale

Alorasence·1/10/2015, 5:22:02 AM·6 votes·1,169 views

This is a game.

In between LCS seasons and the cyclical overhauls we see every year, the game becomes so stagnant and poorly balanced that true toxicity comes from the game itself.

There isn't enough patching, rebalancing, bug fixing, or champion design to keep the game fresh anymore. Waiting months on end for significant changes is unnacceptable.

Games do not have "off-seasons".

Some long-standing problems:

Nidalee is teleporting. Without teleport. Why is this not a priority?

Azir's q still is targeted incorrectly.

Zed, Fizz, Akali, Leblanc, and Reksai are on a mandatory ban list. No balance changes in sight.

Sona is getting nerfed though. Hurray.

Champion release has slowed to about once every other month.

Lee Sin remains the most dominant jungler in the game, uncontested, for 3 seasons now.

Evelyn, Nautilus, Olaf, Zac, and Elise remain essentially unviable.

Urgot, Zilean, Poppy, Yorick, Gangplank, et cetera, remain abominations of champion design. Being told they are "on the list" is hardly consoling.

For a game as widely played and as popular as this, the etiquette of patching, bug fixing, and rebalancing, is amateurish and unprofessional.

11 Comments

Yummines1/10/2015, 5:38:22 AM5 votes

Seeing how long it took them to fix Sion (who keep in mind, was UP from Season 1) I wouldn't expect them to give underplayed champs any love. All that really happens is that if someone figures out a way to dominate with an underplayed champ, it gets promptly nerfed and left in the dust (like Season 2 Urgot).

Evelyn got a remake but apparently her ult was too good an execute so it got nerfed into oblivion. Now she again is next to useless. Trundle is never played in tournaments and has literally gone years without any balance changes whatsoever (the "remake" only changed his design and changed the skills slightly).

Poppy is on the same list as Trundle in never getting any balance changes either. As well as Urgot.

Honestly, it's more they can't make money off of underplayed champs, so generally they're thrown under the rug.

Kuroi861/10/2015, 7:50:59 AM3 votes

"I don't like how Riot handles their company, they should change it."

Do you have half a clue how long some changes can take? Heck, Riot itself admits that with the new jungle and some of the changes made for this new season they are trying to streamline some thing that will help them tweak numbers much faster, "Levers!" I understand being impatient. But just relax and wait, Riot knows there are problems and they are working on them. Bug fixes can especially take a long time. The number of pages of code that goes into a champion I expect is insane. And having to go through all of that code to find what is causing a bug. To my experience, a single digit, just one, just 1 single letter or number being off, can cause all sorts of hell. And when you're looking at a script for a champ that is potentially hundreds of thousands of bytes, it is seriously a daunting task.

Balancing issues are not made simply on who is most banned or who you don't like. There are numerous numbers involved. Win rate, pick/ban rate, damage rate, heal rate, crit rate, not to mention countless other numbers you and I don't even know about. Then you've got to ask yourself what the problem is with the champion (And no, I wouldn't ask the community, read through a few threads and you'll quickly see many have no idea what balance is, so don't expect Riot to EVER come here looking for balancing advice. That would be like asking a drunken hobo under a bridge if he can diagnose a dog bite you got last night.) What is the problem with the champion, what is the solution? Then you go from there.

Release dates have slowed, because we all know what happens when Riot rushes a release date Azir

Many champs remain unviable and some abominations. Yeah, many needing reworks. This also takes time. What elements of a champ do you want to preserve, how do you preserve it and stay true to the feel and lore of a champ while making them viable. Can you get a paper kit written down. How functional is it without being broken. Lets work up the mechanics and see what we can do. Do the mechanics function, do they work without being too much. We're talking months if not years of work.

Games do not have off seasons. Well LoL does. The people at Riot work their butts off to try and keep this game up and running. If they want to spend the holidays with their family, I'm not going to deny them that. This isn't WoW we're talking about, you can't just release a single update once every few years and wait for people to play through it all. LoL is constantly updating almost bi-weekly. That takes a lot of work.