Question for Riot's balancing team

I always felt bad for the balance team since everyone always posts negatively about them and completely disregard the good changes. you dont really see people talking about the good changes as much as the bad changes. I mean, with such a big and complex game, there are going to be a lot of broken aspects that are op, or some champs being trash, but like one minor change can make them interact with certain things completely different, like nerfing the ratios on an ability that is used as waveclear can make that champion's roams much less effective, which is a much huger nerf than intended. i feel like people need to realize how impactful a small change could be. I am 100% sure the balance team is trying their best to balance the game, i just wish other people would think the same and support them instead of ranting negatively about them.

Props for sticking up for your company. Pride in your works important. And the passive aggressiveness in that first part made me laugh, lol

Tell em' man!

It's almost as if players seriously think that Rioters are trying to upset their playerbase by making the game unbalanced.. No company in it's right mind would do something so ridiculous which is why posts like these are understandably infuriating.

[slayer-jinx-unamused]

You could at least pinned this comment on the front page of Boards where everyone can read it first before making accusation threads. This would make things easier.

dang i would love if a balance team member would respond to my boards at times, cause i am always genuinely curious about things and would just love to hear their thoughts of how things are, such as does anyone think that the assassins being compensated for duskblade nerfs overboard? except perhaps wukong seeing he's been in a bad state. but kha zix and kayn are becoming wayy to strong in the early game.

[{quoted}](name=Riot Sparkle,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=99VJR4Ez,comment-id=000f,timestamp=2018-03-25T06:08:44.721+0000)

Yes. Every game designer and playtester who works in Gameplay plays League of Legends basically every day (and quite often multiple times a day) whether on internal environments, PBE or the live game. But you knew that, yeah? This isn't really a question, it's one of those "sick burns" that the kids like these days right? :P

Let me add that as a frequent Boards-goer it's really disappointing to see the same tired, old memes at the top of the front page about the "balance team being silver" and "balance team doesn't even play the game", and I'm not even on the dang balance team. They're simply not true and, real talk from someone on the dev side, I think topics like this can be really discouraging for Rioters who want to come here and talk directly with players.

Discouraging for RIOTERS? Are you serious? We are the customers!!

You ignore the forums for the most part. You do exactly the opposite people tell you to and you keep broken champs buffed for ££££.

Seriously. You want discouraging? Discouraging is a matchmaking system designed to make every other game a loss. Discouraging is a matchmaking system that pubsihes you by taking LP for promo losses whilst ignoring additional LP gains over 100 carried to the next tier.

Discouraging for me is feeling like your a law onto yourselves.

Here's an example: we tell you stop damage creep. You ignore it.

Damage creep continues.

We say stop.

Damage creep continues.

Baron even gets a buff.

We go nuts.

You finally post on the forums something like " Yeah were looking into ways that reduce baron buff without affecting low elo but keeping it high elo" or some nonsense like that.

Why do it to begin with????

It's almost like you make problems to fix them on purpose constantly changing the game then reactively fixing the issues you've created....issues which you never seen to consider but are plainly obvious to us which makes me wonder whether you do it on purpose or are inept. I cannot figure it out!!!!

Anyway. Rant over. I don't expect a reply sadly. Be careful or you'll heamorage players like Blizzard did when they ignored theirs and the playerbase dropped so much they stopped reporting playerbase numbers.

Peace

Oh experience designer... I played 9 years in this game and spended around 2,5k+ $ just to be know that Riot now doesn't care about my playing experience as a Kalista player. Awesome <3

[{quoted}](name=Riot Sparkle,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=99VJR4Ez,comment-id=000f,timestamp=2018-03-25T06:08:44.721+0000)

Yes. Every game designer and playtester who works in Gameplay plays League of Legends basically every day (and quite often multiple times a day) whether on internal environments, PBE or the live game. But you knew that, yeah? This isn't really a question, it's one of those "sick burns" that the kids like these days right? :P

Let me add that as a frequent Boards-goer it's really disappointing to see the same tired, old memes at the top of the front page about the "balance team being silver" and "balance team doesn't even play the game", and I'm not even on the dang balance team. They're simply not true and, real talk from someone on the dev side, I think topics like this can be really discouraging for Rioters who want to come here and talk directly with players.

While balancing is difficult, Riot's track record isn't exactly admirable. You might think they do a good job, I feel I'm on the verge of quitting every time they make a stupid change that endangers my champion, like the recent Sudden Impact changes that were reverted on PBE before they even had an opportunity to be released. I understand PBE is tentative, but this kind of thing feels like it happens all the time.

It should be a clue when a massive amount of people threaten to quit, over certain changes, that maybe there isn't enough forethought to them. I disagree a single player of Katarina would ever 'thumbs up' that kind of change to her balance, so my assumption is none of you ACTUALLY play Katarina, or the Katarina Tester didn't show up for work that day, and so I feel where the OP is coming from, despite being rude, you, as a company, make extremely controversial decisions. With less people to scream "STOP" you would have easily tanked my favorite champion to a subpar 40% winrate, for who knows how long.

People often considered you(Riot) make balance changes themselves sometimes, purely for the controversy and memes. That is not a good image for your company, if true or not. It also has an origin, so while a meme seems easy to write off, it's still based on some truths from the past. There would be less joking, with less to joke about. [slayer-jinx-wink]

[{quoted}](name=Riot Sparkle,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=99VJR4Ez,comment-id=000f,timestamp=2018-03-25T06:08:44.721+0000)

Yes. Every game designer and playtester who works in Gameplay plays League of Legends basically every day (and quite often multiple times a day) whether on internal environments, PBE or the live game. But you knew that, yeah? This isn't really a question, it's one of those "sick burns" that the kids like these days right? :P

Let me add that as a frequent Boards-goer it's really disappointing to see the same tired, old memes at the top of the front page about the "balance team being silver" and "balance team doesn't even play the game", and I'm not even on the dang balance team. They're simply not true and, real talk from someone on the dev side, I think topics like this can be really discouraging for Rioters who want to come here and talk directly with players.

Well Riot Sparkle, I want to say that these meme's are a direct ventilation of players frustrations. You can back to the Season's where Morello's Team was doing the balancing for the game and compare it to now with Meddler's Team. There is a vast difference between them, whereas one team took precautions as to not let things spiral out of control the other is trying to hide the fact that they may have messed up and know about it. It's a difference between knowing you've done wrong and hiding it and actively hitting the issues that were created to return the game to a balanced state. As it is now there is too much damage in the game and the game has been balanced around that power creep, Champions and Items, that it creates a game where many people even streamers find it being tedious to continue playing the game. We want the Balance Team to communicate with us and take our feedback seriously, though we may have some biases we are still a reliable source for knowing where to make tweaks. As said previous by some other Rioter: "There are more than a million games played on launch of a new patch, and not every bug will be caught during internal testing as there are a multitude of variables. We make sure to get rid of the BIG bugs before a patch hits live"

At the same time, I feel like you guys don't even hear our voices at all. I would have loved to sit with a Developer and discuss and argue about the current game situation, current plans or balance changes. In reality however, two things happened when we ask a question: a) It's a question you want to answer and answer it (plain and simple) or b) You ignore it like it never existed.

At the same time I can understand why you guys get annoyed when people roast you and don't give you credit for your work but at the same time, isn't it the same for other games aswell. The thing is, we primarily talk to you for two reasons, feedback and critizism because we players still want to enjoy LoL and we want you therefore to do a good job in balancing it.

I don't expect you guys to answer every single question (especially the dumb ones). But if there are questions regarding gameplay where players give background information regarding the question, even if it isn't an answer that is satisfying, I would just be happy with getting something because then I feel like you guys have heard my voice and are engaged with the community.

whether on internal environments, PBE or the live game

So basically, mostly not playing the actual game. That might explain why Xayah been left untouched. No one bothered to look at stats (she's the highest damage ADC, 20%+ pickrate, while keeping 51.5% winrate), and I guess no one is playing against her to realize she's dumb.

Hard to believe they actually play the game when they allow shit like the ardent meta to last months. Oh and the fact that solo lanes are nothing more than meat shields for the bot laners. How does anyone that plays this game think those are fun for the players?

And questionable balance changes like nerfing Kalista's range to target "pro play" when the main reason she is picked besides her strong laning phase is unlimited rend damage on Baron/Dragon. But no lets hit her in a way that would impact her in solo q too! Do i even need to mention the .25 seconds meme?

You want people to stop trashing the balance team then tell meddler to get their act together.

At least the Art/Skin/Muisc/ team have been almost nothing but perfection for the last few years, rarely have any complaints with their work (Frostblade irelia please).

as a frequent board-goer its really disappointing to see the same tired old responses from rioters when they get feedback or criticism, even criticism as blunt and pointless as this thread.

maybe next time try to adequately defend the repeated pattern of poor decisions made by the balance team the last two years instead of getting frustrated and whining that 'people are too mean to us poor rioters on the boards'. grow up. you all are working for a multibillion dollar company on the biggest game in the world and you're bleeding players because of crap like this. respond to criticism. if you don't like it when people make threads like this, don't respond to them, and instead respond to the legion of threads addressing specific points and concerns that have populated these boards for years but you all ignore. you're feeding the monster by responding to personal attacks and not rational criticism.

'discouraging for rioters?' don't make me laugh. it would take an entirely separate post to list the grievances league players have against the balance team for just this season so far, and another for season 7, another for season 6.

if they play the game then why do they make the same stupid mistake by nerffing and rebuffing a champ that doesn't need it like zoe for ex. you guys went from .4 ap ratio which was ehh to .2 which was fine she now had counter play to .6 you triple buffed the ap ratio and its actually fannoying to see that because no they can q from crugs to the bush by raptors and if you dont ahve vision theres no counter play what was the reasion for doing this

But If I played the game, I'd gut Titanic Hydra because it's OP on ADCs. Kappi.

{quoted}

Ghostcrawler: “you don’t need to play the game to balance it” OMEGALUL

You know if I recall I saw a person made this post on reddit and what dissapoint me was some people actually agreed that you don't always need to play the game to actually balance it.?? Like wtf that's like you don't need to get hand on experience in a job to be able to do the job.

Technically, he's not wrong. On one level you obviously cannot balance everything in the game without playing it or being familiar with the mechanics. On another level, you don't need to play the game at all to know giving a champion a Karthus-lite ability to ult all towers on the map isn't going to be balanced.

I have tried to help when it came to my main Azir and they never listened. I wrote constructive feedback, walls of text and was very vocal about him in general and they didn't listen.

Now (to be more specific in the most recent Quick Gameplay Thoughts) we Azir, Kalista and Ryze mains got the finger straight from Meddler himself.

He doesn't intend to say "Fuck you" to us, but he wrote it like that. Antagonize them all you want, I ain't gonna defend a team that told me I'm no longer looked after when it comes to balance just because I'm low elo.