@Riot, do you really not do important balance changes because it would upset some players?

Solideus·Jul 7, 2015·2 votes·672 views

How true is this? I've always been of the "raze and rebuild" mentality when it comes to design, which admittedly isn't always an appropriate approach. However, if the games health is on the line, shouldn't that come first? If a kit is over-loaded or intrinsically flawed, shouldn't fixing that be prioritized above some players getting upset that they can't pubstomp anymore? Are some of the champions mentioned in the video immune to the design-changes they'd really need?

15 Comments

DisasterSolaJul 7, 20151 votes

Its more or less true. Riot has a very closed mind when it comes to balance; they only see, more or less, what happens in professional play (and the occasional ranked game someone played and made a proposal out of it). The result is that the game is "balanced" around what is powerful, instead of the game as a whole. You see this in the holy trinity; the same three champions are picked almost every game, for the same role, and perform the same purpose. Riot making kits for specific lanes is also a form of this closed-mindedness, as it enforces the meta.

SolideusJul 7, 20151 votes

Do you feel the same way about their game-design? Do you feel they do changes to counterplay/kit design/play-pattern/strengths-to-weaknesses/etc based on high level play in the same way as balance changes? I was speaking more along the lines of design-changes rather than balance changes, you see.

R110Jul 7, 20152 votes

Riot making kits for specific lanes is also a form of this closed-mindedness, as it enforces the meta.

I'm not sure how true this statement is, especially with the newer champions. I remember that Vi was designed to be a bruiser that goes toplane but she ended up being a jungler. Riot didn't make any changes that disallowed her to jungle with as goal that she is to be played toplane.

I can't remember a specific case were Riot enforced the meta by creating champions, maybe you could give some examples?

SolideusJul 7, 20151 votes

I think as a rule they try to allow different roles/lane-positions etc to emerge, but they have cut some things down when they were deemed too toxic, like jungle Alistar.

R110Jul 7, 20151 votes

That is also the impression I get from Riot's balance changes.

DisasterSolaJul 7, 20151 votes

{quoted}

I'm not sure how true this statement is, especially with the newer champions. I remember that Vi was designed to be a bruiser that goes toplane but she ended up being a jungler. Riot didn't make any changes that disallowed her to jungle with as goal that she is to be played toplane.

I can't remember a specific case were Riot enforced the meta by creating champions, maybe you could give some examples?

Braum, rek'sai, azir, gnar, bard.

None of them have much viability except in their "role" or their "lane". Azir is a stall champ in the top lane, and rek'sai Q nerfs effectively removed her top-lane potential. these are all champions who more or less have a single thing they can do.

WingsofGulgazorJul 7, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Its more or less true. Riot has a very closed mind when it comes to balance; they only see, more or less, what happens in professional play (and the occasional ranked game someone played and made a proposal out of it). The result is that the game is "balanced" around what is powerful, instead of the game as a whole. You see this in the holy trinity; the same three champions are picked almost every game, for the same role, and perform the same purpose. Riot making kits for specific lanes is also a form of this closed-mindedness, as it enforces the meta.

the meta isn't really enforced by anything riot does but it's something that happens. If we say nerfed even just one or two o fthe strong champions right now it would change the meta and all the currently picked champions can go to a bad spot while another group of champions that work well and against eachother become strong. They create some regulations to some items because it would be abused if used by other roles. For instance if jungler items are mega strong and makes junglers need them everygame and can't only be used by junglers they will be used by several champions in other lanes and then junglers become a lot less effective in the game because they have no cost efficient stats to help them carry early mid game. Though there might be other ways to balance this all I would be able to give would be hypothetical balance changes that may or may not work and riot has probably tried them.

As for this some of it's pretty true. Like heimer can't really be balanced. But they have since changed him to be viable in about anything other then competitive play. Singed can be played in about any elo as well. Lee sin has since been nerfed and as I mentioned as champions like lee sin and Graves were nerfed it helped change the meta to tank meta where there are other strong picks exept as a tank like shyvana not only are you strong but a lot more simple to play then lee sin because your tanky for free so you can build all damage and still have 400 hp more then anyone else in the game while having 100 armor and high MR base stats and tons of aoe all you have to do is litterally press R into the enemy team and you've done your job. At least with lee sin you have to get fed to do stuff and if the game drags out he becomes useless if he builds damage and is still pretty much does almost nothing if he's a tank in the mid/late game. So the question is why would Riot nerf a popular champion like Lee sin when that would just change things around to make other champions just as strong or stronger then him in terms of the overall game and even though there just as strong the same champions are easier to use. But over time Riot still nerfed Lee sin and things did change to make other people whine about other strong picks.

So in essence there will always be strong picks and if you nerf those strong picks the meta will change to another group of champions that are strong picks despite this the game has been getting more and more balanced despite there being more and more champions as the game runs longer. The heimer that is said to be almost impossible to balance it's true but recently he's became as balanced as almost possible. There's no reason to remove him some people like playing him there's nothing wrong with that. They just can't allow him to be one of the core strong pick meta champions.

mayby they could comprimise a little in some cases like Lee sin by just adding 2 second cds to his abilities early on so that they can't be spammed as much and mayby that would have been a decent nerf to compromise but he would definetly still be about as strong and any real nerf just changes the meta to other strong picks and the same is true with most these champions.

We also have to remember how finely tuned the balance is where jax or ryze can receive 20 or 50 point health buffs or nerfs to there base stats and go from mega op to almost unplayed. Jax was a God for a while then 50 point hp nerf caused him to be a considerably weaker pick. You will see in some patches where champions gain or loose like 2 points in damage and people scoff and say what's the point but it really does change things around and they might not give 3 or 4 points because it would make the game change enough to go to another meta which isn't bad but I don't think they want to change meta's left and right to fast especially since there trying and succeeding pretty well in balancing the game more and more as the game goes on.

Then there's people that talk about how every released champion is either mega op or super weak for a while and that's true but there getting better at it I mean even the most op things right now aren't close to how op some of the release champions where in season 1 and 2 and possibly 3 and some of the weaker champions are made to try to not make them op and then people complain then they buff the champion and then there mega op then they revert the changes and it turns out there still strong picks and people just didn't want to learn how to play the champion and just sat there complaining.

Also as the game goes on there making less and less champions like singed and heimer that are completly impossible to balance. While making champions like corki and lee sin and even olaf more balanced power wise. Like he said Corki is usually really strong or pretty negligible but he's in a decent spot right now and not op or weak. Same with olaf and heimer and not only that but look at all the viable adc's. For a while we had Graves/trist/corki/vayne/kalista/jinx and I don't even know what all but there was a lot of viable picks for adc and support alone and the same was true for the other roles and though things have consolidated and changed some the game is a lot more broad then it has been for a long time and the items for specific roles mentioned haven't enforced the meta but has given strength to certain places to allow certain champions to be strong without other champions abusing it and completely grinding out the other champions that can't use the item.

Also there is the running concept that Riot balances around the LCS but it's really balanced in Plat + and that sort of includes the LCS and challenger because there above that but most the balance changes aren't made around them but around plat through diamond. Though they will still look at feedback from those below the usual threshhold in cases like akali or teemo/ect who everyone seems to hate if they get stronger.

People then like to compare LoL to Dota but you really can't do that they are balanced differntly. Dota is balanced by making anything that gets a kill a super carry through items while the dead can't do anything and the only reason games last long in that game is because the map is so blasted huge. I would bet if the map was the same size as league games would be over in 15-20 mins every game and though people would say they would just make champions that could stall the game out forever in a small map LoL has kept that from happening from things like dragon and Baron and blue and red buff. So if your behind in league you have a chance at coming back and in Dota your chance is that since every ability is so op that even if behind if you combo your abilities well you can still win fights. But even though Dota has it's differnces there is still the really strong picks and meta champions. Though it seems like they try to balance that a bit by making those champions mega hard to play. Which is one of the reasons why League said if they were going to have a strong pick why not use something that is actually pretty hard to play like lee sin who falls of late game and is a popular champion instead of something like sion who just would get fed and build a thornsmail and walk into your team and you can't do anything including stall the game out because sion scales to hard.

Though this does bring up some thing like it would be interesting to see what League would be like if the map was slightly larger.

ImAHeroForFunJul 7, 20151 votes

@solideus I think in general assuming riot only cares about public opinion is wrong considering all they hate they get every time they nerf, buff, change, rework a champion. i think they understand some people will like it and others will not. remember they are gamers too, so they understand the frustrations of the community. Also I think with certain champions they want to keep the identity because its awesome and worth keeping but it can be really hard to keep a champions identity and put them in a playable position so some of the champions in the video may take a LONGGGG time to see any changes to them needed or otherwise because its all ultimately a balancing act.

Meep ManJul 7, 20151 votes

I kind of disagree with Singed and Teemo because, yes, while their kits cant change, thats not really a bad thing. It shows of at least decent design when a champion becomes famous for their kit enough to where changing it would brong havoc. Changing Teemo would be like changing the ingredients of Coke. Same with Singed who has become famous for "Dont chase Singed" and his simple yet satisfying kit.

However, most other champions mentioned here could be nerfed without much backlash except for their own personal fanbase, which happens with every nerf. I despise Teemo, but would hate to see him changed in any rework level way, especially if it meant losing mushrooms, the most hated part. I dont think anyone would mind TOO much if they reworked one of Lee Sin or Corki's spells into something different and better.

SolideusJul 7, 20151 votes

If a kit is toxic it isn't well designed, popular or not. While Teemo isn't a huge problem when undertuned, it's a bit of a shame they can't make him good without him becoming a problem; toxic champions are purposefully kept weak, and his only chance of becoming truly on-par is if they redesign his kit to be less of a problem. Most of the time they can probably keep his iconic elements; I don't think they'd replace his shrooms entirely even if they did rework the kit. Maybe give them some inherent counterplay.

Meep ManJul 7, 20151 votes

{quoted}

If a kit is toxic it isn't well designed, popular or not. While Teemo isn't a huge problem when undertuned, it's a bit of a shame they can't make him good without him becoming a problem; toxic champions are purposefully kept weak, and his only chance of becoming truly on-par is if they redesign his kit to be less of a problem. Most of the time they can probably keep his iconic elements; I don't think they'd replace his shrooms entirely even if they did rework the kit. Maybe give them some inherent counterplay.

Well they aren't nerfing him next patch despite all of his items getting buffed so he is getting possibly buffed to be an "annoyance" next patch. However, it seems like these days I can look at almost everyone and say "Well Im gonna have to deal with THAT mechanic." Which is a good thing because it gives me something to look out for and play cautiously at all times.

The Yetii RiderJul 7, 20151 votes

I don't know, Riot is working on Singed, actually. Giving him some interaction with flinging his opponents into his Mega Adhesive, and the patch notes aren't out yet but the PBE has a buff to the duration that scales with Fling rank so if you land a late game Fling into Adhesive, you snare someone for 2 seconds. (I mean, I don't think that will ever happen because it's ridiculously difficult to do and Fling has a weird pathing that I haven't been able to figure out) but at least Riot is trying to give Singed an option in team fights so that he has more incentive to group instead of just split pushing for years.

If Riot wants Singed to stop split pushing they need to give him something more to do in team fights than just run around. This is a classic example of "You can build a champion tanky, but that doesn't make them a tank". Singed needs to constantly be moving in order to use his Poison Trail, which means it's very unlikely for him to use his larger hitbox/Elixir of Iron to tank skill shots for his team, and he has very little hard CC on a long cooldown. His ultimate doesn't give Tenacity and the MS buff is decent but not amazing, so there's really no reason for Singed to group.

I think Tryndamere is another example of a champion that's just impossible for Riot to balance. At least when Master Yi was a problem Riot reworked him and gave him amazing new power (Auto resets on Q and true damage on hit made it possible for Yi to be strong in team fights without going AP). Tryndamere needs the same level of rework, but his passive has a wild swing between his autos randomly dealing double damage or higher based on how often he autos, and his ultimate is...yeah. Tryn needs to be reworked into a champion that can actually do more than just split push. Melee carries are hard to balance I know, but at least Fiora is rewarded for grouping.

SolideusJul 7, 20151 votes

I don't think adding a few more mechanics on Singed will fix him; the reason he hasn't gotten any "big impact moments" on his kit is because he doesn't have any weak moments to capitalize on when playing against him. I'd be interested in seeing him with a kit that didn't rely on raw stats to work; that's the first problem that'd have to be solved.

One the other hand, Tryndamere's ult is so strong it forces him into being a one-trick pony. He doesn't really have any alternate fallback-pattern when it is on cd either. Beyond that, I'm all for replacing his W with something else, although I ultimately think his R must be reconsidered for him to really be solved. As aggravating as Yasuo can be, he is actually a pretty well designed melee ADC; there are things about his design that should inform a proper Tryndamere update.

DeynaTaggerungJul 7, 20151 votes

I think it's important to remember that reworking a champion is a fairly long process for Riot. They want to be really careful with each one. The champions on this list are basically the champions whose projects would be the longest and most annoying to do(for the various reasons mentioned). And these champs are (powerlevel) doing decently so far. It's because of this lukewarm status that they're unlikely to be up for a rework anytime soon. With a number of reworks needed and not enough time to do them all Riot will probably continue to overlook these cases until they either become more pressing or the easier ones are done.