I agree that it's impossible to organize a good team, and I do enjoy some of the randomness that comes with the territory, if only because I don't have to deal with roles like jungle, mid, etc and instead just deal with "do what you can while taking as little damage as possible." To me, this sums up the core of league balance where it most matters, player vs player.
However, the issue always arises that some teams are completely fucked out of any crowd control, and some teams just have so much burst it becomes ridiculous. And yet, despite what I've mentioned above, even occasionally being one of the bursty characters I cannot negate the rest of my team. To be fair, this is actually a good thing, even if it's incredibly frustrating that it only takes one teammate (my last game's jax for instance) to completely tank a victory out of reach.
My biggest qualms with the game arise from my expectations on how the game is meant to be played and the concept of 'counter play'. My expectations are as follows:
- if at any time, a given champion can full->zero another champion, even a 'squishy', then that is too much damage allowed
Reasoning: You cannot argue that a game has 'counter-play' options if the player receiving the damage has to sacrifice the ability to perform at all to be able to live long enough TO counter-play.
Anticipated counter-argument: But they can build items that help their survivability!
Response: And as of yet the options are 'I can get these hybrid options that are power and defense!' and still be burst down quickly because the ones doing the bursting go glass cannon or similar hybrid and can perform as well, arguably better due to gold issues. Or they can go 'I can go tanky! ... but now I can't do damage!' If they're not designed or anticipated to be a tank/bruiser/whatever, it rarely bodes well for them and people would look down on them for playing a character not 'optimized' for that.
- Chain crowd control, or even some of the crowd control in general, is not designed well for 'counter-play'
Explanation: The stuns in particular are the complaint, as are knock-ups or similar terms where the receiving player is unable to react, move, attack, or any similar action. If you are stunned for 2 seconds, you have given an enemy adc about 3-4 shots, not counting any followup after, or can have a caster unload everything, which I've complained about above. This usually means that the recipient, unless built tanky as above, is easily below half health and really cannot return fire on the enemy.
Simple reasoning: Stuns as they currently stand do not allow for a player to react or make good choices other than make themselves the least desirable stun-target available. If you're stunned, you have to wait. That is never fun for the recipient and needs addressed.
Recommendation: Take inspiration from bloodline champions. While the game effectively died (primarily due to the ability of the pros to abuse the weaker players and the lack of attention/poor marketing), they did incredibly well with balance when i played it a couple years ago. Each stun was either a root, a silence, or if it did stun, any damage would unstun, akin to a sleep effect. This always allowed the player receiving to act, whether to cast from that spot, to charge and melee, and to immediately react upon damage respectively.
Those are just the main two issues I can think of currently, though the lack of equivalent power across roles is huge in my opinion, I'll leave it at that for now.
