Balancing the Game Around Top Picks

Is one of the reasons why players can seem so dissatisfied with the game.

Take for instance.

Do not misunderstand me here. This isn't another "LC$" rant. But rather an argument against the fact that the game's balancing seems to revolve exclusively around top picks that seem to remain top picks regardless of the changes made. It makes the game seemingly exclusive to those champions, leaving dozens of others in the dark for months or years even to the point that Riot's idea of bringing them back into the light is butchering those champions and stitching them back together again into something that, at best, vaguely resembles their original design (but that is an entirely different topic of discussion).

I am using Lee and jungle here as an example because of the recent changes to the jungle.

They were done in order to weaken the early strength of jungle overall so as to allow laners breathing room to farm during the first five minutes of every match. While, later in the game, the exp and gold supposedly evens out so that a jungle has some chance of catching up to solo laners.

So, in essence, Riot attempted (and failed, mind you) to nerf early jungle. What ended up happening instead is that Riot created an extending farming phase for all involved. Imagine, if you will, each game is a story being told of two teams of super beings engaging one another in mortal combat. Previously, the story began with the early game, "Chapter 1". But now we've this extended laning phase that was supposed to make Chapter 1 longer. Instead, however, the stories now include a Prologue, the farming phase of the game.

What this does is makes it so early game jungle take a little longer to reach their early game. You would think that this would extend game time, but it does not. Jungle exp and gold equalize over the course of the game as compensation for lessened gold and exp early on. This shortens the other Chapters of each story so that the length of each one is essentially unchanged from previous installments.

In other words, the changes done to the jungle did not actually influence the game one way or the other and, instead, made players upset because the changes made the jungle less enticing and less fun. Jungle is being abandoned by its former mains as a result regardless if they played early game champions or not.

It has not been the first time the game was poorly balanced in favor of or against early game champions. And it won't be the last because the years have shown that this is Riot's entire thought process when it comes to balancing the game.

They look at top picks then shape the game around it. If other champions remain relatively unplayed and unsuccessful for who knows how many seasons then those champions are gutted in an attempt to return those champions to light. And while reworks accomplish this initially, the reworked champions often fall out of favor once their flavor of the month dries up like a piece of chewing gum. And then it's back to the popular picks, the familiar picks, the champions who will forever remain unchanged because of the immortality that the player base bestows upon them. And then Riot puts all the champions they reworked back into the closet for later and scrambles, once again, to balance the game around the top picks, hoping that things will be different, that things will change, that the majority of players will be happy with the changes done.

But the community has shown, repeatedly, that this formula of change is not at all satisfactory. Because it changes nothing for anyone. The game is in a state of stagnation because league never really changes. And this is a perspective I've gained from witnessing its changes over the course of years.

The game just looks and sounds better. But it's all an illusion.

I honestly wonder what would happen if Riot looked at the number 1 pick for each role and reworked them. I don't know if anything would change, but I would certainly be interested to see the results.