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Ghost Crawler: "We certainly don’t balance the game only for pros"

Best Fiddle··83 votes·16,426 views

Followed up by;

"pro play is obviously a huge draw and we want to make sure there we can provide a good viewer experience for the major LoL esports events."

So in other words, pro play is still being catered to an audience, which is being treated like the majority, rather than its actual fanbase. What exactly is "good viewer experience ? Oh, the damage, flashy moves and nothing to do with the players commiting to any strategic plans to win, so it isnt "that boring to watch"?

GC recently posted this:

Source: https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/2pvn0ldJ-a-response-to-doublelift-on-a-constantly-evolving-game

"Overall, our goal is to make sure that our changes always move the game forward. An (unrealistic) vision I try to impart in our designers is to imagine that there is a perfect League of Legends out there (there's not), and every change we make should move us closer to that vision (even if we sometimes take one or two steps back along the way). "

In order to actually move "forward" you need to actually do it without wearing a blind fold as well. Just pushing the game forward on its own spine, without addressing the concerns of the majority (your actual fanbase), is completely ignorant. It's just another way of reminding us the "you agreed to the terms of the game" nonsense still exists and we actually have no say in the matter. Also, is having players quitting this game, account towards "taking a few steps back"?

Am I wrong?

Edit: So, conveniently no where does it mention anything regarding the current damage creep issue. The silence itself on the matter, is also raising those red flags.

106 Comments

Fízz v254 votes

idk where people even get the "flashy plays and burst in LC$" idea from tho, almost every time I watch an lcs game its a farm fest for 30 minutes with 10 tanky mages/bruisers and 0 assassins LUL

Best Fiddle32 votes

[{quoted}](name=Fízz v2,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=E3w6McgG,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2018-07-15T12:29:30.537+0000)

idk where people even get the "flashy plays and burst in LC$" idea from tho, almost every time I watch an lcs game its a farm fest for 30 minutes with 10 tanky mages/bruisers and 0 assassins LUL

It stems from the lead designers philosophy. The words are right out of their own mouths, as GC has stated and made very clear, they don't like 'boring' champions. Which is skewering the roster and the game itself.

Fízz v26 votes

The meta kinda speaks against their words tho, the last time assassins were meta was like season 4. And the mid lane meta for all of season 7 was just "wave clear as fast as you can and scale" while bot was mostly "boring" enchanters.

Thefrostyviking4 votes

The reason it turned out like that was because they severely nerfed many assassin exactly under season 4, then a few mages as well resulting in a control mage meta for midlane.....orianna being the poster mage for that.

They then attempted reworks for marksmen and juggernauts under season 5 which all in all failed rather spectacularly, particularly the juggernaut rework was a giant disaster resulting them actually hotfixing in the middle of LCS to bring them down.

We then move on to the season 6, the season hosting the set of reworks that were almost as disastrous as the juggernaut ones......being the mage reworks, graves, poppy and shen.

Do note that yet another failed Ryze rework happened here along with the STILL problematic Malz rework that we are still having various headaches about......well Brand and Zyra too.

Then they reworked the jungle to fix problems having arisen from yet another earlier jungle rework, the earlier one was mostly about items but in this one they added the current jungle monsters and objectives.

Which has once again been deemed a failure, oh joy.

We also started seeing the support issues arise here pioneered by the addition of Redemption and the first enchanter meta of botlane.

Season 7? Lethality meta into botrk user meta into tank rework and subsequent meta+ ardent censer.

The midlane meta here was first, survive against the lethality users, then it was control meta against the botrk using marksmen then its was initiation help or anti tank mages for lane meaning Ori and malz largely.

Assassins were unplayable because of enchanters being so powerful with abundant and highly powerful tanks ontop.

Then the tank meta ended and we had malz+anivia for midlane, brief apperance of azir as well but he was nearly hotfix nerfed.

Assassins gradually made their way back in once tanks and enchanters got gradually nerfed more and more and that has been ongoing until now pretty much, some mages like malz also got slammed with nerfs although in his case, probably rightly so.

Fízz v22 votes

Thats all true but... assassins are still nowhere to be seen. Talon is pretty much the only relevant one and his wave clear is getting nerfed pretty hard in 3 days. Tho he goes Tiamat anyway so.. not sure how much thats gonna do lol

Thefrostyviking4 votes

Zoe is basically an assassin, Yasou isnt really far off either i think.

And isnt noc played full AD? Pyke is there too.

But you are right that there are few all in all, probably because Swain and vlad are so popular as well, along with Darius and Aatrox.

Assassins can only ever really thrive when they either snowball easily or all targets are vulnerable to burst after all.

Noc, talon and Pyke do fulfill those, Yasou is a monster in good hands and Zoe........is Zoe.

chipndip11 votes

{quoted}

Zoe is basically an assassin, Yasou isnt really far off either i think.

That shit doesn't count.

Thefrostyviking1 votes

As much as i´d like to agree.........proverbial 10 miles 2 shots and a great deal of random jumping around and speedups makes a case for Zoe.

And Yasou? Get him 1-2 items and he can melt a great many squishies at any moment he closes the gap, get him 3-4 and he can 2 shot them and be a proficient duelist ontop.

5+ and he is a monster.

chipndip11 votes

Then you don't know what a burst mage is or what a melee carry is.

Thefrostyviking1 votes

Burst mages are traditionally very different in execution compared to Zoe.

Syndra relies on stacking a couple of Q´s around, landing her other skills and then ulting followed by another Q for a total of massive damage.

But the entire combo takes time, and is completely visible altho she gets to be able to move while casting as to compensate for that.

Veigar? We all know how he works, he is much weaker for much longer and his ulti can actually be denied by a number of things, he is also limited by range and his own mobility.....well he is also entirely visible so nothing that happens with him is any kind of surprise.

Meanwhile Zoe? Her unique ability to jump around, speed up and the massive range when played well is what makes her so immensely frustrating, you can seriously be playing safe then a bubble comes flying through a wall with its massive range extension.

Followed by her jumping in briefly, vanishing and Q comes along.

And even if you deny it it has literally almost no CD later on, so like 6 seconds later it can happen again from a different direction, that or you get hit any die or are forced to run right away.

And it does quite high true damage, 500-600 or what it was post some point.

I honestly prefer both Syndra and Veigar far more than Zoe exactly because of that, i can react to that which i can see no matter how unreasonable it might be, but getting someone take potshots at me every few seconds with the certainty that i will either die or lose 80-100% health if hit for it just feels like pure shit.

If you outplay veigs cage and dodge his Q and W he cant kill you with his R and becomes extremely vulnerable.

If you simply back up a bit when Syndra stacks spheres she will have wasted the mana for them, or you shoot her as she tries to approach.

Zoe? You dodge her E-Q or cancel the E somehow and she pops back ready to go again a couple of seconds later, i honestly find it ridiculous that her ulti doesnt cancel when hit by hard CC, there is just no way to punish her short of something like having a Syndra wait for her at her R destination with all the spheres ready and drop R-E-Q on her right away hoping she wont zhonya or something before the spheres can catch her.

Yasou is a melee carry thats true, it justifies him having a lot of power.

However i´d still argue that he is overloaded, mobility, windwall, two forms of hard CC and his passive added ontop of his damage and now considerably high true damage makes dealing with him hella obnoxious.

Ranged champs are made weaker by comparision as to give melee something to be happy about, but when the melee can easily gapclose at will then that advantage is swept aside and you begin to question if the melee should truly have all that other power.

Its so insanely difficult to kite or outrun him for most that i find it doubtful, even more so when he overall maintains a rather high winrate and playrate ontop of having the highest banrate in the game at 67%.

Even the nr 2 Zoe is only at 46% something x)

chipndip11 votes

{quoted}

Burst mages are traditionally very different in execution compared to Zoe.

Syndra relies on stacking a couple of Q´s around, landing her other skills and then ulting followed by another Q for a total of massive damage.

But the entire combo takes time, and is completely visible altho she gets to be able to move while casting as to compensate for that.

Veigar? We all know how he works, he is much weaker for much longer and his ulti can actually be denied by a number of things, he is also limited by range and his own mobility.....well he is also entirely visible so nothing that happens with him is any kind of surprise.

Meanwhile Zoe? Her unique ability to jump around, speed up and the massive range when played well is what makes her so immensely frustrating, you can seriously be playing safe then a bubble comes flying through a wall with its massive range extension.

Your bitching about champions doesn't magically make them different sub-classes than what they are. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you one thing or another about how to handle a Zoe on the enemy team. You have the brain enough to deal with a Veigar, so I trust you can deal with a Zoe. Still, she's a burst mage, not an assassin.

Thefrostyviking1 votes

The counterplay to Zoe is in the end, be extremely paranoid about moving around on the map and to the love of the heavens, never go anywhere near the FOW when she is missing.

Much the same as any assassin really, because unlike a burst mage she doesnt have the cooldown issue if something goes wrong and she has a much easier time running away quite often as well.

And i wont argue that she is part of the burst mage subclass, however i would argue that like Diana or Wukong in the diver class.....she doesnt play similarly to the others in the same class.

My Waifu Vanilla1 votes

Except Zoe doesn't have an escape either. She is going to die just the same if she gets caught and things go south. What is she going to do? R away from me? I will literally stand on top of where she pops back and murder her on the spot. The only "escape" she has over other burst mages is if she HAPPENS to be holding onto a flash even then a champion like Syndra or Veigar has actual hard CC to help them while they are caught while Zoe just throws a bubble at you and it doesn't do ANYTHING for 2 seconds which is usually more than enough time to kick Zoe out of the fight.

Thefrostyviking1 votes

Zoe player is doing something terribly wrong if someone actually gets near her when not ulting in the first place, once she gets ulti she should almost never be in such a range that doing so is even possible.

That´s how the pro´s play her, and the mains.

And that makes her exceedingly difficult to catch and kill, and she maintains kill pressure all the same pretty much.

GigglesO16 votes

I think that LCS used to have more fighting and attempted flashiness in it. (Currently) Why would you try and fight if you aren’t 100% sure you win, and 1death means you don’t ever win?

I sure as hell try to avoid dying in .5 seconds by staying two screens away. (The riot approved method of counterplay in this current meta)

TheSingularity4 votes

It was less that fights were more frequent and more that they lasted significantly longer. Possibly 10 seconds+ if they had enough peel

GigglesO3 votes

Longer Fights = More fighting.

If each fight now lasts 2 seconds, and you have 10 fights = 20 seconds of fighting. Back then if it was 10 second fights 2 fights = 20 Seconds.

I mean its not Rocket Science...

Ifneth2 votes

I don’t like boring champions, either. They’re boring to play as and against, feast or famine, and usually have gimmicky or frustrating gameplay.

Think of Garen. He runs at you faster than you can run away, on-hit silences you, and then walks away. If you all-in him, he just presses a button to ignore your damage. To all in, he just presses another button and walks at you. If you get low, then, yet again, he just pushes a button to kill you. He can’t outplay you, and you can’t outplay him, so Riot has to deliberately keep him down to prevent the Might of Demacia from just stat-checking everyone on the Rift.

Contrast, say, Rakan. He can dance around your team, knock up enemies, charm enemies, slow enemies, and even has a scary flash combo. However, he’s squishy and requires some skill to play, leaving you impressed with his plays whether he’s on your team or not. He even has a passive out-of-combat shield and cure interactions with Xayah. Awwww. :3

3TWarrior1 votes

well, garen's stats weren't really an issue until they changed his ultimate and W

really, it used to be pretty fun to trade with spinmaster garen, but so many champions now have so much "interactive" gameplay that they're just annoying to play against or outright better than the simpler alternatives

of course, as you get higher up, simpler is not always good because it can and will get outplayed, out-maneuvered and outdone by more complex kits

garen could use a rework, but they need to keep him to his core values, such as spinning, a reckless charge and maybe even give him a fast, mini-pantheon ult where he drives that sword down, spiking it down through an enemy champion in a deadly swipe

a small amount of crowd control would work in his favor. maybe give him a stunning dash like gragas

I don't know where his defensive stats would be though...perhaps during the charge of his Q

d9u7c1anh1 votes

{quoted}

well, garen's stats weren't really an issue until they changed his ultimate and W

really, it used to be pretty fun to trade with spinmaster garen, but so many champions now have so much "interactive" gameplay that they're just annoying to play against or outright better than the simpler alternatives

of course, as you get higher up, simpler is not always good because it can and will get outplayed, out-maneuvered and outdone by more complex kits

garen could use a rework, but they need to keep him to his core values, such as spinning, a reckless charge and maybe even give him a fast, mini-pantheon ult where he drives that sword down, spiking it down through an enemy champion in a deadly swipe

a small amount of crowd control would work in his favor. maybe give him a stunning dash like gragas

I don't know where his defensive stats would be though...perhaps during the charge of his Q

His W and is the outplay ability think of it like Fiora's W, if you got it right then you have 60%, if you did it to soon then only 30% and if you were too late then you shuold forget about it. His Ult passive is annoying thought.

My Waifu Vanilla1 votes

And then you have his "best" outplay ability in his passive where after the second rank of it Garen can take god awful trades and then go sit back for like 8 seconds and heal most of his health back while all the damage he did to you sticks. I hate laning against Garen as a melee not because of the silence or even the spin or ult, but because he can literally take garbage trades and then play like a total pansy under his tower doing handstands and I cannot turn off his passive so he heals back most of his health after I do 3/4 of it from him Q'ing me in a wave of 15 minions drawing creep aggro. Garen's passive promotes playing like an idiot because it doesn't matter if you lose half your health and the enemy loses 1/4 because you will always come out ahead if you can just avoid taking damage for a few seconds.

d9u7c1anh1 votes

[{quoted}](name=My Waifu Vanilla,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=E3w6McgG,comment-id=000000000002000000000000,timestamp=2018-07-16T18:18:07.953+0000)

And then you have his "best" outplay ability in his passive where after the second rank of it Garen can take god awful trades and then go sit back for like 8 seconds and heal most of his health back while all the damage he did to you sticks. I hate laning against Garen as a melee not because of the silence or even the spin or ult, but because he can literally take garbage trades and then play like a total pansy under his tower doing handstands and I cannot turn off his passive so he heals back most of his health after I do 3/4 of it from him Q'ing me in a wave of 15 minions drawing creep aggro. Garen's passive promotes playing like an idiot because it doesn't matter if you lose half your health and the enemy loses 1/4 because you will always come out ahead if you can just avoid taking damage for a few seconds.

he have it in level 11 onward you can still punhish him in lane and who the hell did you play, like 3/4 in 1 Q (i'm assume it is in lane before level 11 cause not many fighter champ will give a shit about normal minions after level 11).

saltran2 votes

The best was the GRF-KT game 1 where there was 10 melees and Ucal landed a 5 man taunt with Galio.

Gorantharon1 votes

They designed for flashy plays and fast kills, so naturally every pro goes for the safest option to counter that and remove as much one shot potential as possible.

High risk high reward is not something pros generally prefer to pick.

In a game environment where even tanks die in seconds you only engage carefully. If a tank like Leo could dive in and walk out, unless hard locked down, you'd see many more dives.

Edit: And I'm amazed how they can't see that when this exact thing was the season 2 problem. Team fights and dragon control to get a gold advantage mattered so much that everyone was playing super safe untiil 20 minutes in, then they hoped they had farmed up an advantage for the big fight.

These devs really don't play this game, or have not paid attention to it.

Shukr4n21 votes

There should come a point in which riot stop to make the game "flashy" and wait for pros to make those flashy moves.

Like rocket league. They dont change the game to be flashy, but rather expect pros,to make flashy moves.

Till that time, u agree their rules or u can go create your own game, noone force u to stay in a enviroinment not suited for you. And.u havw no power to change this fact. Other than claim "league is dead" and still playibg it..

Best Fiddle11 votes

{quoted}

There should come a point in which riot stop to make the game "flashy" and wait for pros to make those flashy moves.

Like rocket league. They dont change the game to be flashy, but rather expect pros,to make flashy moves.

Till that time, u agree their rules or u can go create your own game, noone force u to stay in a enviroinment not suited for you. And.u havw no power to change this fact. Other than claim "league is dead" and still playibg it..

I agree. If you look up old clips, there have been people who earned even penta kills, by actual decision-making skills and knowledge of the rock-paper-scissors formations.

Now you have a team comp of 5 champions, all ready to pull out some forbidden jutsu on your ass, without the need to plan anything.

TheInnocentdevil2 votes

{quoted}

There should come a point in which riot stop to make the game "flashy" and wait for pros to make those flashy moves.

Like rocket league. They dont change the game to be flashy, but rather expect pros,to make flashy moves.

Till that time, u agree their rules or u can go create your own game, noone force u to stay in a enviroinment not suited for you. And.u havw no power to change this fact. Other than claim "league is dead" and still playibg it..

As someone whos actually majored in economics trust me consumers have a lot more power than you think, a company generally wants you to think you have so little effect, but if enough people complain they'll make changes simply, because they can't afford to ignore negative feedback.

ΦmalphintoΦ15 votes

Just quick question, i didn't see any words from Ghostcrawler addressing or about The DMG creep?

All of his comments upvoted, All of the people replys downvoted,

Since the boards is raging more than 6 months now, how did they upvoted him, and downvoted themselves?

Just cant get this? any though?

Edit: i know what was happening, but at least this was for me.

Decrit4 votes

because more sane people went to that thread, at a certain point.

Keevalroy5 votes

This happens every year so it's easy to explain. Outrage reaches critical mass, Riot makes a long winded PR damage control thread, knuckle-draggers eat it up, forget why they were upset, and now the outrage is dormant. This one came a bit early, so we can assume we're still getting our annual "we'll do better" post at the end of the season, and the rage will subside even though nothing ever changes.

Rinse and repeat. Every. Fucking. Year.

Wert the Wacky1 votes

[{quoted}](name=x HIGH x,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=E3w6McgG,comment-id=0006,timestamp=2018-07-15T14:51:49.707+0000)

Just quick question, i didn't see any words from Ghostcrawler addressing or about The DMG creep?

All of his comments upvoted, All of the people replys downvoted,

Since the boards is raging more than 6 months now, how did they upvoted him, and downvoted themselves?

Just cant get this? any though?

Edit: i know what was happening, but at least this was for me.

He prob manipulating the votes to make it seem like people like him.

PaladinNO13 votes

We certainly don’t balance the game only for pros

http://www.savethecat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/untitled1.png

deadlychuck1 votes

They really don't. They balance it for viewers...

A lot of their changes over the years fit a pattern of being aimed at LCS viewers (trying to make it game enjoyable for a layman) or appealing to** youtube/twitch viewers**, by trying to highlight and recreate smurf account pure damage builds or montage youtube edits.

Play 20 games where you build pure damage, get a couple of CRAZY 1 SHOTs, from each game. Throw them all together into a montage. Look like you didn't go 4/8 every game...

D4M2X011 votes

league is fun AF when sivir comps are meta, i LOVE it when our gragas+maokai make the enemy bounce around all game. i remember one time in season 6 the enemy had a fucking sion gragas maokai braum tris, we lost by 25 but that comp amused me and i wish it was like that every game.

now league is just about stealth 1 clickers that functionally backwards fools can easily win with, ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

THE RlVER KlNG2 votes

The sentence ‘that comp amused me’ to describe a CC-heavy comp you lost hard to is just so hilarious for some reason

Thilmer10 votes

L-fucking-MAO.

Riot has only balanced the game around proplayers since I started playing 5 years ago.

Kitten of Evil5 votes

We don't balance the game only for pros! We balance it only for pros and LCS viewers!

Stars Shaper3 votes

I don't see why is a bad thing that pro play is taken in heavya ccount too.

How good would it be if all the proplay scene was so boring to watch tha you'd rather watch OWL?

DNFVixen6 votes

[{quoted}](name=Stars Shaper,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=E3w6McgG,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2018-07-15T12:37:30.471+0000)

I don't see why is a bad thing that pro play is taken in heavya ccount too.

How good would it be if all the proplay scene was so boring to watch tha you'd rather watch OWL?

Get downvoted, learn before you speak.

Śhunpo1 votes

Hmmmmmmm then why did they specifically state that Ryze, Taliyah, Kalista and Azir were nerfed/changed for pro play? [zombie-brand-clap]

King of Demons9 votes

{quoted}

Hmmmmmmm then why did they specifically state that Ryze, Taliyah, Kalista and Azir were nerfed/changed for pro play? [zombie-brand-clap]

How can you unironically ask that question? Champions perform differently in pro level play and in cases like these, where they are just so much better than any other champions, they need to be balanced specifically around that.

Saying "we don't balance around pro play" doesn't mean no change ever was intended to balance pro play, it means that the amount of changes that are intended to do so are a comparably small amount to the changes that balance the game as a whole.

Arcane Blue Boi5 votes

He said ''We balance for high plat and low diamond, but broken heroes in bronze cant run wildn and broken heroes in pro play cant run wild either''

Ahris1 votes

{quoted}

He said ''We balance for high plat and low diamond, but broken heroes in bronze cant run wildn and broken heroes in pro play cant run wild either''

Which doesnt make sense since Ahri was nerfed in season 7 when she was balanced in those elo.

chipndip11 votes

53% win rate at the time you can't fool me.

Ahris1 votes

{quoted}

53% win rate at the time you can't fool me.

Ahri was still balanced with 53%. With how her kit worked, anything lower wouldve meant she was really bad.

She only had 53% winrate because riot nerfed every other champ in game. All riot had to do was buff other champs but nope.

chipndip11 votes

Maybe for pro play.

But a 53% general win rate on like a 10% pick rate is generally on the strong side. Justified nerfs.

Ahris1 votes

{quoted}

Maybe for pro play.

But a 53% general win rate on like a 10% pick rate is generally on the strong side. Justified nerfs.

Even in highelo she was weak. Only lowelos complained about her(majority).

She was just in strong side, so why nerf? Her nerf was really big too.

EDIT: She only had a high winrate because of her high survivability. If she had lower than that just meant she was trash. Riot couldve nerfed her survivability, but instead nerfed her damage. That is not a justified nerf.

chipndip11 votes

They nerfed her general damage because they added the damage amp back to her E.

Ahris1 votes

{quoted}

They nerfed her general damage because they added the damage amp back to her E.

I am talking about season 5 ahri who had nerf in season 7.

chipndip11 votes

...so the 53% win rate Ahri?

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