Boards›Gameplay

Let's talk: Skill Gap - Boards vs Reality

IP Masquerena·1/31/2020, 12:32:20 PM·7 votes·3,950 views

So, any of you who recognizes my good looks, you know I don't really care if anyone gets offended by what I say, while for mods, the thread is in the right section because it discusses balance changes, which affect gameplay directly.

This Masquerena talk episode will be much shorter than most of the other ones for one reason only, there's not that much for me to say that this guy bellow doesn't mention.

So, this vid randomly popped in my YouTube recommendations, and I'm like, ok, sounds interesting, let's give it a watch and well, although it doesn't even talk about this game in particular, or at all, but my mind jumped to Ego of Legends....I mean League of Legends.

Why? I'll post the vid first, so you can watch it now if you want, or you can wait after finishing what I have to say then watch it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSgA_nK_w3A

Now, if you watched it, you will probably have reached the same conclusion as me. The changes done to that game are exactly what's done to League:

  • Reducing disparity between good players and bad players

Isn't that was Riot keeps wanting to do? Reduce the disparity to make bad players feel good. And no, this isn't just a conspiracy theory like the one others do with the "chinezze liek cafegame so rito maek it foh dem".

Now, that's not the case, in the past the vocal minority was the one where people cried making games easier BUT in today's era, the minority is the exact opposite, we, the ones that want to stop this bullShaco of making stuff easier to stop.

I mentioned in another thread of mine the Sekiro controversy, where oh so many people went crying that the game is too hard and it's mandatory for every game to have easy modes so people can enjoy them without getting good. Then we have comments like the ones we have on the boards.

Taken from 2 different Akali threads, one being pro high skill cap, one being against them.

In the pro skill cap, one person made a rework that made her balanced BUT was incredibly punishable and only balanced when player close to perfection, yet there are comments like this one:

http://prntscr.com/qvkhc1

Or this one

http://prntscr.com/qvkiyi

In the Akali hate thread, (sorry, can't find that exact one, we all know how many hate threads are around, but if I find it while at work, I'll screenshot it and post it here), where the guy started stating that Akali shouldn't be hard to play because hard to play champions need the opponent to be good at the game to punish them, but he and his friends don't want to get better, they just want fun so hard to play champions need to be nerfed down to the point where they are easy to play against regardless how they feel to play.

And what does Riot does? Listen to those players, look at some of their "mini-reworks" like A-Sol, Sylas or even what they want to do with Akali? "Reduce disparity between good and bad players".

If you feel that everything said in that video applies to this game, regardless of the fact that the genre is so different, shouldn't we as players try to find an actual way fix the problem instead of just crying about how the game gets ruined?

Unless we understand the real reason why a problem is a problem, we can't find the proper way to fix it and we ask for different stuff to be fixed that isn't really a problem outside of "doesn't feel fair" and just "feeling" don't show balance. There are called by many "some of the most unfair champs", yet, they are also some of the worst in the game, sure, they have a high skill caps on some of them, while others are lower skill cap that only win when the opponents are bad (cough Yi without Taric cough) while champs that feel "fair", such as the Boss, well, highest winrate in the game currently, or Ekko as some people call him "the most fair assassin" is the highest winrate assassin in the game, and outside of Diana with half of Ekko's playrate, all champs who have a winrate between Ekko and Sett have less than 3% playrate. MF feels fair, but she's the best ADC in the game, while Kai'sa, is the worst.

As always, let's hear your opinions down bellow.

32 Comments

Worst JG Wins1/31/2020, 7:47:12 PM6 votes

Imagine thinking Akali is hard to play LUL Also, Akali's problem is and unless changed will always be a massive lack of counterplay

Humb1e Rumb1e1/31/2020, 1:15:47 PM5 votes

So how would you make Akali actually balanced in high elo? Bcs if we kept her current kit, nothing would change.

Also how about skillgaps outside of champs kits? Like being punished for doing well, even farming. I think that is big problem as well and it makes soloQ kinda trashy.

Darkdemon6531/31/2020, 1:21:21 PM4 votes

[{quoted}](name=IP Masquerena,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=E6TME3cx,comment-id=,timestamp=2020-01-31T12:32:20.523+0000)

If you feel that everything said in that video applies to this game, regardless of the fact that the genre is so different, shouldn't we as players try to find an actual way fix the problem instead of just crying about how the game gets ruined?

What would you like players to do other than explain to Riot that Riot is fucking up?

Velasan1/31/2020, 6:27:02 PM3 votes

Couldn't you just increase the CD on Q so she has actual downtime instead of spamming it in the enemies face and change the smoke screen to expand slower and be done with it as far as Akali is concerned?

Those are her two main problems. She doesn't have many openings to punish her because she can use the Q so often. Normally during trading your waiting to get an enemy to use up an important skill and then skirmish with them. She never lands up using all of hers because of the low CD combined with that if she ever gets in trouble she just smoke screens for the energy back and repeats it. The second issue I'm speaking of is that often the correct answer is to back away from her when the smoke screen is down because many champions have no way of trading with her during that period. Melee champions in particular have trouble auto attacking her while jumping around in the smoke, which is normal, but the point is the answer then is to walk out of it and away from the danger zone. However, the smoke fills the area so quickly and in a wide area that getting away from it becomes problematic. If the smoke screen just expanded more slowly than it currently does so there was actual time to move away from that danger zone I think it would be a big improvement. Otherwise her visuals and kit are cool, she's just so flexible she's difficult to deal with because she doesn't leave many openings. I don't find the champion as a whole to be a problem however.

On the rest of the argument about complaints on the boards I'm not so sure about that. I never complained about armor pen and I don't remember a lot of people mentioning it in the past (someone probably did because there's always a complaint from someone, but I don't remember that many) and yet Lethality exists. I don't remember anyone complaining turrets needed to give more gold and getting a kills worth of gold from plates exist. No one ever said anything about adding plants to the game and the scrying plant still screws over vision, but it exists in the game. Actually most of the complaining I've ever done on the boards has been about the systematic removal of tanks from the game.

So, theoretically sure I can agree, but there are plenty of instances of Riot just dropping new things in the game for their own reasons.

Iljos1/31/2020, 7:07:10 PM3 votes

the problem with a champions skill ceiling being too high is that it makes the game a single player experience for the person piloting that champion if they're good, I don't have anything against ""high skill"" (aka difficult to execute due to mechanics) champions but when one champions skill ceiling is so high that there's no counterplay to them besides them fucking up we have a problem. for some reason you seem to think this is fine and ideal though.

Killer of Night91/31/2020, 7:46:32 PM3 votes

I'm pretty sure that the board is the place to put this kinda of post but i'm not sure if board users understand why and how balance is done. I think that the board work around upvotes (and should work around that since well done and correct opinion should get upvoted and off topic, flame against someone or something, incorrect post, ecc should get downvoted Since u mention sylas and yuumi i have some thing to say on that regard. Both sylas and yuumi got their kit changed in order to make them easy to play and better afterall (so increasing power on soloQ) but i read only post that say that they should keep their "Overloaded" kit intact because they were fun to play and now they say that they are unfun to play even tho their winrate is up. Then we have akali an "Overloaded" kit that people begging for a revert. This fell really weird considering both sylas and yuumi had post here with a good amount of upvote begging to not rework their kit and akali is seen different from them. And stat said that all 3 champ had 40-46% winrate Let's talk about another 2 champ MonkeyKing and Karma I read the board every day and this 2 guy come up always on some post. Every thread that nominate both champ and get upvote call for overloading the champion kit. Wukong in particular is seeing some change but each time i read reddit wukong mains and board thread i read: He should have a sustained spell, his Q should scale better and should have a sustain mechanix (heal), his passive should increase dmg and his shield should work both on ap and ad, he should have a dash on his W on a low cd and should walk through wall, his stealth should stay 1,5s. This is overloading champion kit. Let's talk about a really simple champ with a simple kit Garen the tutorial champ. When riot touched this champ, people should have know that this isn't the kinda of champ that can be viable with number buffing since his ability work on 1 way. He goes in and damage you. Sadly riot didn't want to remove his tutorial ability and want him to stay simple. So riot had to overbuff garen (basically increasing his overall dmg) and the same people that cried for buff also cried for a nerf. After he got nerf he continued again to be a terrible champ because he could do only 1 thing and he still do 1 thing and now we had some post begging for a revert (they're 1/10 of the akali or karma thread) Both this 3 scenario was on board with a good amount of upvote and low downvote. Fun fact. Some pleople claim that both yi and tryndamere, 2 simple champ that has the same simple level design of garen with abit more skill expression on yi, need a rework because they're toxic design. If those 2 are toxic and akali reworked is toxic and garen with an actual playrate is toxic the who isn't toxic. For what i found here, champ with 47%- wr need a rework because they're pro play champ or a revert, champ with 50+ wr and high play rate need a rework or a revert because they're too much strong and toxic (currently ekko or cait some patch ago) and champ with no playrate such as trundle need a rework because they're to simple and their mains wanted em overloading with no change or nerf on their kit. So we're stuck with 49% winrate champ with mediocre play rate and 53%+ with no playrate (2% or less).

Mid Summoner1/31/2020, 1:08:58 PM2 votes

really good post thank you. I feel another issue which you didn't discuss is the number of new players coming into the game is much lower than it used to be. And, we all know LoL has been in decline for a very long time in NA. I feel like Riot as a company is kind of forced to lower the skill cap + increase a champions "Fun to Play" while being "not terrible to play vs" factor in order to introduce MORE new players to the game and keep older players playing.

Minimac20001/31/2020, 5:37:40 PM2 votes

Ekko is or was probably the most fair mid lane assassin in the game... but then riot decided he needed to be a jungler where his w breaks the game. I agree with you about sett tho, sett feels garbage to play a lot of the time due to having gigantic weaknesses, but he is actually quite strong rn because his laning is amazing and people don't play around his weaknesses well and so he gets off too many 1v5 moments too consistently in teamfights. But guarunteed as soon as his numbers are not champion release level high, no one will play him because he doesn't feel like he gets to decide anything or have any agency. Meanwhile akali and yasuo will keep having a 15% play rate despite not actually being extremely overpowered, because they feel good to play and feel awful to play against due to all the interaction agency being placed in their hands and not the opponents

Kai Guy1/31/2020, 6:38:03 PM1 votes

You might enjoy this series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31OSVZF77w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitZRLt2G3w

Jaspers1/31/2020, 1:41:45 PM1 votes

I can see this SF5 changes in Tekken series so much. I have been playing since T2 and played them all beside the GBA one. The introduced bound mechanic which made juggling the key gameplay in 6, an exploit used by good players to something everyone can do and introduction of characters like Lars where it was easy to pull those combos off vs older characters who had to be adapted to fit this new gameplay was obvious (I am an Lee main, and a punisher, not a juggler, so I had to adapt as well).

I can see the same things in league as champs are introduced to fit a design of making everyone feel good but this might have a problem of being too good in pros hands, the ease of letting you pull off a certain combo is exploited to the extreme by masters of the game. How do they balance the mechanics of the game without making certain champs so weak that low skill players while still pulling off the same combos just don't do anything while doing it? Right?

2gudaiya1/31/2020, 1:41:28 PM1 votes

actually riot ventured into the skill expression thing by making everything a skill shot. they then ventured out of that by shelving champions that were otherwise balanced but the community refused to adjust for, like tahm kench top, fuck tahm kench...ahem. scuse me, almost had an episode there. so, like tahm, ryze before this rework (very skill expressive champion) and the likes of the akali, irelia and aatrox reworks which i stated way back then should become the standard for the game. but what happened instead? they got mechanics removed, resources nerfed, and runes and items rebalanced on account of how well they used them, they were ofc going to use the items well and riot would have sincerely committed to having a thoroughly skill based game if they then set about extending the ranges (so to speak) of the rest of the roster where it was required. i mean things like ryze before this rework, ahri, yasuo, cass, illaoi, all the new releases that followed that trinity of reworks, and niche things like azir and kalista, once again i state, azir and kalista were set to be unlocked as legitimate champions again if the new state of balance were to be based on the akali, irelia and aatrox reworks, but we didn't choose that path in this timeline so woah is me now :/

instead we're doing this thing where anything skill expressive get's nerfed into the ground on account of people expressing their skill lol. i will say if something is broken but there is skill expressive broken and there is by the numbers broken. true stealth was by the numbers broken, because i can be dove under turret and my turret can hit the champion less times than the champion hits me, that's a very literal by the numbers, broken for being skill expressive is the katarina soloing a team without even popping zhonya's :/ does this even make sense anymore? fuck if i know we are on a very boring path, but it is one where people will admittedly complain less so whatever i guess, lol can anyone even imagine people complaining more than they do today.

ZephyrDrake1/31/2020, 11:29:53 PM1 votes

Making the gap between good and bad plays isn't bad in it of itself. It really depend on how much of that gap we are talking about. If you have something that requires you to be perfect or close to perfect all the time then that something won't appeal to many people even the most hardcore of players. The reverse is also true, if you make something that has there is no way for you to screw up no matter what you do then that thing is just going to be dull and uninteresting. You need to balance both the skill floor and ceiling.

I am not saying "make everything be super accessible but also have incredible depth so you can tell between someone be good or bad at it!" But more of "if something is too flat then add more depth to it" and if something is so unforgiving to make it slightly more forgiving.

If a game is too easy then people grow bored of it pretty quickly in most cases. If a game is too hard then people stop playing it out of frustration. So you need games that while incredibly challenging still have that forgiving aspect to it and also games that while super easy still have those places where you will get challenged to some degree.