The Shared Item System, Talents, and Alternative Playstyles

I'd like to preface this thread by saying that I don't expect drastic changes to the state of the game. This isn't a thread bashing on the current gameplay and design teams. Rather, I hope to foster discussion and come to a better understanding of why the teams make the decisions that they do. That being said, let's dive right in!

I'd like to start with the (rather bold) assertion that the current item system, and really shared item systems in general, make a MOBA like League of Legends way harder to balance than it should be and foster inherently unhealthy interactions with the champions within it.

But before I start bashing on the item system, let's take a look at what I think it does uniquely well:

-Makes it easier to add interesting choices for a broad class of champions. -Allows 'feel-good' balance improvements to a large number of champions at once. -Gives champions access to unorthodox build paths that may set them up for success.

That being said, here are what I think the cons of a shared item system are:

-Creates problematic balancing loops where champions become too strong because of a combination of their numbers and an item, but because Riot is unsure whether it's the champion or the item, they nerf one or the other, and when that doesn't work, nerf the other one, leaving that champion in a fairly bad spot. I'd argue that this might be more of a symptom of the way the balance team does things than inherent to the item system, but the item system is certainly one of the culprits.

-Creates balancing headaches when an item is adjusted (either buffed or nerfed) for one or two champions, then all the other champions affected by it need compensation adjustments to keep them in a balanced state. A recent example of this is the nerfs to Lethality items, and then all the compensation buffs AD assassins had to receive to keep them in a good spot.

-Allows for abuse of certain items by a class of champions that were never meant to use that item. Examples of this include lethality item abuse by Marksmen, or support item abuse by solo laners or even junglers.

You'll notice that I didn't say "Gives champions access to alternative playstyles" up there under the 'pros' section. I'll get to that in a moment.

For now, I'd like to talk about an alternative system that another MOBA uses. So this is the part where you might stop reading because I know people have rather strong opinions about Heroes of the Storm. But let's look past all the balancing issues, bad game feel, and map diversity fiestas and focus on one thing: the Talent system. As a quick refresher, in Heroes of the Storm, characters do not purchase items, but instead choose from one of a few Talents every few levels. These range from enhancing or modifying an ability, to giving them additional abilities, to giving them new passive effects.

Cons of this Talent system:

-Takes significantly more work as a sunk cost. Creating entirely new Talents from scratch adds to a character's development time.

-The implementation of this system in Heroes of the Storm is tied to Levels, which are then tied to your team's overall performance instead of the individual performance of the players, making things like CSing and getting a level advantage irrelevant and removing that aspect of skill expression.

Pros of the Talent system:

-Saves times on ongoing balance by compartmentalizing balancing to individual characters only. The only thing that needs to be taken into consideration is how that specific character interacts with the rest of the game, not how changes to an item might affect an entire class of champions.

-Allows for the promotion of alternative playstyles for characters without breaking the game for others, since all modifications and balancing levers are character-specific.

Having introduced such an alternative system, let's return to my point about alternative playstyles. I know that a lot of us enjoy the fantasy of having multiple playstyles for a champion, but the reality is that over time, alternative playstyles for champions have become increasingly infeasible.

The problem is twofold:

One, Riot has slowly been dropping support for alternative playstyles, with the exception of a very few cases. There have been repeated attempts to push champions out of alternative playstyles, mostly because those playstyles are unhealthy for the game (Tank Ekko, Solo-lane Lulu when it's strong). Unfortunately, this mostly comes down to kit design. When a champion is designed with a certain role (assassin, tank, enchanter) in mind, there will likely be certain mechanics that allow them to excell at that role that would be overly strong if they were relevant in another role.

This leads to problem number two. Over time, high-ELO and professional players have become increasingly good at optimizing champions. When a certain playstyle or item build of champion is better than the others, no matter by how little, that is the playstyle that ends up being dominant on that champion, because why would you ever go for a build or playstyle that is suboptimal for the champion you're playing? (I'm speaking about this from a purely competitive standpoint, not for-fun Draft Normals). As a result, creating a champion that has two equally-viable but different playstyles has gotten more and more difficult. Even Kai'Sa, a champion Riot SPECIFICALLY designed to achieve this purpose, really only has one playstyle with some variation in build.

As a side note, I am talking about alternative PLAYSTYLES, not just alternative BUILDS. Sure, you can have some variety in item choices, but the 'alt builds' end up playing fairly the same as their 'default' build counterparts.

The end result is that with the exception of a very few cases (support MF coming out at World's), alternative playstyles that are competitively viable more or less do not exist, and when they DO exist, they tend to become dominant strategies that crowd out a champion's 'base' playstyle (tank Ekko).

THOUGHT-EXPERIMENT PROPOSALS:

I spent some time thinking about how to implement the gains you get from each system into a compromise, and this is what I came up with.

Least Drastic Change:

Rebalance the stats and passives of items per champion that purchases it (basically taking the current melee/ranged only restrictions and going all the way to champion-only conditionals). This introduces a lever for individual adjustment to champion power levels and prevents item abuse. It's a lot of initial work but I feel like it might end up being lower maintenance after the initial groundwork has been done.

The end result would be that not every item is the same strength on each champion (Randuin's may have less HP or more armor depending on which champion buys it). This wouldn't do a lot for the 'alternative playstyle' part of it but should allow for things like making Lethality and Crit equally viable for certain Marksmen instead of shoehorning them into one or the other, or individually rebalancing things like Lethality items between AD assassins and Marksmen.

Most Drastic Change:

Move to a tiered system of item buys, similar to the Talent system in Heroes of the Storm. Instead of purchasing items whenever they wanted, players are offered a spread of items when they hit a certain gold breakpoint. Gold would function the same as now, gained from CSing, Kills, Assists, Towers, etc. The logic behind this is that item purchase sequences are already fairly structured (choice of Zeal item [Hurricane/Rapidfire/Shiv/Phandom Dancer], choice of MR item [Abyssal/Spirit Visage/Adaptive Helm], choice of Armor item [Randuin's/Frozen Heart/Thornmail]). Once more, items could be individually tuned such that the same item would have different levels of strength depending on the champion that bought it. This system would also allow for the introduction of champion-specific items and effects, as well as allowing for the gating of certain item purchases later in the game. This tiering system allows for the introduction of alternative playstyles in a structured manner that is much easier to balance.

I'd be interested in hearing thoughts about the state of the current shared item system, and more importantly, I'd like to put a question to the Riot design team as to what they believe the merits of the current shared-item system are that no other system has, especially with regards to their thoughts on how it creates balancing problems when certain classes of champions abuse items meant for another class, and how 'playstyle diversity' within a champion doesn't really exist anymore.

TL;DR: I think the current shared item system is clunky and outdated, and giving champions personalized items instead would lead to a healthier and more balance-able game state, even with the amount of initial work that would need to be sunk into it.