How does Riot balance when it comes to other regions? Genuinely curious if they have an impact.
Just seems like a hard thing to deal with and keep track of.
6 Comments
I'm pretty sure all the regions follow the same patch cadence, meaning that they are on the same patch and balance as NA. Again I'm pretty sure on that, but not 100 x)
Pretty sure they look at global data and balance around that, instead of just NA data or just KR data or whatever. They'll break it down by region and mmr band and so on too so they can try and figure out what might causes differing trends, but they do try to balance on a global scale.
This does occasionally have the side effect of some of us going "WTF they buffed X? They were already op!" or "Huh. I've never seen that champ played and they just nerfed it to the ground." since the champ(s) were problematic in other regions. It can be interesting how despite the same balance for all regions, different metas can evolve, so what is OP broken on one server may actually not be an issue on another since they are in a meta that counters that OP thing.
The only thing I've seen or heard that is the main difference between all the regions is the toxicity that is allowed. NA seems to be the strictest and Korea seems to be the most lax. Not sure if this is a conscious effort based on the culture of the individual societies or not. Perhaps it's just an illusion because we don't hear as much about bans and restrictions from other regions. Would be interesting to see player behavior data from Riot, ie how many players were banned/restricted in each region in a given time. Perhaps inting and opening lanes is a bit harder to notice if it's not blatant. I also think Koreans are craftier about how they are toxic. Like saying "Support Difference" in all chat instead of directly calling your support "trash" or some other less favorable terms in team chat.