Please stop telling Riot what they should be doing to their game
I came across this board discussion just now, and I am appalled at how the community acts in regards to the balance of the game. This community, at least a seemingly large portion of it, acts in a way that closely resembles a self-entitled and spoiled child. They demand changes left, right, and center when things get "out of balance", and demand that Riot caters to us the exact way that we are demanding it. I'm going to tell you, it doesn't work.
Disclaimer: this post is a long read.
A story to enlighten us.
My dad is a regular player of a game called Blood Bowl. Blood Bowl is a board game that is played both online or with tangible pieces. The game is based on the Warhammer 40K series, and it is basically football with killing. The goal is to score touchdowns while knocking the other players down, hoping that the dice roll in a way that injures or kills the other players on the field. There are many races in the game; some standard (Orcs, Humans, High/Dark/Wood Elves) and there are some other races (Undead, Mummies, Norse, Amazons, Chaos, Rat men, Frog men . . . ). One of the races, the Vampires, are said to be one of the weakest teams to play, so no one plays them, while the Chaos are the strongest. Some members of the community begged for balance between all of the races, the outside factors, and a whole bunch of other stuff, when the game in reality was just fine. The company, Fumbbl, decided to finally listen to all the complaints and made all of the suggested changes by the community.
The result was a totally ruined game. One race (I think it was the Amazons, but I'm not sure at this point) became overbearing and almost never lost in almost every scenario, even though they were nearly never touched. The community was outraged and realized their mistake. After about 3 years or so, everything went back to normal.
I'm using Blood Bowl as an example to what our community is doing right now. Though both games are very different in game-play, style, coding, graphics, etc, the principles stay the same.
Here is a picture of a rabbit for staying with me this long :3
http://www.laughaton.com/uploads/images/2050-Cute-bunny.jpg
- Riot has the game designers
They know what they are doing to the game. They know what they are looking for in terms of balance, game-play, and overall game health. Though they value how we receive their game, they know how to please the largest crowd possible.
- They have ALL of the data
We like to look up on lolking, mobafire, elophant (is that even still around anymore?) and other sites that grant champion winrates, pick rates, and percentages on how well they do in certain matchups. Riot has EVEN MORE DATA than that. They get WAY more information than we ever do, and they use that information to make the changes that they make.
- Balance does not happen overnight, nor should counter changes
When a champion gets buffed, a new champion is released, when an item gets changed, when anything announced in the patch notes gets released, things go out of whack for a bit. Immediately when the patch comes out, people start complaining about the balance. Whenever I see this, I literally think "Holy crap it just got changed. Actually play it out and figure out how things work now instead of trying complain." Balance does not happen overnight. And when a champion becomes a bit oppressive after a patch, and they aren't changed or toned back a bit by the next one, the community roars with anger at Riot. But they made the right call. They want to see how things settle in, and if you don't give things time to settle in, then there isn't a purpose of releasing the content in the first place, and nothing gets done with a cycle like that.
We need to stop telling Riot how to design their game. We need to stop telling them that (insert champion here) is op. They have the data. If a champion or item or summoner spell or something is op or broken or out of balance, they know this already. They are just giving time to see if the community and player base figures out how to make it work and how to beat it. If they start listening to our ideas, and start letting us run the balance of the game, then we will end up in the same spot Blood Bowl did for 3 years, and I REALLY don't want to see this game get flushed down the drain.
A Giant rabbit now :3
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Runt_and_Paxie.jpg
I know that I can't stop the people who are angry and feel entitled to win every game. I can't stop people from thinking that they know what is best for the game. But here is the truth to those who do think this way: You don't know what is best for the game, I promise. You may have good feedback on something, and if you are truly worried about something, Riot will hear you and acknowledge what you have to say and look into it. But they know what they are doing, so please stop acting like they don't. They work hard to make this game the best they can for us, and I believe that they are trying their best to please as many people as possible.
Thank you for your time. One last picture for you :3
http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2014/360/8/a/secret_santa___gnar___by_kotatsucats-d8ba9oq.png
