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On Balance And Improving The Game

ModCaliCoastReplay·4/1/2018, 3:39:00 PM·1 votes·194 views

I think this board needs to move away from angry, salty rants about nerfing champions people just lost to, and towards a better and more healthier understanding of what it really actually means to have a fun, balanced game.

What does it really mean to have a balanced, enjoyable game? Is League only fun when we win? Do we all feel like it's okay when we're winning but not when the other guy is? (Warning: mini-essay to follow.)

A lot of the community seems unhappy with the game this year, and according to one recent forum poll, many people - even myself included - feel like the game felt much better a few years ago, Season 4-5ish, which stands in contrast to so much of the hard work Riot's put in since then. I do feel like Riot is trying and does work hard in this space, despite what many say, it is not easy to make and actively curate a game of this size played by millions every day. The answers seem to be different for everyone - personally, I miss item 2004 pots in the store, but everyone seems to have something - and one thing many people on this forum seem to agree on is that Riot may be overtweaking the game, and that it feels less balanced, not more. I ask this sequence because this game gets reworked so often, and I don't always know that it's getting better for it. The game feels overtweaked over the last several years, to me. Relearning the game every year is actually one of my least favorite parts of League. Yet clearly further changes are needed - even I don't feel like the "feel" of the game is in the best place it's ever been right now, and I say that even as someone who's doing well in the moment (17 wins in my last 20 games). It doesn't necessarily feel fair and balanced, either on my wins or my losses.

This brings me to one of three points I want to ask about actual balance and how to move back towards a game that feels more fun:

  1. Reworks! The production quality of assets on recent champion reworks is great. Some new kits have been great, like Urgot. But others have not been well received - like Swain - probably because this is just a different champion altogether. And my actual biggest fear going forward is how some of my other old favorites are routinely mentioned for "upgrades". Kayle MasterYi are often discussed as being on the block, for instance, and with good reason, they're early season champs who have never seen a serious technical upgrade. But while I agree their kits need modernizing, reworking champs out from under us is actually my biggest balance concern. I don't want to play a version of MasterYi without an Alpha Strike or Kayle without something I can vaguely at least recognize as Righteous Glory. I saw my MMR drop 300 points in a month when Swain got reworked. Do we as a community feel like this is an issue? Should we get to keep playing our old mains? Does Riot have an obligation to preserve champs or should it continue to just do what they feel is best for overall game balance?

  2. League definitely has a lot of matchups that can be lost in Champion Select, still. There are matchups between countless variations of champions that are almost unwinnable for one side - and it feels bad. Is that something that needs to change or is it a fundamental part of the game? Should it be possible to play every champion in League versus every other, 1v1, with some degree of success? Is this a design goal? Or is it absolutely impossible? It may be impossible just because there are 9,000+ potential unique 1v1 matchups - which goes up by more than 130 every new champion, these days - not even counting mirror matches. Even a company of Riot's size would have a hard time allocating enough QA resources to test that. At the same time, getting dumpstered in Champion Select feels bad, and I have a feeling it leads to a lot of hard feelings here - I see a lot of people complaining about another of my mains, Illaoi, and even I have to admit that a lot of melee champions do lose the game to her in champion select. What, if anything, is the way forward on balancing champion matchups? Should there be a community of players who offer to test 1v1s, or a new Mode Riot can implement to allow it and players to get data on champ vs champ winrates?

  3. Many people also seem to feel like every game should be winnable - 1v9, if necessary, if your team is that bad. But at the same time, brutal losses lead to cries about how bad for the game snowballing is - this seems to be a particular concern for botlane this year - and so this gets to the real heart of the matter: Most of us want to feel like if we are playing well we can carry much of the time. At the same time, the boards are full of how unfair the game feels versus overfed opponents. And any sport must inevitably trend towards a 50% winrate with teams of balanced skill - and winning 50% in League can feel really bad right now. I feel like that's one of the reason we see so many angry rants here, and less philosophical discussion - I don't feel good at a 50% winrate, myself, nor does it feel like I'm playing well. But statistically, we're all going to be there at times, and this comes to the core of an issue - how do all of us get less salty and to a place where we feel fairer about the game? How do we handle snowballing and let players be heroes without letting them also get so brutally fed that at least five other people have a frustrating, miserable time?

TL:DR: How do we as a community get to the point where there's less bad feeling about brutal losses (and posts here about the same) and more proactive about trying to find real balance and fairness? Do we as a community only have fun when we win, and how do we discuss problems arising from that? How do we manage reworks, matchups, and snowballing to keep the game feeling fair and fun?

1 Comments

k wìx4/1/2018, 8:29:45 PM3 votes

Brutal losses are not really that fun for either side, and what I think needs to be avoided at all costs. be that through matchmaking or game balance. In a stomp, the winners don't really have any challenge, so it gets dull for them, and the losers are obviously having an awful time because they don't get any agency to try to make plays, they also have to deal with the fact that its probably 'over'.

This is compounded by how snowbally the meta is right now - The 'comeback' mechanics built into the game are far and few in-between these days. This is EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING for players - especially veteran players who have watched the gameplay 'devolve' over the years into what it is today.