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Give preseason some time before coming to conclusions

Chuck Charles··4 votes·447 views

So as I'm about to head to bed I thought I'd add in my thoughts on the preseason and everyone's reactions to it so far. ADC's can fee stronger or weaker and in some cases may very well be clear that they are (graves, kog maw) Certain items may be op, may not be. I remember when devourer came out everyone was calling for it to be "op" and everyone banned shyvana, kayle, etc. Well, for melee champs that item is mostly the same and those "broken" champs are not played nearly as much. My point is everyone eventually adjusted to each meta. In each meta there has usually been a few truly broken points. In the tank Meta it was Sejuani and probably Sion. In the assassin meta, Zed was out of control. In the ADC meta so far it clears Graves is overpowered. But for the most part, people adjusted to the meta games and realized certain things were not overpowered. Master Yi, Shyvana, Xin Zhao with devourer were all "too strong" to certain people and now people don't even consider banning them. The juggernaut patch gave way to Darius, Garen, Mordekaiser, and Skarner. After one of them got hotfixed, people whined and whined that Darius and Garen were op, but now both are realized to be very beatable, even in competitive play darius was played less and less as world's went on. People learn how to adjust to something new.

My point? Give this preseason some chance before you freak out and say its all bad. There are certain aspects you will certainly dislike and I even my own that I hate. But give it some time, try to adjust at the very least. You'd be surprised at how the game will feel in the end. Your cries of broken this broken that or shitty change this may very well be true. But you could gasp be wrong as well. Just try to learn how to play against these new changes and with them. Riot has a plan for the game and I'm sure they didnt put these live without least testing them internally for general feel. If the game gets stale or un fun because of changes I am confident they will find a way to fix it. We will probably never have season 5 again so get over it. Just like you got over season 4. and season 3. and so on. I mean there was a time altogether when trinkets werent a thing. there was a time deathfire grasp was a thing. I mean, we ALL adjusted to those changes and it turned out fine.

League is still fun, its just adjusting to changes is NEVER fun, just give it a chance. try to learn new strategies rather than complain that your old ones aren't working anymore.

9 Comments

Toastey2 votes

I think you misunderstand and somewhat misconstrue the relationship between popularity and health. A gameplay element that forces a response inherently larger than its own size is somewhat unhealthy for a game's competitive game balance. For example, a single champion (let's say Soraka) forcing the entire enemy team (5 champions) to play completely differently than if there were no Soraka is an unhealthy interaction. That isn't to say that it's bad; indeed, many of these "unhealthy interactions" require skill to deal with and thus raise the complexity of the game.

Ticking time bombs, ie champions with guaranteed late-game scaling and very few counterplay options available once they hit their powerspikes are a very unhealthy part of the game, though it can be argued that they make the game more skill-reliant for their opponents. Examples include Yasuo, Sated junglers, Ryze in his prime, Cassio in her prime, and Vayne in her multitude of primes.

I think the heart of the outrage against certain "broken" and "OP" things lies in skill floor disparity and the palpable chasm of input-to-output risks and rewards. It doesn't take an awful lot of brain to slam your keyboard on your opponent's face as Graves and crit them for ten buckshot pellets to the gut. You do a lot of damage, get some damage resistance along the way, and even limit your opponent's vision to a 2.5-Teemo radius (250 range). Every time you pick a bone with someone, it's most definitely your fight to lose, and the onus is on your enemy to outplay you. If you're actually a mechanically skilled player and choosing relatively favourable engagements, your opponent has few to no options besides "lie down and die". Does that mean it's impossible to outplay Graves? Impossible to outplay a skilled Graves? No, both those things can be done.

The underlying issue is that it's always up to the player on the receiving end of a Graves or a Tryndamere or a Garen to outplay their circumstances, and very rarely are these champions with simple goals and simple executions required to think an awful lot. Sure, maybe they're geared towards lower- or entry-level players who are still learning the game, but that's unlikely. Ashe was once the queen on starter champions, and is still included in the RP bundle for starters if I'm not mistaken. If she were purposely designed to teach players the ropes of an ADC role, the rework should and would have gone to painstaking lengths to keep it so. Instead, we now have a very complex champion who relies on acute map awareness, skillshot accuracy, intelligent use of utility to compensate for low damage, and expert timing on a temporary self-steroid. Doesn't sound like a starter champion to me.

Moving away from Ashe, let's boil the statement down even further into the simplest distillation I can think of:

Skill-independent simplicity, if not rewarded enough will result in an intimidating and unfair barrier to entry, but if rewarded enough to be viable at all levels will inherently be successful more often than skill-reliant complexity.

Ideally, every champion should feel a healthy mix of both sides of the coin: being the one who must outplay, and being the one who must be outplayed. Of course, perfect worlds (and perfect balance) don't exist, and Riot Games likely cares very little about what their players complain about. Historically, they seem to develop their game based on the complaints yelled the loudest (regardless of value) and the metrics they think are the most important.

TeCoolMage1 votes

Riot doesn't care about what their players complain about... But they develop their game based on complaints...

?????

Toastey1 votes

Players as a collective tend to be ignored. People who make the biggest fuss tend to have their fuss attended to.

TeCoolMage2 votes

But Riot tends to listen to the discussion with the most up votes, rather than the one with one upvote in all caps so I'd say the opposite is true. People who say Riot never listens tend to be those who complain the most, and those who create discussions with the most up votes and attention tend to get the change they want.

TeCoolMage1 votes

Yeah, I always wondered, "What happened to Shyvanna Devourer anyway?"

Toastey2 votes

early game pressure junglers who pack utility were always the name of the game. devourer is/was just a pain to deal with if your jungler doesn't know how to invade and counterjungle properly.

TeCoolMage1 votes

Wow poor Warwick, I never knew how jungling utility worked...

Toastey1 votes

yeah same tell me about the jungler who was good for one season and then instantly got relegated to an easy intro jungler who had a wealth of counterplay options and got outshined by practically every meta jungler since

tell me about warwick and his brief stint of glory when sated first came out, only to immediately be outshined by yi and kayle and xin. tell me about how his sustain, his only real selling point, is completely useless because his pre-6 ganks are garbage and his jungle clear isn't even competitive b/c he has no aoe. tell me about how if a single hard cc spell is saved for him, he has no teamfight presence whatsoever. tell me about his lack of waveclear, his lack of neutral objective control, his lack of non-ultimate utility, his general lack of...everything

TeCoolMage1 votes

That's why I go AP Malzahar jungle instead

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

AoE, ridiculous wave clear, tanking from voidlings, has Rylai's in core build, ranged non blink ulti that lasts a second longer, kinda average pre 6 ganks (before you get chilling smite and Rylai's, you need to rely on DoT from E so just get chilling smite as soon as possible) and his only competition of AP Junglers include a gambler, a moon crazy lady, a man on fire and a scarecrow!

Join today at your nearest champion select!

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