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New Dev Team vs Old Dev Team

JustaNewb··175 votes·27,444 views

Let us define this:

New Dev Team - Under Meddler. Many older designers either quit or left. Now mostly a new team. Old Dev Team - Under Morello. Came from over a decade of experience in champion design even before they started RIOT.

Old Dev Team - Said things like True Damage is a bad game mechanic due to driving an HP heavy meta, ADCs should be limited in both mobility and CC, and that overly complex itemization and champions looked flashy but were bad for game health.

New Dev Team - Threw all of that in the trash.

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Old Dev Team - Used to be on the forums, every single day, discussing changes, reworks, and even designed a few champions WITH the playerbase, using Player creations for both skins and champion design.

New Dev Team - Screw you players, we will do what we want. We know what is best. (I.E. Karma, Morde, Shaco, etc)

<

Old Dev Team - Had a rich, and ever expanding lore system, including a weekly 'news paper' to tell you about the goins on in Runeterra.

New Dev Team - That's stupid, people don't really care about the Lore, this is all about competition and tournaments. (Again, Recent example, Karma.)

What we basically see is a newer Dev team, lacking the decade and a half of design experience, and wishing to 'Prove they know how this game can be improved.' They no longer interact much with the playerbase, they make what ever changes they wish to see based on only Pro Player ideas, and somehow think that the E-Sports is what drives the economy of LoL. They ditch the rest of the 95% of the playerbase (where ALL OF THE MONEY COMES FROM) in exchange for their adamant idea that E-Spots will be the future of RIOT. Despite the fact that other games have vastly surpassed RIOT when it comes to E-Sports. A Single Minded focus on the pro-player base, whereas the Old Dev Team had never HAD a pro player base, and thus based their decisions on everyone.

Want to know why your complaints are never fixed? Answer is here.

192 Comments

34112354565285 votes

Old Dev team - created varus draven : lack of mobility, clear weaknesses, constant skillful usage of abilities. Old phantom dancer was strong but didnt have absurd passives like current zeal items.

New Dev team - created xayah kai sa cancer : hyper mobile, braindead right click, press 1 button (that you dont even have to aim or target) to 50-0 someone. Add rageblade to varus. Add shiv to draven. Shields invulns stealths low cd ROOTs.

Old Dev team nerfs: "holy shit draven is insanely overperforming, scrap his bleed completely and replace it with something not damage oriented"

New Dev team - Kaisa Q .05 ad ratio less will fix it LOOOOOOOL , Xayah - 25% less dmg to minions on one ability will fix it.

Old dev team - caitlyn has an oppressive lane phase and also scales incredibly well into late with high range and mobility, so her weakness should be mid game and overall low dps.

New Dev team - lets make every caitlyn ability do extremely high amounts of damage , higher ad ratios than assassins on her passive , Q, W, E, AND R!!! (objective fact, she has higher ad ratios on all her abilities than assassins)

Old dev team - Support's lack of gold is what balance's bot lane power levels compared to other lanes. Support role focused on playmaking , engaging , setting up fights (madlife aphromoo season 3/4)

New dev team - insanely overpowered items like ardent censor , redemption, locket, etc etc to transform support into a stat check shielding enchanter role will make it more popular!!!!! oh they will also get close to as much gold as solo laners cause more popular!!!! Freelo is popular.

old dev team- balanced AD assassins by limiting the level of total flat armor pen available. It was only available on one item which was brutalizer which built into ghostblade. That was it. Attack speed on ghostblade was alot healthier and smoother form of damage than duskblade. brutalizer + old LW were WAY healthier for AD assassins because they did less damage to squishies in the mid game but did more damage to raw tanks and didnt fall off as hard as lethality does.

new dev team- lets add the most failed and cancerous stat called lethality which required multiple reworks and has the most unhealthy powercurve in the entire game. Early mid game it completely destroys everybody!! late game it sucks!!! Buy armor and its useless!! Totally better than Old ghostblade + old lw + brutalizer right?. Then lets balance the lethality champs (that we ourselves broke) BY ADDING NEATO DELAYS in the assassin rework. Lets make zed RNG , some games he will reap 90 AD and become a god , some games he wont have any reap target and will only get 20-30 ad #GOOD mechanic.

And most importantly of all:

old dev team - something is blatantly overperforming ? Address it ASAP. Remember "scarizarding" champions? Morello was not afraid to slam the nerf hammer.

new dev team - oh lets just let it be overpowered for ABOUT 5-6 months before we decide to nerf it. 5 damage off of Janna. .05 ratio off of kaisa. couple attack speed off of ardent censor.

Shåwn40 votes

You know its gotten bad when the live design team decides to scrap brutalizer , Old ghostblade , and Old LW. Only to replace it with lethality stacking cancer. Alot of people think crit is the worst designed stat but I actually think lethality is the worst designed stat not only in all of league but in all video games I've played thus far.

Its mind blowing how incompetent they must have been to introduce something that can cause AD casters to be so extremely overpowered in certain scenarios (early/mid game, vs squishies/lack of armor, when you are snowballing it becomes even more oppressive because you get more based on level). But then becomes absolute worthless trash in other scenarios: (late game when people have their armor per level, any armor stacking item, exponentially lower damage when enemy has armor). I play alot of zed and in the current state of the game at level 13 if I have 2 lethality items completed, I can instantly delete a squishy that has no armor with just W E Q swap auto. Never in the history of season 3-5 was that possible. But when it reaches late game, not only does damage to squishies go down awkwardly, but anyone who buys the slightest armor on top of it will just take extreme amounts of lower damage. In the level 13 scenario, a double Q can take half of a squishies hp, but at level 18 vs a tank or a squishy that built tabis + armor from GA + shields , those same double Qs wont even get the squishy below ~85% and wont even dent less than ~7% of the tanks HP.

Is there anyone who wants a powercurve like this? This is the reason why the live design team somehow managed to make it aids to play against lethality stackers while also making it aids to play AS lethality stackers. Who wins here? If they would just remove dusk, edge of night, and ghostblade to replace them with old LW, old GB , and brutalizer then I bet a large portion of problems surrounding these champs would go away. If they are worried about old LW and old GB being abused by ranged champions, they can simply make old LW only purchasable by melee and make it so old GB's attack speed only activates if you are melee.

What a time to be alive, when some of the best design decisions for the game currently , are simply reverts to older designs.

JustaNewb21 votes

Incidentally they have given up on trying to explain WHY they will not do reverts such as this. It is the same as Atma's Impaler. The singular item would fix most AD Bruisers who are very weak right now... and they have made vastly more powerful items than it ever was.

It seems that they merely have an inability to say "oh, we were wrong. Sorry."

Risen294 votes

{quoted}

You know its gotten bad when the live design team decides to scrap brutalizer , Old ghostblade , and Old LW. Only to replace it with lethality stacking cancer. Alot of people think crit is the worst designed stat but I actually think lethality is the worst designed stat not only in all of league but in all video games I've played thus far.

Is there anyone who wants a powercurve like this? This is the reason why the live design team somehow managed to make it aids to play against lethality stackers while also making it aids to play AS lethality stackers. Who wins here?

I havent seen anyone sum it up as well as that. It describes exactly how I feel playing as Talon. You can kill people easier earlier if they misplay, but you'll fall off hard mid game and never recover. It feels like a race to snowball the game before 10 minutes or call gg.

Zed feels better late game because his ultimate scales better. Talon has nothing.

XeroKimo10 votes

You forgot the one bad thing about old dev team tho.....

old dev team - Oh this champion is under-performing for 2 seasons? Let's just buff someone else

New dev team - Oh this champion is under-performing for 2 seasons? We hear your complaints, we'll buff him to OPness....

I guess they're both bad

MuffledGarbage13 votes

Old Dev team only had a few bad things about them...

New Dev team is worse than my name without the Muffled

Karunamon4 votes

You.. you picked that name just so you could set up comments like that didn't you?

Well played.

AFilthyCaitMain5 votes

Just going to point out that they gave Cait more weaknesses by removing runaans, finding a sweet spot for her AS, then early by redcing her base health. Also Cait cant realistically use any of her abilities like assassins so thats relevant.

Navorian Grace2 votes

On top of that, marksmen build vastly less ad than assassins.

krute6 votes

Old dev team - caitlyn has an oppressive lane phase and also scales incredibly well into late with high range and mobility, so her weakness should be mid game and overall low dps. New Dev team - lets make every caitlyn ability do extremely high amounts of damage , higher ad ratios than assassins on her passive , Q, W, E, AND R!!! (objective fact, she has higher ad ratios on all her abilities than assassins)

What the fuck is this shit??? A caitlyn will rarely use abilities in an actual fight except for her E, since it gives her range advantage and a headshot. But using Q and/or W midfight is a complete loss of DPS, so her ability scalings are completely irrelevant. Her Q is also so telegraphed, that if you get hit, you deserve to lose a chunk of health from it. If you can't mechanically move out of a trap as it is arming, you deserve to lose that fight.

Her ratios are high because she doesn't build damage. Your core build is Shiv-IE-RFC. Pls tell me how her massive ratios makes her OP, when cailtyn primarily build crit. Caitlyns midgame is still trash and if she deosn't win lane with at least a 30 CS advantage, she is going to be a nonfactor, until she gets her RFC.

Xyltin6 votes

Varus right now is said to be the most versatile ADC in the current meta. He dominated last year and this year. He lacks mobility, but his CC and DPS are great and his strength is that he has nearly no weakness at all. If lack of mobility is the clear weakness then a lot of champs have that one clear weakness, but that is not enough. Just no mobility as a ranged champ is often a terrible weakness.

Draven is terribly designed. He has some interesting parts, but he has actually a pretty much permanent MS boost and a knockback. He has a clear weakness and strength, but he is terrible to balance.

Xayah is less mobile than Draven

Kai'Sa has less CC than Draven and Varus and her only mobility is her R.

So I am not sure what you are even talking there about. It seems you are not really playing league or you just don't know anything about these 4 champs.

2Charmnot2Charm55 votes

New Dev Team - Screw you players, we will do what we want. We know what is best.

Trust me everyone that had their main champ reworked by ricklessabandon already knew this.

JustaNewb25 votes

Precisely. Before Meddler took over there were actually 3 reworks that were canceled due to player polling. Out of 5 rework ideas, only 2 took place.

DarwinTheory33 votes

Had to invite this. New Development team really aren't LOL players at all. They're money men.

Splitgrips29 votes

This is the result of GhostCrawler. his effects are slow but painful. He is NOT a gamer nor does he actually play the game. He is not a person to use as a source of anything... @Riot.. how did he get the job anyway? just leave him at Blizzard for his failed vision there of how a game should be and not what it could be. I remember his first reaction to the community. it was take what we give you, you will accept it anyway. First 3 years i played this game and i am sad to say i spent 1k a year on it each year. Season 2-4. Season 5 i started scaling back. really you only get $100 out of me max and that seems it will carry over for a few years. even if you up the prices i dont feel enthused to spend the money.

that is equivalent to not eating out for 5 days out of the year. food for thought. Fix your F#$%#$ game. stop having ADCs just slaughter people for literally no reason. If they survive the burst for being out of position then they kill everyone????? wtf..

I even lost my Duo partner that now mains Top lane because of this.

Stop forcing the meta.. or you will get duo top and duo bottom. completely ignoring the jungler role.

that damage is too much and its going to crush top lane. so sad .. so bad on the development.

JustaNewb13 votes

Yeah... on my first account my profile says I shelled out 4200$ between Open and Season 4. Since then I have spent 120$. I don't like paying games that are doing no more than trying to make a buck at all cost.

Draehl28 votes

Old dev team appreciated a balance of sustained damage, burst damage, utility, and durability/sustain. Supported diverse item builds.

New dev team places a massive emphasis on burst damage. Wants short games and caters to low attention span players.

Risen2914 votes

{quoted}

Old dev team appreciated a balance of sustained damage, burst damage, utility, and durability/sustain. Supported diverse item builds.

New dev team places a massive emphasis on burst damage. Wants short games and caters to low attention span players.

Maybe thats why old time streamers are leaving. Strategy is going out the door.

Thats the mistake HotS made. It wasnt the most strategic game to begin with, but they decided to respond to dwindling player numbers by removing any semblence of strategy whatsoever.

You arent going to win or keep players by dumbing the game down. The appeal of MOBAs from the original Dota has always been depth, options, long term strategy. It was ok that games lasted an hour, because you could still make a comeback.

remakoro6 votes

HOTS was stillborn... So i dont think its a good example.

Risen2910 votes

{quoted}

HOTS was stillborn... So i dont think its a good example.

No, it is a perfect example because the underlying mistake is something every game does when they are desperate to reverse a declining player base. MMOGs in general make the same mistake, not just MOBAs - they try to make the game more "accessible" and faster paced thinking they will widen thier potential playerbase. All they end up doing is alienating the existing players. They end up killing off their game quicker.

The same flawed logic behind what appears to be happening to LoL has led to the death of everything from MMORPGs to MMOFPS to other MOBAs.

In some cases, yes, the games are already in critical condition and think they have nothing to lose. But in some cases they are viable and profitable playerbases, they just choose to gamble that on trying to grow to be bigger. They end up losing who they have.

How you win customers is how you will keep them. Dance with the one that brought you.

Strategy MOBA gamers are what have been the core of LoL's success. Don't drive them away by trying to become a fasted paced dumbed down action brawler. In the long run you will neither gain new players nor retain your existing ones.

Draehl6 votes

{quoted} Strategy MOBA gamers are what have been the core of LoL's success. Don't drive them away by trying to become a fasted paced dumbed down action brawler. In the long run you will neither gain new players nor retain your existing ones.

Well said!

AMYS GRAVE3 votes

Very well said.

JAAAAAAAAAAAAYCE25 votes

Old Devs - This champion isnt doing too well in the game, lets nerf the champs that counter him in lane.

New Devs - Champions can just one shot this champion without them having any counter play. Lets buff their core items, abilities and base damage by a lot so they can have 60% wr by next patch.

This game is just turning into Smite 2.0 minus the first person view. Smite devs would find the champion that is weak and buff it so all champions can one shot everyone.

FrostQueensPlane19 votes

I actually like how riot repetoir, after failing every rework he worked on, got promoted to lead the live design team. I want to say the live design team is cancer, and they are, but at this point we know the problem is in their hiring and evaluation processes so things like meddler "ardent censor isn't overtuned" the janna boot licker and ricklessabandon are just symptoms of a much larger problem that will probably be the death of league and it can't easily be fixed because the quality of the game seems to be totally disconnected from it's revenue generation through the sheer momentum of being at the top of the MOBA pyramid. I mean how else can a billion dollar company on the decline that makes it's money from selling you cosmetics only be allowed to release 1 skin a month, maybe, unless internally riot's still a shitty poorly run indie company that still has no idea what's it's doing but are still somehow making money hand over fist.

JustaNewb16 votes

Mobile games net thousands a month in microtransactions. It isn't hard to make money in gaming. The trick is to SURVIVE for a long time in gaming, as a game. Incidentally, they began making money, and went All In on what they felt was making them money... which it WASN'T, but they didn't want to hear that.

Many of us, with business management experience, have offered over the years to assist, even potentially pro bono for parts of it... but they do not want us. We are "too old." They seem to have this idea that young, inexperienced management and QA is what they need. Despite all evidence to the contrary. They use new age business models that work great for mobile games, historically terrible for actual online games. Ask Nexon or Potatoe Games... if you can find them now days.

Stupafly15 votes

If this is not a circle jerk.. I dont know what is.

Ghi21 votes

Doesn't mean they're wrong.

Arakadia9 votes

They completely ignore all the shit old designs that got reworked and the totally cliche and generic lore from befor.

Whilst ignoring the amazing art, lore, and designs that we've gotten. Its pretty biased even if it is correct.

GripaAviara6 votes

Shit old designs were fine in that state of the game. Now the team is way bigger, have a better fan base and a plethora of stats and history to mold the new champs.

Do you believe Zoe is a healthy design? Or yas? Or even Kai'sa, which her kit doesn't even synergize and is play overpowered to compensate. Kalysta was a perma ban in competitive. While the new Irelia is more flashy and has better animations I wouldn't call that champion healthier than the old one.

Arakadia7 votes

New Irelia is much healthier than before. Old Irelia was 90% targeted burst/dueling and punished her enemy for being successful.

Anyways you missed my point. There are quite a few bad designs that are from the new team. However both teams made shitty designs.

OP acknowledges none of the new design team's success and none of the old team's failure.

ARE YOU PC BRO11 votes

LOL and RIOT:Katey Khaos likes to defend Meddler whenever he is criticized

Carnicore10 votes

I think the funniest thing about this post is that you're implying the game was more balanced before.

Arakadia3 votes

Yeah remember all those old designs. Wasn't old Yorick, Eve, Tryndamere, Poppy, etc. all such great designs from the flawless old devs?

ViciousSummoner2 votes

Yorick was amazing because if played properly you could just sit in lane forever and literally make your opponent not exist or force them to move to another lane just so they can play the game.

Old Eve and Poppy were so, so. Trynd is fun to play when you're fed, but is not fun to play against a fed one.

Arakadia6 votes

Thats fucking awful design though.

LDG Jiambles9 votes

I don't understand why people have the mentality that they are owed something by Riot. They may have bought skins or champions and supported the game for a long time, but at the end of the day, it is Riot's game. It is made and developed and balanced by professionals who definitely know more about game balance than the average boards user. I myself am not particularly happy with the way the meta is shifting at the moment, but I recognize that if I tried to balance the game, it would turn out much worse.

UpDownLeftRightAB24 votes

I wouldn't call them professionals.

LDG Jiambles8 votes

{quoted}

I wouldn't call them professionals.

They are people that design and balance the game for a living, therefore, by defenition, making them professionals.

UpDownLeftRightAB14 votes

They're pretty bad at it, does that make them lemons?

Arakadia7 votes

Riot artists and sound design are part of Riot you know.

UpDownLeftRightAB3 votes

What does that have to do with the live balance team? You know they are completely separate teams right?

Arakadia3 votes

You said Riot was unprofessional.

UpDownLeftRightAB7 votes

[zombie-brand-facepalm]

Look at the topic.

DragonShea5 votes

Then what about Ghostcrawler, people talk so much shit about him but there is rarely anyone that sets the record straight about him, is he good, is he ok, or is he an utter gobshite, Unlike CertainlyT, we dont know what stuff he does that is good or bad and at least we all know what CertainlyT brings to the table.

JustaNewb19 votes

He is the basic reason for "players will like what ever you give them. Just ignore them, they will stay."

Śhunpo3 votes

{quoted}

Then what about Ghostcrawler, people talk so much shit about him but there is rarely anyone that sets the record straight about him, is he good, is he ok, or is he an utter gobshite, Unlike CertainlyT, we dont know what stuff he does that is good or bad and at least we all know what CertainlyT brings to the table.

We know what Ghostcrawler brings to the table, he ruined WoW almost entirely to the point where entire guilds just quit raiding for year and quit PvPing.

DragonShea1 votes

{quoted}

We know what Ghostcrawler brings to the table, he ruined WoW almost entirely to the point where entire guilds just quit raiding for year and quit PvPing.

Then I'd like to know the specifics, many people will just say, GHOSTCRAWLER IS A RETARD SHFOSTHNSONETOSN !!¤="u0423. But I am not interested in that bullshit. What I want is facts because the very people that are complaining about GC are ironically his biggest defenders as their ranting is creating a smokescreen for his antics, We know exact what CertainlyT does, he makes game breaking champs that have unique abilities that is beyond the norm.

As a semi-retired WoW player I can tell that there are similarities with GC's changing/"ruining"(I am being generous here) the game, I see a change of favoritism towards ranged damage dealers, nerfing fighters while leaving skirmishers free from the nerfing, Tanks are OP and so are Enchanters. Ignorance of negative impacts of the game for periods unheard of, more distacts between the devs and the player base in general(still better than WoW)

Thing is, ambiguity is a powerful weapon and armor.

Śhunpo3 votes

{quoted}

Then I'd like to know the specifics, many people will just say, GHOSTCRAWLER IS A RETARD SHFOSTHNSONETOSN !!¤="u0423. But I am not interested in that bullshit. What I want is facts because the very people that are complaining about GC are ironically his biggest defenders as their ranting is creating a smokescreen for his antics, We know exact what CertainlyT does, he makes game breaking champs that have unique abilities that is beyond the norm.

As a semi-retired WoW player I can tell that there are similarities with GC's changing/"ruining"(I am being generous here) the game, I see a change of favoritism towards ranged damage dealers, nerfing fighters while leaving skirmishers free from the nerfing, Tanks are OP and so are Enchanters. Ignorance of negative impacts of the game for periods unheard of, more distacts between the devs and the player base in general(still better than WoW)

Thing is, ambiguity is a powerful weapon and armor.

Hey, I never said CertainlyT was better than Ghostcrawler, quite the opposite. I just want people to know that CertainlyT is far from the biggest problem to do with LoL and Riot games.

DragonShea3 votes

{quoted}

Hey, I never said CertainlyT was better than Ghostcrawler, quite the opposite. I just want people to know that CertainlyT is far from the biggest problem to do with LoL and Riot games.

But you can't deny that CertainlyT's actions are more apparent, and as much he does fuck up and get rightful hate for it, he doesn't threaten the stability of the game overall.

Cenutrio 5 rabos2 votes

Let's be fair, as a cutting edge raiding WoW player myself, I'm well aware Ghostcrawler wasn't the only motive why pvp went downhill (which has always been bad even during WotLK). He's got a team behind him with A LOT of people. He's just the man that gotta speak up, and everyone points their guns at him.

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