Why doesn't Riot do mini hotfixes to champs instead of waiting until full patches?

Chud Bubson·Apr 6, 2016·7 votes·2,749 views

Recently (past few months) Fiora has been commonly banned across all ELOs. Riot changed her in 6.5 so she's a bit more tolerable now, but my question is, why wait that long? With champions like Fiora, Udyr, Poppy, Soraka, etc. riot waits until patches to change them. Why not skip the month before the patch when they are on near permaban status and do small changes like lowering base damage by 5 or ad by 2 or something to make them more difficult to abuse if no one bans them? From a technical standpoint, would it be too stressful for the servers, changing more often, or can our feeble minds just not handle the unforeseeable long-term consequences? Would the game end up changing too rapidly? Could someone help explain this to me?

23 Comments

RiotMeddlerApr 6, 201611 votes

Hotfixes have a much shorter testing time available to them than regular patch changes. That means a much increased risk of serious bugs that compromise game results, cause champions to get disabled etc. As a result we only use them for cases where a champion's really out of line or has an urgent, high impact bug.

Chud BubsonApr 6, 20161 votes

Thanks for explaining, I understand now. Also, I dont mean that sarcastically (sometimes I worry that people people misunderstand me since they cant hear the tone of my voice)

SaltyToplaneGoatApr 6, 20163 votes

I seriously doubt that a pure numerical change can result in that many bugs that internal testing could not fix it. It's 90% random Azir bugs anways <_<

If you were to recode an ability or change a certain aspect of it (like removing the cc from Azir's E for example), then I understand... but for something purely numerical? All you do is change values. That's nothing that should require a two week period of extended testing, especially not when the game's balance is on the line!

YCitizenSnipsYApr 6, 20166 votes

They managed to make Zed kill enemy minions on spawn just by being in the game, and you are doubting this games spaghetti code?

SaltyToplaneGoatApr 6, 20162 votes

Yes, but replacing one number with an equally valid number on the very same spot is not what would have any consequences - unless you accidentally remove a comma from the code, but that'd be human failure.

With Zed, it probably happened with his passive to be triggered on any unit by accident even without him being in range. Usually it probably puts an invisible mark on then if they are blow the hp treshold that gets consumed once the damage is taken. They probably messed up and made it detonate the moment it gets placed. Just a speculation from my end, but that's nothing of what a numerical value change would cause.

YCitizenSnipsYApr 6, 20161 votes

If they are just replacing a number, than why not just wait till the next patch anyway? Why even bother with such a minimal task. And I will ask you, without biased crying on these boards, how many champions honestly need to be hot fixed on a patch to patch basis? In fact I would love to hear your thoughts on who should have been hot fixed for being just a balance problem in terms of too high numbers since Graves was in the pre season.

SaltyToplaneGoatApr 6, 20164 votes

Replacing a number does not matter as it is such a minimal task and can wait until the patch? Well, go ahead and change the base damage of an ability by 100. And then tell me if it had minimal impact or not.

If a champion singlehandely disorting game balance to the point they become pick/ban while utilizing items they weren't even supposed to in the first place it should be intervened. If none of these champions need a mechanical change but simply their numbers adjusted, it should be done ASAP, especially if that champ has been causing problems over several patches now.

Whenever something goes wrong on the balance end (and be it something Riot did not forsee, such as tank Ekko right now), I'm sick of having to ban that particular champion for two weeks straight. It's not like we wouldn't have enough broken shit in the game right now that would need banning.

Wasn't banning supposed to be somewhat strategical? Because right now it's just "block out where Riot screwed up". And I'm glad for every champ that gets fixed immedeatly so I do not have to bother wasting my ban for them.

Edge of DaybreakApr 6, 20161 votes

We haven't had many cases of that one champion breaking the game enough to warrant a hotfix. It's rare to see anything get that out of control. Last one I can think of was skarner post rework skarner or Skirmishers warwick. Rarely are champions actually strong enough to warrant a hotfix. We used to have kassadin and yasuo who literally had a combined pick/banrate reaching over 100%. Most champions boards complains about are purely circlejerk. Wait till something hits 60% winrate at least then at least a hotfix is understandable.

Tank ekko isnt even close to gamebreaking. He's not even statistically overpowered. Just more anti assassin circlejerk bait. Bans are all player perception. They have almost nothing to do with actual power and are never going to be used strategically outside of premades or pro play. Hell when everyone was complaining about fiora daily there were 16 champions that had higher pickrates and higher winrates than her. out of those 16 only 3 were even being talked about. But the majority of them all had lower banrates than her.

SaltyToplaneGoatApr 6, 20162 votes

Tank Ekko is overpowered. If you can completly eradicate your main weakness (squishiness) while having close to ZERO dent on your damage for that, then something is wrong.

Or are you telling me Devourer-Tank Yi was a healthy and nice addition to the game too?

Edge of DaybreakApr 6, 20162 votes

[{quoted}](name=Kyoki Shinkuro,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=NgydW5vR,comment-id=00010001000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2016-04-06T04:58:46.711+0000)

Tank Ekko is overpowered. If you can completly eradicate your main weakness (squishiness) while having close to ZERO dent on your damage for that, then something is wrong.

Or are you telling me Devourer-Tank Yi was a healthy and nice addition to the game too?

Sorry but a less than 51% winrate with an about 6% pickrate doesn't net you overpowered anywhere. There is a reason riot buffed him recently which put him to the spot he is in now which is more or less average.

He doesn't seem to have a dent in damage because the tank items all bring way too much damage with them. That's not an ekko issue it's the items. To say it makes zero difference is straight hyperbole which no one actively balancing this game cares about. It obviously hits his total damage potential but since getting ulted by ekko if you aren't afk, or CC'ed isnt a thing you are never going to notice that his ult is hitting you for far less damage. On top of that he doesn't explode instantly so he has more time to use his passive. If AP ekko bursted you you would notice the difference instantly. Instead of burst he gains a longer window to deal sustained damage which always takes longer than straight burst.

Overpowered is warwick pressing R and melting over 60% of your hp while you are supressed. Overpowered is Kassadin chasing you down 700 range blinks while building tanky and silencing you for 2.5 seconds. I could keep going.

The point of items is to get rid of your weaknesses. Ekkos main weakness is that his damage is unreliable when built full AP and if he goes in and get's CC'ed he explodes. So yeah I would go tank too if it meant I got to function.

Why would I care about yi who has already been addressed and if it is worth nerfing will probably get nerfed again? Hell that build has been available for months. It just takes the boards too long to learn about what is actually good so they know what to complain about.

YCitizenSnipsYApr 6, 20161 votes

You are the one that implied replacing a number is easy. I'm just saying if it is that easy why even go out of your way to do so? They fucking patch the game like every two weeks.

"Wasn't banning supposed to be some what strategic" Only if you believe that there was ever a time in this game that there wasn't ban worthy champions. Most of the people that play this game are one trick poines/ only play a handful of champions no matter what. To pretend that an average game out side of competitive are ever even remotely drafted with a comp in mind/ banning what works against it is just a dream.

Even if they game was balance and their were no OP champions worthy of a ban, then all that would happen is the one tricks that make up most of the game would just ban what ever works against them and say fuck the team comp.

Also you are really going to have to explain the concept of "wasting a ban" on a champion that is supposedly a balance issue.

SaltyToplaneGoatApr 6, 20163 votes

{quoted}

"Wasn't banning supposed to be some what strategic" Only if you believe that there was ever a time in this game that there wasn't ban worthy champions.

Tank meta.

Sure, one team bans Seju, the other bans Gragas. Both got gutted a bit later and the patch before juggernauts I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO BAN. Seriously, there were happy threads on the boards about this.

I can deal with one or two outliners. That's not an issue. But if you have a group of more than seven champions dominating play there is a problem.

YCitizenSnipsYApr 6, 20162 votes

Well for one with the amount of bias and exageration on these boards, I don't personally care for it's take on balance. Especially when you consider how small of a sample of people it is, and how the Meme and Games boards are constantly the most popular and highest up voted.

Second you are over rating the Tank meta very heavily. There were plenty of pick ban champions during that time. Hecarim, Ahri, Vayne, and Cho'gath all have spiked ban rates during the tank meta. Also Le blanc, Zed, and Riven were all pretty common bans at that time to. And none of the champions I named have under a 20% ban rate at that time. And most of them sit around 40% .

Ayame IsakiApr 6, 20161 votes

I don't think you understand how software engineering works if you think all that is required is changing a number. I guarantee the backend for LoL isn't written in an interpreted language like Perl. It is probably a combination of Java and C/C++. Both of these languages are compiled (I am aware Java emits byte code and C/C++ emits machine code).

On the C/C++ side (assuming use of gcc), changing a single number with high enough optimization level can actually have a significant changes to the emitted machine code (I'm not sure the level where this happens, high level optimizations have really strange effects on your applications behavior as you go past 3, and 3 itself isn't always a safe choice). I truly hope LoL isn't run with anything great than -O2 (-O3 and above can actually disable explicit memory corruption protections in the name of performance, creating security vulnerabilities).

It can also have unintended consequences elsewhere in code for a codebase that suffers from severe technical debt (the boards likes to refer to this as spaghetti code, but that is not entirely accurate; spaghetti code is a type of technical debt).

Now, if champion numbers were stored externally such as in a relational database or a config file there wouldn't even need to be a code change. However, in C/C++ there are performance gains to be had by hardcoding numeric values as the compiler can make better optimization decisions. The config file approach gets complicated for large scale distributed systems, which may require repackaging the backend (which, depending on tooling, may require a rebuild of the software) if something like Puppet isn't being used to manage configuration. The database approach has complications depending on replication schemes and colocation considerations.

I'm going to stop going down this rabbit hole now.

http://i.imgur.com/23fX9dd.png&noredirect

LuciferApr 6, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Hotfixes have a much shorter testing time available to them than regular patch changes. That means a much increased risk of serious bugs that compromise game results, cause champions to get disabled etc. As a result we only use them for cases where a champion's really out of line or has an urgent, high impact bug.

What about for someone like Ekko? Who is completely warping the game at high elo right now by going complete tank and outdamaging everyone in the game.

Teridax68Apr 6, 20161 votes

Not a Rioter, obvs, but adding to Meddler, another issue with hotfix changes is that they're a lot harder to keep track of for players. In an extreme case where everything would be addressed through hotfixes, keeping track of the game's changes would be an absolute nightmare, and it would be significantly more difficult to get a good idea of what's going on at the moment, and why which change was implemented at which time. Hotfixes also don't allow for much communication with players, and in some cases it can risk damaging trust with the playerbase because they feel like the content they enjoy could get ninja-buffed or nerfed at any given moment, without them having any real say or forewarning on the matter.

DecritApr 6, 20161 votes

Also it can mess up balance.

I remember rework release Fiora, where you buffed her Q because she felt weak. Since that moment people learnt quickly to play her overwhelmed the enemyes, chasing them across the lane spamming Q.

Sneakyy XDApr 6, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Hotfixes have a much shorter testing time available to them than regular patch changes. That means a much increased risk of serious bugs that compromise game results, cause champions to get disabled etc. As a result we only use them for cases where a champion's really out of line or has an urgent, high impact bug.

You're obviously not involved in the coding process, but maybe you have some insight anyway. How can changing the base damage or scaling of a champion's ability ever cause bugs?

Wînter FoxApr 6, 20163 votes

she's a bit more tolerable now

This board I swear...She literally has Urgot level win rates now

Chud BubsonApr 6, 20161 votes

I wouldn't really know I guess. Not many people play her in my games because she still get banned a lot. I don't play top much as well, or play her at all for that matter. I'm going off what others have told me. Was the nerf really that bad?

LankPantsApr 6, 20161 votes

Was the nerf really that bad?

Yes, Fiora's in a pretty bad state now. I don't think she needs straight buffs though, her reworked kit has a lot of problems that need to be addressed.

Namely the reward on her ult makes no sense and feels out of place on her kit and %HP true damage was a terrible idea. I think Fiora's vitals should be changed to deal %HP magic damage. This makes her still hard for bruisers to duel since she has a phys/magic split but overall she'd be less able to just go in and blow up a tank. Obviously this change would need to come with some damage buffs since changing true damage to magic is a straight nerf in almost every situation.

As for her ult I'd say something like empowering her vital procs and bumping the heal on them would be better than her team wide heal. On every level a team wide heal makes no sense on Fiora, she's not meant to be a supportive champ, she's a duellist.

RottedApplesApr 6, 20162 votes

you aren't wrong, but she is still the most obnoxious thing to fight against.

hh the thinkerApr 6, 20161 votes

i would believe that the changes aren't urgent enough. some champs have gotten hot fixes in the past, but their cases were much worse or bugged. fiora is just one of many champs they want to change. they could just keep changing things, but that would make a mess of things.

everyone likes to know of the changes also, if they keep doing things not on the big patches, then it can confuse people as the information they believe is one way, is just changed.