Get Used to Imbalance, It's Here Forever

**EDIT: Read the whole post and not just the first sentence, seriously. **

I have no doubt in my mind that Riot is doing the best they humanly can to 'balance the game', and I hope by the end of this post you'll understand why, and I might inspire some empathy and appreciation for this endless cycle.

I was a fan of a game called Guild Wars, made by Arena Net, and I followed it's updates for 10 years up until Arena Net finally left it behind for the sequel. They had actually given up with the core balancing of the game long before that, but a few bits of content trickled in in the later part of it's decade long run.

The problem with Guild Wars is that there was too much content to balance. There were 10 classes, each class has an 8-slot ability bar, with around 100~ abilities on every class that you can pick and choose as you please. So the game had just over 1,000 abilities that needed to be balanced.

ArenaNet admitted they could not handle this and decided to take what they'd learned and create a more stream-lined sequel. Evidence of their failure still exist in the game, with certain abilities having been massively "Olaf'd" because it was easier to make it terrible than to remove the ability outright, or put effort into finding a balanced state. Imagine if Playful Trickster now cost 300 Mana an dhad a 2 minute cool-down. Entire game-modes were removed - not because of a low play rate, but because Arena Net could not manage to balance them.

Now look at League of Legends. A very rough estimate, 129 champions who each have at least 5 abilities (including their passive). At least 645 abilities in the game, not including items. Consider that the game continuously expands with a dozen new champions every year. Also, older content becomes reworked with more complex mechanics, and more 'balance levers' are added. And don't forget the shifting perspectives and philosophies of Riot as time goes on. Every year Riot reports on the things they got wrong with their approach to the previous season!

Even if new champions and items are halted right now, the game will never become balanced. A game like this is a huge undertaking and is well above the average development burden. Riot will be reworking and rebalancing existing content that is backed up for years to come if they don't give up like Arena Net.

But the new content is not going to stop any time soon, so you can forget about the game ever being balanced. Overall balance has improved over the years absolutely, but I'm talking about the day-to-day, week-to-week, patch-to-patch "Gut Fiora", "Graves in every lane" shit-posting. Those issues will never end, and acting like Riot is doing something wrong because something is busted in a patch is just ungrateful and frankly stupid.

With more 'balancing levers' and shifting design principles, the game will overall improve but there will also be more opportunities for something to go wrong, as they bump a lever here and there accidentally while they were reaching for another one. I don't care how "broken" you think Yorick will be, as long as he's a better character than he is now and back on the Free Champ rotation as a legitimate piece of content. Poppy is back too. And people were crying about Fiora even before her rework. Maybe Sion is underpowered right now but do you want to go back to that shit that he used to be?

Riot will never 'get it right' unless you decide to set your standards to a more realistic level. The alternative is that Riot gives up and we no longer have LoL.