Perfectly Valid Question: Imagine the game to be like a scale (balance, get it) but not one of those new age digital ones. I mean like the Libra ones. You have to have a set point. A Benchmark that never changes that you can continually come back to for the rest of time to work off of.
I am talking about a Static Point
In LOL we have a fair number of variables: 126 Champions, 60-70 Full Items (Summoners Rift), 11 Summoners(Flash,Tp,Heal,Smite,etc), and 5 Positions on Summoners Rift (Top, Jung,Mid,ADC,Supp)
With 4 Big variables in one game that's a hell of a lot of stuff to balance. On top of that the champ pool interacts with the Item pool, etc etc. THEY ALL INTERACT WITH ONE ANOTHER.
To answer your Q: How do we Balance a game with more than roughly 11 Undecillion, that 11 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 potential combinations? We find a Benchmark. In My Opinion the best and easiest Benchmark to create and manage is the Positional Meta Game. I am talking about the 5 positions on SR map. Top/Jung/Mid/ADC/Supp
I call this the Jungle Meta, and it came into effect in the 2nd Season of LOL. We have been playing the same Meta for 3 Seasons.
Riot needs to put their foot down and say publicly and assertively that the Jungle Meta is how League of Legends is played. Noone will be angry with that because we all already do it.
Once you have positions in place and official you can start labeling the champions. Who is a top laner? jungle? adc?
League of Legends has had a fixed meta for over four years where we find the game continuously being balanced based entirely on the interactions of the jungle and how it effects game play. If you do not believe me go back and look at preseason patches and see what they focus all their changes on. It is Jungle, jungle jungle. So why are we lying to ourselves and thinking that this game is suddenly going to find itself in a situation where we don't have a jungler in the competitive scene. We need to hard or soft lock champions in to roles and balance the game not on items, not on summoners but on champions and their given roles. Hard lock means you literally cannot play that champion outside the role, soft lock being where you balance champions on such a large skew that unless they are designed for the jungle they are basically unplayable, for an example. This needs to be done in every position in some fashion. Tops are basically left over champion who cannot jungle but have good dueling potential. Mids do not really require any changes in this regard, neither do ADC's really. Supports might be a little more complicated but if we really want to get in to this I should do a whole new thread.
For example Warwick is a Jungler. Ok, what makes a good Jungler? Clear speed. Sustainability, Gank Ability. Neutral Objective/Zone control.
WW has decent clear speed of neutral camps with his current W atk speed buff. His current Q and passive allows him to steal health from a unit, His ganks at lv 6 are very simple, Press R, and because his R is a point and click he presses a button and gets a kill for his carry. He is a high cc threat that has to be respected at neutral objectives ie Dragon.
Riot needs to play God over their game and say "Warwick is a jungler and thats where he shall be played" and this is true of all positions in the game.
To make their case true they need to give junglers proper kits for jungling. For example what better way to force the decision by giving Warwick's Q the ability to steal more health from NEUTRAL monsters and do bonus damage or what ever seems reasonable
With changes like the above mentioned people won't play Champions anywhere else outside their designated role, not because they are not viable but because position oriented champions will just always be better at doing their job. For Instance I NEVER see a Syndra ADC. Why? because no matter how trolly I feel Syndra ADC is sooo bad that its not even fun to play. Syndra has no AD Ratios, no Atk Speed ratios, etc (outside of leveling up) so people don't ever play adc Syndra or if they do, its not serious. (I type this thinking I will probably see this in my next ranked game lol)
Above example leaves the player choice quite open still. Ok you label champs and have a super beneficial jungle meta. But players can still pick wherever they want to play. I feel that is still not quite there. While labeling champs you need to put restrictions on them. You would have to rework items ONCE and get rid of anything role specific and once again, give supports higher utility, junglers more natural sustain and neutral monster damage, you could even discourage carry type champions from jungling by having negative effects (take increased damage from neutral monsters) This stops stupid mid, adc solo dragon, solo baron plays for an example.
TLDR: Riot Needs to put foot down and find a Benchmark in their game. From that point on work off of ONLY that Benchmark when designing new champions. items, etc. When you are constantly changing everything, everything gets !@#$ed up all the time.
Note: That ridiculous number comes from 10 potential (different) champions, multiplied by the number of possible six item combinations, multiplied by 6 potential ward items (your seventh slot), multiplied by a base of four abilities (ignoring passives although I shouldn't), multiplied by 2 (different) summoners.
126 x 125 x 124 x 123 x 122 x 121 x 120 x 119 x 118 x 117 Possibly Champion Combinations
x
60 x 59 x 58 x 57 x 56 x 55 x 10 Possible Item Combinations (This is a low ball)
x
6 x 10 Different Ward Items
x
40 Basic abilities per champion (Note I am ignoring individual interactions with each ability or this number would get insane, like you don't even want to know how big it would be)
x
11 x 10 X 10 Possible summoner combinations
Does this answer your Q Jameree?
#Sandbox #StillNotAPriority
