[{quoted}](name=Nameless Voice,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=QLXl78u0,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-03-20T01:01:39.303+0000)
Something that Riot have stated in the past is that they're okay with a champion being no fun to play against so long as the person playing that champion is having lots of fun.
It would be nice to have a source for that, because in Champion Insights, among many other places, Riot has explicitly stated that they want to make very sure champions and mechanics are fun to play against, and take it into at least as much consideration as enjoyment while playing said champion/mechanic. Terms like "counterplay" and "outplay potential" have been used so often by Riot and various individual Rioters in the past that many people on Boards have poked fun at them for it.
[{quoted}](name=Nameless Voice,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=QLXl78u0,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-03-20T01:01:39.303+0000)
Riot have said or implied that they don't really take things like ban rates into account, or really pay much attention to the boards when making balance decisions. The (perfectly valid) reasoning for this is that most players don't have enough information and knowledge to make truly informed decisions, but it misses an important point: yes, most people aren't qualified to make fine balance decisions, but they are qualified to know what is and what isn't fun.
I'd say even that much is debatable, since you will very often have people complaining about a champion's toxicity when what they really mean is that they're overpowered -- a few also go here to vent immediately after a bad game, which doesn't make for very nuanced discussion. There are also a lot of contradictory opinions on here (is Cass a poison mage, or do we want to revert her rework?), as well as opinions on here that are provably wrong (people calling Sona weak despite her pretty decent win rate -- the real problem is that she feels weak). There's also a lot of hyperbole going on here, and the end result is that "fine balance decisions" are usually a small minority of posts: most usually call for full-on reworks, massive buffs/nerfs, reversions of reworks, or the outright removal of champions, and those are only the posts that do propose something, instead of just calling champions or the game itself toxic and leaving it at that. Boards posters in general have a lot of trouble differentiating between what is genuinely good or bad for the game and what they personally like or want, and if Riot were to fully cater to the wishes of everyone on here the game would be a disaster.
[{quoted}](name=Nameless Voice,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=QLXl78u0,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-03-20T01:01:39.303+0000)
Most of the threads on the boards are not about champions who are overpowered, but instead about champions that people despise playing against.
Compare Jinx and Kalista. In season 5, Jinx was generally considered to be the strongest ADC and one of the strongest champions in the game, yet she was rarely complained about that much; whereas Kalista (with a kit full of heavy hard-counters and frustrating strengths) got thread after thread dedicated to her.
I agree that Kalista is frustrating to play against, particularly as a melee champion, but this is also incorrect: when Jinx was popular, she was complained about endlessly, and even now the occasional thread pops up calling her toxic. Every time a champion rises in popularity, the number of complaint threads surrounding them rises as well.
[{quoted}](name=Nameless Voice,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=QLXl78u0,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-03-20T01:01:39.303+0000)
It's a similar situation with bans. Maybe a champion isn't being banned in the majority of games because they are overpowered, but instead they're being banned for a far more serious reason - no one wants to play a game with those champions in it.
Usually bans apply to both. Champions like Poppy, Kindred and Nautilus all have fairly healthy kits, they're just too strong, which is why they're banned pretty often. Problem is, they still get called toxic on the boards because most people here equate balance to design. Even champions like Kog'Maw or Braum, who both have clear counterplay, have been called toxic at times when they were especially strong.
[{quoted}](name=Nameless Voice,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=QLXl78u0,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-03-20T01:01:39.303+0000)
Rather than dismissing this (based on the champion's performance) as the champion being balanced but frustrating, this should be something that is a major focus - everyone hates playing against this champion, so they need to be worked on far more urgently than mere balance problems.
The last time that happened, Kassadin got a rework, and look where he's at now. The problem with this kind of mentality is that it encourages knee-jerk reworks that set out to "fix" a champion's current issues without looking much further, and whenever that happens, the champion still ends up having problems that need to be addressed with further design changes. Reworking a champion takes a lot of in-depth analysis and careful evaluation to do right, and despite literally years' worth of experience, Rioters still don't have a 100% success rate either, so rushing reworks instead of producing balance changes is not the way to go.
[{quoted}](name=Nameless Voice,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=QLXl78u0,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-03-20T01:01:39.303+0000)
Over time, the number of champions that are considered unfun to play against has slowly risen, so that it is no longer possible to even ban the worst ones.
I think this is currently a major problem for League of Legends, and probably one that will end up losing the game a lot of players in the long run.
This gets said every season. Last year players were complaining about Warwick/Azir/Ryze/Juggernauts ruining the game, before that it was Annie/Fiddlesticks/Braum/Yasuo, and so on. I'd say the level of anti-fun has gone down over the years, it's just that we, as players whose opinion of the game is affected by every match, don't really think in the long-term. Champions like Rengar and Leblanc have been in pretty much the same state for over a season, but it's only past a certain point that their design issues reached the upper tiers of unhealthiness. I agree, there are a lot of things Riot needs to look at to improve on the game's long-term health, but they've been doing that for the most part.
[{quoted}](name=Nameless Voice,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=QLXl78u0,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-03-20T01:01:39.303+0000)
If the balance isn't perfect, people are likely to complain a bit, but they will expect it to get better, and can probably ban the outliers.
Adding to the above, I think the opposite is true. Champions that were toxic for a long time only get talked about when they see more frequent play, and even healthy champions get complained about when they're popular. Balance has never been perfect, but that's usually the first thing players here talk about, and feel most strongly about too. Analyzing the fundamental design of a champion or mechanic usually takes time, effort and a somewhat lengthy OP, but that's not usually not the kind of thread the Gameplay Boards favor.
