Why perfect game balance is impossible

Burns Master·5/9/2018, 2:21:35 AM·3 votes·2,256 views

I want your thoughts and opinions on why the age-old subject of balancing the game to basically have no real meta is impossible or extremely difficult?
If you feel there is actually a way, let's hear the thoughts you guys have.

10 Comments

Marshbouy5/9/2018, 2:58:24 AM2 votes

I think that close to perfect balance is possible, but it would be at a great cost to the game.

Riot could spend two years adjusting every champ kit, item, and rune by small increments until everything was perfectly balanced as it should be.), but it would be boring as nails for most people who play the game. Sure the competitive players might like more viable champions, but the average joe would get really sick of nothing ever changing.

Colton1475/9/2018, 4:19:22 AM2 votes

Buff my main champions/champions I frequently play to reach 100% win rate for a balanced meta is my guess...

Top: Illaoi Gangplank Ornn TahmKench Maokai DrMundo Heimerdinger

Jungle: Ivern Shyvana Vi Hecarim

Mid: Corki Galio Lux Ziggs Zoe

ADC: Jinx Kaisa Caitlyn

Support: Janna Lulu Braum TahmKench Leona Morgana Zilean Karma

Chembaron Yamada5/9/2018, 2:29:26 AM2 votes

Too many variables. There are so many combinations of runes, champions and items as well as positions and other stuff that it is realistically impossible to have everything in a really balanced way.

If you want 100% balance, delete all this stuff. No items, no runes and everyone plays the exactly same stick figure. But who would actually want to play something like that?

KZ Engel5/9/2018, 3:05:36 AM1 votes

because there are hundreds or even thousands of variables

Aptest5/9/2018, 3:18:14 AM1 votes

In a high level of abstraction, the game is overly simplified such that there is only one best way to win at any given time.

example:

If you look at a game like DOTA, rat dota coexists with group-up dota and can be used as a counter. mroeover the best rat champions are not good duelists.

This is facilitated by the map being much larger.

conclusion:

If order to allow for a no-meta state, some elements of the game must reach a level of complexity that allows for several strategies to compete with each other. This requires at least 3 strategies that counter each other.

The game as a whole must have enough levers to have a balance between all of these strategies.

Onandaga5/9/2018, 3:27:32 AM1 votes

I don't think absolute fairness and balance would be desirable, even if it were possible. Balance and diversity often conflict, and a game without diversity simply wouldn't be fun. Think of how many people loved CoD MW2 even though everyone agrees that game was absolutely chaotic in terms of balance. Often the "broken" stuff we always complain about when used against us is the same stuff that gives us the most pleasure we ourselves use it to its maximum potential. Just think of how the most played and popular champs are almost always amongst the most hated and difficult to balance, Yasuo being a prime example. If you try to bring about complete fairness and take away all the "Yasuo" parts of the game, you'll also take away what players enjoy most from the game but probably won't admit or even realize, which leads to the end result of the playerbase fizzling out and the game dying.

Lost R5/9/2018, 4:06:28 AM1 votes

Any degree of game balance as it is is completely impossible because everyone wants to be an ADC or AD melee assassin. They all want to do all the damage, engage in all of the teamfights, get all of the pentakills, and have no solution for anything other than to build up as much damage as possible and engage in a direct slugfest with the enemy without any sense of nuance or strategy. A rabid fucking mongrel has more strategy than the League community.

Nobody goes for objectives, pushes lanes, wards, watches the map, or does anything that doesn't even remotely promise that they'll get all of the pentakills ever. Nobody picks tanks, mages, supports, fighters or even brawlers, and have abandoned all durability, range, magic damage, crowd control, and buffs because they think raw attack damage is all that they'll ever need.

The game will never be balanced because the entire community continues to triple, quadruple, and quintuple down thousands of times over on doing absolutely nothing but the most direct form of damage possible, even going out of their way to screw each other over in order to claim all of the kills. And right now, there's a growing movement to try and petition all of the CROWD CONTROL to get removed!

The entire community imbalanced the game by focusing on one singular element of the game and not only abandoning all the others, but ACTIVELY trying to get them all removed! I've been pointing this out for years, and all I am doing is losing ground on this.

DragonShea5/9/2018, 7:39:41 AM1 votes

It will never happen but what we can do is make is as balanced as humanly possible.

Bent Pixels5/9/2018, 2:59:23 AM1 votes

There isn't a way to make it balanced. No matter what, someone will always complain about something being broken and will want buffs/nerfs and will sometimes get them to make the game more unbalanced.

I like the "unbalanced-ness" of this game though... makes it quite fun to play :D

PhDs Nuts5/9/2018, 3:02:37 AM1 votes

Because they change the entire game every 6-8 months, and always leave behind the fundamental problems like creep block, minion AI, and death recap.

Not to mention that they only balance the game for the top 0.01% of players that can exploit the extra 2-3% strength advantage a specific champion has over the rest of the field.