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Remember this when you say a released champ is OP

Truely Fabulous··11 votes·1,122 views

Riot is fundamentally a business, which means they want to make money.

While customer satisfaction is a priority, we can safely assume that making money is priority #1.

Money is more likely to be made when people are buying champs, and people buy champs that are: A. New B. Powerful C. Fun

Ekko is all of those, which means that people will buy him, making Riot money in the end.

Is he OP? Hell yeah. Why? Because it gets Riot money.

Will he get nerfed? 99.9999999999% sure of it. ...And I say this because almost every champ Riot releases initially is OP. I mean, VERY OP. Take Azir for example -- when he was released, he was incredibly OP, but no one knew how to play him. Once people started figuring out how powerful he was, he got nerfed. Ekko is the exact same thing, but with a smaller learning curve. I think it's quite reasonable to expect an upcoming Ekko nerf within 5 patches or so.

Just my thoughts.

16 Comments

ElJanitorFrank5 votes

Yeah, because Bard was super overpowered.

Yes, Riot is trying to make money and this is one way to do that, but I honestly think EVERYBODY is blowing this out of proportion.

I haven't laned against Ekko yet, though I've been trying, but I've had dozens of games against/with him already.

Just from the teamfighting alone I don't think he's OP, and that's supposed to be one of his biggest strengths.

He's too predictable, his numbers seem ridiculous because he doesn't hit his abilities half the time.

The Lexer4 votes

Dude Bard is so OP people dodge in champ select when you pick him

Remlap12231 votes

You know why Ekko is OP as shit right now? Because of Bard. Once upon a time, Bard was released. He was released in such a poor state of QOL and number balance that to this day he is still regarded as a troll champion. This, obviously, hurt Riot's sales on said champion, and thus they had to correct it by making Ekko the most OP champion in the game in terms of stats. It's not right, but they got too ambitious with Bard in "HEY GUYS ITS NEW AND EXCITING" without taking into any regard of how the champion would actually function with only one damaging spell and being squishy as fuck, and we're all paying for it now every patch when a new champion is released.

MTempty2 votes

So then, Bard was meant to throw us off the scent? Sure it logically follows that Riot would want to drive sales. But just because it is a possibility, doesn't mean its the truth. When Rengar was released, he was considered one of the worst champions until riot gave him some small buffs and people decided to give him a shot then, everything from ap rengar to triple dorans blade Rengar was played until he got a ton of nerfs. Lucian was garbage for a Looong time until someone on GD posted that maybe botrk wasn't the best first item. Through no direct efforts of riot, Lucian rose to pick/ban.

Truely Fabulous1 votes

I totally see where you're coming from, but after Bard came out, I saw a Bard player in almost every game I played for a month straight. While Bard may not have been strictly OP, I'm beyond confident he brought in a small fortune for Riot. That's a really good point about Lucian, and I think that the player community does have a significant influence on how champs are dictated, but I just think the overall guiding premise of Riot is to make money

MTempty1 votes

{quoted}

I totally see where you're coming from, but after Bard came out, I saw a Bard player in almost every game I played for a month straight. While Bard may not have been strictly OP, I'm beyond confident he brought in a small fortune for Riot. That's a really good point about Lucian, and I think that the player community does have a significant influence on how champs are dictated, but I just think the overall guiding premise of Riot is to make money

I hope I don't come off as naive. Every company has a commitment to making money, both as an entity and as the people who make up that entity. As a game designer, you want your new champion to sell well because some of the money that is made off of the champ affects the bottom line of you and the people around you. I don't think its dishonest or unethical to release champions and market them. Thats standard ethical practice and should be encouraged. What I understood from your original post is that you suspect Riot of purposely making their new champions powerful to drive sales, a common and unsavory tactic found in F2p games. We've seen it before in plenty of games (War of Legends, Runescape, Honorbound, Planetside 2 to an extent, Battlefield 3, etc) and it leaves a sour taste in your mouth. I wanted to make it known that while I see that champions often end up being released in an overpowered state(Zyra, Diana, Aatrox, Vi, Jinx, even Zac), there are champions that aren't initially considered op (Velkoz, Syndra, Rengar, Lucian, ) and thus I think its just poor use of the pbe servers and ineffective attempts to curb that "op-ness". To their credit, Zyra got nerfed in a hotfix the very first week.

RoyaiChaos2 votes

No, this isn't true. What's true is release champions are often UP or OP. If they were just OP, this assumption might be true, but many champions are released UP as well.

Hollabakatchya1 votes

Totally agree. It's kind of a sad truth, but still a truth.

Lugg1 votes

I understand that, but it's ridiculous to release a champion that broken.

PiRoScOuT1 votes

I like how you say 5 patches or so, as a patch is 3-4 weeks inbetween

Truely Fabulous1 votes

Yeah, I've learned that you can't come to expect to much when it comes to timeframes in "balancing" champs. May as well put a longer timeframe than a smaller one.

Donagh131 votes

Yeah it totally makes sense to release super new champions that new people can only dream for playing while long term players get to bask in all of the the over powered glory even when you don't consider money.

LegitBacon661 votes

I mean it didnt happen with bard azir

MidEvilKnight3k1 votes

I don't think people understand how hard it can be to balance champions without testing them on the live servers. They do prefer to have new champions be on the strong side for the given reasons, but it's hardly an exact science.

Despite everyone's complaining about terrible balance, even the weakest champions are not much worse than the best champions. This became obvious to me when Urgot was on free week a long time ago. I tried him and found him decently strong. I didn't really like the play style so I didn't buy him, but I was wondering why everyone thought he was below useless. One buff later (to his shield) and now he is OP and deals tons of damage. The problem arises when the weak champions are weaker at everything, giving no reason to pick them.

Puri Puri Taric1 votes

meh rito also has so many fans they gotta be drowning in moneyz so meh dun get me wrong but teric still the same he was released 2009 and they didnt manage to poop out a rework yet ? its liek rly sed. they could have multiple rework teams but no teric ww and so on are just forgotten swag yolo gems outrageous.

Lxst1 votes

if you are ever complaining about "op" new champions then YOU HAVE OBVIOUSLY NOT LIVED THROUGH XIN ZHAO AND LE BLANC RELEASE

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