I dont understand why Riot balances around pro play at all.

Terozu·Apr 18, 2018·83 votes·18,433 views

They're supposed to be pros who can do well in any meta. Why is the game being balanced around them period? Higher ranks make perfect sense, but not pro level.

105 Comments

DuskDaUmbreonApr 18, 201824 votes

Because if something gets broken in pro play, they have to nerf it.

Note that they don't often buff around pro-play. They primarily nerf around it.

AhristocatsApr 18, 20182 votes

this isn't really true

the poppy changes on pbe intend to buff her in pro while leaving her the same in soloq

DuskDaUmbreonApr 19, 20188 votes

I did say didn't do it often, not that they never did it at all.

Although, when they do buff around pro-play, it tends to be buffs that should only affect pro-play, by increasing their skill ceiling. Such as, like you said, with Poppy.

SolitairApr 19, 20182 votes

{quoted}

Because if something gets broken in pro play, they have to nerf it.

Note that they don't often buff around pro-play. They primarily nerf around it.

Kai GuyApr 18, 20189 votes

They attack outliers in highest or lowest ELO even if its ok or weak in a majority of games. Leauges balance is not built around everything at 50% regardless of skill or champions and frankly any one who feels it should be really needs to consider that's just not a realistic expectation for mobas.

SuperLuigiLXIVApr 18, 20185 votes

Battlerite manages it.

SlythionApr 18, 20189 votes

I haven't played Battlerite (alrhough I've been planning to), but I'm 95% certain you are choosing to ignore certain aspects or differences between Battlerite and League in order to compare them in that way

Kai GuyApr 18, 20182 votes

Your correct. Its not balanced around 50%, There are still tiers in battlerite and Skill floor and cealings still exist.

That said, I recommend it GET IT TRY IT HAVE FUN! I want to support devs that make good games. Personally I'm in the camp that we should not call battlerite a MOBA. Feel like the devs try to avoid this as well, as it is not listed as a moba on the official site nor on its steam page, the devs first game also avoided using the term MOBA.

Yes, its an technically a arena battle game but mechanically its not the same as dota,hots,lol,hone. WASD movement yo.

Its a pure skill game, its rewarding to get good, and its a pretty quick match time and require a lot less macro to master. All about champion mechanics. I am glad very glad Superluigi brought it up as I keep neglecting to recommend it to folks.

But no, not all builds (called battlerites, Think of them as a mix of Talents in HOTS and runes in LOL) are equal on all champions and not all champions are equal between equally skilled players.

I advice yall to go check out Biscuits vid if your curious or on the fence.

Edit. If luigis point is that personal skill can compensate more for champion kit then in lol, ok that's a fair point but the gameplays so vastly different its a unfair comparison, and I very much feel that Stunlock does not build their balance around the principle all champions need to be on a 50% scale and I feel its an unrealistic expectation to set even in Battlerite.

SuperLuigiLXIVApr 19, 20181 votes

Actually, my point is that in a recent pro-level Battlerite tournament, every single champion made an appearance.

Whether or not League and Battlerite are two different designs, they're both MOBAs and one of them can get 100% champion participation at high levels, without being unbalanced at lower tiers beyond a very few "pubstomp" characters on the very lowest end of the scale. Hint: it's not League.

My overall point was that it is most certainly NOT an unrealistic expectation. Nothing that's been successfully done can truly be considered unrealistic.

Now, do I expect RIOT to do it? Not in the slightest.

Kai GuyApr 19, 20182 votes

As I state I don't think Battlerite should be called a moba. Its not an inaccurate anagram for the gameplay but to many people are going to associate it with the same gameplay as LOL, DOTA, HOTS. Its nothing like any of these games, its entirely awesome in its own way that you don't get in LOL, Dota, etc etc. Also, pretty shure the Developers themselves are trying to get it not labled as a moba.

Your comparing 27 champions to 140 and your not surprised to find out the game with less champions has better champion participation in tourneys?

Again the gameplay is so vastly different is just not realistic to expect riot to balance the same way, and league balance is much more complex, again 140 champions to 27.

0 items, 0 lanes, 0 minions, 0 pve, also 0 champion Experience or level ups, for Stunlock to deal with remember < Riot still balances for all of that,
Of the 27 champions, how many share ability's in similar/identical function, realistically how many ability's at this point are just recolors or very minor adjustments in function?

Look Just set realistic expectations for your comparisons, Look at each game on how its built to decide how that game is balanced don't take them and smash them into a box only only one or the other will fit.

SuperLuigiLXIVApr 19, 20181 votes

I don't expect the games to play the same. I simply expect Riot to be as dedicated to balance as Stunlock. If Battlerite put in far fewer systems to consider than League did to make balance easier, then fine. Their job is easier, sure, but you know what? They're still doing their job. Riot's got the harder job, but it's still their job to do, and they keep willingly making it harder. I don't care how hard the job is. If it's impossible, maybe they need to start taking measures to make it easier. I don't know. But they have a job, they ought to be doing that job.

Also, if you don't want Battlerite and League to be labeled the same thing, I'd like to point out that MOBA fits Battlerite more than League, as it literally describes 100% of BR's gameplay, as opposed to only a portion of LoL's.

Kai GuyApr 20, 20181 votes

I don't think I have a good enough understanding of what you consider balance to look like to properly reply to you yet. So I'm gonna seek some clarity from you on that.

Its not that riots job is impossible its that they fundamentally have their own goals to meet and need to accomplish different things. I really feel this should be pretty self evident if you take a brief moment to consider the differences between the two games, really, BR is just not a good example to compare with any of the bigger Mobas, I really don't think its unfair for me to claim this, please just consider the gameplay differences.

I mentioned it before but I don't disagree that BR fits into Massive Online Battle Arena very well. That being said nothing in that's really exclusive to any part of league of legends gameplay however, all of it is still related to battleing in the map.

My issue is theres an oversaturation of crappy mobas out there that turned off enough folks as well as 3 fairly popular ones that control a dominant portion of the market and that people are going to discredit BR as some f2p mobaclone with out ever looking at it or giving it a shot. I say this because that's literally what I did when a friend told me about BR, I was over it soon as he said it was a moba I needed to play. Its gameplay is great, I enjoy it a lot I missed out on a free game. I want to support the Devs, I want to encourage folks to try it out. Hence I don't call it a moba when I know that will set an expectation for gameplay that's not represented in BR.

SuperLuigiLXIVApr 20, 20181 votes

I am aware that Riot's not actually interested in true balance.

My point was not that they were going for it. My point was that they could if they wanted.

They ought to be going for it, of course. That should be their goal. In fact, that's what disappoints me most about the company: not that they don't do it, but that they don't want to.

Kai GuyApr 20, 20181 votes

Still want a definition from ya on what you view as true balance in relation to a moba. Theres a lot of definitions of True balance I have heard that I personaly just don't agree with. 50% rates on everything's one for example, all champions being on the same curve of power regardless of kit difficulty is another I don't like.

I'm in the perfect imbalance camp myself, Explained very well by some bloke here.

SuperLuigiLXIVApr 20, 20181 votes

True balance would be if every single champion was viable enough to see use at all but the lowest levels of play. From, let's say gold, all the way up to pro play, if any champion is either not picked, or gets a laugh when they ARE picked, the game is not balanced enough. And cheese comps don't count. Simple.

Course, that's only in theory. In reality, pro players will always do what is safest and most reliable, even if a risky champion is viable to use, because it's not a game to them, it's a job, and they have to put out the best results. That means not playing risky and possibly being the reason your team loses.

But the bottom line stands. There should be a reason to play, as an example, Wukong over J4 or Yi over Xin Zhao, even for pros.

Kai GuyApr 21, 20181 votes

Correct me if I am wrong, but it sounds like for you true balance only works in one direction. Why cant we have champions viable in low elo that do not work in pro play?

You say that True balance should be riots Goal, You say they could move in that direction and should. First question How would they move in that direction? list a few steps that need to happen to accomplish this. Next question, why is this better? its a simple question but give it some though and properly reply to this. Because balance just is better because balance is better that's obvious. This is a bad answer, show some thought and really express why balance is superior, again to my understanding here your claiming all champions need to be viable for pro games. "But the bottom line stands.... even for pros." What benefit is there making the game like this? Why is this superior? How does it enrich the gameplay experience for the rest of the playerbase?

Why exactly do you feel pro play represents the rest of the game accurately for balance? Note that a majority of the game users experience is nothing like a pro match. Why is bronze and silver, the vast majority of all games being played and players in this game, discounted as being relevant to the games state of balance?

Lets say we get to a point on paper the games balanced satisfactorily for upper MMR with out gutting Skill expression. Do we call it a "true balanced" game even when a majority of players will never experience it at in a balanced state?

Or if the requirement is that we nerf skill expression for a more global balance, does the game truly become better by removing skill factor and/or adding it to kits as needed?

Why do we consider balance for the game to be individual champion kit A vs individual champion kit B, both options are available to all players. If option B's strength is in reliability and ease of use why exactly should it be as rewarding as the riskier higher skill requirements behind option A?

Is it truly necessary for us to Gate every champion behind the same power curves?

End of the day what I want from Riot is a state of the game where every one playing it regardless of MMR has options available to them they can pick up and play successfully in a reasonable amount of time. If your game knowledge and mechanics a simpler champion is more attractive for you, we need to have theses options in the game for folks, that should be a reason for them to exist and get picked but that reason does not exist in pro play. As you grow more complex options become viable and superior. I like that, so I don't want to ever sacrifice skill expression for better balance far as champion to champion comparison goes. I feel it Is less rewarding for every player in that situation as their improvements in skill do not relate to a rapid of a growth in success.

DeathBurstApr 19, 20181 votes

A good way to sum it up is this: LoL is balanced around everything at 50% in High Plat, unless it creates problems somewhere else. It's not perfect, the reality is a bit more complicated, but that's a good summary.

Jon 678910Apr 19, 20182 votes

That isn't true though, if it were you wouldn't see champs hovering at or around 45% across multiple patches. They do balance around pro play, to the point that many of the champs are garbage in solo queue.

FakeGravityApr 18, 20187 votes

i think the balance around high level of play isn't the issue, the problem is when champions on both ends of the spectrum are unable to perform well, have amumu ever been a problem in pro play? impossible to buff since low elo cant handle him, have azir been good in solo queue? cant be fix since pro play abuse him. riot been having a very hard time trying to put this two cases in balance while also keeping the meta from stalling, but like the phrase say, if you chase two rabbits you will lose them both.

they should let the meta at pro play stall a bit, make champions that are having a hard time overall perform well enough and if necessary ban them from pro play then once a big majority of champions can be consider playable make sure each have its unique place in the game so there is a reason to pick them, oh their team pick azir i guess i will pick lux and still do well, but if i pick lux and they pick zed then i'm screw, yet if they pick zed i can pick kayle and so on...and make all those choices be completely viable without being op

VerxintApr 18, 20187 votes

I wouldn't have any problem with it if it actually meant pro play had diverse picks and strategies.

LauchmelderApr 19, 20186 votes

They answered this question a while ago.

Simply put they don't give a shit about their actual players.

IIRC They said there are 5 groups:

players who play the game and don't watch esports
players who play the game and occasionally watch esports
players who play the game and frequently watch esports
players who play the game and religiously watch esports
people who don't play the game but watch their esports

Because Riot wants to push the idea of LoL being a 'viewer sport' they want to make proplay fun to watch by balancing around them. And the groups are clearly 1:4 here.

RyzeTheSmurfMageApr 20, 20182 votes

Yeah but most players are in the first group. And most of the rest in the second one, the ones Who watch it but don't really care.

ZtokaApr 18, 20185 votes

It would make pro play a bit more interesting if they had to play on our current patch.. Maybe they would actually have to adapt and make changes on the fly. Why would you want to give pros a challenge though, or force them into any sort of last minute adjustment.. Imo, that is where the true skill lies. How fast can you adapt to a new champ/strat/counter? The way things are now, pros have way too much time to practice safe play junk and it is boring..

LCS is pretty unimpressive/boring to watch. I think it has a bit to do w/ the way riot tries to cater to them, but while catering to them, they exclude a lot of fans. I'd much rather watch pros play in the current patch so I could be like oh that is a neat idea etc. The way it stands, it's more like, ya, that was broken last patch.. Oh wait, they still get to abuse the last patch.. I know they don't play on the most recent patch because Riot seems unable to actually roll out a patch w/o major issues or things being super broken. Maybe riot should invest in people who actually have a clue how to balance things..

TonyTonyMordecaiApr 19, 20181 votes

I wish they played on the current patch too. I agree with the point of being able to think on the fly, because if they are supposed to be the top 1% of the playerbase, they should be able to theory craft while just reading the patch notes, or practice runs before they have to go on stage, or whatever.

SpecterVonBarenApr 19, 20182 votes

The reason they don't play on our current patch is so gamebreaking bugs don't turn up in an LCS match.

ZtokaApr 19, 20182 votes

Maybe if riot pulled their head out of their arses and released good patches w/o game breaking bugs, it wouldn't be an issue. Maybe this should give them something to strive for.. You know, patches that don't totally destroy things and lead to many more things being nerfed..

SpecterVonBarenApr 19, 20181 votes

You're asking for an impossibility, you can't find everything that could go wrong with changes you make every time. It doesn't matter what game company it is, from the most high paid with a staff of 100 to the indie game makers that make a game with only one person doing all the work, every game has bugs and problems when it releases and it's not humanly possible to catch all of them every time.

ZtokaApr 19, 20181 votes

True, but this game, for whatever reason, seems to be continually plagued w/ balance issues, champ issues, item issues, rune issues etc every patch. It isn't like other games where you release numerous patches and have one or two that cause some serious issues. Even many of those instances, the issues are quickly fixed. Here in league, issues are discovered and they go about fixing them in the most ass backward way one could think of.

SpecterVonBarenApr 19, 20181 votes

Relative to what?

SulranaApr 19, 20182 votes

If you watch pro player streams most of them don't even read the patch notes when they come out. they wait until they have to play on it.

Most of the "great" players have fallen from the top recently because they don't adapt well to changes.

I always wished that they had pro players play multiple lanes and only declare the roster just before games.

LeetriApr 19, 20182 votes

"Make changes on the fly" boils down to playing it safe with something you know cause you can't risk play something you haven't practiced yet.

ZtokaApr 19, 20182 votes

I don't watch the lcs often but the times I have, I don't see risk play. They play safe no matter what it seems, which also makes things quite boring..

Risen29Apr 19, 20183 votes

In my observations; one of Riot's problems with balance is that they don't have a single standard they adhere to. They try to have their cake and eat it to by making the game more balanced for bronze/silver, but also plat/diamond, and also LCS. You can't do it all at once.

Dota does balance for pro play, but for the longest time that was all they balanced around. They didn't care if Riki was terrorizing new or low skill players with permastealth. He was never in pro play because he's easy to counter with some game knowledge and teamwork. They didn't care if omniknight was crushing winrates in soloque, because he never saw pro play when his ultimate is so easily countered by one item purchase. They didn't care that people cried about techies ruining their games (the Teemo of Dota), because it was a nonfactor in pro play.

This gave the game a sense of consistency and logic behind what they were doing. Pro play represented the very best of teamwork and individual skill, the way the game was meant to be played, so the only proper way to truly balance was to look at what the best were doing. You cannot truly balance a game around low skill players. All you're doing is giving them a crutch for their low level of player, instead of calling them to improve and raise their game up to unlock the full potential of a hero.

They also were able to freely take an approach of pick and counterpick towards their balancing. There was never an expectation that every champion would have the same pick and winrates evenly across the board. Trying to balance that way is folly, doomed to failure. Especially across so many skill levels. A particular hero may rarely get played, but it was considered not in need of tweaks because it was still viable in certain circumstances, team comps, or matchups. LoL doesn't work that way, because people don't have access to the entire roster. They get attached to a few characters and expect them to be playable in every game with at least a guaranteed 50% winrate, and they cry foul if that's not the case. It's not a very good foundation from which to balance a game around. It forces you to make all the heroes too similar in order to meet that 50% winrate goal with average playrate. You aren't able to make niche designs. You are forced to hammer down heroes that stand out too much.

All this makes for boring pro play. That's why Dota2 was always riveting to watch for me, but I can't be bothered to watch LCS.

TèrminusApr 19, 20183 votes

[deleted]

TerozuApr 19, 20184 votes

Dude. Calm down.

SquishieApr 19, 20182 votes

you want them to balance the game around us? garbage ? what do we know?

you want to make everything easier? lower the skill ceiling and boost the skill floor ? More champions like janna and akali? No thank you.

TerozuApr 19, 20181 votes

No i said it should be balanced purely around ranked not pro.

Starcraft243verApr 19, 20182 votes

But the game is meant to be played with a highly coordinated team knowing each other perfectly and well trainned strategies. Not putting 10 people who do not know each other.

SuperLuigiLXIVApr 19, 20181 votes

Then why do highly coordinated teams that have trained for team comps and meta strats make up less than 1% of 1% of the playerbase?

Seems to me that if that's how Riot wants the game to be, they have failed miserably and need to consider either remaking their game or changing their target audience.

Starcraft243verApr 19, 20182 votes

Hum, because it takes a lot of work and investment to manage to have 4 friends showing up everytime you want to train ?

When children play basket 3v4 in a garden, they still call it basketball and they still have fun. Yet if someone stated that the rules for basketball were : playing 4v3 in a garden with a non plane court and a tree in the middle of the court, people would think this game suxx.

When you play (european) football with your child or friends in a park using two bags to represent the goals, you still call it football and enjoy it. Yet if someone stated that the rules for football were playing with 50cm^3 bags to represent the goals you would call him crazy.

So when 100 000 000 players plays something that is nearly lol, they still enjoy it and they call it lol. Even tough they are not really playing LoL.

SuperLuigiLXIVApr 19, 20181 votes

Poor analogy.

Basketball as a sport is organized at multiple levels, and there are coordinated teams at every level. Pick up games exist, but are in the minority compared to actual team games (or practice by team members) where the players can be removed from the game if they're not skilled enough to contribute.

You want to compare League to a sport, it has to be a sport where the vast majority of the sport is played casually, not by coordinated teams for a specific goal. Otherwise, it's not a reasonable comparison.

Even setting all that aside, you're talking in terms of basketball minorities compared to League majorities. If I said basketball courts had to have a tree in the middle, yeah, I would be crazy. But if literally 99.99% of all basketball players played in courts with trees in the center, guess what? That wouldn't be an outlier, it would be the rule.

Starcraft243verApr 20, 20181 votes

But if literally 99.99% of all basketball players played in courts with trees in the center, guess what? That wouldn't be an outlier, it would be the rule.

I think you greatly underestimate the numbers of football games played casually on non regular courts or non regular rules. I see it everyday as I walk by parks and I used to do it every weekends with my friends, and we would meet other kids doing the same, and we never had a regular 11 vs 11 with a referee.

Also the fact, when 5v5 was a thing in LoL, that you could find a game in less than 1 minut show this game mod is much more popular than "muh 99.99% never 5v5".

SuperLuigiLXIVApr 20, 20181 votes

I am aware that every sport is played casually, frequently.

But even at the school I went to as a child, there are basketball teams for every student from 4th up to 12th, for both boys and girls (divided into sections, of course, I don't literally meant 9 different teams). Same goes for baseball teams.

Do not for a single instant act like League comes anywhere close to the same ratio of organized vs disorganized.

KarunamonApr 19, 20182 votes

Oh, so that's why solo has so much more traffic than flex.

Jon 678910Apr 19, 20181 votes

If the game was meant to be played around a highly coordinated team, solo/duo would not be the primary ranked option. Balancing flex and clash around this principle is fine, but pretending that solo queue players should be as coordinated with a bunch of randoms as pro players are with their teams is just stupid.

TEA Nietzsche Apr 19, 20182 votes

They're supposed to be pros who can do well in any meta.

They can and they do, obviously. It's just bullshit to expect them to play or ban Azir for several years in a row (and Kalista etc.).

If anything I can't understand why Riot balances around low elo, the champions are clearly not too strong, people are just too bad. Why complain if you could use that energy and get better?

RyzeTheSmurfMageApr 20, 20181 votes

One of the problems in low elo is that there are tons of smurfs there. That makes for people placed there very hard to climb. Also bad teams, you can't carry a 0/8 botlane in this ADC auto spamming meta.

TEA Nietzsche Apr 20, 20181 votes

{quoted}

One of the problems in low elo is that there are tons of smurfs there. That makes for people placed there very hard to climb. Also bad teams, you can't carry a 0/8 botlane in this ADC auto spamming meta.

Bad players and smurfs cancel each other out if you are neither then you will climb because you have 4 people in your team who could be a smurf/bad while the enemy team has 5. The more bad players are in your elo, the better for you which cancels the negative impact of smurfs. Just be better than the average of your elo and you will climb no problem.

Tzuyu Is My BiasApr 20, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name=TEA Traumate,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=TkqfBanE,comment-id=001b00000000,timestamp=2018-04-20T12:09:28.981+0000) Just be better than the average of your elo and you will climb no problem.

This is what the earlier response was referring to. The amount of smurfs just increase the average of that elo and while the smurfs do get out of there, there are just more smurfs there again keeping the average high. Then the worse players will never get out because they will keep facing smurfs and never get better than the average, unless they get really lucky.

TEA Nietzsche Apr 20, 20181 votes

{quoted}

This is what the earlier response was referring to. The amount of smurfs just increase the average of that elo and while the smurfs do get out of there, there are just more smurfs there again keeping the average high. Then the worse players will never get out because they will keep facing smurfs and never get better than the average, unless they get really lucky.

There is a very simple reason why smurfs do not have that much of an impact: the amount of people in low elo is vastly higher than the amount of people in high elo. Even if every high elo player would be smurfing that wouldn't have such a big impact on low elo. I also don't understand how playing against smurf would stop anyone from being better.