Is riot making their game "too easy"?... Let me explain.
In a conversation on another thread, someone bought up a point about a champion in one of the class updates, calling them "unnecessarily complex", and having low reward for the complexity.
Which got me thinking...
Why is having high complexity, low reward champions a bad thing? Players are under no obligation to extensively play the champion if the gameplay is not appealing to them (though i'd say you should play all champions to have at least a basic understanding of how they feel). So why is it that riot acts as if this breadth of complexity and rewards is a bad thing? Riot has openly stated that they want to make champions more rewarding, but I've really got to question if it would be a good thing for them to make ALL champions rewarding, both complex and simple.
Now, when I say "too easy", you've got to understand, that it's a PvP game, so "easy" is very relative. A Masters player will find most plat players "easy" to beat. Where a bronze player will find most plat players "hard" to beat. What i mean to say, is that riot is making it so that you can't choose to challenge yourself. Are they making it harder, for players to make the game harder? You can't pick a champion (without being labeled as a troll), which will make your Diamond level of skill, struggle against Silver players (probably exaggerated), and i can't stress this point enough, if you choose to do so.
If I want to play AP gnar, you can be damn sure that I'm going to struggle against the players which I'm normally going to do fine against at my relative MMR. Though, i'll also be labeled a troll and flamed, because i'm not playing the champion "optimally" or "correctly" (two concepts which i believe are fundamentally invalid but i digress). At which point, I've just got to wonder, why isn't there a champion which is as difficult for me to play as, in this example, AP gnar, but is legitimized by riot, by virtue of having extremely complex play styles which fit their design. Regardless of how the output might appear to the other players.
It's like a 2D graph of different depths and difficulties All playstyles fall somewhere onto it (some champions have more than 1)
........Low Reward
.............../
Simple <--|--> Complex
.............../
........High Reward
Reward: referring to not outright power relative to other champions, but something more akin to skill floor/ceiling. (mind you "reward" might be the wrong word to use, maybe "impact" or "influence" would be more applicable...)
Simple/Complex: being more a matter of the number of mutually exclusive and situational choices you can make, rather than the number of mechanics which the champion has in their kit.
Shouldn't you want a range of champions which exist throughout the full breadth of the graph, preferably fitting to as many of the "rock, paper, scissors" combinations as possible, of complexities and difficulty? Now idk how many total champions that would required to have one in all four quadrants of that graph, and filling each of the "rock, paper, scissors" combinations, maybe there are already more, maybe 144 (is that right?) is still short.
The only of these champions which i see being extremely under represented by riot's champion designs are the high complexity & low reward champions. They don't seem to mind too much, leaving simple champions low reward or high reward, or making complex champion high reward.
And i get where riot is coming from by avoiding, and removing, these champion. They feel that they wouldn't want to play the champion, because it would feel unfair, from their prospective, for them to need to invest much more thought for only equal, or even less, reward.
But, from a design prospective, i don't see how, in effect, telling players the difficult styles are invalid or less acceptable, to some greater degree, than the easier more rewarding play styles is better than creating for a wide range of all combinations. It seems like you're just cutting out a significant portion of the players who want that feeling of accomplishment for having overcome greater obstacles.
TL;DR "Easier" by making it harder, for players to make the game harder (legitimately). Why create more of something which the game already has in spades, instead of allowing for a large range of choice for players? which are not obligatory for those who don't enjoy such gameplay. Can one just assume that making **ALL **champions rewarding, across all complexities, is better, from a design prospective, than having range of payoffs, across all complexities?