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Is this whole season just an experiment in change?

D rok·4/7/2016, 11:13:03 PM·221 votes·8,802 views

I mean this in a very real way. It seems like Riot has entered their lab and locked the door behind them.

There seem to be a lot more things entering this game that inherently favour the choosing of a specific champion over decision making as ANY champion. Champion select in general has never felt more impactful. And I mean that in a really frustrating way. This isn't about winning or losing games. It's about Riot seeming to have a disconnect with their own philosophy.

Their philosophy this year has been to create clear champion strengths and weaknesses so that you have a REASON to pick a champion. But in my experience this year, virtually every reason I have had to pick a champion is because it is inherently overpowered in relation to whatever else is available. I can honestly say I have never had LESS concern for my team's overall strategy before in champion select. It's all about grabbing the most OP champions right now. And has been since preseason. This seems like a serious failure.

To provide an example and to remain topical, a lot of these new mage update items will bring a plethora of balancing issues, the same way the new masteries have. You're giving specific and situational passives/actives/items to a large subset of champions. And they have to end up being balanced around the champion who derives the greatest benefit from them. But we're already in a meta that seems to be totally out of control in terms of balancing. So is Riot just trying to push out a crap-ton of content this year, so they can try to sort it all out next year?

Is this whole season just an experiment? Has Riot got any intention of finding a reasonable balance state this year? Or is it about transforming their game for season 7? Because the more I see, the more I feel like a guinea pig in some sort of extended PBE experience.

Thoughts?

140 Comments

Tokogawaruf4/7/2016, 11:15:52 PM73 votes

I hope this sick experiment comes to an end soon. The Patch notes fix problems at the wrong end, dont fix some problems at all (Graves ) or just create more for no reason. This is crushing my game experience lately a lot.

Hopeslayer4/7/2016, 11:53:24 PM68 votes

It's called the Ghostcrawler effect.

WoW died because of it, league is next.

Weasel Kensei4/8/2016, 3:55:10 AM33 votes

Honestly, I think this season is about a balance team that has some very strong bias and they have enough of them that feel a certain way, and are using their position to make the game have what they like be king.

Season 6 has so far had a major AD bias, with all AD comps actually working too. Mages had a wholesale itemization cost increase nearly, AP was removed from a couple of items too item 3025 item 3078 item 3057 as examples. There were fewer AP items in the game, most were made more expensive. True much of the AD items were made more expensive too, but their build paths were altered to make them built more steadily. Less holding on to big chunks of gold to save up for item components. Mage items are getting that now, but also having a massive overhaul in how the items work.

Now we actually have items that give mana for getting hurt.... the last thing you would want on a mage, but this balance team has shown they kinda like assassins, so AP assassins will be fine with it. IDK, maybeGragas TahmKench got together to design the new AP "get mana from getting hurt" items.

I really think we have a balance team that only likes marksmen and assassins. The poke, poke, poke, all in burst of mages isnt very flashy either, its hardly LCS big play material. So maybe that has something to do with it.

I just have no faith in their design/balance with all the 60% win rate champs weve had so far. These boards begged them not to let the Xin buffs go through, then they did and he shot up to 60% win rate... Kog buffs, 60% win rate. Maybe Im wrong, maybe theyre geniuses... though the performance so far hasnt reflected it, but in my opinion, this may be a disaster from the balance team.

redniwediS4/7/2016, 11:25:29 PM24 votes

Every season is a constant experiment. This season just has more drastic changes than most.

I am Pacman4/7/2016, 11:37:03 PM24 votes

Yeah, I've noticed this trend as well. Pre-Season changes are always a mess but this year it felt like they changed more than they have in the past. Add on the Marksmen update and the upcoming mage update and there is way more shit changing in such a short span of time than ever before.

I feel like the masteries are finally balanced, the marksmen for the most part are where they should be now and the marksmen item changes are also in a good spot now.

I sort of agree with the OP picks. I tend to play what I have lots of fun with so I usually don't pick op things. (I picked up ekko due to the tank ekko trend and have been having so much fun with him. I prefer to build him ap assassin but if it doesn't work as well as tank then I'm going to go tank in ranked. Normals I go whatever.)

I still feel like you can climb with anything as long as you are good and have enough game knowledge (honeslty people are so predictable, junglers too)

The new mage items are going to cause a plethora of problems across the board and riot simply will not be able to properly tune them until they hit live servers due to low sample sizes and human ingenuity to exploit.

I am against adding more active items in the game, especially ones that give movement (looking at you hextech cannon or whatever its called).

Item actives have either been generally incosequential like the gunblade active (its a slow sure but you almost never take it in to account when planning a fight) or they are game defining like zhyonas or qss.

If the enemy has zh or qss then you NEED to play around it. Its something that everyone can build to outplay you and thus you always take it in to account when planning a fight. Adding mobility to active items when a large magority of the games damage comes from skillshots means everyone gets an extra dash.

Im a little off topic but tldr for the items is generally speaking if you give everyone the same buff then the weak become mediocre and the already strong become way to op.

Right now I would say the game is decent in terms of balance, sure tank items on assasins are still a thing (ekko my boy you gonna get your ratios buffed and tankyness nerfed), and towers are weak (yay the riot post said they looking in to it) but its not kogmaw, yi, xin release state broken.

Don't get me wrong, I really hope after the mage update dust settles (riot fix it in one month after release tops pls) then we are going to be smooth sailing till the end of the season.

Just my two cents.

Earl Eulrich4/7/2016, 11:56:25 PM19 votes

i honestly have no faith that they will fix it next year...they don´t really seem to be aware what they already broke and what´s dirly in need of fixing in the first place. Maybe when they notice that a siginficant amount of players will stop paying for RP due to how lackluster the gameplay has become...

Cryo004/8/2016, 2:10:30 AM14 votes

To be fair, in my opinion the marksmen changes worked out pretty well. AD vs AP changes on the other hand....

Privileged Jew4/7/2016, 11:20:09 PM11 votes

Rito has adopted the ways of Kha'Zix.

Khazix Change... is good...

Pikmints4/8/2016, 12:16:02 PM10 votes

We've only been telling Riot since the season began that death timers need to be shorter and turrets need to be stronger, and only now they are finally addressing that issue. The marksmen got access to more crit and lifesteal at no real cost, the end of last season gave juggernauts/tanks purchasable mobility + steraks which has only recently been nerfed, while mages will have less mana regen + less AP at the benefit of some fancy utility and a little CDR (which won't mean as much with less mana regen).

Marksmen now will need to be burst down by a mage's combo mid-late game otherwise they will use their exclusively purchasable sustain to be full health by the time your abilities are back up again. Let's not also forget the fact that abilities can miss where auto attacks won't, so mages' damage is less reliable, less potent, and whittling people down is a less viable option because of AD champs' sustain, on top of the class' inherent benefits of being able to take objectives quicker and not having their damage tied to cooldown windows as well.

So my hopes at this point are that the rework team doesn't redo what they did with the juggernaut update/marksmen update and leave there being a few elite reworks, a few underpowered reworks, and have them flip-flop from patch to patch for multiple patches. Let's hope that the item balance doesn't become as drawn out as the nerfs to Deadman's Plate + Steraks + Sated Devourer were. If any masteries get added along with the mage update, let's hope it's not a repeat of the 10 Thunderlord meta. Let's also hope that with this update no champ can build full tank and still have enough damage/utility to be able to take on multiple champs at once unless significantly fed.

I gotta do my placement matches at some point this season, but the game is all over the place this season so I might not have any windows of 'good enough' balance to play them in.

Zirzon4/8/2016, 1:05:39 AM9 votes

They used to say they wanted to closely monitor and avoid overt mobility and power creep. However, it seems that this season that kinda got thrown out the window.

General damage creep is what has bothered me the most. I think it has something to do with the new masteries, and possibly the gold/itemization changes, but damage seems to be higher than ever before, on every class of champion. It makes the game feel much more punishing and snowball-y, at least from what I can tell.

t0ad54/8/2016, 3:57:59 AM9 votes

Lost me with screwing over Mordekaiser. Certainly(t) have only been continously disappointed since.

GhastlyGhoulMan4/8/2016, 5:53:36 AM9 votes

I feel like Riot's efforts at making everyone unique and powerful in their niche will just eventually lead to power creep, and everyone will be super.

http://orig01.deviantart.net/38aa/f/2013/140/9/7/cliff_by_fragmented_shadows-d65zl0q.gif

Strabane4/8/2016, 5:49:01 AM8 votes

It really feels like they are throwing more and more into the game without actually sitting down and balancing it. Riots motto in the boardroom must be "More is better". If they actually sat down and rifled through what was wrong with the game, cemented that and they slowly add content then things can be done.

Problem is the game has become so popular that they feel they constantly need to bring out more content to appease the masses instead of looking at what they had. Riot needs to understand that they have already established themselves in the gaming world and that new content isn't exactly what's needed. Remaking characters that need it should be higher on the list; at least higher than developing new characters. When an old character is re-done I already feel like it's a brand new character, and it appeases the part of me that really wanted the new content.

I can only assume the balance team is yelling "SLOW.THE.FUCK.DOWN" when the developers are just running around with all these ideas. It also feels like the departments within Riot are so out of touch with eachother. Balance teams making changes to champs when items are what needs to be balanced. New items being developed to fill holes in champs that actually just need small re-designs; causing new said items to break other champs that were in a decent balance spot, and the circle continues.

CarameI Frappe4/8/2016, 9:31:35 AM8 votes

In Ranked, it's no longer about strategy man. People don't even really pick to counter either- they just go for the most OP champions. Tell me how many times you wished you banned Shyvana MasterYi Soraka Malphite Graves Nautilus because most likely, someone's going to pick one of these and ruin your day. There's other broken champs too, but the 6 I listed comes to my mind without having to try. Makes me not want to bother but I like going Support for my friends in Ranked. Really wish Riot cared about balance over profit.

EDIT: Also nearly everyone builds item 3512 now. Enjoy trying to eliminate 2-3 from all sides.

jQuery4/8/2016, 9:56:13 AM8 votes

I realy need the next season to be a "Zen" or "Cool off and Balance" Season.

I seriously cant caught up with all the changes. I track everything but I dont play enough games to adapt my gameplay to them.

Rozzeta4/8/2016, 4:46:36 AM8 votes

It would not be that much of an issue if their philosophy on game design wasn't so shifty. I still remember back when Xypherous commented on how the game could not get rid of wards, and now he actively defended their removal. Whatever is the set in stone ideal now, might be considered the bane of the game in less than 6 months.

Rakvir4/8/2016, 8:10:55 AM7 votes

I don't know about anyone else but I'm still pretty pissy about the passive buffs minions get while you're ahead.

Yes, theoretically, minions pushing harder into you means safer to farm but in reality, you can't clear them quickly enough to avoid significant turret damage and it allows the enemy to dive you MUCH more effectively.

Everything else on top of that is just insulting, be they champion buffs, itemization being re-worked, etc.

Rockm Sockm4/8/2016, 2:56:07 AM3 votes

Riot stated numerous tims once the items are in place...they will balance the champios kits around them.

That was the whole point of te new assassin item.