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How to deal with champion communities. (Comparison of two Rioters assigned for reworks.)

Craft Zeppelin··2 votes·429 views

It has been at total year since Leblanc was effectively "disabled" from the game. The resulting rework brought out Leblanc into a broken 53% winrate. With nigh unmatched waveclear, roaming capabilities, and early bully power.Then she got gutted into oblivion, and the noise and hype just died down after Riot claimed "They currently have no solution to fix it". I still remember the community's outrage, and the lack of communication from Riot's part that brung confusion. A confusion of "why are they even reworking this champion and turning it into something more messy".

RicklessAbandon, the rioter who made this situation, is doing this ill formed method of being in charge of a rework yet again. He is now in charge of the Ahri changes on the PBE, and he seems to be not "interested" in what the community holds in concern, nor the problems the champion faces. Although he claims to be open to opinions, he works very secluded. And communication seems void. His Ahri rework on the PBE is currently on "version 4", and looking at the Ahri mains reddit, they are saying "It looks like some "Ryze rework" with slapped on CD's and mana refunds (Ironically the same response as the Leblanc rework he was assigned ). NOBODY seems content with it, and are just confused with the results, and why are they subjected to a rework.

Now look at Azubk, the person in charge of the current Leblanc rework. He made strong declarations of WHAT is the direction of said rework and the end-goal. He communicates with the community about their concerns, and explains what he can accept and he cannot. And openly says that he is open to opinions and would like to integrate them to this plan.

These two seem very different in their direction and project quality. And I prefer the latter. I know that different directors have different approaches towards their project, but as a large company, I think that quality must be maintained.

7 Comments

Z3Sleeper2 votes

Rickless just operates differently. When he tells people what he's doing, it's not so people can criticize it, he's literally just updating us.

He makes these changes, tests them, makes more changes, tests them, etc. until he finds something he settles on and thinks is the best.

Some designers just can't operate off feedback during development since it impedes their mental process (too focused on feedback to continue constructing new concepts).

I'm not pretending I know Rickless and this is all speculation, but have you ever had a friend tell you "it's better if you do it this way" and you acknowledge it but then instead of simply using their idea you come up with something else that you think is even better? I think this is basically that.

Most of these concepts he's testing wouldn't even be testing if he had impeded his process to cater to what the community is telling him. Whether he settles on any of the concepts he creates or something based on feedback is entirely up to what he thinks is best based on what he has tested.

This doesn't just apply to Rickless either, this applies to Riot as a whole. How often have they directly utilized balance suggestions from the community? Hardly ever right?

I don't think it's a good thing or a bad thing, I think it's just one of the many ways to approach game design/balance.

Ace12431 votes

to be honest i think that zoe was completely fine before she was gutted (even as an adc main), people just got butt hurt and salty. I believe that they should revert katarina because kat was a champion that you needed a ton of game knowledge on, and i love those kind of champs. As of right now kat is too snowbally rn and you dont even need a brain for her either :/

The Headbutter1 votes

Two problems with Zoe: 1.) Her bubble needs to have around a 20 second cooldown if it is going to be that incredible of a CC + damage buff. 2.) When Zoe uses her ultimate we need the opportunity to CC her in place, instead of her always going back to where she starts no matter what.

These two changes would still give her one shot potential windows, but would allow people windows of retaliation and fighting back. It's not the one shots that people hate the most(at least in my opinion.. I'm okay with assassins being... well.. assassins.), it's how often they can be trapped by those fucking bubbles every 6 seconds for 4 seconds each. You literally cant charge at her to assassinate her or you're bubbled and dead. Ridiculous.

Ace12431 votes

to be fair, the bubble is very thin (when she initally throws it) and easy to dodge. Riot has even changed the way qss and the bubble interacts.

The Headbutter1 votes

The problem is they assign some assclown who doesn't even play the champion, or at least play the champion well, to completely fuck over her whole kit. LeBlanc's rework was a disgrace, I quit the game last season because of it and I haven't put any time into the new one until just recently. I've actually been doing decent with her so far, but the old one is 100x better and more fun to play.

Rework LeBlanc: dash around and pray you land chains, then ult and send more chains, then gunblade and kill. Pretty pathetic playstyle, similar to that of Lux and now the infamous Zoe.

Old LeBlanc: ability to get in and drop high burst damage onto a single target and (hopefully) get out before being CC'd and thwacked. You either won or lost the fight by picking off that champ or getting caught in the process. High risk, high reward. Now that's fucking fun to me and there was definitely a high skill ceiling on playing her well. Sure anyone could land a combo, but in the high pressure situations an average LeBlanc was near useless.

Stop trying to get some bum to make changes to LeBlanc and just go ahead and change her back to what she was before this mongoloid got his hands on her kit. Thanks.

IP Masquerena1 votes

I would rather have someone like Rickless develop stuff than AzuBK, simply because of his statement on LeBlanc "It's too hard to press 2 buttons".

Rickless tests and ajusts, AzuBK sets a goal and doesn't move from it. How many people asked Azu to keep the R that is on Live, and we got what? Nothing. From what it's shown, he doesn't even consider it, at least Rickless tests multiple variants.

Why is LeBlanc getting a full rework when many high skill players, and on the LB thread, even the #1 LB in EU said that the current LB is more skill intensive than the old one? Because during the in-house testing, Riot took only the Old LB mains, who are too lazy to do anything that's not instagib enemies.

So yes, I would rather have someone who asks himself why x might be better than y and do lots of testing around both concepts but doesn't tell us much, compared to someone who walks us step by step but doesn't care about why x might be better than y and only has 1 idea set.

I barely played old LB because how trash she felt for me, she wasn't fun. I won lane because I instagib the enemy? That felt boring. I lost lane because I can't instagib the enemy? That was even boring and there was no inbetween. Even Riot themselves stated that and how her kit is toxic.

At least now if I win lane as her I know that it's because i out played the enemy, and I won many lanes simply because of the way her R is on live. Her old R wouldn't had given the win unless it could 1 shot the enemy, but then again, where's the fun in that? Yes, some people like one shotting things, but then there are others who like to have some skill involved.

And spare me the "you needed to know who to instagib and when to go in", as that's not something that applies only to LB, but to all assassins and divers.

And yes, I am pissed. I hate the old LB with a passion, even winning lane against her felt boring, and losing lane against her felt even more boring, but the current version feels so much better, both as her and against her. So when she gets the revert, I'm shelving her. I'll also send a support ticket and hope for a refund on her skin.

ExcessiveProtest1 votes

I'm actually alright with Rickless' work so far on Ahri. Yes, the iterations are all over the place, with three experimental versions and one (dropped) final version so far. Yes, he has no idea where all this is going. That doesn't mean he isn't listening in this case; Ahri mains are split 50/50 on any subject at best, and much of the general League population dislike every previous Ahri playstyle for entirely different reasons. So instead of picking a direction that pisses off most players, he's spitballing ideas to see what elements would be least disagreeable in the final product. If anything, he's communicating better than most, since most reworks pick an idea from the start and balance it. It would be easier to track if he posted here instead of sending direct responses on twitter, but so far he's been decent about following feedback.

The extra dashes were dropped because she's not supposed to be Ryze or Akali, cooldown reset for ulting into enemies was dropped because she's not supposed to dive straight in and stay there. Cooldown refund for general Ulting will likely return once the mana experiment is done to help with late game Charm-Bot issues. The current W is a first attempt to integrate requests for more reliable W targeting, more W counterplay, and people repeatedly suggesting making W an autoattack enhancer or linking it to Charm. The whole thing was pulled from the last cycle because players insisted on W and possibly passive changes. If he were saying "This is going in the final version, trust me it's better", it would be classic Rito, but making multiple experimental changes and letting players play with each of them seems more like an open version of the internal testing they do before releasing Beta versions.

On another note, as strange as it seems, the mana passive addresses an issue that developed midway through: with the shortened cooldowns from the Ult changes, she tends to run out of mana mid-fight easily late-game, with no possible way to sustain combat, but in laning phase mana conservation is supposed to be a weakness. The passive actually makes more sense than it seems; it restores more mana if you hit more Champions, which means it's a small reward for skirmishing in lane, but significantly improves extended fights lategame if you get close enough, allowing for repeatedly hitting more durable targets instead of diving the ADC and hoping for the best.

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