Design Philosophy/Opinion: We need Polymorphs.
Hey, I'm SuperJavelin. I'm about to attempt the dangerous act of typing some opinions about League while being silver. So as not to waste your time, I'll list some facts about me up front that may invalidate (to some people) anything and everything I have to say. That way they can get off the bus early without being consumed with indignation and/or righteous fury. If you want to skip my little bio, go down to where it says ACTUAL THING. If you already hate my guts, close the tab I guess? It will probably get worse.
For all intents and purposes, it's fair to say I don't currently play League. I've never played 100 ranked games in a season, never ended a season higher or lower than silver, and this season I have only played ~20 games, ranked or otherwise.
My favorite champions to play over the course of Leagues history have been Anivia, Malzahar, Old Swain, MF, Jhin, and New Yorick. Essentially, some combination of: Strong point & click, Waveclear, Lane bully, or Splitpusher. Ex: The main reason I like Jhin is his unavoidable fourth auto execute. My least favorite part of Jhin is his ult.
I enjoy killing minions to get free gold and XP. I enjoy damaging enemy structures to get closer to the enemy nexus. I love moments in game where nothing important is happening on my screen and I get to stare at my minimap. I dislike interacting with enemy champions, which has a possible bad outcome and makes me stop paying attention to my map.
The only rush of emotion I get out of winning a super close and down to the wire teamfight is relief. It feels sloppy; if the fight was that close, then taking it was just an objectively bad decision. The best I've ever felt playing League were in two different premade 5 games: First, when I successfully coordinated a suffocating 1-3-1 with my friends to close a game out without teamfighting, and second, when I convinced my friends to sit in front of Baron and do nothing for like a full minute to force the enemy to choose between losing their base to supers or giving us an uncontestable Baron. They tried to prevent both and we won the game without teamfighting.
I hope that gives you a good idea of where I'm coming from.
ACTUAL THING
Ok, so for the small amount of League I've played I've tried to think about the game in a way analogous to card games, which are the other main strategy game type that I have played. For example, it makes sense to me that professional League is different from solo queue in the same way that it makes sense to me that a constructed format is different from a limited (or draft) format in a card game. In pro/constructed, one wants the most unfair synergies between options, and all options are available. In soloQ/limited, one wants the most consistent and reliable standalone options out of a random set outside your control.
Opinion #1: Unconditional, unavoidable abilities that are as strong or stronger than some conditional avoidable abilities are League's version of hard removal in card games.
Opinion #2: Like hard removal, these abilities are necessary as checks if League is to have fun, wild, and crazy champions.
Opinion #3: Starting off by assuming these heavily pushed and unanswerable abilities as a sort of immutable core around which the rest of the game is built and balanced is a fine way to construct a balanced and enjoyable game.
Fact #1: Those were my opinions, not facts. There are many ways to build and maintain an enjoyable competitive game.
Time and again in League, I've seen nerfs to reliability. I've seen so many point and click abilities turned to skillshots, or be made conditional in some way. I've seen (IMO, obviously) boring, useless point & click champs reworked with higher variance kits. I've also seen (IMO) fun, useful point & click champs reworked with higher variance kits. If the champ was garbo, the reason was pretty obvious: "Champ's legit unplayable," we said. "Champ's archaic and needs to be brought up to speed or deleted." However, if the champion was useful: "X is UNHEALTHY for the game," we said. "There's no counterplay, no way to tweak the numbers, items, or other abilities such that the X isn't too strong."
I admit I'm not active in any MTG community, so I can't say for sure, but it would surprise me if any serious Magic player thought instant unconditional damage/removal, counterspells, or board wipes needed nerfs/bans for being too useful. It's not that Lightning Bolt is too universally good in any matchup, it's that the game is designed with the card in mind, so that assigning exactly 3 toughness to a creature really means something. You're giving it a specific weakness in that it now dies at instant speed to Bolt. The strategy of going wide is made risky if you are vs white. Going tall is risky vs black.
I have seen the vocal portion of the League community unanimously baying for Lulu's blood, among others like Malz or Syndra or Janna at one point or another, and the extent to which Riot appears to be if not listening, then at least independently on the same page for whatever reason - well, it makes me uneasy. All I can imagine is Polymorph inevitably being deleted, Annie losing her stun, Malz's ult reworked, etc.; all I can see is a world without hard removal where Timmy doesn't get any new cards because WotC can't print a giant awesome dragon if it has no reliable answer; where Johnny doesn't get any new cards because WotC can't print a 3-card infinity engine if there's no way to prevent it from being set up; where Riot can't release any crazy powerful champions that make you say "wait she does WHAT?", because they would take over any game if they had no check to their power.
I get that it's not fun losing your big dude to a Doom Blade. Or getting blown out by some Wrath effect after going wide. Or flashing in for a 5-man stun on Riven only to start hopping around as a cupcake and die outside your control. As a kind boy once said, "Legit no counterplay." But in my opinion, it's true. If you can juke or make the correct decision to get yourself out of LITERALLY any situation, that means the game doesn't have anything truly threatening or powerful. I think some things need to be overly strong and have 0 answer, and that the rest of the game be balanced around those things.
As all analogies do, obviously this one breaks down somewhere along the line from card game to MOBA, and I'm not certain where that point is. I'm not sure what an elegant solution to my perceived problem looks like, either. Maybe my vision of having strong "core" abilities cannot be implemented in an environment where abilities are tied to champion picks. Perhaps that's where the analogy breaks. Having a Lulu on your team is much more expensive and exclusive of other champion picks (1/5) than having 2 Flamestrikes in your deck (1/15) or 4 Harsh Rules (4/75).
Maybe my solution is to give each champion in the Enchanter class some reliable CC, a "form" of Polymorph, or give each (insert class) champion some ability on par with other "core" abilities expected in that class, not necessarily CC- in essence ensuring that any given game with a sensible combination of classes/roles will have a spread of strong unconditional abilities like Polymorph to look out for on each side. Perhaps I think strong unconditional abilities should be moved to item actives, to be more accessible (actually strike that, that's a bit too accessible).
Whatever the case, It's definitely my opinion that we can't continue to extract, without replacement, all the unfun "sit down" moments in League and expect anything of its future but wet noodle fights or dodgeball. And I can temper that a bit by admitting to some poor use of linear regression in that opinion (my bad). Obviously there's an optimum somewhere between the two extremes of, depending which camp you're in, (Pure Macro Utopia/strategy snoozefest) and (Pure Micro Utopia/literally dodgeball). All I'm saying is that I think that optimum lies a bit closer to the Macro side of the curve than where I think Riot thinks it lies.
Gotta eat our veggies, my dudes and dudettes. Anyone gettin' what I'm spittin'?
TL; DR
- I'm silver trash who gets off on safe macro play
- IMO Strong unconditional unavoidable abilities are important checks
- They are frustrating to get hit by
- IMO Rito kneecaps their design space by removing them
- Confused as to why they are being removed
- something something Children's Card Games
- Fail to offer solution to my own perceived issue
