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Serious Talk: People need to chill out about the Balance Team

ShadowParker·10/26/2017, 7:02:01 PM·284 votes·21,008 views

The fact that one of the posts at the top of the boards is that riot's balancing team needs to be changed is just sad.

Did they overbuff Galio? Yes. They've also given their thoughts on why they went through with it and to be honest, I can understand their mentality.

I HATE that despite how many wins the balance team achieves, they're still told they're shit at their job.

The balance team is great, and has done a fantastic job of trying to balance this game and flesh it out.

And before someone whips out the ardent censor fiasco, ardent censor was buffed in 7.2 and wasn't changed for a long time before it became "op".

To everyone reading this thread that disagrees, grow up already. If you want change, you don't bitch and whine. You have a goddamn civil conversation with actual reasoning.

Edit: Just a sidenote, but I think it's super interesting how split this thread is. It wasn't downvoted into oblivion because so many people are combating it by upvoting it.

417 Comments

ZT Xperimentor10/26/2017, 7:16:11 PM103 votes

"I HATE that despite how many wins the balance team achieves, they're still told they're shit at their job." Some champions were left in the gutter because their kits were too toxic to let get a foothold, other items were left sub-par because some champions would benefit way too much from it, ext. Yet they make such drastic changes anyway, only to post a few patches later about how the result was unexpected. I agree nobody wants to be berated for their employment, but somethings should require common sense &/or forethought. The pbe used to be for balance checking, but for recent years they just use it for skin advertising.

SkyblazeHydraX310/26/2017, 7:13:13 PM64 votes

Posts like the ones you mention are why Rioters practically give up on communicating and interacting on the Gameplay boards.

Posts like the one you made are why they haven't given up entirely.

Malicious Metal10/26/2017, 8:44:42 PM51 votes

Gameplay boards need to be heavily changed if we ever want Riot to dare coming on here and discuss the game with us.

This board brings out the worst of our community and is usually just hatemongering or salty posts.

The first step would be splitting gameplay into three categories: Design (Is X champion/item doing stuff he's supposed to, does X champion need a rework, etc.) Live game (What issues do we currently face in the game) Q'n'A, Guides (How do I play X champion/against X champion)

Lanson10/26/2017, 8:54:39 PM42 votes

Riot circle jerk thread. The balance team was ass this season, it is painfully obvious.

Infernape10/26/2017, 7:18:36 PM36 votes

To be fair though, I can understand where some people's frustrations with the balance team comes from. Riot has made a lot of questionable balance changes within in the last few months. Like Ardent's "nerf" that actually still kept its strength, Janna's "nerf" that made her win rate skyrocket, not addressing or even acknowledging balance problems through the entire season (AKA Twitch), Maokai, Sejuani and Zac's update, overtuning Cho etc.

This isn't to say that they haven't done good things.

Blåbæret10/26/2017, 9:19:21 PM26 votes

{quoted}

The fact that one of the posts at the top of the boards is that riot's balancing team needs to be changed is just sad.

Did they overbuff Galio? Yes. They've also given their thoughts on why they went through with it and to be honest, I can understand their mentality.

I HATE that despite how many wins the balance team achieves, they're still told they're shit at their job.

The balance team is great, and has done a fantastic job of trying to balance this game and flesh it out.

And before someone whips out the ardent censor fiasco, ardent censor was buffed in 7.2 and wasn't changed for a long time before it became "op".

To everyone reading this thread that disagrees, grow up already. If you want change, you don't bitch and whine. You have a goddamn civil conversation with actual reasoning.

The game is a mess. So no.

Downvoted your post and moving on.

kargish10/26/2017, 7:44:45 PM26 votes

Seasonal fiaskos from the balance team

Janna Twitch Rengar Galio Chogath Shaco item 3087+item 3094 item 3504

As much as I understand that balancing 140 champions is extremely difficult, these 8 cases totally broke the game and some of them haven't even been fixed yet. Like how they allowed ardent so run rampant for so long, and how AP Galio was allowed to go the checkups and get released.

Tacosrock10/26/2017, 10:09:03 PM23 votes

I would agree with you, but seeing that Season 7 was an absolute disaster in terms of balancing the game should not be overlooked. It starts off with Camille and later Ivern being broken for patches on end, lethality overbuffed, the tank update (Zac and Sej broken), consistently buffing ADCs and their items while ignoring the need for diversity in the mid lane through new AP items, Cho'Gath buffed time and time again to force him into the meta as a bursty tank (why tho?),Ardent censor broken for multiple patches, and now buffing Galio's AP ratios through the roof for, honestly, no logical reason, should not reprieve them of criticism.

If anything, I hope this criticism forces them to understand more about how the game works and what they should do in testing to make sure that things are not seriously overpowered before releasing them; this season, they were so naive... I mean seriously... what a blunder of a season! Either way, I'm looking forward to them learning from these mistakes to make Season 8 much more enjoyable than the previous.

Falcon Of Death10/26/2017, 9:28:58 PM20 votes

they've literally been nonstop fucking up for the past 3 years; ever since ghostcrawler came in. I've played the game since fucking BETA. AND I'm Master Tier. This game has become so disgustingly shit from balancing. They managed to make 90% of the roster broken and the remaining 10% troll picks. Picks win games now, not skill or game knowledge.

xelaker10/26/2017, 9:44:41 PM18 votes

{quoted}

The fact that one of the posts at the top of the boards is that riot's balancing team needs to be changed is just sad.

Did they overbuff Galio? Yes. They've also given their thoughts on why they went through with it and to be honest, I can understand their mentality.

I HATE that despite how many wins the balance team achieves, they're still told they're shit at their job.

The balance team is great, and has done a fantastic job of trying to balance this game and flesh it out.

And before someone whips out the ardent censor fiasco, ardent censor was buffed in 7.2 and wasn't changed for a long time before it became "op".

To everyone reading this thread that disagrees, grow up already. If you want change, you don't bitch and whine. You have a goddamn civil conversation with actual reasoning.

psst in a grown up world if you perform your job like butt, you get fired...

not that the balance team should get fired, but they have a loooooong track record of bad ideas and big mistakes at this point. people have a right to be grumpy.

Penns10/26/2017, 7:22:41 PM17 votes

I understand their mentality, I dont understand how they cant spot it in their playtesting lul

also revert fizz imo :]

jjcool9910/26/2017, 8:40:14 PM14 votes

reinforcing bad behavior of the balance team says it ok not to test stuff before shipping busted stuff to live. someone does need to be removed from balance team and retrained before being allowed to continue. lets be honest they have done a lot of silly things lately and every other company would have 100% have fired any employee for it by now. people would act a little different if they actually hot fixed it like they should have or fixed ardent instead of letting it define 3 months of game play and worlds.

Teridax6810/26/2017, 8:27:03 PM12 votes

Agree 100%. Yes, Galio's balancing is really off. Yes, there have been similarly large and seemingly obvious balance issues in the past. For sure, the balance team does likely deserve some criticism for how some issues aren't anticipated well enough, or allowed to persist for too long. None of this, however, provides any justification for calling any member of Riot to be fired. Everyone makes mistakes, and seeing how League is a) an incredibly complex game that is b) on the verge of one of the biggest balance upsets in its history, yet is c) still largely functional, I'd say the balance team is doing a pretty damn good job. It is always easier to criticize than it is to do anything, and while it may be understandable for players to be frustrated at the game's current state of affairs, instinctively lashing out at other people is not the way to bring about anything constructive.

Speaking of constructive, as several other players have mentioned, posts calling for Rioters to be fired are exactly the kind of shit that pushes them away from the Boards. When I was on the Warden team, I met a member of Riot who took it upon herself to personally convince Rioters to post on the Boards, simply because of how much they did not feel like going on here. When I asked her what the major problem was, she told me it was the toxic atmosphere and the baseless personal attacks against the developers. Calls to fire Rioters and similar bullshit are a prime reason why Gameplay is still not the healthy communication space between players and Riot that we've hoped for, and the users making those posts are simply making things worse for themselves and for others.

While at this point it's already too late, I really think the "balance team needs to be changed" thread needs to be removed, as with any other thread like it. As long as it stays up, it conveys the message to everyone that it's okay to personally attack members of Riot, and thereby drive them away from Gameplay, and will continue to spawn more terrible threads like it. No matter how good the actual content in the OP is, that is something that can be posted in a thread with a less inflammatory title.

gottrjr10/26/2017, 11:39:19 PM10 votes

{quoted}

The fact that one of the posts at the top of the boards is that riot's balancing team needs to be changed is just sad.

Did they overbuff Galio? Yes. They've also given their thoughts on why they went through with it and to be honest, I can understand their mentality.

I HATE that despite how many wins the balance team achieves, they're still told they're shit at their job.

The balance team is great, and has done a fantastic job of trying to balance this game and flesh it out.

And before someone whips out the ardent censor fiasco, ardent censor was buffed in 7.2 and wasn't changed for a long time before it became "op".

To everyone reading this thread that disagrees, grow up already. If you want change, you don't bitch and whine. You have a goddamn civil conversation with actual reasoning.

I mean, if you are good at your job you should make few mistakes. They have internal testing, they have pbe testing, they have common sense, yet, galio, and many other ie ardent, mistakes keep happening. If these level of mistakes kept happening at my agency then they would be relieved of a job. You grow up. Realized that continually making giant mistakes it not acceptable.

THE RlVER KlNG10/26/2017, 11:58:17 PM10 votes

the balance team has utterly and completely failed on multiple fronts the last two seasons

they deserve to be criticized and called out and at this point should admit that theyve fucked up and need to get better at their jobs. this season has been a perpetual nightmare and season 6 was no better.

virtue signaling by praising them in an attempt to get a response (since riot rarely if ever responds to a thread that calls them out but will always respond to threads that praise them) is shameful

warpenguin55510/26/2017, 7:21:13 PM10 votes

They do a good job, yeah. But they take way too long to fix game changing problems. Zac and ardent are 2 of the most recent examples

Cosnirak10/27/2017, 12:25:05 AM10 votes

I saw a whopping 1 thread saying anything as mean as that they should be fired. A couple stray posts perhaps inside other threads, but fairly rare, and not upvote fests. Mostly I've seen a bunch of threads going "holy hell how did this go live?!" and I think that's absolutely deserved. One thread calling for firing doesn't warrant a whole other thread telling people to chill about it.

I knew the Galio changes weren't ok by just reading them. I saw it first hand clear as day on the first game I saw it in action, and I was the one playing it. It felt extremely unfair and overpowered by mid game. Every game I've seen Galio since then has shown it to be disgustingly obviously broken.

The real key here is that even if the changes lowered Galio's win rate, they would have not been ok because they create unhealthy gameplay. The initial change feels more like a bug than an intentional change. How little playtesting had to happen for that to go live? They knew it was a big increase in damage, they knew there was already a lot of concern from players and tales of it being ridiculous, and yet it still not only went live but such concerns were met with what felt like shrugged shoulders. I saw several Rioters comment on it and no one seemed concerned or even cautious. And then to top it all off... it took them too long to fix it.

I would be less shocked and annoyed at a seemingly small change that ended up having a big effect. At least then there'd be justification for the ramifications being missed in testing. But this was big, obvious, clearly in need of more than a couple games of testing and so I assume it got more than that, yet somehow went live.

Durzaka10/27/2017, 2:28:06 AM7 votes

{quoted} Did they overbuff Galio? Yes. They've also given their thoughts on why they went through with it and to be honest, I can understand their mentality.

Why they did it is irrelevant to the discussion.

No one is complaining because he got buffed.

People are complaining because what made it to live should have been changed in the first day of PBE at worst.

He is triple overtuned. His Max% damage is THREE TIMES what a reasonable number would be. The scaling on it puts every other max hp scaling in the game to absolute shame.

So THAT is a straight up failure and it means people didnt do their job at all. Know what happens sometimes when people dont do their job? They get fired. Obviously, that is an overaction, but saying that balance team fucked up is absolutely correct this time.

NoxianShrooms10/27/2017, 12:21:35 AM5 votes

Care to list these "Wins?" then compare them to the string of unacceptable failures they've allowed in the exact same patch?

When the bad outdoes the good, changes need to be made.

junglerboy1610/27/2017, 2:03:04 PM4 votes

That's how life is. If you do your job well, nobody notices because that is what's expected of you. If you do your job poorly, people notice that it was sub-par.

There are enough talented people in the world doing quality work in every field that there is now a baseline expectation for performance within your job beyond "You do well most of the time"

It's not necessarily justified or fair the amount of flak that the balance team receives, but in our modern consumerist western culture, people in general think that if it isn't perfect, the person is replaceable and the job can be done better.

Balance team is definitely under-appreciated and I'm not saying that it's fair to demand that others take their positions, I'm just saying it is an aspect of modern society that it is extremely unusual to actually receive praise for doing what's expected of you. You should be praised for doing well, and equally called out on your shortcomings (productive criticism though), but don't expect a free gold star for doing your job right. That would be nice, but at the moment that's not how the world works.