Balance is not simple...give Riot a break

UNCLE RICO SUAVE·Dec 21, 2015·6 votes·481 views

Everytime I visit these boards there are so many posts flaming riot for champion balance. I get it, things are not perfect and never will be. With the massive champion base keeping everything perfectly balanced just isn't going to happen. Overall I think they do a pretty good job all things considered, and they are definitely engaged with the community to get feedback and iterate on champion balance. Everyone should remember, perfect is the enemy of good. If nothing ever got released unless is was perfect, this game would have died a long time ago (I've been playing since s2). So all you people out there who like to just complain, take a moment to appreciate what the riot team has accomplished over the last few years as it really is remarkable.

7 Comments

HangsterrDec 21, 20152 votes

You're going to get downvotes if you keep making those kids cry LOL

Hayaishi2Dec 21, 20152 votes

It can be pretty simple.

Make guidelines that every champion should follow to be considered balanced.

Champion doesn't follow said guidelines? Nerf him/change him until he does.

Champion can't be fixed with nerfs/buffs? Rework.

Very Hard EngageDec 21, 20151 votes

balance is simple, too strong? take a small little something away. went overboard with the take away? give a little bit back.

riot just doesn't have the staff (despite making millions in sales). to try and change lots of little things at once, they "focus" on a handful every patch when in reality everyones current kit is largely ok, and could just be tweaked until true balance is achieved, but they dont do enough experimentation.

Deep Terror NamiDec 21, 20152 votes

You have considered exactly 1 variable in your assertion lol.

That's not how it works at all. Touching one thing can affect many others, and there is no definitive gauge of "power" something has. Do you think win rate is the defining factor in a champion's strength or something? Pick % of an item/mastery/champion? There are many, many factors to consider.

AustinodoodDec 21, 20151 votes

Here's the thing though man. With each balance change, it sets off a "ripple effect" causing another champion to become stronger/weaker/more favorable/less favorable. This includes jungle changes, gold changes, mastery changes, ANY change in gameplay. This is why it's so hard to balance, because as one person is getting balanced, another slowly becomes stronger, or weaker. Now imagine trying to balance 120 champions at the same time. It's impossible.

Very Hard EngageDec 21, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Here's the thing though man. With each balance change, it sets off a "ripple effect" causing another champion to become stronger/weaker/more favorable/less favorable. This includes jungle changes, gold changes, mastery changes, ANY change in gameplay. This is why it's so hard to balance, because as one person is getting balanced, another slowly becomes stronger, or weaker. Now imagine trying to balance 120 champions at the same time. It's impossible.

not trying, or believing that your intetional effect will have the opposite effect is the reason why this game cant be balanced, not trying is like saying "gg just surrender at 20, we gave first blood away, why bother"

you HAVE to try, at least. that is what PBE is for, you can see what will happen before hand, before it goes live, there is zero reason not to test.

the truth of the matter is, people dont ever want change, they're scared the game might change, or their freelo OP champ wont be so good anymore. or they might actually have to learn how to deal with a surprise Yorick in their game.

UNCLE RICO SUAVEDec 22, 20151 votes

As a manager of a devops team at a fairly large development shop (150ish devs not including qa/sdets), I can say that scaling large applications where small changes could have significant ripple effect is highly dependant on automated regression testing; however I'm not sure how that works in the game development world as opposed to a traditional application. I do know riot was an early adopter of ci and the devops culture, i would be interested to learn more about how you can automate regression testing for a game like league