Cause of the issues with balance: discussion welcome!

Hey there! Thinking of something: most of the balance problems people are complaining these days ( and the one from the recent past more or less fixed) are coming in my opinion from the length of games, intentionally reduced ( consider this the TLDR of the following wall of text).

Tanks are feeling so weak before they fall off too much, too fast, and the few that are strong are felt stronger then their fellows because they have higher base damage/forms of damage scaling with defenses. Tank's damage used to fall off anyway and then their strength became measured on how well they could actually absorb damage and be relevant in a teamfight.. but now for the time we reach the point in which the damage falls off a tank is no longer that good at taking hits either, so the lowest damage tanks never reach a point in which they are stronger then their higher damage counterparts.

ADCs are feeling overpowered because they reach their late-game power curve way faster then before, thus: 1- the window to effectively shut down enemy ADC is way shorter. 2- Since your own ADC is going to reach his peak way faster then before the most effective tactic available is often to feed him some early kills and that's all that it takes to abilitate him in taking down everything in his path.

Supports are felt overbearing as a consequence: while sup items HAVE to be cheap given the nature of the role if you happen to complete your defensive items when your ADC already has a shitload of damage your defensive capabilities towards him feel frustrating to deal with as the enemy team not only is getting shredded by the ADC but can't even organize effectively a tactic to rapidly eliminate him from the fight/force him to reposition to avoid death as he will simply tank what is thrown at him while having his own lifesteal busted by the shields/heals/damage reduction you offer.

Assassins have a very limited window of time in which they can do their job, even with a flawless execution: the damage that can be avoided by the ADC (scaling with his own damage via lifesteal) is simply too much to allow them to semi-reliably kill him, especially when the ADC has enough damage and attack speed to effectively make use of his lifesteal in the time the assassin has to dance around his imposed time-frame to complete the combo.

Mages got their AP reduced overall so they can reach full build sooner, at the price of being less effective then before late-game. The reason being a general mage gameplay was waveclearing non-stop waiting to hit their power spike, thus making the game longer ( and I think accordingly to the rioter that stated so less fun ). Being less of a damage threat ( with some exception ) late game the best use of their kit becomes keeping their own ADC alive, again contributing with the perceived excessive ADC strength.. and late game comes sooner then it used to, so the issue is perceived sooner.

Power curve related to specific classes instead of single champions have been introduced to keep the game from becoming potentially stagnant ( and thus too long). The reason is I think pretty logical: if you happen to have more or less even teams, and one of them is running a late game tank while the other is running an "early game ADC" (I think no ADC is REALLY early game oriented, but undeniably some scale better then others in late, who in turn have the capabilities of bullying their opponent a lot ) the likely result past a certain game point would be to have the "late tank" survive to the damage of the "early adc" for too long, stalling the game in fights when no one dies but everyone has to back or 1/2 players get traded and everyone has to back regardless, prolonging the game until one side makes a crucial mistake the other side can exploit into pushing to victory. BUT, looking at champions kit is enough to realize most of them were projected with an individual specific power curve in mind , and not to be adapted by a "class power curve", which leads to champions that posses the individual power curve more similar to the one intended for the class being stronger that the rest of their class (generally speaking, there are exception due to item balance/counter of meta champs exc...) .

This creates a balance mess, which the balance teams is desperately trying to fix via buffs/nerfs/changes to items and numeric champions value, only to create a new issue the next patch, because they are not hitting the core problem (and it's not that they don't want to, they CAN'T if the direction they have to follow is to keep games from becoming too long).

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT? Simply looking at balance suggestions in this scenario gives me headache for how big this mess is. Shortening the game is in direct contrast with the basis the whole game has been created and balanced on until now. So, if we keep this trend the developers will have sooner or later to apply a major game mechanics rework (like crit itemization, defensives formulae, functioning of targeted attacks exc.. not suggesting any of this in particular, but I mean they will have to put hand in some game pillar), or to rebalance every single champion in the game (and not only through numbers.. ) so they will fit the power curve intended for their class ( of course this would likely lead to a " who I pick? the one who does X job better " situation, even more then before )

The other thing would be ( obviously ) to return on our steps and don't force game length anymore, with the predictable return of 50 min games where one single teamfight looses you the game with long respawn timer. While some players would love to have long games back, others do not and, even if some of them still complain about the too hard snowball, are happy with the general idea of having shorter games.

Honestly I can't see how the situation can be happily resolved and the only think I can think about is this: make the games long again in summoner rift and implement another game mode, where people who desire shorter games can find their fun. It can be a completely new one, or a Twisted Treeline revamp, but properly balanced with the same attention of the SR and directed to have the same amount of competition then our old one. It can both be 3 vs 3, 4 vs 4 (the "no support" dream some people have ) or 5 vs 5 ( but with game and map mechanics that will lead the game to be shorter then SR). Completely different item shop, so items can be fully balanced around it, and even different runes reforged could be considered. Of course this would be very expensive for the company and will carry the risk of having the playerbase split, with increased SR queue times. But, since the goal of an expanding company should still be to acquire new customers, the investment could be coupled with a rework of the game tutorial system and the public game art with the intent of attracting new players to the game, and a "multiple accounts on same e-mail" with rewards attached to make payers want to link their accounts. Why this? Simply: tutorial and general publicity of the game serves to attract new players, game mode with shorter games will not "make them run" once they started and "more accounts on the same e-mail" will make it so if you flame the new playerbase on a smurf your main account gets punished too: less flame in lower levels, more people will try the game and decide to stay instead of quitting at level 3 after they get flamed like crazy for being 0-30 in a game against 5 smurfs enemy team. So, hopefully, more people buying content (the hextech system already does a pretty good job introducing you to the "with skin" game, making buying one a more neutral thing for people who are not accostumed to buy stuff in free 2 play games). Then all the e-sportive competitive manifestation could be made even on the new mode, to make it a consistent source of gain too. Buyable content with minimal realization cost can be added too to increase even more the company profit, like allowing to purchase the various versions of the map skins already realized. If a huge cost is to be made to make the game balanced again and more enjoyable I wouldn't mid too much a little increase of rp cost, or of content cost in rp.

I'd like to know what do you guys think about my point of view ( of only one thing or everything ), and if you think I'm saying a bunch of bullshits feel free to let me know so we can discuss it!

PS: I know there are people who judge other's opinion about the state of the game based on their ranks: don't bother looking, I'm a noob silver 5. Being bad at something in practice doesn't necessarily mean being bad at it even in theory. I am by no mean pretending to be right and having a good analysis but if you think I am wrong I'd like to know why, if I'm missing some game aspect I'm more then happy to catch up on it! Also my English is not good I know but I tried my best to express myself, if you have corrections to make or don't understand some point due to my bad writing I'm happy to be corrected!