Dear Riot, please stop making game decisions based on Esports

DoubleParadoxify·10/25/2018, 2:39:34 AM·3 votes·851 views

Dear Riot,

One would think, with 67 MILLION active monthly players, that the organization who created that game would make changes to the game based on them. It would be realistic for them to look at how the game was being played where the bulk of the players were, and make changes there. INSTEAD, its almost comical how much Riot makes changes due to Esports. The select few players, most likely less than 1% of your player base, have the power to change the game for everyone. While some champions like Kai'Sa, Irelia, Aatrox, and Urgot get a lot off nerf and debuff attention due to Esports, others like Zoe, Teemo, Yi, Warwick, Soraka, etc. etc. etc. are completely forgotten. Unless a champion is played in Esports, or if they are just ultra insane, Riot cares. If they are not played in Esports, then Riot forgets they exist. Buffs and de-buffs to certain Esports champions may seem INSANELY stupid to bronze, silver, and gold elo's and make champions completely overpowered or underpowered, but in pro play, it might help just a tiny tiny little bit.

No thank you because you will still never change how you run your company, DoubleParadoxify

4 Comments

Ætheist10/25/2018, 2:46:19 AM3 votes

The bulk of players are in Silver.

If you balanced around Silver, it would result in a near complete abandonment of high-level ranked play and by extension pro play because the "meta" at high levels would be an absolute disaster.

AirKingNeo10/25/2018, 2:51:58 AM2 votes

They don't balance around pro. Balancing around pro means nothing is kept OP for 6 months.

They don't balance. Simple point.

Rewt10/25/2018, 4:15:58 AM2 votes

Couple points on this. I do agree that some changes are pretty dumb, and the fact they basically ignore state of balance in lower elo is kind of dumb.

But i dont agree with fully balancing around the average player.

They should balance the game around High Elo and comp first. Then they should go back and work on Low elo. While this will hurt the pool of playable champs in high elo, it is the best for both worlds.

Ill take some examples from history to break this down.

Rek'Sai was released. Straight busted in all elos. Then she was nerfed hard. Became shit in Gold and below. Underpowered but playable in Plat+, But was god tier in pro play. Then she was nerfed again. Now she was useless in Ladder period. But still god tier in pro play. They eventually nerfed her Q down to a .1 AD scaling and she was no longer oppressive in pro play. Keeping OP shit off the field in Pro play is first priority.

Fiora was reworked. Strong but "fair" in plat+, Complete and utter monster in Gold and below. They gave her a nerf that made her a low second tier - High 3rd tier top laner in Plat+, but reined in her power in Gold and below, but high elo players and people in lower elos who wanted free wins bitched and moaned about the nerfs and it was reverted back to being a monster in low elo.

How this last one should have gone. Nerfed fiora. She was no longer OP in any elo. Move on to the next champ and ignore the bitching and moaning.

haaaaaaalp10/25/2018, 8:13:57 AM1 votes

Two main problems

  1. they don't actually make decisions for pro play. They use pro play as an excuse when things go wrong due to their own incompetence.

  2. there are far too many players watching pro play to just ignore it. Only reason riot cares about pro play is because such a large portion of the community does.