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@Riot Why do you make abilities level up linearly?

Derptionary·2/15/2015, 4:42:52 AM·2 votes·818 views

It's something that has always confused me. I very much believe that the pendulum swings we constantly have between a champion going from overpowered to underpowered due to nerfs is due to your insistence on making every skill level scale the same as the previous one did.

The only reason I can think of is simplicity. It's pretty easy to just go "Okay this ability starts at 60 damage level 1, and gets a 20 damage increase on each level for a total of 140 damage at max rank." however this has been shown to create issues when balancing a champion. There have been many times where a champion was too daunting to deal with at a certain point in the game, they'd get nerfed... and then their winrate plummets into Olaf or Urgot territory. The majority of the time the problem isn't with the champion or the ability, It's that their damage/crowd control/etc was too high at that point in the game for anyone to be able to compete with, because instead of just taking 10 or 20 damage off of their ability at a certain rank, they lose that damage at ALL ranks. Making abilities not scale up in a straight line could fix the issues that many of the "OP" or "UP" champions face. Allowing non-linear scaling would give you a lot more control over taking away power from a champion only at the point in the game where they are a problem, while still allowing them to maintain their stature in the points of the game when they aren't overbearing.

Think of it like this... Champion A is fine where he/she is in the early game and late game... But has too much power in the mid game and ends up snowballing out of control before anyone else had a chance to react. Under the current school of thought you'd remove power from the champion at all points in the game, when they were only an issue at that one part of the game. This is what leads to so many champions crashing and burning so hard after getting nerfed, because instead of only removing power from them when they're a problem and then giving it back to them later on in the game when they aren't they get hurt across the board.

I'm by no means a professional league player or a master of balancing champions, but it seems like it'd be a much more successful route to take.

3 Comments

KidSpectre2/15/2015, 4:53:20 AM2 votes

The problem with scaling on a curve is made most obvious when people "Max" certain abilities first. The sooner they hit the high end of the curve, the sooner they hit they're powerspikes. If you make the curve too low in the beginning, they feel really gimped early; too high and suddenly they are hitting HUGE powerspikes once they max that first skill. You could try something like a bell curve, then people would put so many points into until it becomes more efficient to level another ability.

Evelynn's Q gains increased ratios as it ranks up, making it more of a curved progression depending on her items.

Derptionary2/15/2015, 9:03:15 PM1 votes

Really curious...