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@Riot @Everyone - Game Desgin Discussion : Is counterplay really that great of a design ?

Annoxis·4/10/2018, 6:35:06 PM·22 votes·11,111 views

The question in the title was put on my mind by the numerous treads that says the game isn't fun anymore and by discussion with my brother. If you want, you can read only the Bold parts of the texts, these are the most important ideas.

Counterplay and its necessity has been part of the design philosophy of Riot since quite a long time. The idea behind is that** you should work to play and master a champion**, and to be able to do what the champion is supposed to do. It does seem right at first glance. The first incentive of a player is to win. If it wasn't the case, there would be no meta. Of course, losing is frustrating, but losing with the feeling that you could never win in the first place is far worse. That is why you don't like being up against players far stronger than you, players that cheats, or unbalanced and/or unfair champions. It is easy to write rules against the formers, it is far harder to make sure everything is right with the latter. ** The notion of counterplay is the solution to that problem **

Counterplay comes at a cost, and that cost is fun. Champions are now harder to play than they once were, and most of the time, their actions have counterplay, which mean that you need to work a lot to potentially produce results. If we suppose that every players have equal mastery of their champ, it leaves four outcomes in every situations : you played well and your opponents didn't, your opponent played well and you failed, you were both successful or you both failed to do what you wanted. Statistically, that leaves only a favorable outcome in 1 situation on 4. Guess why some people complained that professionnal game where stale to watch. If every actions that I could possibly do only had 25 % of success, I wouldn't do a lot of things either. In 2 outcomes, nothing significant happened, and in the last outcome, you missplayed. You can't have fun when what you are putting efforts into take so much risk to be for nothing. Furthermore, snowball in League of Legens has two face :** a negative outcome** will affect negatively your ability to progress further towards victory and will affect positively the progression towards victory of your opponent. The stakes are always very high. It creates a lot of negative pressure.

**The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that ADCs (their ability to deal damage, Tanks (their ability to tanks) and Enchanters (their ability to protect their allies), are exempt from the counterplay rules in some way. **The skill of an ADC comes from its ability to survive, while dealing damage. The skill of an Enchanter (aside from traditionnal Support work) comes also from its ability to survive while protecting important allies, namely the ADC. The thing is, when a Enchanter is doing their job negates a part of the skill needed to be an ADC, and negates part the skill needed to be an Enchanter. On the other hand, Tanks are the cause of the reliability of ADC damage, because their defenses are too reliable, since they come mostly from bought stats. That is why Enchanters and Tanks are often seen as staples in a team, and ADCs mandatory.

Both of the situations explained in the two former paragraphs are the reason the game isn't fun. For opening the discussion, I will propose my solution. First, we must reduce the impact of a failure by making the ability to progress towards victory unaffected by a failure would be a first step, but quite drastic one. For example, making gold and xp income only tied to time would be one way, though maybe not the most desirable one. Also, making sure that Tanks need to work to be tanky, that Enchanters need to work to protect and that ADCs need to work to kill. Also, a complete rework of defensive stat would be needed. The ability of a Tank to take hits should solely decided by its own skill, not by items. The same would goes for others classes reliant on the ability to take hits, namely Fighters and Battlemages. In the same order of idea, a removal of Tenacity and Slow Resistance, followed by a global nerf to CC, with the ability to buy new items that would boost CC effectiveness, in multiple forms (either duration or effect, for example). The Idea is to have items only boosting the outputs of champions, while tying their survivability (through Range, Mobility and Tankyness) in their kit. Also, CDR would not be buyable, but given at regular interval during, to accelerate the speed of the game.

So, I invite you all now : please, share your thoughts. Let's debate.

40 Comments

Ahristocats4/10/2018, 8:05:54 PM31 votes

counterplay is a good idea

what isn't is some champions having a bypass to that philosophy and the only way to counter them is through macro game (twitch kog)

like, if melees were like that it would have been totally fine but then riot calls irelia stat checking when she had (old irelia) more counterplay than kog, twitch, singed, or any champion that you counter through macro game you could disengage during her W, apply persistent slows like singed W to avoid her passive reducing cc duration, you could not stand near low hp minions

but somehow, she was deemed stat checking when kog can legit press W and rightclick an entire team

??????????

point is, riot has to decide if countering through macro is ok or not they should not be "it's not fine for melees, but totally fine for ranged champions"

The Sword Saint4/10/2018, 8:25:13 PM5 votes

Counterplay is good. Teammates being able to cover for each other's weaknesses is good as well. 1 diving fighter or assassin should of course be at a disadvantage trying to defeat a team of two players who are covering each others weaknesses.

To go over your 4 possible outcomes statement,there are multiple ways to argue against it being an issue.

For example, the game is not played in a vacuum and all characters are not in fact equal in potential in power at all times in the game. It is because of this difference in champion potentials and matchups, as well as team compositions, that your '4 outcomes' aren't really split evenly to 25% each. Let's examine laning phase for this: one champion could have an edge in a 1v1 duel purely on stats due to spiking in power earlier or die to the matchup being favorable thus shifting all out possible outcomes more into their favor, one players jungler may favor ganking that lane and if not matched by the other jungler could tilt the direction of the lane, one champion may be a key part of a scaling team composition that will run your team over later on if you do not shut them down early - and this would shift the 2 'going even' possibilities to be more favorable to the scaling team,...

There's just a lot of stuff going on that shifts these variables around. To even be able to get a broad idea of what these outcomes and percentages actually mean in terms of an actual game you're playing in real time is a huge talent and skill cultivated over practice, research, and experience. Even in a mirror match players could pick different runes, items, and strategies that through all of these percentages and outcomes off.

Counterplay exists in part to keep all these estimations more interesting. Counterplay is what allows the game to be more than just two players click on each other and the one with more stats wins over and over, allowing mechanical skill in the game to be relevant. Without counterplay the game might as well just be chess or something similar. Such games exist and are good, but they aren't league.

princeblumpkin4/11/2018, 1:29:33 AM4 votes

The upside of having more counterplay is that you're allowed to have more potential as well. The Darius rework is the best example of this. Much higher potential, but lower overall reliability. Q is now a garbage spell if you can't land it. Your full damage isn't unlocked until you get 5 bleed stacks on someone. But once you do, oh boy.

On the contrary: Wukong. Among the lowest counterplay champs in the game, and thus his potential is severely limited. He's stuck being a stats check champion because he has very little way to outplay people and has no counterplay on his own damage. You can either absorb his burst and fight back, or you can't and you're zoned forever. That's why he's never allowed to be really good.

3411235456524/10/2018, 10:06:51 PM4 votes

Gonna rewrite what I wrote in another thread:

Counterplay is really funny word people love to warp to fit their agenda. Whats the assassin's "counter play" when the right clicker has 350 BT shield , 250 Overshield shield, locket shield for god knows how much, ninja tabis, redemption, GA, DD, or literally any enchanter support on top? + Aery shield (can reach 200) , Knights vow, Phantom dancer, Guardian keystone, heal/shield power multipliers, innate ADC abilities such as Kaisa shield, xayah invuln, invisibility, knockbacks, "font of life" heals the ADC for 1% of the allied tanks Max hp ON HIT, Revitalize gives a massive heal/shield bonus to targeted allies who are below 40% hp. How do you even die as an ADC in 2018? I guess that assassin killed that one ADC at 15 mins in the game in a side lane so better rush to reddit and complain that assassins are fine and ADC needs more help right? Nerf a couple points of attack speed off of ardent censor and then act like the ardent meta is over even though half the games I see an enchanter support and its rushing ardent first or second item and it all plays out just like 2017?

ZJD1234/10/2018, 10:19:25 PM4 votes

On the topic of counter play to shielding, REMEMBER WHEN RIOTREPERTOIRE SAID SHIELD NERFS WERE COMING IN 8.6?? AND THAT ANTI SHIELD ITEM???

ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahaahahaha

oh thats good. They are so good at doing their little sleight of hands and lies to get the community to calm down. Pretty sure its part of their agenda to keep the bot lane duo power level at the highest.

mirAcIe4/11/2018, 7:41:44 AM2 votes

Riot will only accept this when people stop trolling when autofilled as a support. Too many people prefer to troll as support Teemo or Lux over getting a free win as Janna or Lulu. This still happens way too often.

FrostQueensPlane4/11/2018, 7:38:00 AM2 votes

There's no point discussing counterplay when Riot doesn't even understand the most basic concepts of "counterplay". Yasuo being allowed to windwall all of my abilities isn't counterplay. Stealth champions being permanently invisible and gaining the ability to clear all my wards instantly isn't counterplay. I'm not even going to go into the entire support class and their "counterplay", which consists of them pressing a button oh lookie there you got counterplayed.

Teridax684/11/2018, 11:50:51 AM2 votes

I disagree with the central claim made by the OP that counterplay inevitably comes at the cost of fun. At the end of the day, counterplay is just a fancier word for interactivity, and interactivity is essential to the fun of a PvP game. Even in real-life sports, football would likely not be nearly as interesting if it only resumed to teams taking turns scoring conversion goals, for example. Additionally, those same real-life sports have all sorts of rules that force players to interact with each other, precisely so that games can be more fun and interesting to all. As such, League isn't really all that different.

While I agree that not all counterplay has been implemented in a fun manner, and many champions have had fun playstyles erased in the name of counterplay (which I don't think was always justified), counterplay itself lends itself to both fun and mastery: in a game where a player can reliably perform one action all the time to get from point A to point B, once they've gotten that action down, they're done, and have no more room to grow. Over time, repeating that same action also becomes repetitive and less fun, if the player is only faced with the same situations each time. By contrast, if the player has to not only play around that action, but also around the actions of a live opponent, one that will dynamically try to adapt and counter them, suddenly the situation gains a ton more depth, because there's a huge amount of variety in how the player gets to approach every situation, how they try to perform that successful action, and whether they even do so depending on their opponent. It pushes the player to learn around each opponent, and so raises potential for mastery significantly. This is the basic kind of gameplay offered by the counterplay of a delayed ability, for example, as opposed to one that reliably and instantly affects opponents, so ultimately I think the reverse of the OP's claim is true: counterplay is not only necessary for fun to happen in a PvP game, but it contributes fun when implemented correctly.

As a side note to this, I also severely disagree with the idea that failing is anti-fun. Failing and subsequently learning from that failure can be one of the most powerful and fun experiences in a video game, and entire games are designed around that, punishing the player for failing before getting them to pick themselves up, try again and again, and feel the immense satisfaction of eventually succeeding (this is the core gameplay loop in Dark Souls and Cuphead, for example). The same happens in team sports, where players can build bonds and healthy competition by trying to outperform each other. League does have issues where the amount of punishment is sometimes disproportionate, and may not offer all that much potential for recovery, but that is a separate issue from that of counterplay.

If there is something I agree with, though, is that several classes in League are exempt from rules of counterplay, and so with very negative results. Marksmen are the chief example of this, as their excessive reliability, and subsequent lack of interactivity, have given them the worst reputation among classes now, because dealing with a marksman is rarely a fun affair. Similarly, older enchanters also have the same problem in that they're too reliable, and mostly operate by shutting down more interesting plays, instead of fostering them, and as a result a great deal many players hate going against them as well. These are clear examples where lack of counterplay has translated to a loss in fun, and because of this I think the answer should be to instil counterplay in those classes, rather than to go back to a state in League where everyone had less counterplay.

Sire Hippington4/10/2018, 10:38:37 PM2 votes

First off, we need a clear definition of counterplay befor we can discuss it. There are some that consider items and even champ picks already as counterplay, then there is the other extreme that only considers Skillshots or similar things that can be 100% avoided as counterplay.

For me, it's something you can do in the sec to sec gameplay to negate or mitigate the effect of your opponent, which can be dodgeing a skillshot, but also disengageing till a buff(like nasus ult) runs out, positioning(bodyblock stuff that would hit a more vulnerable target else) or interuppting a channle.

Now, to the original question: Counterplay is good, but as with all things the balance has to be right. the counter part to counterplay is reliabillity. If a champ has to jmuch counterplay, he becomes to unreliable which leads to hit or miss scenarios and often a binary gameplay. This means high focus on counterplay puts more emphasis on mechanics and lowers the impact of tactical and strategical decision makeing. Also, the way counterplay in general works, some champs have simply alot more tools to utilize it than others. high mobillity for example makes it much easier to avoid people duering powerfull buffs aswell as dodgeing skills. High CC also helps interuppting channles/combos and disengageing opponents duering windows of power. Another big issue is Range. Range on it's own has no real counterplay and makes it alot easier to counterplay opponents. Skillshots are usually easier to avoid on high distance, it's easier to disengage from opponents if you never really were engaged in the first place, and even interupting channles is easier if your interrup can be applied from range as you don't have to get close to the channle first. So what happend in the past is that alot champs lost reliabillity in favour of counterplay, and they got compensated with more raw power if they succed. This hurt immobile champs that can't really abuse the counterplay and get screwed by ther higher overall power, while mobile and ranged champs get away more easily. It also made the remaining reliable champs more relevant. The most clearing example are ADC, they not only hove insane dps with quuite sime savety, they also have the most reliable dps. This is part of why aassins are unhappy right now, if the adc manages to avoid some of their damage, they can do nothing to preven the adc from killing them. Same with mages vs adc, if you get in their range and don't land your combo, you die.

I personal would prefer a bit less counterplay in favour of reliable but less devastateing stuff. I prfer drawn out fights where positioning and decisionmakeing like target selection and timeing is as imprtant if not more than aiming and quick sidesteps. But if we stay at the curren ratio of counterplay/reliabillity, we need to atleast evenly distribute it. ADC are way to reliable compared to how save and potent their dps is, which get's worse by peel and shields also beeing very reliable compared to engage and assasiinations. We also need to aknowledge that beeing melee already creats inherent counterplay and reduces your abillity to use counterplay compared to rangeds. There is a reason why most non tank melees are more or less splitpush only unless they have an as busted kit as camile, whos still mostly succedes through splitpush anyway. Obviously this doesn't count for heavy snowballing.

ZerglingOne4/11/2018, 1:57:30 AM2 votes

Holy shit. You just said have gold and xp per minute be the only way to get gold. While that may not be the best way to go about it fully how about this? What if getting a kill didn't give you 300 burst gold, but like, 8-10 permanent gold per minute?

Early kills wouldn't equate to an instant snowball item advantage, and it would be far less punishing overall.

Keep minion gold the way it is though of course.

rtbf2256182414/11/2018, 3:05:00 AM2 votes

I'm pretty sure counterplay is crucial to a multiplayer game in which you can be literally taken out of a game for long periods of time at a high detriment in order to counter that from happening.

Not to mention League is competitive.

C9 Squeeky 4/12/2018, 5:40:16 PM1 votes

If there was no counterplay, you'd literally only pick those champs who will always win in those scenarios regardless. You need counterplay not just to make it fair, but to express skill that you can "counter" their counterplay. It requires decision-making and reflex. Having no counterplay is like playing a fighting game and the opponent spams one ability that makes you unable to fight back, and gets a flawless victory. You need counterplay for fairness & skill expression to outplay them. If you misplay or "fail to do what you wanted", why should you be rewarded for not executing properly (being bad)? Kids these days want everything to be too easy instead of having to earn their success.

Venomar4/11/2018, 1:53:01 AM1 votes

Only Issue I have with counterplay is the hidden power that usually always comes with it. Champs are made harder, and thus get free passes on some things, usually in the form of damage, so that when executed to a high level, they are in fact stronger than the baseline would dictate.

A good example of this is Draven. His axe juggling mechanic awards him free power in certain situations to counterbalance the predictability of his movements and the micro that they require. However, If a tresh hooks and flays and ults me and draven gets to walk toward you in a straight line, it eliminates the machines but still awards the free power. Where as if I have a Thresh do the same on an Ashe, I don't get that same free damage because I'm not balanced around a gimmick.

That's just an example, but there's a lot other Champs that have similar behaviors, where in certain situations, the complexity of thier mechanics are rendered inconsequential, but they still get thier free power bonuses that are innately built into thier kit.

Raiyza4/11/2018, 4:50:27 PM1 votes

The issue is that there are too many elements in the game that LACK counterplay entirely, or have too LITTLE counterplay.

My personal favorite is stealth. With how limited vision is currently, stealth champions have a major advantage. It's extremely tough to know where Twitch is half the time because each champion can only use one control ward at a time. In a teamfight setting, this doesn't matter because Twitch comes out from 850 range which is one of the highest in the game. Rengar can begin his stealth from across the map and keep it. Then he can leap from a large range and instacrit for massive damage. Shaco is similar, although he is pure melee range.

The other element is the amount of point and click abilities. Maokai's W, Annie's Q/R, Ryze W, Nautilus ultimate, etc. It is not healthy for the game when the only way to fight that is "stay out of the range". Oh, so don't fight them at all? Nice.

There's just too much with little ways to outplay. Honestly, I think every ability should be a skillshot. That's just me. And stealth should be replaced.

5050BS4/10/2018, 7:47:26 PM1 votes

Im inclined to agree with you.