Boards›Gameplay

Food for Thought

Ch1efBeefQueef·2/15/2017, 9:47:24 PM·5 votes·801 views

So Riot has mentioned that balancing has been made difficult in the past due to coordinated pro play vs. Soloq.

It should be very clear to everyone that in league we play in two different universes. There are the pros who travel the world and compete for various silver cups. And there is us, average casual everyday "play a game after work" type people. Kennen to you is completely different than Kennen to the pros etc.

So I was thinking, and it might sound over ambitious or a little naive but why don't they just make two completely different clients or something?

Like one for us the casuals and one for the pros. Same game, same champs, same everything. One exception though. Each client has it's own balance team designated to it. The pro pool balancing team focuses on making changes to champions with high level coordinated play in mind; whilst the Casual pool balancing team perhaps focuses on changes that are more focused on the player at least slightly moreso then the team.

Call me crazy, call it impossible, but you know what? I would like it, and i don't think i'm the only one who would.

Anyone else think this would be a cool idea? Anyone care to expand?

18 Comments

Handy Sandy 2/15/2017, 9:51:23 PM2 votes

I see no downside to this.

Sassmast3r2/15/2017, 9:53:36 PM2 votes

Oh absolutely, the sheer volume of changes made to cater towards one or the other is so frustrating. I'd love it if we had two separate clients. I think the major issue with that, however, is the amount of dedicated "balancers" that would be required. Otherwise, I'm in.

Leo10242/15/2017, 10:02:02 PM1 votes

Even if it did exist, Miss Fortune support would've still haunted solo queue for the next 2 months after worlds

Paroe2/15/2017, 10:10:53 PM1 votes

the problem with that is pros play standards too; balancing competitive and casual separately is a pipedream.

The only way you could do this is by having a "ranked" and "normals" client.

Stillname2/15/2017, 11:05:00 PM1 votes

It would probably be pretty frustrating to pro players to do this.

Imagine if the only way you could practice the game solo was on patch 5.16 (picking a random number) but when it came time to play your serious team games you played on 7.3.

It would only work if the game stayed relatively similar between the two with only a few minor number tweaks between live and pro play but keeping it like that would be a nightmare.

The easiest thing to get thrown off would be build paths and at that point does riot balance so that the new build path on the pro patch matches the build path on live?

I'll try to give an random example of what I am talking about but it is hard to describe how this can go off the rails.

What if on live Sion becomes an mid lane ad burst champ but in the pro play patch he is still a tank and his playstyle as a result veers off in 2 different directions which suddenly makes vayne op on one version so her attack speed has to be nerfed and that makes frozen heart a better buy and so on.... meanwhile none of this stuff happens on the other version so all of these changes cascade in completely different directions.

Not saying any of this nonsense would happen but it is easy to see how one or two small changes can affect the game as a whole and make the two into completely different games very quickly.

Valderis Vandala2/15/2017, 11:13:37 PM1 votes

There is only one true obstacle to this idea, and that is Riot's stance on the issue, they want to keep the champions the same across casual and pro play so that ordinary people can look at pro play and see what can be done with the same tools that they have. They don't want pro play to become a different beast that ordinary people can't relate to.

Besides, what do you think will come of it if Riot doesn't consider balance for high level coordinated play? It will just lead to a lot of OP champions, its just that most can't access what makes them OP most of the time, but that doesn't mean that it won't cause problems.

Big Lincoln2/15/2017, 11:15:36 PM1 votes

So Riot has mentioned that balancing has been made difficult in the past due to coordinated pro play vs. Soloq.

they did it to themselves by forcing the 'team game' meme on soloQ players