Is balancing this game possible?

HellsTrueKing·8/3/2016, 6:37:48 AM·24 votes·3,273 views

Serious question.

Is it possible to ever reach a point in this game where it is perfectly balanced? Where we, as players, wouldn't have anything to complain about? With all the different champions/players this game has, including Riot itself, I'm actually leaning towards...no. I'm not sure it is.

What are your thoughts?

Edit: Just to clear things up, I would define this game's "perfectly balanced" point as a state in which all champions are equally viable. I feel like this would make the game extremely unpredictable, since it wouldn't necessarily be the same champions played in every game.

78 Comments

Psychopath Krieg8/3/2016, 6:44:06 AM26 votes

I'm not even sure if Riot wants this game balanced...

When I think about Riot and the decisions they've made, be it champions, items, or gameplay in general, Riot has proven to me that they aren't concerned with balancing the game in its entirety.

If anything, I'd say that Riot wants to keep this game in a constant state of imbalance...

Kuzja18/3/2016, 8:28:15 AM4 votes

Players want to play as champions that make them win a lot. It doesn't matter if that champion is overrated or is unfairly overpowered despite knowing that they're overpowered. They just want to keep winning a lot and run around and kill people with no need of strategy or teamwork. Riot feeds off of those players by giving champions that are played way too often some new skins. The Project skins is one example. Every single champion in this skin line (With Ashe being debatable) , they're all champions that players want to play as just so they can win. Because of that, these skins catch their attention more and raises the chance of these players to buy these skins. People would love to play as these champions but none of them would want to play against them.

Because there are champions that are overpowered, they become overrated because these champions get picked more frequently than others and that takes the fun away from the game even more because it's lacking variety. I've seen players play as Nasus ten games each day. I've also seen Yasuo players more than ten times each day. Can't you guys pick someone else for once?

Pyrokineticmage8/3/2016, 7:32:58 AM4 votes

This game could be mostly balanced if Riot had some general rules in their designs. For example, don't design champions into tank assassins. Tank Echo was the dumbest thing ever. Not only could he tank and burst, but he had very good sustained damage too.

Also don't overload a champions kit. RELEASE (I said RELEASE) Yasou was overloaded with all sorts of free stats and utility. The first time blind playing Yasou it's like why did I have free crits, a shield, and tornadoes out of nowhere. They are almost like an additional 3 abilities.

VvVVvV8/3/2016, 7:07:22 AM3 votes

Why does everyone feel the game needs to be balanced.....if thats the case we might as well just have 1 champ in the game. Champs are made to be fdifferent and people are expected to counter pick/ban....and counter play and counter build.

MrWasjig8/3/2016, 12:09:36 PM3 votes

No.

Simple as that. It's far too complex with far too many variables to be perfectly balanced. Besides the game works on a system of "perfect imbalance", which basically means everything is always maintained as being above or below the line of "perfect balance" on purpose.

Void Nargacuga8/3/2016, 6:56:59 AM3 votes

There is such a thing as "Perfect Imbalance".

This should explain it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31OSVZF77w

MunchCrunchLunch8/3/2016, 8:11:32 AM3 votes

riot needs to balance champion classes on their own . ranged and melee seperately. and have their own items. or balance items around champions. DON'T BALANCE CHAMPIONS AROUND THE GAME. BALANCE THE GAME AROUND THE CHAMPIONS. by that I mean that this game since its beginning is supposed to be a hero-based game. not a class based game. look where we at now. assassin/tank/support/carry/utility-provider.

I see a hero based game trying to balance itself around classes. the balance decisions of this game has turned it into a class based game. meanwhile its pretending to be a hero based game when you look at how they balance everything else that isn't a champion.

riot balance team and the whole design and riot knows nothing about fixing this game. you can't point a little thing " oh zed is broken this game sucks" its about the big picture. every game has issues. some shooters have superior weapons. or fighting games have superior characters but its usually all subjective. but in this game it is not. they need to sit down for few months and fix issues down from deep game design logic and forget about the little this champ and that champ is op bs. look at champion design classes and types and roles. and start there. also look at the map and make some changes also the items in regarding to champion classes and roles. there is always a point where a certain champion at a certain role is broken. means has nothing to do with the champion its just numbers. buffs and nerfs its never ending unless riot makes so me things standard across champ classes.

the other side of balance. is that its a team based game. where teamwork is not guaranteed. don't call it a team game when i get matched with 4 strangers I never played with and I don't know what the hell to expect from them. so thats the human factor that we will never be able to get rid of unless riot restricts ranked to team 5s. its not a shooter where everyones JOB is to kill the enemy NO. again this isn't a her based game its a class based game. as a tank or an initiator. you have to tank damage and initiate. how the hell do you know if your damage dealers will follow up? you don.t if your the adc mage. how the hell do you know the tank will peel for you isntead of mindlessly dive into the enemy damage dealers and leave u open. you dont?

And apparently someone is going through this thread downvoting every single comment. literally 3 seconds after posting it. how did you read it?

read my post and think about it and i Garen tee you'll agree

Teridax688/3/2016, 3:42:43 PM3 votes

{quoted}

Is it possible to ever reach a point in this game where it is perfectly balanced?

In theory, yes, though that is unlikely to ever happen due to the constantly evolving nature of the game. Hypothetically, every champion has a state where they get to be exactly as strong or as weak as they need to be in the appropriate situations, and it's a matter of tuning until they get to that state, or something very similar. This obviously doesn't take into account the rest of their design, which may or may not need changes (a champion can be balanced but unhealthy, as is and has sometimes been the case with a few).

{quoted}

Where we, as players, wouldn't have anything to complain about?

If the state of perfect balance is one where no player would complain about the game's balancing, then no, that's completely impossible, for the basic reason that players have different tastes and expectations, many of which conflict with each other (e.g. player X wants assassins to be stronger, player Y wants assassins to be weaker). Beyond that, there's also the recurring issue where players, regardless of skill level, experience or overall attitude, will sometimes make erroneous generalizations based on their own experiences (e.g. "I totally dumpstered this Riven as Renekton, Renekton must be really OP"), or complain about a champion being particularly strong or weak in a specific situation despite that being completely intended (e.g. "My squishy team dived the enemy Illaoi, fought her at close range while mostly standing still, and all died once she popped her ult; Illaoi is broken, pls fix"). There will always be reason to complain about something, as these boards have demonstrated, so that shouldn't really be the standard Riot should hold themselves to when balancing their game.

Summonerrr 18/3/2016, 8:30:32 AM2 votes

I would like to agree with Void Nargacuga and say that the short answer is "yes" but the solution is not so simple as that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31OSVZF77w

BlackOnyxAltear8/3/2016, 9:16:14 AM2 votes

{quoted}

Serious question.

Is it possible to ever reach a point in this game where it is perfectly balanced? Where we, as players, wouldn't have anything to complain about? With all the different champions/players this game has, including Riot itself, I'm actually leaning towards...no. I'm not sure it is.

What are your thoughts?

Theoretically, yes. In a world where game knowledge and mehanical skill is all you need to beat an opponent and not a counterpick/stronger champion. But im pretty sure it favours Riot more to keep the game in an inbalanced state, rather than actually fine tune it to function as stated above. "Dont quote me on it though."

Surr20plz8/3/2016, 9:17:09 AM2 votes

This game will never be balanced and if theoretically it was possible to balance it they wouldn't allow it to stay that way because if they did you would get bored and leave.

Reikken8/3/2016, 9:17:48 AM2 votes

No. As long as new champions are being introduced, it's not possible to have an absolutely balanced game.

GigaPube8/3/2016, 9:32:35 AM2 votes

yes but its never gonna happen. doesnt matter what anyone says or suggests, if you're not just here for fun, if you're here to win, you play RIOTS game. this is RIOTS game, you play the way they make it, you play whatevers strong, you do whatever you can to win/climb ranks

Guy Fox Teemo8/3/2016, 9:48:08 AM2 votes

The game will never reach a state of perfect balance. Because that would be an unbalanced game. There is a thing called perfect unbalance though in which its very hard to achieve but incredibly rewarding.

A game cannot be perfectly balanced or it would become a stale meta with nothing changing. It would also lead to the popular champions becoming even more popular since theres no outliers of semi strong champions to combat them (Since a lot of popular champions are just popular because they're fun).

You would have a meta where you would see the same strategy every single game, and teh game would become incredibly boring. League is an ever changing game, if it wasn't it would have died years ago.

SO no there will never be perfect balance as that would create a stale, boring, and unfun game.

oSEXYPLATYPUSo8/3/2016, 10:41:34 AM2 votes

lol no matter what riot does to champs items ect people will bitch. its what every one does. people cry yasou needs to be nerfed alot of threads dedicated to that then you get the yasou players who really love the champ state he needs buffs and try to say how weak he is also has threads dedicated to this adcs get strong so assassins are picked to counter the adcs because you see assassins everywhere people start playing juggernauts and tanks to counter the assassins and when tanks and juggernauts are picked nonstop you start seeing "protect the hyper carry comps" to get a hyper carry adc fed to counter the tanks and juggernauts.

no matter at what point of that cycle the "meta" is in there is someome to bitch that one of those are OP and need nerfs or the other needs buffs to compensate.

some would say the game is balanced by the imbalance. now more so then ever before you are seeing so many different champs be viable. you see marksmen in jungle, mages top. mord jungle, bruisers mid. nearly anything is viable in the right match up. the only consent to the meta is the jungler meta with dou bot meta. and that will stay due to it maximizes the resources of gold income on the map with supports having gold per ten items

The 2nd Horseman8/3/2016, 11:33:52 AM2 votes

Balance would lead to the game being rather bland. I mean think about it if the game reached a state of perfect balance it would mean that you could predict the winner in practically every single game. People know who counters who and after some time they'd know the outcome to a lot of matches.

Though a better question is what type of balance do you want? Do you not want duelist to excel at 1v1s? I mean the game is balanced in that each champion wants to do a certain thing in order to win a game. For instance, some supports will buff their teammates in order to beat the enemy while others hinder the enemy to win.

ZT Xperimentor8/3/2016, 11:57:55 AM2 votes

Unlikely, but some patches clearly show they are avoiding even attempting to do so.

Witch of Babylon8/3/2016, 12:21:24 PM2 votes

Why aren't they always buffing/nerfing/tweaking champions? It's like they're are barely doing any of those on the PBE anymore.

Tribbles Foxfolk8/3/2016, 12:38:44 PM2 votes

{quoted}

Serious question.

Is it possible to ever reach a point in this game where it is perfectly balanced? Where we, as players, wouldn't have anything to complain about? With all the different champions/players this game has, including Riot itself, I'm actually leaning towards...no. I'm not sure it is.

What are your thoughts?

No, it's literally impossible for any game to be perfectly balanced. Even if every character were LITERALLY the exact same, there are human/psychological factors that will affect the "balance" and break the theoretical 50/50 winrate. There's a ton of psychology that goes into game balance (Even down to the fact that blue team/red team slightly changes how you perform), which is better left to self-research and professionals.

However, that does NOT mean it's OK to let your game go completely unbalanced like League of Legends is right now. The lack of balance is pretty disgusting right now and they should be ashamed of it. But for as long as CertainlyT and Ghostcrawler work at Riot, they have no shame. They have no capacity to balance properly, but their egos are so bloated and massive that they can't admit ANY wrongdoing. Otherwise, if a character became OP/UP due to a change, they would just revert it in-between patches while a more permanent solution could be sought out.

BloodyTompon8/3/2016, 2:05:36 PM2 votes

This begs the question of what is balanced? What is perfectly balanced? The question can't be answered until that is answered first.

For Riot's own philosophy, no, it's not perfectly balance-able.

Kingnewgameplus8/3/2016, 4:01:40 PM2 votes

Super smash bros melee is possibly one of the most popular esports in the world. There are 26 characters. Only about 6 or 7 are viable. League has over 100 different characters. 10 billion patches couldn't balance this game fully.

zlumpy8/3/2016, 5:17:20 PM2 votes

Not as long as the E sports scene has any effect on balance. Everytime even a small pro play balance item happens it has a major effect of the general population of a game.

Nameless Voice8/3/2016, 6:35:02 PM2 votes

I don't think it can ever be truly balanced, but I do think that they could make its balance a lot more fun.

Perhaps this isn't common, but I rarely have an issue with the game's lack of balance in terms of specific champions being overpowered or underpowered. I don't really care unless the power level difference is very significant.

What bothers me is when champions are badly designed in such a way that they feel unfair and frustrating to play against, and/or when certain champions are hard counters (rather than soft counters) to others. This is exacerbated when those champions are strong (which is why any time they are strong, there will always be huge numbers of "nerf X!" threads), but the real problem is always that their design is flawed. People can tolerate flawed design when the champion is weak / underpowered, but once the champion with poor design becomes "balanced" or even strong, that's where the trouble comes in.

If Riot made an actual effort to fix and rework those problematic, poorly-designed champions, then the game would be a lot more fun even if it was never truly balanced.

As an example: When Yasuo is strong, everyone is complaining about him constantly and banning him in every game - because his kit is really annoying to play against. When Jinx was strong, people kind of went "oh, she's a bit strong", but hardly complained that much because even when strong, she still has a mostly "fair" play pattern.

ItsOrval8/3/2016, 6:40:39 AM2 votes

Yes there is. The problem is Rito likes to nerf things to the ground, rather than giving proper nerfs. So once it gets nerfed to the ground, it becomes weak and nobody plays it. Rito sees that nobody is playing the champ, so they then immediately think of buffing the champ again and again until more people play it. Thus making a loop hole.

TehNACHO8/3/2016, 6:55:22 AM2 votes

Depending on where you draw your lines, it varies from "sorta" to definitely no.

Consider a game of Rock Paper Scissors. From a macro standpoint, both players equally have a 49.9999999...% chance of winning. Great, perfectly balanced. If we start breaking down individual interactions however, game looks skewed as hell. Think:

WOAH, SCISSORS HAS A 100% WINRATE AGAINST PAPER, BALANCE?!

League on the other hand has many more variables, that all interact with each other, on top of having a gradient of factors like human skill and error. We can work forever to make each interaction a perfectly equal exchange only tipped in the favor of human ability, or we can full on Rock Paper Scissors the hell out of every interaction in the game. Either way, it's not going to look just right to everybody, and we will never get a unanimous vote that League is balanced no matter what objectively correct form of balanced it may actually be.

Personally, I enjoy embracing neato interactions in the game. If it means I can get some clear lines that make sense (the Burst/DPS/Tank triangle), I'd gladly accept statistics that may misguide people that don't understand the contexts behind them.

67chrome8/3/2016, 6:57:17 AM2 votes

Is it possible to ever reach a point in this game where it is perfectly balanced?

Perfection is impossible to achieve, it's like infinity. Great things can be achieved by reaching towards it, but it can never be fully grasped.

DunkinNoobs8/3/2016, 7:21:49 AM2 votes

Of course not. Champions dominate solo q but are nonexistent in pro play all the time. What does that tell you about the possibility of a perfectly balanced game?

Not that a perfectly balanced game is something to even strive for, as others have already stated.

VladTheMage8/3/2016, 7:40:46 AM2 votes

It is, but not for everybody. Judging by the playerbase, there will always be someone that abuses a champ or an mechanic to make the game lose balance, as even nowadays RGM Queues have metas. It isn't Riot's fault if even for game modes that last 2 days we get metas with champs that are easy to abuse.

FreudFromSKA8/3/2016, 7:45:38 AM2 votes

Even if numbers were somehow perfect, which seems like a sisyphean task anyway, players themselves will never be balanced. Player skills and preferences are infinitely varied between roles, champions, and play style that a huge portion of what we really think of as balanced is in our heads.

Have you ever told your friend they are crazy when they tell you X champ is op? Take that to a meta meta meta level. If a game's balance is like an economy, players are illogical, unpredictable factors much of the time.

DevlinCrow8/3/2016, 7:59:31 AM2 votes

No, it is not possible.

It is not possible to completely 100% balance the large majority of video games, something will always have an advantage over everything else.

Over 100 champions that are all unique in their own ways, with unique playstyles and abilities. This is literally impossible to balance but Rito do a very good job (honestly) of keeping the game mildly balanced while keeping the fun.

LionelLeon8/3/2016, 8:09:29 AM2 votes

there can't be balance with meta changes. for example, some assassins Katarina Akali Evelynn weren't being played much when the meta focused on tanks/assassins building tank and mobile ADCs coming to play; this meta currently focuses immobile carries in the midlane and botlane which made the assassins i mentioned earlier feel stronger and played more because their opponents are slower.

Attticus Finch8/3/2016, 10:35:45 PM2 votes

It's possible, however Riot won't do it because it's not to their interests for League to be balanced. Riot wants the e-sports audience and a constantly changing meta is the easiest way to maintain an exciting tourny scene.

Can't stand it, personally.

NotCounter8/4/2016, 5:14:51 PM1 votes

considering most of the time when people complain about something there isn't actually a balance problem with it, no

BlkGolem8/3/2016, 11:56:21 PM1 votes

Definitely not possible.

Mindworm Jim8/4/2016, 8:43:01 AM1 votes

If you define balance as "no one is complaining", then no. The game will never be balanced. Players will always disagree on what is best and someone will complain. It'a an unavoidable facet of life. You can't please everyone.

However, what I suspect most people mean when they say balanced they mean an extremely diverse meta with multiple strategic routes to victory, where every champion has a unique but not overly necessary role to fill and disadvantageous match ups can be overcome with skillful and clever play.

That CAN be achieved, but is EXTREMELY difficult, especially considering a game as complex as League. That said, Riot does seem to me to be trying to push the game in that direction and I have overall been pleased with watching their design and balance teams learn and grow. (Now, how WELL they have been moving towards that goal is debatable, but their heart looks to be in the right place.)

LoL Ergo Urgot8/3/2016, 9:47:56 PM1 votes

I am no statistics major but look at all the champions and items alone. The odds of that stacked and not tilting is an improbability.