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i found the PERFECT way for champ designers to know if their design is unfun/broken

Arammus··3 votes·919 views

if you happen to work at riot (or ever wanna design a champ yourself somehow) and you wonder if your champ design is unfun to play against (akali) or just a broken piece of shit (irelia) you can try the following.

  1. you go on the howling abyss map (the aram map) team 1 picks ashe 2 soft cc champs (like zyra for example. she can snare you and can knock you up but she has to hit you with it)

team 2 picks the champ you are trying to test.

you have everyone at level 11(or 16) with 2-3(or 3-5) items. thats the most realistic case in which teamfights happen. and NOONE using flash. lets face it, flash has a 5min cooldown so its a bit unrealistic to expect it to be up FOR EVERYONE at EVERY fight.

now you have the champ in question FULL ENGAGE on ashe. their goal is to kill ashe. team 1's goal is to keep ashe alive and maybe kill the enemy champ.

if the champ in question manages to kill ashe (or for all assassins just blow her up in 1shot) and escapes without ever being in any sort of danger, YOUR DESIGN SUCKS ASS AND YOU SHOULD THROW IT IN THE TRASH BIN.

examples that would be perfect for this: rengar. ults on ashe, shes dead. uses w to remove cc heal and just walk away akali. hits her e or uses her FIRST r dash to go in and blow up ashe with gunblade lichbane spells etc. uses SECOND r or just simply w to walk away. yasuo... do i really need to explain? oh you have minions? well youre dead. wat cc? lul windwall bye irelia... ok i def. dont need to explain her. r+q, maybe w lol. zed. w r q e r. ekko. flash/e q r.

example of a champ who would "pass" this test is talon. he has no direct way to engage besides his ult. if he uses his ult he most likely blows up ashe, but the 2 other champs then can cc him. and IF they have heal/shields theres a decent chance for ashe to survive. if he doesnt use his ult to engage, then he never really gets close enough to ashe to fuck her up. ofc this ignores stuff like his walljump.

veigar also an example. a 3 item veigar needs to press r on ashe to kill her. he needs to get somewhat close for that. which he cant cause he doesnt have 20 skills that make him dash invis jump or whatever. unless ashe runs into his cage and her 2 other mates do nothing at all, its unlikely for veigar to hit that r on ashe.

this is legit the best way, that i can come up with, to test your champ design.

13 Comments

Hotarµ4 votes

The best way to find things out like this is through play testing and data gathering on live servers. A few matches on Howling Abyss with a ton of variables is never going to match up to the reliability of 20-30 million players' game data.

Arammus3 votes

well thats what pbe is for. the server that riot tends to completely ignore. sure mayor bugs get fixed but thats about it. best example is camille. i didnt see a single thread not saying "SHE IS TOO FUCKING OP DONT RELEASE HER LIKE THAT!!!" what did riot do? release her the way she was.

Hotarµ4 votes

The PBE is not strictly for balancing and it's main focus is checking for bugs. Also, how many players are on the PBE compared to the live game? A miniscule fraction.

There's no way to reliably release champions when you have such a small sample size with a ton of different rankings floating around.

Arammus2 votes

everything you said, i agree with. but you cant deny that riot loves to ignore the feedback they get. and i mean when like 90% of the players say "that needs to be changed" and you ignore those several 1000's of voices, then its your own fault.

The Ecdysiast1 votes

{quoted}

The best way to find things out like this is through play testing and data gathering on live servers. A few matches on Howling Abyss with a ton of variables is never going to match up to the reliability of 20-30 million players' game data.

The issue is that they never do so during the design phase. Not once has a champion had abilities changed entirely due to poor reception and/or balance.

Your argument requires that they do so, but it just isn't true. They don't.

Hotarµ1 votes

Except it literally happens every balance cycle. Go check the PBE changes and you'll see a constant cycle of things being added and removed for the health of the game. It happens so often that I wouldn't even be able to count how many times it's happened.

Jinx's W being able to crit is the most prominent example I can remember.

The Ecdysiast1 votes

{quoted}

Except it literally happens every balance cycle. Go check the PBE changes and you'll see a constant cycle of things being added and removed for the health of the game. It happens so often that I wouldn't even be able to count how many times it's happened.

Jinx's W being able to crit is the most prominent example I can remember.

You're... not responding to what I said. I said no ability has been entirely changed. I meant no ability has been completely reworked in a timely manner after being proven unhealthy on the live game. Which hasn't happened.

The times where such a change did happen, namely Kog'maw, Ryze,and LeBlanc, were a full season after their original changes. Far, far from timely. And there aren't any examples of new champions getting such changes.

Azir is a middle ground between what you're referring to and what I mean: unlike normal stat changes (adding crit, changing base or scaling, etc.), he had functional aspects of abilities changed without them actually changing the ability mechanics. His E lost its knockup but is still exactly the same otherwise. His W lost the ability to damage turrets. But that's not a full rework of the ability, which is what I'm referring to.

Hotarµ1 votes

Because the majority of the time the abilities don't need to be changed, contrary to what the boards think. The only one in League's recent history would be Akali's shroud and even that's being looked at. If they can't make it work in it's current state, they're going to change it.

Your argument requires that they do so, but it just isn't true. They don't.

Also, where in my post did I say that abilities must be changed entirely for balance before reaching live servers? I specifically said that the PBE is too small of a sample size to make decisions like that unless something is grossly overpowered with unbelievable win rates.

The Ecdysiast1 votes

{quoted}

Because the majority of the time the abilities don't need to be changed, contrary to what the boards think. The only one in League's recent history would be Akali's shroud and even that's being looked at. If they can't make it work in it's current state, they're going to change it.

Also, where in my post did I say that abilities must be changed entirely for balance before reaching live servers? I specifically said that the PBE is too small of a sample size to make decisions like that unless something is grossly overpowered with unbelievable win rates.

You implied that they do make such changes as a result of testing on Live, which has never happened.

Hotarµ1 votes

So you're telling me you've never seen abilities or passives have traits removed? Not once? In the history of League?

First there are champion reworks which change one to all aspects of a champion for balancing and to try and bring them up to par.

Secondly there are just straight removals on abilities, such as Azir's knockup, Ahri's movespeed from Q, Ornn's unstoppable, and a million other examples.

Finally there are additions/buffs such as Karthus' wall being swapped to % MR making him better late game/vs. tanks, Vayne's condemn being updated to match her AA range, and Yasuo's bonus AD/AS. Again, a million other examples as well.

So if an ability is found to be grossly overpowered or buggy on PBE, they'll change it.

If the champion/changes reaches live servers and it's good/bad, they'll change it at some point.

See: Aatrox hotfix, Zoe rework, Akali shroud, etc.

If you're trying to say they're inconsistent with it then I agree to an extent, but I don't understand what you're trying to argue since I said all of this before.

The Ecdysiast1 votes

{quoted}

So you're telling me you've never seen abilities or passives have traits removed? Not once? In the history of League?

First there are champion reworks which change one to all aspects of a champion for balancing and to try and bring them up to par.

Secondly there are just straight removals on abilities, such as Azir's knockup, Ahri's movespeed from Q, Ornn's unstoppable, and a million other examples.

Finally there are additions/buffs such as Karthus' wall being swapped to % MR making him better late game/vs. tanks, Vayne's condemn being updated to match her AA range, and Yasuo's bonus AD/AS. Again, a million other examples as well.

So if an ability is found to be grossly overpowered or buggy on PBE, they'll change it.

If the champion/changes reaches live servers and it's good/bad, they'll change it at some point.

See: Aatrox hotfix, Zoe rework, Akali shroud, etc.

If you're trying to say they're inconsistent with it then I agree to an extent, but I don't understand what you're trying to argue since I said all of this before.

Uh. No. I specifically listed Azir as an example of what I'm NOT talking about, because removing a trait of an ability is not the same as changing the mechanic entirely.

Hotarµ1 votes

...which is exactly what I said before and gave an example of with Jinx's W crit.

The PBE acts as a medium to balancing, if something needs a larger sample size they'll move it to live servers and blah blah blah see above. If something is broken on the PBE, they'll change it like Jinx's W. If it's broken or unhealthy on Live, they'll change it like Azir's knockup.

I literally said what you said and gave examples so I don't understand what your point is.

DislocatedSquids1 votes

You know what would help even more? If the idiots in charge of champion creation actually played the game.

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