1.
well i can see that, but the thing about the metagame isnt right.
That theres gonna be a metagame is normal i agree, what isnt normal is that its dominated by the same champions for a very long time.
Normally you get player influence in a meta where as:
player A comes up with something new, does really well with it vs the established meta and then player B comes up with a solution to that.
In a normal situation things snowball in different directions from there.
Unless
Well lets think for a minute on what champions have consistently been good through multiple seasons. Lee Sin is really the only one I can think about. The meta usually changes significantly making othher wise good champions weak picks because of what is being played. An example is mundo and the current mana changes. Almost every mid goes morellonomicon now making mundo significantly weaker. I would argue that as a whole the meta is defined by the people playing it and riot responds with nerfs to whatever they think is overbearing which then people change the meta again. This can be seen in solo queue where people in bronze are usually playing 2-3 patchs behind where as someone in plat might be only 1 patch behind. The one exception to riot responding to metas is the pre-season where riot proactively tries to shape the entire season for a common goal.
**2.
The established meta champions are better at practically all those things so step 1 isnt nessecary anymore.
(remember old kassadin? even tho i still think hes really strong atm, he isnt what he used to be)
The fact that the "biggest" meta changes come with the preseason patch tells me it has alot to do with the game itself as well rather then only the champions.
Although the fact that the core metachamps seem to be more or less unaffected by this is another indicator of 'being too good at everything'
I can get what you say about veigar and whilst im at it, i dont personally have much problems with playing against a lee either.
But that doesnt take away that hes been top tier for a very long time and that has more to do with his kit then anything else.
(overloaded, is pretty good at everything)
You cant say that about veigar, you can say his stun = zero counterplay and i agree with that but at the same time hes rarely played because he has obvious weaknesses:
-Immobile
-easy to gank
-needs to stack
-very squishy
-Single target
-Needs a few items
Those are just a few i can think of.
Dont take this sentence literally but thats the kind of stuff a lot of the newer champions are lacking.
And quite often riot nerfs them really hard without adressing the actual issue.
With overloaded kits i mean:
-Too good at everything with having little to no obvious weaknesses.**
I personally believe that Riot uses the pre-season to set the tone for the entire season which I think is a good thing. It gives you a year of roughly the same content but the promise of it changing the next year if you don't like it. This method has also been proven to be very effective as can be seen in the card game Magic. I won't really touch into balance because I personally believe it is very subjective most of the time.
3.
Well i dont have the numbers for riot either.
I can only go off my 9 years experience working for a game developer, even tho we make RPG's down there,
the great majority of our players isnt bothered with going on forums because they buy the game to have fun and enjoy the game.
And the numbers there show its only a small percentage of the players that actually goes on the forums to discuss things game related.
Those numbers tend to increase a little when people experience something negative in the game but also decrease when that isnt the case.
The regular numbers stay more or less the same and this applied to all the titles we had.
So in a game like this where every season theres major changes and sometimes big patches troughout the season i can only think that it isnt too different from what i've seen troughout the years.
I think the biggest difference would be that you get reactions a lot quicker & harsher because patches in this game tend to have a direct impact on almost everyone's gameplay.
You are correct I made an error in my reasoning. That is a fair assumption to make.
4.
I dont mean this as a generalization but im not making this stuff up either:
Unfortunately the average age of the league player is apparently 15-17 years old, where studies have shown that at that age you lack development of an important part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex loads of information about that out there, which is directly related to a number of skills you need in any area.(not gonna list them all here, if u want to know search for it)
Altho those studies are still open for debate, the general conscensus is that it is directly responsible for all those things, even tho it hasnt been 100% proven to be.
I can only say, think back to the time u were a teenager, im pretty sure u did some really stupid things as well :)
Just because teenagers are prone to be stupid it doesn't mean we can't hold them to high standards and try to make an extraordinary community instead of one that is known for how bad it can be.
5.
i hope i did that with this post then
Your always gonna see oddball picks no matter what, its just the stale meta & the lack of point 1 & 2
to create incentive(? not sure if thats the right word) for players to break the meta succesfully & consistently.
I also think the current LCS has a very strong but negative impact on the game, whilst it could have a very positive impact instead.
The meta being stale is completely subjective and you are entitled to that opinion. I personally think that the lcs has a very positive effect on the game. Riot does need to make incentives I agree there. However unlike you I believe they do.
6.
Thats not what i said, i said 'perfect imbalance' otherwise the game would be really stale and eventually really boring.
In a way you could say the game is really balanced atm but around a very small champion pool, so no, not really.
The key to break this remains the same, you need to have point 1&2 present and then the problem will solve itself.
I don't necessarily think point 1 and 2 are problems. I also don't think it is balanced around a small set of champs. I believe that riot does a good job of balancing the majority of champs most of the time.
was the most blatant FU I've ever seen to their previous design principles.
says hi.
.
Dunk Prince is the same kind of guy Vi is.
*"Balance is a fool's master." *