Riot is not "balancing" or "reworking" their game most of the time

Learn 2 Swim·Dec 20, 2014·5 votes·457 views

When you release a champion that is OP and you start nerfing that champs abilities a few weeks later it is not "balancing" or "tuning" or "fixing". That's called Riot attempting to fix their own previous mistakes.

When Riot "reworks" Cass and Kass 10 different times its not actually a rework it is them making multiple terrible decisions and attempting to undo them.

Stating that you want jungle diversity and releasing feral flare, quill coat and an entirely new jungle and going 0-3 on those is called a massive failure.

Lets stop using political/corporate speak to cover up what is going on here. I have never played a game in my 20+ years of gaming that had so many balancing errors in it. When you release something live and then make changes to that soon after you have made an error as a company.

11 Comments

67chromeDec 20, 20143 votes

I have never played a game in my 20+ years of gaming that had so many balancing errors in it.

The number of balancing errors isn't important. The important thing with balance is the order of magnitude that separates things. 1000 balancing mis-matches don't matter if the worst offender is 0.01% stronger than where it should be. 1 balance error where something is 1000 times stronger than it should be is the thing that ruins a game.

Complaining about LoL's balance is often about blowing very minor differences in balance way out of proportion. Champions rarely get a higher win rate than 55%. Champions often maintain a win rate higher than 40%.

What's truely bad in a game is if you run into characters like Mewtwo or Ivan Ooze where they completely dominate the roster and force out-of-game rules to allow the respective games they're in to even have a semblance of diversity.

LoL offers a very diversified choice of champions that can work at the competitive level. Every worlds tournament a solid 50 champions see play, and more in the qualifier matches leading up to that event.

The best and worst champions in LoL has a lot more to do with the Olymipcs giving gold, silver, and bronze medals and nobdy in western civilization caring who's in 4th place than it does 4th~20th champions actually being unplayable. Twitch wasn't one of the top 3 marksman everyone on the forums was whining about, yet SSW played him anyways.

Anyways - you should really concentrate less on the number changes and concentrate more on how balanced the game actually is.

LoL is, for all intents and purposes, admirably balanced - especially compared to all the games I've played. PvP in WoW seemed considerably more off, balance in DotA, Heros of Newerth, Tome, Pokemon, Team Fortress 2, Diablo I, II, & III, Starwars Battlefront II, and a myriad of other competitive games where balance matters, had worse balance than LoL. Only game I've really played with better balance is Starcraft.

Troy242621Dec 20, 20142 votes

They release it overtuned to see what they need to nerf. The problem is that this sort of approach should be done on a beta server >_>. Also, the most balancing errors? Have you never played Call of Duty, or Team Fortress 2?

JustMyBassCannonDec 20, 20142 votes

In my nearly 20 years of gaming (the earliest I remember is when I was 3-4 years old), I have seen plenty of games make far worse decisions than the ones that Riot has made with League of Legends. Across Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, six generations of game consoles (of the eight in existence), I have seen a lot of bullshit.

Riot makes mistakes. Focusing on the ten mistakes you can name instead of the hundreds of successes kind of skews your perspective.

Troy242621Dec 20, 20142 votes

To be completely fair, issues that seem inconsequential to some may be a really big deal for others. For example, some people don't give to shits about eSports, whereas some follow it fanatically. If it were to start having issues, some wouldn't care, others would be on the forums 24/7.

JustMyBassCannonDec 20, 20142 votes

And to add to that, a lot of issues can have multiple perspectives. The most relevant example I can provide is the Karma rework. There are old Karma players who want back her old kit. There are non-Karma players who jump on that bandwagon for no reason. There are Karma players who appreciate the rework. There are players who didn't play her pre-rework, and like her design as it is. Some people view it as a champion getting replaced by an entirely different champion; others point out that she has a lot of the same kit mechanics, shifted around to fit a more coherent, less dependent, more supportive playstyle.

To be honest, both main sides of the argument have valid points, supported by a few dozen perspectives. Neither side will stop arguing, because they can't actually say anything that dismisses the entire perspective of the other side.