Riot, how much can we chew?
Reds and others have talked about how achieving things like game balance and competitive integrity is an iterative process.
In this iterative process, the playerbase serves as a solution engine, which is a funny math/computer science way of saying that we're trying things, continuing to do them when they work and stopping them when they don't. Eventually, we'll do the best things and avoid the worst things, while Riot will shore up the worst things and tone down the best things. Players are finding the peaks and valleys, and Riot is trying to make it all flat.
However, Riot has a responsibility to the enjoyment of the players in their solution engine as well. If they drastically change the landscape, it takes a while for everyone to find their way. And that's fine, so long as that landscape stays flat--hell, it's even a lot of fun! But part of an iterative process is that you don't know the final solution until you get there.
So when Riot mixes up the landscape, we don't know what it looks like. With small-scope changes in input, we can usually bet on small-scope changes in output. But when you make large groups of changes simultaneously, like:
- death timers, turret hp, turret resistances, and global gold rates
softpretty darn hard ranked resets with Dynamic Queue- marksman/marksmen itemization update
- juggernaut update
- the upcoming 6.9 mage rework
You're bound to have crazy changes in landscape! And iterative processes take longer to work out larger changes in input, and are more likely to leave a not-so-flat (and therefore not-so-healthy/fun) landscape, which we'll have to deal with for a long time until we figure it all out.
In my opinion, I started noticing a change in Riot's behavior around the time of Yasuo's release. They started making much... ballsier champion designs and game changes, (some of which were pretty darn cool), and overall biting off much bigger chunks of changes. (We can talk about what changed at Riot around then more in the comment section, if you like).
In closing, my question to Riot is: do you ever worry you're biting off more than the players can chew? How will you know if you are?
