Balancing around e-sports is really hurting league of legends.

Yi Bencheikh·Aug 29, 2017·64 votes·2,315 views

while solo q players make up like 98% of the league player base ( if my calculations are right ) you balance the game around those 2%. What the fuck, bot lane is busted af because they want to see '' meh epic adc pentakills '' in LCS , turrets are cheese and at some point useless when naut braum or whatever tank/half tank heck even draven can tank more than 5 turret shots still gets a kill make it out alive , and very short games are not fun ( late game when xayah gettting her 2nd item lul )

When will riot realise that we aren't happy about league's current state ? And finally answer this bs going on around ? But what am i really questioning here ? They won't care anyway.

77 Comments

Alex h8721Aug 29, 201710 votes

Poor Ryze knows about this, his ult was too useful for LC$ bigplay$ so he got gutted, now hes at a 40ish% winrate in solo Q and is nonexistent in pro play.

Tails9016Aug 29, 20171 votes

Ryze is pretty strong I'd say... if you can get your full 6 item build. Oh and the 5 non-boots better be the highest ap items in the game, otherwise you're useless.

Alex h8721Aug 29, 20172 votes

Lol, before the nerfs (increased CDs for E/W, reduced snare duration on W), ryze was poor at teamfights but good in skirmishes/1v1s, that was always his thing B/c his combo takes too long to setup in a teamfight and other than Q everything he has is pretty short range which puts him in range of the enemy frontline to get locked down, and this was before the nerfs when he had pretty short cooldowns.

Now to actually be able to combo even close to as quickely as before you have to get at least 30% cdr, and since ryze starts w/ item 3027 rush (no CDR) this leads to a very gimped early and midgame.

It could be argued that he is weak right now b/c the meta is 5v5 teamfight centric at this time, and that is his weakest area, but the gutting that happened after some of the "cool LCS bigplay ults" that pros did w/ him in spring definitely hasn't helped him stay relevant.

Handin Out NapsAug 30, 20174 votes

It wasn't his ult it was literally everything else, and he was ridiculous in high elo.

ZardoAug 30, 20171 votes

He was picked for his ult in pro play in the same way kalista is picked for her rend and taliyah her ult; they all have great objective control. The rest of their kits don't matter if you can rotate to Baron 15 seconds faster as a team.

Handin Out NapsAug 30, 20172 votes

You guys have no idea what you are talking about :^|.

DivewingAug 30, 20171 votes

No, it's more like Kalista and Ryze are picked for being overbearing and obnoxious to deal with. The objective control is a case of: oh hey they even have this too.

Taliyah is picked because she has strong waveclear and situational consistent damage ALONG WITH her ult.

For all 3 the objective control is more icing on the cake rather than the full reason alone, more so for Ryze and Kalista.

TheSingularityAug 30, 201710 votes

Riot is making the same mistake as blizzard.

Blizzard undervalued the casual player, balanced SC2 purely around esports and completely ignoring the start up experience for new players, in a game with an obscenely steep learning curve.

Why the casual player? (also warning, very narrow stereotyping ahead) Well, remove every pro and challenger player, the smallest player population in league of legends.

Now remove the hardcore, balls to the walls players, league of legends is the only game they play. Players who, regardless of rank are in ultra try hard mode, trying to improve and rank up, likely playing 4-8 games after school/work or 15+ if they have no life. Now remember, having a diamond/platinum rank doesn't mean they try hard, they may just be good casual players who like having bans, or the intensity of ranked. This group is the second largest population, they'll likely stick with league regardless of the meta/balance

Now the final, the casual gamer. They likely play for fun, because lol is a FTP game that anyone can get (social) or to spice up their gaming line up. This is riot's largest base and the one they will suffer the most from if it disappears.

The casual player base:

fuels the esport scene (surprisingly more than the HC players, who play rather than watch)
are a huge source of Riot's income
make up the majority, and as such are who're responsible for your queue times
and have other games to play, if LOL turns to shit, they dgaf as they can just move on to the next game.

By losing their casual players, SC2 lost their esports scene, which is now a pathetic couple of twitch channels that re broadcast games from years ago, a dead set of team queues, custom queues and forums. They lost sponsors, (they're fken relying on the community for this years global championships) And from their, some hardcore players left as well.

This will happen to league if riot doesn't get the head out of their asses and make esports the last thing on their to do list.

DisulfiramAug 30, 20172 votes

Imho you are right; at the same time though, RIOT should not ignore the pro scene. The best solution would probably be to balance the game around silver/gold while making sure that no champion is too broken in the pro scene; this way we'd end up with a game balanced for casual players while having a small group of champions that are only viable in LCS.

KovorixAug 30, 20173 votes

You just cant balance for both as they have other requirements for a champion.

DisulfiramAug 30, 20172 votes

Yes, exactly! What you can do is balance for a specific group while making sure that no champion is overly broken in other skill brackets. Which is what RIOT is doing at the moment btw; it just may be better if the group the game is balanced around was the bulk of their playerbase instead of the elite.

KovorixAug 29, 20177 votes

Its no secret that a 5vs5 and a soloQ match are complete different games. It would be best to give LCS, LCK, worlds and whatever their own patches.

AFilthyCaitMainAug 30, 20172 votes

But then how would they actually practice is the question.

How would they learn to deal with new ____ mini rework?

Its too complicated. Overall, if its unbalanced in pro play, its probably unbalanced in solo q too.

TheSingularityAug 30, 20172 votes

private server. Their legit practice is scrims with ppl they know, not ladder matches.

DragonSheaAug 29, 20176 votes

When you balance around LCS, you are just wanking for players and not giving them a challenge, just making them props for cash and it puts their skills to question when the game is balanced around them.

GayFluffyUnicornAug 29, 20174 votes

That's what i've been complaining about for a loooong time. Anyone even remember cheese strats by moscow 5? OR CLG.EU? Old fnatic bush. Anything? And now? Pro players complain that tank ekko got nerfed too harsh so they don't nerf him too hard. LUL. Pro players say nidalee is good against the tank junglers, nidalee gets buffs on pbe. ???? Eh hello? Where is the challenge in playing a game completely balanced around your playstyle?

DragonSheaAug 29, 20173 votes

{quoted}

That's what i've been complaining about for a loooong time. Anyone even remember cheese strats by moscow 5? OR CLG.EU? Old fnatic bush. Anything? And now? Pro players complain that tank ekko got nerfed too harsh so they don't nerf him too hard. LUL. Pro players say nidalee is good against the tank junglers, nidalee gets buffs on pbe. ???? Eh hello? Where is the challenge in playing a game completely balanced around your playstyle?

exactly, when pro players bitch about something not going their way instead of pointing out flaws in the game, they lose credibility to the point where they become phonies.

MizayaAug 29, 20175 votes

But LCS games aren't even fun to watch for the most part right now... SKT vs LZ series was pretty hype but here in NA not so much.

Sasu OwOAug 29, 20173 votes

IDK about you but I love watching NA LCS games. It's fun watching the gameplay.

SciFi ScrivenerAug 30, 20171 votes

TSM v IMT is going to be a competitive game, and lots of fun to watch. The upcoming regional qualifier is going to be highly competitive with CLG, C9, DIG, and FLY all fighting for one spot to worlds.

MizayaAug 31, 20171 votes

Alright, the storylines are somewhat fun and exciting I guess, but the gameplay is kinda lacking to me IMO. I was super hyped to watch Khan of LZ carrying with Jayce top, for example, or watching Levi go 16/0 on Elise at MSI.

Jayce TopAug 30, 20175 votes

Riot starts balancing the game based off of Gold elo players instead of the best players in the world

Nasus now gets 20 stacks instead of 3 and 60 instead of 6 Towers now kill you in 6 shots no matter wtf youre building or playing ADCs now get their damage reduced 25% Tanks now get 100 armor starting to help with early game Base towers now have 10000 health Black Cleaver now only shreds 10% of armor total Average game length has now been increased to 60 minutes Players now get 2 bans instead of 1 for a total of 20 bans Early game lane bullies are now shit early, mid, and late game

BârdAug 30, 20175 votes

If Riot balanced the game for the average player, they'd be balancing for silver.

You can't balance the game around people who (face it) don't know what they're doing.

AnnieTheSupportAug 30, 20174 votes

Mate, been asking this question for 6 years now. Most of us in lower elo and not Challenger will never be able to play the game with 2 ping and godlike reactions and hidden mechanics so all their balance hurts us. And we are the ones playing the actual game. Also how about making PBE an actual testing server and not just a place reserved for accounts that make videos for youtube for skins they don't even own, bought with bogus RP on a bogus server.

Meanwhile some of us that actually want to test the new game balances and content coming out get pushed away. Been trying to get an account on the PBE to test things and give feedback for more than 5 years now. Not possible.

I say let the pros have the PBE server and test their own versions of patches out. Cause I'm sure it makes no difference whatsoever when you play with 150 ping + tv/monitor latency + bad hardware and the latest patch delivered a 0.5 seconds buff or nerf to some champion. I mean let's get real here.

Most if not all these balance patches only work for the top 1-2% of the players.

IPERFECTOAug 30, 20174 votes

I've seen sooooo much straight up bs "suggestions" only on this board from this "majority" that i actually wanted to kms, and i very thankfull to riots that they're not actually looking on it...

SciFi ScrivenerAug 30, 20172 votes

I know what you mean. What most of these "majority is unhappy" posts don't realize is that those of us that comment on the boards are the vocal minority. Very few players actually know the boards exist, let alone take the time to comment here. The average LoL player just wants to play the game.

KaìjuAug 29, 20173 votes

For a long time, I always wondered why MLG in games like Halo, CoD, and more classic games had strict rules on weapons, maps, and in some cases things like cosmetics (Halo MLG you can't change your armor off of default because of model sizes.) As you point this out it makes more sense now. The game can't exist in both forms.

Papa RinkyAug 30, 20173 votes

Nah, the issue is they try to balance around both, which is really stupid

That's why we get random ass Volibear nerfs and Random ass Shen nerfs.

Yuumis MagicbookAug 30, 20173 votes

Balancing around anything other than esports just makes no sense for a competetive game. Overwatch is doing it, Hots is doing it, SC2 is doing it, CS:GO is doing it. Basicly every E-Sport does this. Simply because of the reason that high elo and ofcourse the E-Sport itsself would be really unbalanced so being good at the game would actually feel bad and not good. They have to balance around semi perfect to perfect use of a champion. It's not riots fault that low elo players suck at playing to their champions strengths. Low elo plays champions in suboptimal ways so riot would have to buff and nerf champions in suboptimal ways to balance for low elo.

LeetriAug 30, 20171 votes

Side note, Overwatch is definitely not only balanced around esports. They destroyed Roadhog (who was doing average at all ranks) because people were crying on the forum, and Blizz even admitted that fact. It had 0 to do with how good he was, it was 100% because people were crying.

ImTheSideKickAug 30, 20173 votes

no way 2% of the worlds players are pro and in e sports. just no. maybe 0.00000001%

Sraeg2013Aug 30, 20171 votes

Nah, you took it tad too far. It's at best 0,0001% (assuming Riot's alleged 100m of players)

ImTheSideKickAug 30, 20171 votes

point being its a lot lower then 2% lol

Sraeg2013Aug 30, 20171 votes

To put it into perspective 2% of the ranked playerbase is everybody between #1 Challenger and Platinum 5.

ImTheSideKickAug 31, 20171 votes

now this I believe. but these are not people in e sports, the pros per say. not like op mentioned

Sraeg2013Aug 30, 20173 votes

2%?

There's how many "pro" players? 100?

Assuming Riot's magical number of 100 million players that's 0,0001% of the entire playerbase.

5050BSAug 29, 20172 votes

LC$ is where most of their money comes from. EVEN with those that buy skins. LC$ makes more money for Riot.

chipndip1Aug 29, 20178 votes

Why do people still believe this horse shit?

Athenes LuluAug 29, 20172 votes

That has long been a thing since season 3.

Just giving everyone a reminder.

Yuumis MagicbookAug 30, 20172 votes

It's basicly a thing since people got good at the game and learned how to exploit op champions. It took a while for people to realise how op ap yi was and it also took a while to realise how op ap gragas was etc.

BoilTheOilAug 30, 20172 votes

pro play is much less than 2% (its like 0.015% I would guess)

PaffWasTakenAug 30, 20172 votes

I hate riot There, I said it, come and downvte me fanboys, you'll cry too when the game will countinue to be gutted like it is now

SEKAIAug 30, 20171 votes

It's 1 thing to say balancing according to tourney spectacles or agenda-filled direction are bad ideas, it's another thing entirely to just imply or think that the issue is to do with the supposed elitism or something and that solution is just to plunge to populism and say they need to balance according to solo queue because they supposedly compose of 98% of player base; which the game is neither intended for, will make pro matches even more broken if balanced around solo performance, and neither will it do any good if you just get from 1 skewed balancing that you're just complaining about into another.

You are mixing too many stuff together which led you to draw wrong conclusions like these, that's not how the whole thing works.

makkiiAug 30, 20172 votes

{quoted}

It's 1 thing to say balancing according to tourney spectacles or agenda-filled direction are bad ideas, it's another thing entirely to just imply or think that the issue is to do with the supposed elitism or something and that solution is just to plunge to populism and say they need to balance according to solo queue because they supposedly compose of 98% of player base; which the game is neither intended for, will make pro matches even more broken if balanced around solo performance, and neither will it do any good if you just get from 1 skewed balancing that you're just complaining about into another.

You are mixing too many stuff together which led you to draw wrong conclusions like these, that's not how the whole thing works.

but its not that riot is even balancing around pro play though, it would be more accurate to say they are making "gameplay changes" because TBH they havent been, and arent trying to make pro play "balanced", that went out the window about 3 seasons ago.

its perfectly fine to balance around pro play, thats what riot did during Seasons 1-3, what they are doing now could be more accurately described as "balancing" around LCSBIGPLAYSYALL.

to sum it up, their whole balance philosophy right now is to make league an incredibly exciting to watch spectator sport, that is to say, their balance philosophy cant even be described as such.

SEKAIAug 30, 20172 votes

{quoted}

but its not that riot is even balancing around pro play though, it would be more accurate to say they are making "gameplay changes" because TBH they havent been, and arent trying to make pro play "balanced", that went out the window about 3 seasons ago.

its perfectly fine to balance around pro play, thats what riot did during Seasons 1-3, what they are doing now could be more accurately described as "balancing" around LCSBIGPLAYSYALL.

to sum it up, their whole balance philosophy right now is to make league an incredibly exciting to watch spectator sport, that is to say, their balance philosophy cant even be described as such.

Yeah, as I was saying, there is a difference between balancing around "pro LEVEL" and balancing around "pro PLAY".

I do know that Riot has been doing agenda driven balance for some time now, hence why I didn't simply dismiss the idea when I brought it up in the earlier reply. I was just saying that OP was clearing merging them together when they are completely different things to talk about, and shouldn't be just bundled as one.

That said, if I were to go personally I fully support the notion of balancing around "pro-level" because to me that's only just being fair as a game (and how I disapprove the idea of populist balance ideals), but utterly despise balancing around "pro play"'s spectacle-oriented balance philosophy that they do for whatever reason (aka the now meme-fied LCSBigPlay).

SpârkyAug 30, 20171 votes

I mean riot only balances almost completely around lcs when it's worlds time. (which is now) so I'm perfectly fine with that. Otherwise I think people don't understand that a champion will always be broken and they just go "Riot broke x champ by buffing him/her what were they thinking" there will always be a unbalanced champ there will never be a perfect world where every champ can be played the same and has fair play against everything. People just need to let riot do there job that they have done such a good job for years now and that is balance the game. Just because you don't like what riot is doing doesn't mean they won't fix it. Just because you think your champ is forgotten (karma mains) doesn't mean riot won't eventually address it. Just give them time and patience that's all we can do.

PoskeAug 30, 20171 votes

Oh boy they are balancing around esports?

Thats why There are 40 champions played in each compettettive compared to dota 2 roster 97% of all heroes

They are balancing around everything............................ which is an issue I wish they balanced around best players

zaire90Aug 31, 20171 votes

Tbh I'm probably going to get down voted for it but I feel like it should be balanced around pro play seeing that they're the very best at the game and they're playing the game how its supposed to be played. In solo queue people complain about anything they don't like to fight doesn't matter if its not really op they'll still complain about it.

If we balanced around solo queue every champion besides Mordekaiser and tanks would be nerfed constantly until they feel like these champions are too op. I watched the boards complain about Ahri and then jump to Syndra when you guys begged for her counter to be nerfed. Boards dont think past I dont like this champ and if it got nerfed who would take over or they just dont know who would take over.

Also you guys glorify Dota 2 but doesnt Dota balance around the pro scene

dEAdbUsAug 31, 20171 votes

I doubt it's about proscene. Riots are trying to find right tempo for game. In ADCs meta pros usually run lots of support champions. As I'm not watching pro games so I suggest you to check this. Easy towers and fast games usually tend to slow pro gamers, because they don't want to risk and fight, so games have low kills number.