My thoughts on how to solve the lack of skill reliance and snowball components

This will be a long post and I would like to explain some things before getting into exactly how to solve these problems to get to the point i got into this.

I think its easy to tell that itemization, runes, ability values and stats given per level make every champion stand from the most weak to the most broken, including all ranges of snowball and skillcap possibilities. If you wonder what I mean more in depth let me explain:

When you do hit an enemy or you get hit, punished, you do an objective, you group or you do anything in this game there is a set of things that decide the result, these things are what make the game balanced or not in general, aside from champion kits.

These datas are:

• Itemization values (gold income, gold cost, raw stadistics, value of actives and passives)
• Runes raw stadistics, runes synergies, rune kit synergies
• Base champion stats and Per level stats
• Dragon passive bonuses
• Champion kit raw stats (cd, raw damage, scaling, range or size of area, casting time, raw movement speed or distance traveled, time and type of crowd control, untarget, healing and shields)

All of those decide wether you are strong or weak in any point of the game, in simple terms snowball components.

But its not just snowball, we all have base stats, runes, core items we have to buy, a kit with all of those stats from start and all of those make a "score" of how weak or strong we are as a champion by itself, this makes a huge difference between champions and its the component that differences fair of broken champions.

Examples of these are:

• Overloaded kits (too many options, which means more ways to snowball, save yourself, kill an enemy or whatever you can extra do) (champions should do one good thing, not many things)

• Too weak then too strong (It looks balanced at first, you play safe and then you are a monster, or you play agressive and then you fall of, seems fair if you do properly but if you think about it thats not true for many reasons):

  • Game length decides if you win
  • You can't decide what your team does, your skill won't be enough to win the game because your champion either falls of or is weak early
  • Some many champions don't fall of and are not weak at all in any point of the game
  • The point you are strong just by level you are relying on champion stadistics and not in skill, and most likely that will win you the game even if your enemy plays twice or more better than you.

• Suposedly weak against X champions and supposedly strong atainst X champions:

  • Some champions have strengths that are too strong that beat some other champions with little to no effort with no counter play, these are usually target abilities or abilities that don't punish player mistakes but champion missing survival options, a good example of this are insane speeds against champions that can't survive a burst and they are not mobile while the champion that is mobile has burst aswell. Due to this, many champions are weak just because other champions have better kits than them.

Back into it, champions themselves are strong or weak without any itemization or runes just by their kits, and thats a point to balance. However, thats not the biggest point, it is... Sources of snowball.

Main sources of snowball are Itemization, Gold Income, Dragon buffs, per-level stadistics and scaling.

Its simple, you get more gold income you buy more items you do more damage you do kill more often your opponents you do more objectives you win the game.

Its a simple punishing system where the player who does better gets the snowball, or not? No:

As I said above, champion kits decide which are strong, specially at the start of the game because they don't have any tool to change their weaknesses or strengths, so the only way to snowball is rely on strategy and skill, however, if your champion doesn't have the ability to win the other champions you will most likely never snowball, even if you were better than your opponent, so in these cases the enemy can do it on you but you not on him, which causes snowball on them.

So how do we deal with this common situation? Reducing damage wouldnt be enough right?

Reducing snowball component values will make games more skill based and strategy based and less snowball reliant, if we would remove the whole snowball components (this wont happen you know), the game would only rely on skill, but we would get to a point where some champions would be stronger than others just by champion kit and stats, this is where the other part comes, normalizing champion possibilities and balancing them around that with no snowball components.

In short terms it would be a bit weird and out of the box but the idea would be to temporarily (only pbe probably or test servers) disable all items of the game, runes, dragon spawn and balance champions around that (winrates, banrates and playrates will change drastically), after they are balanced around that enough (46~53%), its time to add one thing a time, first dragons, check, balance dragon stats, then add runes, check, balance change or rework if necessary runes, this is where you can easily see when a champion power spikes because of a rune, because there wont be any other changes, then itemization, and like with runes, balance all across the board.

All of that can't be done in live servers, and PBE servers don't have enough people, then what? Custom mode would be an option but might not get enough people, thats the only concern i have.

I really think this game has to return to a more skill-pace oriented and less snowball-damage meta, champions that need changes or make boring meta can get changes properly thanks to that and we could get the game to a way way way more balanced spot.

I hope you understand why i wrote all these things, its indeed really complex to understand why it would work that way but its easier to split the problem into the root components and deal with them one by one, because that way you can readjust the problems.

These are my thoughts and i'm probably missing more things, i didnt talk about herald or nashor because i think of them as an strategic objective to push the game forward and not as a snowball component.

Towers, inhibitors, minions might need changes aswell if these changes were made.

Anyway, give me your thoughts and please remember, this is my opinion, something i thought in deep, i love this game and i would like to see everything less frustrating and more balanced. Also take in mind i have some experience developing games yet I dont have anything public yet (mostly Ludum Dare and side projects, mods and now i have a game in the back)