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What exactly is wrong with Binary gameplay?

Tusutaki··3 votes·272 views

One of the bigger trends i've been seeing in recent years is the drive to get away from designing binary champions in favor of a more dynamic jack of all trades approach. Every time I hear about something being "binary" it is always put in a negative aspect. That's where the title comes in, what exactly is wrong with binary gameplay?

I feel that there is nothing wrong with a champion that has binary designs and that there shouldn't be that much negativity surrounding it. I would even go as far to say that they have a healthier impact to the game's health. Binary champions keeps things interesting. But how so compared to the nonbinary champions? Because Binary champions has weaknesses and must be either played around your team comp or around the enemy's comp. They introduce experimentation and theory crafting which is where half of the fun comes from for me. Finding out neat viable combos like Anivia's wall with Poppy's Tackle. Or Sivir and Singed. Ect.

8 Comments

MagicFlyingLlama7 votes

Binary stuff is impossible to balance well: MasterYi Garen LeeSin Warwick

It is not fun to play: stomp or be stomped.

It is not fun to play against, for the same reason.

Teridax681 votes

This is pretty much it, and also why Riot wants to stay away from rock-paper-scissors/hard-counter gameplay in League. The problem with binary champions is that they tend to either win hard or lose hard: while this can be okay in a game mode that lasted, say, five minutes, or some equally short duration, it isn't really as good in games that last 20-30 minutes, where whichever player who gets the short end of the stick ends up having their loss smeared across a much more extended duration. It's not great when a champion has no options to recover from a bad situation, because when that happens it tends to lead to the feeling that games have been won or lost at champ select.

With that said, I also agree with the criticism that many more modern champions have become too generalized, and are often able to do too many things at once. Imo, this creates the opposite problem where these champions have a ton of agency at everyone's expense: if their opponent doesn't have at least some counter to everything they do, they can just abuse that one mechanic that's not getting countered and bully out the other champion in their lane. It creates this new status quo where champions that don't do "enough", i.e. lots of things at a high level of competence, fall to the wayside, which is why a lot of champions who appear pretty balanced tend to suck in most current formats, and why most champions who are dominated are either really overloaded, really overtuned, or both.

Tusutaki1 votes

However that was how League operated in the early years. Not saying their previous state was much better but I can tell you for sure that it offered more variety of choices. While you can argue that yes, binary champions doesnt require much skill to operate however what I feel that a lot of people don't realize it's quite the opposite but in a nondirect way for the lack of better words.

When you isolate and narrow to just the player playing the said binary champ the problems are easy to point out however, this is a 5v5 game. When claiming a binary champ being no skill you're not counting who he would be laning against, his team comp, nor his enemy team comp. A player could choose to counter pick himself and lose lane if it means his team would more likely win. I've personally done it plenty of times and isnt that where "Win lane, lose game" comes from? The champ shouldn't have 20 thousand options to respond to a situation, else why would there be a wide selection of champions to choose from? In a lot of games, especially in the pro scene, you can easily tell who is going to win by champ selection alone without even accounting their personal skill 90% of the time.

As for as balancing, it is a lot easier to balance binary champs than it is to balance generalized ones. At least in my eyes but thats due to having different balancing philosophies since I would much rather prefer buff the ones that are greatly under performing than to nerf unless it's someone breaking the game like re-worked Fiora. Now how do you "properly" balance re-worked Fiora without making her useless nor drastically changing her kit? You essentially cant and neither could Riot. Same with Gnar and Galio.

Teridax681 votes

{quoted}

However that was how League operated in the early years. Not saying their previous state was much better but I can tell you for sure that it offered more variety of choices.

League had more choice in its early years because it did not yet have a balancing philosophy. There were a ton of choices that were causing a significant amount of harm to games, like AP Yi, but those choices were allowed to exist because Riot hadn't gotten around to fixing them yet. I can definitely agree that League lacks diversity overall right now, but it wasn't that much better back then either, at least not for the tradeoffs it presented.

{quoted}

While you can argue that yes, binary champions doesnt require much skill to operate however what I feel that a lot of people don't realize it's quite the opposite but in a nondirect way for the lack of better words.

At no point have I claimed that binary champions require less skill than non-binary ones, so this argument is kind of a red herring in this particular exchange.

{quoted}

As for as balancing, it is a lot easier to balance binary champs than it is to balance generalized ones. At least in my eyes but thats due to having different balancing philosophies since I would much rather prefer buff the ones that are greatly under performing than to nerf unless it's someone breaking the game like re-worked Fiora.

Purely buffing underperforming champions, and not nerfing overperforming ones, introduces power creep into the game, and it is this very methodology, which Riot has been using for quite some time now, that has already been causing a lot of problems in League. The buffing of underperforming, and especially older champions, is what has caused many champions to become overloaded or otherwise more frustrating to deal with, and applying this to binary kits, which have fewer levers to balance, merely creates an even more unstable balancing environment.

{quoted}

Now how do you "properly" balance re-worked Fiora without making her useless nor drastically changing her kit? You essentially cant and neither could Riot. Same with Gnar and Galio.

Fiora isn't doing too poorly right now, and while I agree she has some issues in her kit, she is a lot easier to balance than the old Fiora, which as I recall was specifically just a pubstomper who either crushed lane hard or became irrelevant the whole game. Currently, there are a lot of different ways to adjust Fiora depending on what you want to change about her (targeting her proc damage, for example, can affect her tank-busting power, and adjusting her self-healing alters her sticking power in lane), whereas her old kit had comparatively little that could be done, due to how one-note her playstyle used to be. This is one more reason why I think champions shouldn't be too binary, because when the largest part of their kit does only one thing, it is difficult to fine-tune that kit's playstyle without doing some sweeping buffs or nerfs.

C9 Squeeky 3 votes

Because it has no skill (or mastery) expression and relies on stat-checking your opponent rather than playing better than them. It also usually means they are feast-or-famine, either frustrating to play against / no counter-play, or very 1 dimensional and doesn't do anything except 1 thing. If they aren't strong enough to do that one thing, they are dead weight to the team, a walking ward/bag of gold.

woodvsmurph2 votes

I don't know that it's a problem for a champ to be binary, I think it's more the idea that they want champs to have more options to give more outplay potential, more options, and more chance to express skill. It's like comparing a good and bad vayne vs a good and bad malphite. Sure we can see that the good malphite is better than the bad one, but do we really see the same difference as we see with a good vs bad vayne? No.

In addition, binary champs tend to be too exploitable. Which forces Riot to either overbuff their stats or abilities (hi udyr early this season, hello master yi) or leave them in a very weak to unplayable spot. They're either too good, or unplayable except at lower ranks.

I get what you are saying, and I do agree to some extent. But I think we need more of a middle ground between what you argue for and what Riot has been doing.

Infernape1 votes

Because it usually feels quite shit to be on the receiving end of it.

Dead flag blues1 votes

Simple answer : either too strong or too weak (aka number reliant and can never be "balanced")

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