@Guinsoo Tryndamere rework, Zileas' anti-design patterns and more
##Why does Tryndamere need a rework?
###Theme
Playing Tryndamere does not convey the sensation of being a barbarian king because the gameplay and the theme for Tryndamere do not coincide. This is the reason he should be reworked-- so that playing Tryndamere feels the way Tryndamere should feel. Currently the optimal way to play Tryndamere involves split pushing and catching out stragglers at the end of a team fight. I do not believe this is the gameplay that Tryndamere's kit should encourage because it does not align with his theme in any particular way. Tryndamere is supposed to be a barbarian king who thrives in battle, not someone who hides from battle and only kills people who cannot defend themselves. His lore states that he challenges people to test him in combat, rather than those who cannot defend themselves properly:
*A man robbed of his home and his people, Tryndamere wandered across the Freljord for years, vowing to forge himself into a brutal instrument of revenge. He visited all the tribes in the frozen wastes, besting each of their warriors until there were none left to challenge. In doing so, he mastered the barbarian ways of war and harnessed his anger as a force to be reckoned with. With sword in hand and rage in his heart, he is now on an undying quest for vengeance against the one who destroyed the life he once knew. *
Currently Tryndamere does not execute on his intended fantasy of being someone who thrives in combat or on anger. His optimal play pattern is confrontation avoidance and constant pushing. This is something that is far more suited to a different champion, one who's theme more strongly resonates with that playstyle. Currently we cannot have a champion that ought to thrive deathlessly in combat deep in enemy lines that any other champion would find suicidal because Tryndamere already occupies that space, even though he doesn't deliver on it. In other words, he occupies creative space that he doesn't fulfill.
###Gameplay
One of the big reasons for Tryndamere's poor performance in team fights is due to the inflexibility of his kit from a balance perspective, and the problems that executing his fantasy successfully would create. Simply giving Tryndamere enough power to thrive in fights by buffing his sheer numbers is not an option because it does not leave his opponents with any significant gameplay. Tryndamere fails to deliver an engaging gameplay experience to opponents in basically every dimension. In particular he exhibits every single anti-design pattern in Zileas' List of Game Design Anti-Patterns:
Power Without Gameplay
This is when we give a big benefit in a way that players don't find satisfying or don't notice. The classic example of this is team benefit Auras. In general, other players don't value the aura you give them very much, and you don't value it much either -- even though auras can win games. As a REALLY general example, I would say that players value a +50 armor aura only about twice as much as a +10 armor aura... Even though +50 is 5x better. Another example would be comparing a +10 damage aura to a skill that every 10 seconds gives flaming weapons that make +30 damage to all teammates next attack (with fire and explosions!). I am pretty sure that most players are WAY more excited about the fiery weapons buff, even though the strength is lower overall.
The problem with using a "power without gameplay" mechanic is that you tend to have to 'over-buff' the mechanic and create a game balance problem before people appreciate it. As a result, we tend to keep Auras weak, and/or avoid them altogether, and/or pair them on an active/passive where the active is very strong and satisfying, so that the passive is more strategic around character choice. For example, Sona's auras are all quite weak -- because at weak values they ARE appreciated properly.
Tryndamere's mocking shout reduces the attack damage of any enemy champion within 400 range by 20 / 35 / 50 / 65 / 80 regardless of their facing. The actual influence this has on fights is difficult to appreciate and a lot of his team fighting power is tied up in this relatively invisible ability, which does nothing to execute his fantasy as an in the fray kind of fighter even though it takes up a tremendous amount of his power budget.
Burden of Knowledge
This is a VERY common pattern amongst hardcore novice game designers. This pattern is when you do a complex mechanic that creates gameplay -- ONLY IF the victim understands what is going on. Rupture is a great example -- with Rupture in DOTA, you receive a DOT that triggers if you, the victim, choose to move. However, you have no way of knowing this is happening unless someone tells you or unless you read up on it online... So the initial response is extreme frustration. We believe that giving the victim counter gameplay is VERY fun -- but that we should not place a 'burden of knowledge' on them figuring out what that gameplay might be. That's why we like Dark Binding and Black Shield (both of which have bait and/or 'dodge' counter gameplay that is VERY obvious), but not Rupture, which is not obvious.
Undying rage and mocking shout are both Tryndamere's most significant abilities and suffer from burden of knowledge. There is no indicator that tells a player that they will be slowed if they are facing away from Tryndamere, and the only indication of how long undying rage lasts is a small buff in his buff bar that can only be seen by someone looking for it. In other words, a player who knows nothing about Tryndamere or his kit does not have all the tools required to combat him until he is either told how his abilities work or he learns by losing many times, which causes frustration. Magnifiying these issues is that fact that these two abilities work in tandem to punish people who do not already understand how Tryndamere's kit works-- people who choose to run after being dissappointed that Tryndamere isn't dying when reduced to no health are then slowed massively by mocking shout for turning and running.
Unclear Optimization
This is a more subtle one. when players KNOW they've used a spell optimally, they feel really good. An example is disintegrate on Annie. When you kill a target and get the mana back, you know that you used it optimally, and this makes the game more fun. On the other hand, some mechanics are so convoluted, or have so many contrary effects, that it is not possible to 'off the cuff' analyze if you played optimally, so you tend not to be satisfied. A good example of this is Proudmoore's ult in DOTA where he drops a ship. The ship hits the target a bit in the future, dealing a bunch of damage and some stun to enemies. Allies on the other hand get damage resistance and bonus move speed, but damage mitigated comes up later. Very complicated! And almost impossible to know if you have used it optimally -- do you really want your squishies getting into the AOE? Maybe! Maybe not... It's really hard to know that you've used this skill optimally and feel that you made a 'clutch' play, because it's so hard to tell, and there are so many considerations you have to make. On the other hand, with Ashe's skill shot, if you hit the guy who was weak and running, you know you did it right... You also know you did it right if you slowed their entire team... Ditto on Ezreal's skill shot.
Due to the gameplay issues listen in this section Tryndamere's raw numbers are constrained so that opponents can interact with him. The fundamental flaws in his kit make it so that the numbers required for him to be a success in a large confrontation or team fight are so high that, given those same numbers in a small skirmish or 1v1, he would have essentially no gameplay and would simply win any matchup from sheer stats. The fact that the required numbers are not present in Tryndamere's kit means that he has to choose how he enters a team fight very carefully if at all. He cannot initiate a fight (though that would be more inline with his theme than skulking in the shadows) without being denied hard by crowd control and nukes, and his ultimate cannot last long enough in its current state for him to make a dent if he chooses to initiate. So he must wait and watch for most of the fight to take place before he can go into combat. Waiting and watching does not feel very much like a fearless barbarian king.
Unclear optimization occurs when Tryndamere is presented with a choice that often has no right answer: Entering a team fight early to apply mocking shout to as many targets as possible in order to swing the fight in his team's favor, but likely dying before doing much of anything because of the limits of his kit imposed by numerical restrictions due to concerns of fairness. Entering later to clean up people who cannot defend themselves after most of the fight has already occurred.
Regardless of the choice Tryndamere is left feeling unsatisfied because he wasn't able to contribute throughout the entire team fight and what contributions he did make do not resonate with his theme.
Fun Fails to Exceed Anti-Fun
Anti-fun is the negative experience your opponents feel when you do something that prevents them from 'playing their game' or doing activities they consider fun. While everything useful you can do as a player is likely to cause SOME anti-fun in your opponents, it only becomes a design issue when the 'anti-fun' created on your use of a mechanic is greater than your fun in using the mechanic. Dark Binding is VERY favorable on this measurement, because opponents get clutch dodges just like you get clutch hits, so it might actually create fun on both sides, instead of fun on one and weak anti-fun on another. On the other hand, a strong mana burn is NOT desirable -- if you drain someone to 0 you feel kinda good, and they feel TERRIBLE -- so the anti-fun is exceeded by the fun. This is important because the goal of the game is for players to have fun, so designers should seek abilities that result in a net increase of fun in the game. Basic design theory, yes?
Undying rage allows a Tryndamere player to ignore his opponents attempts to nullify the threat he presents and then use that time to eliminate them regardless of their damage output. The fun that the Tryndamere player enjoys from simultaneously defying and delivering death is exceeded by the frustration that people who fight Tryndamere experience when they do not have the tools to fight him or they run out of those tools before he runs out of time. Unfortunately this is the most significant driving force that keeps Tryndamere from having numbers high enough (or undying rage lasting long enough) to allow him to team fight reliably-- because he does not offer a compelling experience to his opponent.
Conflicted Purpose
This one is not a super strong anti-pattern, but sometimes it's there. A good example of this would be a 500 damage nuke that slows enemy attack speed by 50% for 10 seconds (as opposed to say, 20%), on a 20 second cooldown. At 50%, this is a strong combat initiation disable... but at 500 damage it's a great finisher on someone who is running... but you also want to use it early to get the disable -- even though you won't have it avail by the end of combat usually to finish. This makes players queasy about using the ability much like in the optimization case, but it's a slightly different problem. If the ability exists for too many different purposes on an explicit basis, it becomes confusing. this is different from something like blink which can be used for many purposes, but has a clear basic purpose -- in that place, players tend to just feel creative instead.
Mocking shout both reduces attack damage by 20 / 35 / 50 / 65 / 80 regardless of enemy facing and slows any enemy champion facing away from Tryndamere by 30 / 37.5 / 45 / 52.5 / 60%. As a strong debuff Tryndamere players are encouraged to use it before the enemy unloads their combo or auto attacks in order to diminish their damage as a fight breaks out, but Tryndamere players also want to hold onto the shout so that it can be used to slow someone who is trying to escape. This makes Tryndamere players feel uneasy about when to use the ability.
False Choice -- Deceptive Wrong Choice
This is when you present the player with one or more choices that appear to be valid, but one of the choices is just flat wrong. An example of this is an ability we had in early stages recently. It was a wall like Karthus' wall, but if you ran into it, it did damage to you, and then knocked you towards the caster. In almost every case, this is a false choice -- because you just shoudln't go there ever. If it was possible for the character to do a knockback to send you into the wall, it wouldn't be as bad. Anyhow, there's no reason to give players a choice that is just plain bad -- the Tomb of Horrors (original module) is defined by false choices -- like the room with three treasure chests, all of which have no treasure and lethal traps.
False Choice -- Ineffective Choice
*Similar to above, except when you give what appears to be an interesting choice that is then completely unrewarding, or ineffective at the promised action. An older version of Swain's lazer bird had this failing... Because the slow was so large, you could never run away in time to de-leash and break the spell and reduce damage, and in cases you did, you'd just dodge 20% of the damage at a big cost of movement and DPS -- so running was just an ineffective choice. *
Mocking shout again is the culprit. If Tryndamere gives chase to an enemy player, that player is confronted with the decision to attempt to make distance while being slowed by mocking shout OR turn around and fight him despite having a massive attack damage debuff. Both options are wrong. Furthermore due to limitations in the game engine that make it impossible to turn around without issuing a movement command a player cannot turn around to face tryndamere before he casts mocking shout without moving towards him, so players that rapidly try to juke Tryndamere's mocking shout end up moving closer to Tryndamere anyway, so Tryndamere has no reason to cast it and they effectively close the gap for him. This leads to the sensation that players are "fighting the game" rather than "fighting the player".
Non-Reliability
Skills are tools. Players count on them to do a job. When a skill is highly unreliable, we have to overpower it to make it 'satisfying enough'. Let me give you an example: Let's say Kayle's targeted invulnerability ult had a 95% chance of working, and a 5% chance of doing nothing when cast. We'd have to make it a LOT stronger to make it 'good enough' because you could not rely upon it... and it would be a lot less fun. Random abilities have this problem on reliability -- they tend to be a lot less satisfying, so you have to overpower them a lot more. Small amounts of randomness can add excitement and drama, but it has a lot of downsides. There are other examples of non-reliability, but randomness is the most obvious one. Abilities that require peculiar situations to do their jobs tend to run into the same problems, such as Tryndamere's shout that only slows when targets are facing away from him.
Other than the stated example, Battlefury is also very unreliable even at full fury and occupies a huge amount of Tryndamere's power budget because of how oppressive a few critical strikes can be in the early laning phase. This tends to cause players who play against Tryndamere feeling cheated by RNG when Tryndamere wins a trade that he shouldn't have just from the luck of the draw. The fury meter doesn't convey much certainty to Tryndamere's opponent or the player playing Tryndamere about whether or not he will critically strike often because even at full fury Tryndamere's critical strike chance isn't high enough early on in the game to convey with certainty whether he will crit once or twice or zero times in a trade. It is possible for Tryndamere with full fury to engage in a long trade and not crit once, or it is possible for him to engage with half fury and crit 3 times in a row.
If the critical strike chance at full fury was much much higher, then the fury meter and playing around it would become more meaningful. For example, if Battle fury gave 100% critical strike chance at full fury the difference between a full fury Tryndamere and an empty fury Tryndamere would be obvious and immediate-- it would convey with much more certainty Tryndamere's trading power. However, in order to give Battlefury that much power so that it has a healthy amount of feedback, it would necessitate taking power from other areas of his kit, which makes it a greedy gameplay mechanism. Furthermore it interacts poorly with itemization in league of legends which tends to leave Tryndamere players feeling sour about being discouraged from building items that grant critical strike chance, limiting his options.
#What should Tryndamere be?
##Theme
Tryndamere should be someone who thrives in combat. He should be someone who wants to be where the blood and fighting is. He shouldn't run from big confrontations or avoid large scale combat, he should dive into it and excel in it. His kit shouldn't be so convoluted and poorly designed that it is impossible for him to do this without leaving his opponent with no options or good choices. It should feel like there is always something you can do to control Tryndamere, but simultaneously Tryndamere should be able to do something that makes him feel fearless and amazing even in those constraints that the enemy places on him. His entire gameplay in a team fight should not focus around skulking around in the shadows for most of the team fight to occur in front of him so that he can spin onto a straggler and assassinate them before they can react / between cooldowns while they cannot put up a defense.
Tryndamere should not have to seek out defenseless people-- he should seek out people who challenge him. He should seek out the strongest warriors in all the freljord and put their mettle to the test. Tryndamere should fight where everyone is clustered, where the most stuff is happening, in the middle of the fray, where no other person can survive. He should be hitting tanks and front liners and should be comfortable staying there and hitting things that can take a few hits, because hitting things is what makes Tryndamere players happy.
##Gameplay
Obviously mocking shout has to be replaced. For the many reasons listed in the previous section it is one of the most, if not the most poorly designed ability in league of legends. It is a huge power sink, does not contribute significantly to Tryndamere's fantasy and theme, causes more frustration than it is worth, and offers a frustrating experience to new players playing against tryndamere and those trying to find his optimal play pattern in team fights.
Undying rage is currently gated by a duration which is already barely manageable in solo lanes and skirmishes but if it were any higher would be broken, and yet cannot be high enough to allow Tryndamere to express his theme in a team fight because if it were Tryndamere would not offer his opponent any compelling gameplay. Therefore in order for Tryndamere to have an ultimate that lasts long enough for him to fulfill his fantasy he must offer his opponent some compelling gameplay. The fact that Tryndamere can ignore damage while delivering damage frustrates players because they feel as though that once they run out of tools to control Tryndamere they have no way to successfully interact with him. So a way must be made to allow players to interact and control Tryndamere without demanding the use of important crowd control or interfering with Tryndamere's fantasy or being so demanding in order to execute the interaction that the choice becomes ineffective.
Battle fury leads to frustration in the laning phase because fury poorly communicates the certainty for Tryndamere to critically strike. Because the probability for Tryndamere to critically strike at full fury is low enough that the feedback betweeen "I see that Tryndamere has full fury" and "He just hit me really hard" is decoupled, new players may not immediately make the connection that his fury is tied to his trading potential. Tryndamere's trading potential should be much more strongly tied to his fury level rather than luck. This means moving power out of Tryndamere's damage output at zero fury and into his auto attack damage at full fury but giving him ways to interact with the opponent in order to build fury quickly or consume fury. Each of Tryndamere's basic abilities should consume some fury and his auto attacks should build some fury.
