Disabling Champions in LCS...but not for live?

The B0ulder·7/29/2014, 4:39:20 PM·8 votes·1,423 views

Listen, I understand every champion has counter play. I also understand there is always a way to win a game. However, something that Riot needs to consider is disabling champions on the live client if that champion is disabled for LCS. If the champion is bugged or deemed too broken because of a miscalculation in a recent patch why should everyone who's not an LCS player have to suffer. If the champion isn't fit to be used in competition than I feel that as a community we deserve more consistency. Why does the quality of the competition of solo queue (or the champion just being a near perma ban) suffer even when Riot is clearly aware there is a problem with a champion. I'm not butthurt, I'm not angry. I just wanted to put my thoughts in writing. If there's a explanation I would love to hear the thoughts behind it.

9 Comments

Hyrum Graff7/29/2014, 5:05:38 PM5 votes

I assume you're talking about the shen bug.

I think the difference is basically magnitude of importance. Here's a comparison: soccer.

Let's pretend there's a rule that you need to use a new soccer ball every game. Someone discovers that 1/1000 Nike soccer balls start leaking when they're used. At the college level, it's probably not a problem if you use a Nike ball. But for the world cup, you're sure as heck not going to (assuming other brands never leak).

Sire Hippington7/29/2014, 5:21:54 PM3 votes

Well, they shouldn'T be taken from the server, but maybe from ranked games.

Sir ArmaMalum7/29/2014, 4:50:05 PM2 votes

Money, and not in the greedy sense in the practical sense. A normal online game by regular people has the only investment of time and possibly LP, and as such is a much, much, much lower stake than a tournament pool. Prized events like tournaments can follow LCS rules themselves, that's their decision, but as far as the online game goes you will never lose anything permanent and thus doesn't warrant a disabled champion due to a 1/10,000 or so bug (Shen ult bug).

There is also the fact that the majority of the League playerbase won't have an entire game hinge on a single ability malfunctioning. I'm not saying it can't happen, but the chances are very low for the bug in the first lace, and then factored in with the chance of a proper game-defining ability and it bugging it's astronomical. I would suggest that person to go get a few lottery tickets kind of unlucky.

Phoenix Kotori 7/29/2014, 5:02:20 PM1 votes

Some of them are for very small bugs, so I don't think it's practical, or fair to disable them for all play on the live servers.

Maybe riot could consider disabling them from just ranked soloq or something though and allowing them in normals/ARAM/etc.

Morvrannis7/29/2014, 7:39:36 PM1 votes

I think you're likely misunderstanding the context of why a champion is disabled for LCS.

Let's start with a standard player first. He/she hops on at night to play a few games. Wins some. Loses some others. Maybe the bug even showed up in one of the games. But, at the end of the day, not really too big of a deal. At most people's level of play (Gold and down), a single bug will rarely cause a big shift in the game since individual and team play will make up for any of that. (And, to be fair, Riot definitely has disabled champs with gamebreaking bugs - Hemier and Yorick are the two most recent that come to memory.)

Now, let's look at LCS. You are talking about people's careers her (you laugh...but these guys bring in some serious $$$ from some estimates I saw). And, remember, every LCS game is a potential to move closer or farther away from going to championships. So, say two teams are battling it out and the Shen bug appears. It may not even be clear that that bug caused the game to be lost or won for the respective teams. But...it could have been. At this point, the team that lost now has a legitimate excuse with Riot that not preventing that bug from occurring ultimately cost them prize money, promotions, advertising dollars, whatever. It's a big deal when careers and money get involved.

I believe this is why Riot gives special care to disabling champs in LCS - particularly with those tricky, hard-to-find issues (like the Shen bug). A Riot employee would have to confirm.