Boards›Live Gameplay Balance

How does Riot/Community feel about permanent stat boosts or "Snowballing"?

ModCaptainMårvelous·4/22/2014, 1:46:00 AM·2 votes·103 views

I'm not so much talking about, say, getting a lot of kills in a lane and thus gaining a lot of good items at an early stage. More so, I'm referring to the skills pertaining to characters like Nasus ,Veigar and Sion. While these are gained from last hitting and minion kills, I'm curious how Riot would feel about skills like this:

These are just quick examples and are flavored to make them a bit more interesting to look at. All of these are generally passive, though that's not to say that these skills couldn't have an active effect.

| "Icon" | Ability Name | Description |- | summoner 1 | Consumption of Arcana | Champions who die within a small radius around the target and grant a kill or assist give XYZ a permanent bonus to mana. | item 2050 | Infinite Sight | Whenever ZYX kills a champion, he/she/it gains a permanent bonus to sight range. | Teemo | Literally Satan | Every 5 kills allows Satan to store one additional mushroom.

So when looking at skills like this, I see both pros and cons related to them:

###Pros

  • People enjoy being rewarded for their efforts/skillful play.
  • Sharing these types of stories is conductive for community.("One time I got xxx stacks on this guy!")
  • Items like this technically already exist. item 3041 item 3141
  • Bonuses such as this can be mitigated by diminishing returns if they're too powerful.
  • Likewise, there's tons of room to give bonuses that do not skew the balance too much. (As opposed to perma AP/AD increases.)

###Cons

  • Increased sense of who failed what. "Omg u failed mid and he's got like 8 stacks."
  • People generally don't like to lose stacks on anything, as tons of work could be erased with one careless death.
  • Permanent bonuses will have to be passive/retroactive, otherwise you're almost forced to get them at level 1.
  • The balance between snowball and still being enjoyable to play against is incredibly delicate.
  • Conversely, so is the balance between snowball skills being on the edge of powerful if fed but not useless if underfed.

So we have an interesting crossroads. I, personally, am all for carefully tested and regulated snowball skills such as this. Everyone in league has that "power fantasy" of going 8/0 and getting an infinity edge at 9 minutes, but this niche isn't really explored save for a few select champions (The ones I mentioned above). Likewise, I think the idea of testing out a carry who can gain a lot from being around champion kills could make for some interesting dynamic of choice. Do I let them farm the lane or do I try for a kill, knowing full and well dying to them will make them stronger in future fights.

Compared to guys like Nasus, I never really feel a choice between fighting him head-on or letting him farm. The obvious choice is almost always to fight, as you want to keep his stacks low. Sure, Nasus could get a kill and get some items, but it's the Q damage you fear late game and what will happen if I try to counter farm him.

I'm hoping to establish a dialogue and see what people think. As people might have seen before, I occasionally design champions for fun and with hopes to one day work at Riot. (Mostly narrative but I feel these skills are important in designing a champion idea) I've often thought about putting these types of skills in characters but I want to see how people react to this.

1 Comments

Sir ArmaMalum4/22/2014, 1:59:36 AM2 votes

Personally, even though I play Nasus often in my ranked team I feel Nasus Q and Feral Flare are cool mechanics in a general idea sense but are too easy to reach an edge case for. i.e. Nasus 500+ stacks, Feral Flare 30+ stacks. It just takes time. And while yes this doesn't affect the pro scene too much I find that high gold and lower elo games are very easy to extend past the average game time making these mechanics too often abusable. Veigar and Sion less so because burst is gated by overkill/cooldowns and health is easily shredded given a chance.

Now the easiest way to counter act this is to add a limit, but that would not only defeat the purpose of the mechanic but also literally draw a line of 'this is where you plateau'. Personally I'd rather see more variations using diminishing returns, so that way it still rewards good play early game but funnels late-game play back into still requiring skilled play rather than a number crunch. Granted the math would be much harder to balance, but I feel like it can be done well consistently given enough iteration.

tl;dr Love these mechanics, but (at least continuous damage stacking ones) needs diminishing returns.