A General Letter to the Players of LoL, Specifically Those Who Whine About Game and/or Its State.

Disclaimer: This article will likely offend many people, specifically the type of people that use clickbait titles on Reddit and the Gameplay boards and/or have overused Caps Lock keys.

Disclaimer 2: If you find a source that supports or disputes any of my statistics, please place them in the comments.

I have seen a very major problem with LoL’s community; no, I am not here to whine about in-game toxicity, but rather a problem found almost exclusively on messages boards such as these Boards, Reddit, YouTube comments, etc. This issue is a severe since of entitlement, a feeling that everything should be perfect just the way you like it. If you aren’t the type of person to whine in the gameplay section, or are, in the words of Meteos, “but a humble memer” (shout out to my boy Malicious Metal), then most if not all of these things don’t apply to you, so you don’t have read this (or you can do whatever the fuck you want). If you are, you still don’t have to read this, but if all the gameplay boards came together to create what could loosely be called a soul, then have that soul read this.

This entitlement, in case you couldn’t tell by my anti-Gameplay Boards bias, is mostly in the form of whining about balance. This has always been an issue for LoL due to its constantly updated state, but Season Six saw the creation of a new beast: Dynamic Queue. The biggest issue with Dynamic Queue was the possibility of premades versus solo players. This can be divided into two subcategories: premades of 3-4 players, and premades of 5 players. 3-4 players, much more common than 5 mans, offered little to no strategic aid to the team, unless they were botlane, the synergy was negligible, and anyone else not in the assumed voice call lost out on 99% of communication with those premade teammates 99% of the time. Besides, if you have a premade on your team, you never think “oh, this game is freelo.” Instead, you treat it like you have a normal game, but with 3 to 4 players essentially doing /mute all at the beginning of the game. The strategic gain is negligible, but people still complained with little to no statistical, concrete evidence to back it up; hell, even most anecdotal evidence was bullshit.

Now onto 5-mans. This is where the most controversy lies. I personally don’t see why. IIRC, Riot stated that after some tweaking the chances of 5 solos being paired against a 5-man premade was <5%. Now, if you perform decently in 19 out of 20 games and that 20th game is supposedly an “instant loss” (which it isn’t), then climbing should still not be much of a problem and you need to find a better excuse for losing those Bronze 4 promos (I’m acting tough because I am insecure about my ELO. SEND LP). And again, if you think that Riot has the balls to LIE on such a significant statistic, you better rejoice in knowing that Riot would risk that much just to make the players happy.

But alas, as preseason 7 rolls around, you guys won. Riot removes DynaQ, and everyone is happy. However, I’d be dumber than the people that favor catapults to trebuchets if I said that DynaQ was the only balance issue complained about. Before I get specific, I want make an argument for insignificance of being OP. Let’s assume that a champion has a 55% winrate right now. Just toeing the line between OP and simply meta, and just enough for the gameplay boards to lose their shit. That means, in practice, that out of every 100 games you play, only 5 loses can be blamed on said champion being OP. To quote myself, “If you perform decently in 19 out of 20 games and that 20th game is supposedly an ‘instant loss’ (which it isn’t), then climbing should still not be much of a problem and you need to find a better excuse for losing those Bronze 4 promos.”

Now I want to address the biggest buzzword in LoL balance today: Toxic. You guys have made me hate Chernobyl even more because of this word its misuse. Toxic, in its balance context, means that some champion/ability/item breaks a certain rule in place in the game. If a champion is sincerely not fun to play against (in a controlled, salt-free environment) then they are unhealthy for the game, but not necessarily toxic. All toxic champs are unhealthy; not all unhealthy champs are toxic. Let’s look at some examples by declaring laws of LoL and finding examples that break those laws. We will start with the Law of Conservation of Mana, which states that “Mana is a limited resource that is regained over time: it cannot be destroyed, nor created without a loss of something else.” This law is true for all nontoxic champions in LoL; even TF loses his ability to stun or waveclear well when he regains mana, plus it takes mana to regain mana. So what examples break that law? We will look to two very old examples. One is old Kassadin, when his W used to steal mana. In other words, the enemy champion could lose mana without having said mana being converted into some sort of ability or special effect: THIS is toxic. Mana is lost without any gain from the loser. Another example that breaks this law is VERY old Soraka. Her E used to be a targeted ability that could regenerate an ally’s or self’s mana at no cost. This violates the idea that Mana cannot be regained without a loss of something. THIS is toxic.

Let’s move onto another example, Morello’s third law: “For every ability there is a cooldown time that is proportionate to the strength of said ability in relation to the rest of a champion’s kit.” You guys remember 58% winrate Sona from a while ago? This is a good example of this law being broken: her cooldowns were significantly disproportionate the strength of her abilities. THIS is toxic. Now, since I am out of clever physics-based jokes, we will move on to a specific and recent example of toxicity: Tank Ekko. Tank Ekko was in direct violation of the idea that everything has a tradeoff: tankiness loses either damage (Braum) or utility (Darius). Utility loses either damage (Malphite) or tankiness (Karma). LoL balance is usually based on a “pick two” system; champions can have any combination of tankiness, damage, and utility, but not all three. Some champions, like Bard, have one very strong category and two weak-average categories. Either way, everything ideally has tradeoffs. Tank Ekko broke this idea: he had average-strong utility, average-strong tankiness, and average-strong damage. THIS is toxic. Nunu being able to have 4k health at 20 minutes is OP, but certainly not toxic: his utility is average-strong, and his damage is weak at best.

What I am saying with all of this, is that it isn’t up to you anyway. People often talk about Riot like they owe us, or that they need us to survive. In some ways they do: they need revenue after all. But, in the end, it’s their game. Sure, Earth needs moon to survive, but if everyone on the planet agrees what is stopping us from nuking the shit out of it? When this topic comes to Morality, it is different; the whole Esports controversy, the recent Reddit thing about LoL Mexico, etc. Those are different.

The best example of this I can find is the removal of Dominion. If you go to the article on the LoL website called “Retiring Dominion” and scroll down to the comments, you get a bunch of people whining about the removal of Dominion. It was so bad that a Rioter’s comment on it got downvoted to the point of being “below threshold.” This is so immature. In the metaphorical playground that is LoL, Dominion was the shitty sandbox in the corner with wet sand and no toys. Sure, it isn’t hurting anyone, and there’s always that one weird kid that sits and plays in it, but logically anyone would have it removed, even if that shithead that plays in it throws such a fit that he transfers schools.

Plants are another great example. Everyone is bitching about plants like they were spawned straight out of Teemo’s diahorrea caused by too many shrooms. In the end, two major points exist. First, it doesn’t fucking matter. With the slight example of the vision plant, I can confidently say that as a jungle main these plants will do next to nothing. Even if they do, no one knows what will happen. People will claim that “I/my friend on the PBE/some streamer says that they are the worst thing ever!” Well, newsflash: the PBE is solely an environment for bug testing; any non-obvious balance issues are undeterminable there. Unless plants go live and are so unhealthy/unbalanced that the game becomes unplayable, and even if they do make the game that bad, then I can say with confidence that Riot will fix it: that is what the Preseason exists for.

To conclude, people need to stop treating the game like some birthday cake that they can sit and complain about until the baker takes it back and fixes it until it is perfect. In reality, playing this game is a privilege, not a right, and is in full control of Riot. If you don’t like how this game is managed, balanced, or cared for, then go play a different game, because we sure as hell don’t want you here.