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2 Comments

Norunika7/18/2014, 5:24:34 PM5 votes

I enjoyed the points of view you presented in the video, and I for one definitely agree that it sucks to lose game modes, but I feel like you glided over a pretty essencial point: these game modes are nightmares to balance.

You presented that this shouldn't be an issue, because after all these are fun game modes not created as a competitive challenge but as a chance to let off some steam and do fun things, but honestly, you need to consider that even that becomes imppossible if the balance becomes too skewed.

The first example that comes to mind is ARAM. At first, this quirky community created game mode was just that: all silly and all fun, and also quite a niche interest. But as it became an official game mode, it started becoming more widely played and suddenly a variety of problems began to emerge. The second someone saw a Jayce, Nidalee, Lux, or Master Yi (to name a few) on the enemy team, they would feel a sinking sensation in their stomachs and suddenly they knew they were in for a horrible game unless they had an equivalent champion on their own team. The forums were quickly flooded with complaints about how the game mode was untolerable with these champions in them, and riot was forced to try and tweak ARAM so that it could again become a more enjoyable experience (orb of winter is the first ARAM exclusive change that comes to mind).

So, basically there seems to be a point where the balance between 'fun and silly' and 'I'd actually like to win' starts to become unstable, and I believe this begins to kick in right about two weeks to a month after release. It's after this point where a meta starts to become established, and a certain competitive nature is added to the game mode. This is a natural consequence: no matter what your motivation for playing a league game may be, it's undeniable that in the long run anyone who stays interested in MOBAs does so because winning is fun for them. Naturally, no matter what game mode then, people begin to refine themselves in order to find optimal winning strategies, and since these game modes by nature are rather unabalnced, these strategies end up disporportionately unfun to play against.

So instead of letting the game get to this point, I feel like Riot has decided to nip the problem in the bud. They give us two weeks to derp around like crazy on some derpy game mode, but pull the plug before the nidalee/luxes of ARAM start rearing their heads, because if any resource is not only costly but also essential for Riot, it's balancing.