One big qualm I have with this particular argument (let's not get into detailed why a specific change is good for Lee Sin / game health or not, or maybe later) is that the philosophical approach to Lee Sin was never to make him "the same" or have the same power curve as everyone else.
We've made it really clear we love varied power curves, but we also value counterplay and Lee Sin was, by his stats and power, winning a certain phase of the game by showing up. If you're literally not allowed to play a champion because they picked a different champion, that's a hard counter and it's not great. The changes we proposed for Lee were always to follow in this philosophy, and while I won't disagree if you feel the changes didn't reflect it, I am a little confused when people say "oh you're making Lee Sin the same as everyone," when even in internal playtests he's following pretty much the same curve as before (he's actually doing quite well, and these are challenger / diamond players who play in competitive playtests).
little off topic here but...a small question...morello said you guys dont want to olaf champions yet you(not directly you) guys completely destroy pantheon and completely ignore renekton
just curious why is this?
Because Pantheon's not currently destroyed on live and we're all being hyperbolic. As an FYI, S@20 did not pull the channel reduction we also did where the channel time has gone down by 1.5 seconds.
That's why this was the wrong thread for discussion. I've been one of the louder advocates of more Riot communication/openness for years now, and even I can tell you that ducking out here is the better option. You brought information that others hadn't known (channel time reduction), and that's about the maximum possible benefit that can be brought.
I shrug off aggression fairly well.
The reason I hopped into here was because this particular argument just needed pushback on because then we get further and further away from each other in terms of mental models that actual dialogue becomes difficult.
If a video like this becomes "proof" of an argument, that's not good. I watch it and I fully disagree with it because we do value unique power curves - just not when champions win a phase of the game by being picked - and if our changes don't reflect it, then call us on that (because while the changes might actually be healthy and accomplish their goal, the outcry seems to not see it). That comes down to trust and perception. So I disagree with a video that seems to be echoing a hyperbolic stance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skaarrjj
Look. The way I See it is this.
People don't want to get nerfed to the point of being underpowered or uselessness. And that generally people are okay with things that are mildly OP. The games more fun like that.
What's not okay is when things are overnerfed and you might as well not play them, and when something is stupidly OP. But the problem with adjusting lee sin NOW the way you guys are (and I'm a guy who wants to nerf lee sin, I hate him, but I dont want him destroyed) is because for so long you guys have only minorly tweaked him here and there, and you left him alone mostly, as in no drastic changes. You sent the message of "Yeah, well Lee is balanced now". Then you come out of left field with these HUGE HUGE nerfs.
Champions should not be underpowered, or nerfed to a really bad spot. That's not good for the game. I'd rather keep a champion mildly OP than have him UP.
I honestly dont believe anyone really thinks that you guys are homogenizing things, even when they type that.
People are concerned with champion power levels. There's a few too high, and some too low.
This is a far better articulated point, so I'll respond to it. I think you have two core points:
1.) Don't nerf things so drastically.
2.) We didn't expect Lee Sin changes.
The first point I won't reallllly comment on because that comes down to maybe we can find a good line in between. The second point I'm really interested in because I agree. I think we should have found a better way to communicate the Lee Sin changes in a more organic discussion and more openly made aware that there is a problem space where Lee Sin, by being picked, topples that game scene in such a way that he becomes almost a hard counter to many, many things as a single champion. There are very few champions that do that.
From our own end, one thing I'd ask is for patience. We're actively now trying to get better at this but I'll explain a specific pain point here: scale. We have so many players right now that we were trying to communicate with as many of them at the same time. Unfortunately, that lead us down the path of constructing bullet-proof messaging (or so we thought) that sounded an awful lot like monologues with no discussion. Discussion is inherently a small scale concept, and when you deal with the scale that we're dealing with, it gives me headaches every day. Imagine trying to have an empathetic discussion that brings others to your mental model when there are millions of players out there. How do you even coordinate that?
But that's not an excuse, it's just what our problem space is. I agree that Lee Sin could have / should have been communicated better over a longer course of time and with more discussion to bring you on board. Leeson learned.
And I totally get how champions being OP can drown out certain picks.
But you have to ask yourselves this.
Is that champion really that much out of line? Or is it the other champions its "drowning out" from being picked are just not good enough in the first place?
Don't ask yourself what's easier or harder. You'll always arrive at the wrong conclusion if you think that.
Power creep is a very scary thing. I won't speak to the whole nuance of it (try to buff things to compete with the most powerful outlier), but I'll mention that if there are only a few outlier power spikes versus a whole pantheon of champions who are struggling against the outliers, occams razor comes into play.
I understand your point but there's a lot to consider here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MackleDoge
Can you address why nothing has been altered about Renekton though? Maybe it's just me but you guys slightly tweaked Mundo, slightly nerfed Shyv, but left Rene completely untouched. I'm just seeing a bit of a disconnect between what's happening and what seems like a reasonable next step. Are you guys waiting on more data, are we looking at a "We aren't sure what to change" situation? I know it can be frustrating constantly having people question the balance decisions you all are making, especially when it is done in a less than polite manner, but maybe a bit of an explanation as to the thought process behind things or what you are aiming to accomplish with certain changes could go along way to making the community feel more comfortable. And hopefully lead to better feedback specific to those directions or intentions.
We are looking at Renekton! This is true and I appreciate your candor. This is good feedback without being aggressive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rauron
I disagree. Right now, the competitive scene is RULED by early power (Elise, Lee Sin, Lulu, Annie, Thresh, Leona, Lucian, Renekton, Shyvanna), so pretty much all of the current nerfs are moving power from early game to late game. People are seeing that and reacting against it because that feels like a removal of interesting power curves. What Riot REALLY needs to do (and honestly Morello should be the one to do it) is lay out what the issues are and why all of these changes are happening at once right now. They need to explain the competitive scene's issues as they stand, the way that these nerfs will help, and why this situation is not indicative of an overall philosophy that glorifies the late game.
This is also good feedback. Articulating values and the way we approach a problem space (or what the problem space is) is extremely important. What I can say here is that yes, the competitive scene currently highly, highly values the early game and they pick champions who spike early. I don't think we believe ALL OF THEM should be adjusted down, but I think it speaks to a greater problem. Why is it so important to win the early game? Because it snowballs into the late game and allows for a greater degree of control. It might be a systemic thing but that's food for thought.
There's a super aggressive poster trying to wring an explanation out of me and I may give it (what wasn't necessarily a nerf given that more powerful combat stats were given), but come on guys we're in a civilized setting and discussion. Ultimatums are what kids use and if I respond to threats that turns this whole thing into a "TALK TO ME NOW" thing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by James T Kirk
My only real question is, "Why is a hard counter bad?"
I'll answer this particular one. Because we value counterplay. Counterplay as a concept can be boiled down to: "We value what you do." If you walk into lane and meet a bad matchup, you shouldn't feel like you're not allowed to opt in for the first 20 minutes of the game. You should feel like you're as a disadvantage right now, but if you play your cards right (mechanically, tactically, strategically) then you can pull out a win. If I pick Blitzcrank first and the enemy team picks Amumu, I modify my playstyle but I do not just say "well I'm not allowed to play this game."
We value counterplay on a player-by-player basis and a team-by-team basis. Both of those. If we only valued counterplay on a team-by-team basis, you'd probably see individual lane hard counters that get smoothed our with team compositions. We value it all and that's a super important value. I know for me being able to be the "best X in NA" to hit Diamond is a real thing that can happen, and our value of no hard counters is partially what drives it.
Quick thing: the current iterations for Pantheon have a 0.5 second channel on his ult. Not 1.5s.
As to the rest of your points, I'll let SmashGizmo post the full changes and his philosophy, and let's go from there!
Quote:
Originally Posted by MackleDoge
So ignoring the fact that perhaps you should just get a forum moderator to ban him.
I'm a bit curious how you guys balance around the idea of counterplay, when counterplay is so dependent on individual skill. Since skill varies so greatly across the community, isn't it really difficult to balance with that in mind while having the numbers not completely terrible for one end of the spectrum or another?
I'm very much debating it. If it's acceptable within this small discussion group, perhaps it might be healthy to ban him temporarily.
And you touch on a good point of individual skill. I think counterplay is powerful insofar as a player "knows" it's there. If you know what you should have done but couldn't execute and you know you can't execute, that's a unique problem space. From my perspective you eventually need to bite the bullet and say "here's our fundamental expectation of someone who plays League of Legends." And we design from that. One thing I'd mention is that counterplay relates to mastery and mastery of the game is your knowledge of your how much executional mastery you have and how you can manipulate that in the game space. So playing within your mechanical boundaries is... a form of mastery! But that's now me rambling.
I'M HEADING OUT FOR DINNER Y'ALL I SHALL TRY TO BE BACK LATER BUT IF THIS DISCUSSION EXPLODES SORRY.
Also I 1day temp banned that one dude who was spamming with super aggro comments. It's not to say that I can't take super aggro comments, but insofar as they are unconstructive and they set a negative precedent for both conversation and a healthy environment, it's tough.
Quote:
Kha'zix
I think we love the new way Kha'Zix has evolved to be played in the LCS but the windows for counterplay in between his stealth (ie: HE'S UNSTEALTHED BEAT HIM HIM) are super short and allows for him to absorb tons of damage even when the opponent is trying to outplay it. We'll probably be looking at that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mechanical Heart
Hey Pwyff, how's the dinger anyway?
Poor guy needs to be fixed up and let loose in the rift again.
He got a buff in 4.4 mannnnn!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Super Explosion
As I may have said, perhaps any champion in this game is not so terrible as to cause instant loss-- you can likely win with any of them through skillful play.
But some may simply perform the set team 'role' better than others, thus perhaps causing the victory to be 'easier'.
It is perhaps a rather unsatisfying method of counterpicking-- "oh, he picked Skarner, they'll counterpick with Vi to outclass him at the same role".
This is a great point. If a champion is literally overshadowed by another pick, we should look to ways to accentuate that overshadowed champion (or tune down the strong champion to highlight their own individual points). I fully admit that with so many champions this gets real tough, but it's an admirable goal. Ziggs was a fantastic example of this. We do have a lot of 'design debt', however, where some champions (looking at you Lee) end up being designed with older values in mind, like having complete kits to do whatever they want regardless of team synergy or composition. It's painful when you want to accentuate their strengths while trimming where you can, because everyone's like "BUT HE WAS SO COOL THERE AND YOU NERFED IT. AND HE WAS COOL IN THAT WAY TOO. AND THAT WAY." It's like... mannnn.
This is the key mentality of powercreep games vs. anti-powercreep games.
Everyone should take a look at DotA 2 patch notes (main, big patches by IceFrog). If you follow the competitive scene and the popular metas, you'll see that IceFrog will do minor nerfs to OP/super-strong heroes, and then give out a LOT of minor buffs to a LARGE number of other heroes. He even buffs heroes in different categories and roles from the current OP/popular picks.
This means that the net power gain/loss in many patches tends to be higher with each patch. The relative strength of the collective heroes as a whole is more than before. This is overall power creep.
Now, this WORKS for DotA 2. The joke about "everything is OP in DotA 2 so it's okay" is both true AND not a bad thing for the game:
-The League approach to counterplay is for you to have options before, during, and after an ability being cast on you (within reason/in general).
-DotA's approach to counterplay tends to be centered around trying to avoid allowing those abilities to be used on you in the first place, and then what you can do to survive--if anything--once they've been used on you. AKA, DotA has a very emphasized 'before' phase, almost NO 'during' phase, and a moderate 'after' phase.
However, this is NOT what Riot wants to do with League. The answer to 'Lee is strong in the jungle/too dominant early' isn't "just buff other junglers/early laning/etc." This would result in overall power creep. From a design perspective for League, it makes much more sense for Riot to hit him in a number of overall areas, and then gradually tweak, raise, lower, and adjust among these values over time.
Is this the better approach for League? Yes.
Does it feel to us, as players, more unpleasant on a visceral level? Absolutely. This delayed timetable is the perceived tradeoff of this approach and opens the development process up to much more knee-jerk criticism.
And here we are, on GD.
And now we've come full circle.
I'm quoting this because this is a really solid rundown.
Full circle indeed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Talohmiir
Pwyff,
With the new changes to Rengar's Q, not being an AA reset, not having AS boost (unless empowered), and scaling differently, why does it not proc on Towers now? Whenever I split push with him Live, I'll Q > AA > Emp Q > AA > Hydra > AA and it tears it up fast. i understand that is a problem, but now it doesn't give you 5 attacks in quick succession and would have to be Q > Hydra > Emp Q. However, like I mentioned, not proc'n on towers grants you no extra damage or AS, which completely kills his split push. Would it be too much to let it proc, giving you extra damage and AS on Emp Q without the AA reset, which would still allow him to be a split pusher without being so incredible at it????
Thanks if you reply to this.
CertainlyT said something in a dev blog (coming soon(tm)) on Wind Wall where he mentions that a lot of melee AD fighters tend to have a lot of "selfish" power packed into their kit (very little in terms of altruistic utility) which leads to a strong feast or famine effect (kill things and feel good, or be unable to kill things and feel bad. No in between).
For melee AD fighters / carries, a lot of their fallback mechanics (famine) is basically to split push because they just can't contribute meaningfully to a team fight. I won't get into the larger discussion of how to counter split pushing, but if your fallback mechanic is largely to not fight, that's not great. Proxy Singed is the most egregious version of this, but the scale goes down.
Rengar being able to split push super effectively while taking down towers insanely fast makes him want to do that as opposed to actually fighting. When we were initially dealing with the Rengar rework, most high level Rengar players just didn't team fight because they were like "I'M SPLIT PUSHING THAT'S WHAT RENGARS DO MAN." I think that's a problem space they want to solve. We had a game this morning where Rengar was hunting down the enemy Vayne every fight and jumping on her. The chaos he sowed was amazing as we fell into the fight, and only Rengar could have engaged from such a far range. I think that's a pretty cool thing to encourage rather than split pushing all day and providing general pressure. Might be fun for Rengar but...
What I think about Riot's recent balance decisions
Seriously Riot stop making every damn thing the same in this game. Fun is still a huge factor. Making everything the god damn same makes it boring.
One big qualm I have with this particular argument (let's not get into detailed why a specific change is good for Lee Sin / game health or not, or maybe later) is that the philosophical approach to Lee Sin was never to make him "the same" or have the same power curve as everyone else.
We've made it really clear we love varied power curves, but we also value counterplay and Lee Sin was, by his stats and power, winning a certain phase of the game by showing up. If you're literally not allowed to play a champion because they picked a different champion, that's a hard counter and it's not great. The changes we proposed for Lee were always to follow in this philosophy, and while I won't disagree if you feel the changes didn't reflect it, I am a little confused when people say "oh you're making Lee Sin the same as everyone," when even in internal playtests he's following pretty much the same curve as before (he's actually doing quite well, and these are challenger / diamond players who play in competitive playtests).
The reason I hopped into here was because this particular argument just needed pushback on because then we get further and further away from each other in terms of mental models that actual dialogue becomes difficult.
If a video like this becomes "proof" of an argument, that's not good. I watch it and I fully disagree with it because we do value unique power curves - just not when champions win a phase of the game by being picked - and if our changes don't reflect it, then call us on that (because while the changes might actually be healthy and accomplish their goal, the outcry seems to not see it). That comes down to trust and perception. So I disagree with a video that seems to be echoing a hyperbolic stance.
1.) Don't nerf things so drastically.
2.) We didn't expect Lee Sin changes.
The first point I won't reallllly comment on because that comes down to maybe we can find a good line in between. The second point I'm really interested in because I agree. I think we should have found a better way to communicate the Lee Sin changes in a more organic discussion and more openly made aware that there is a problem space where Lee Sin, by being picked, topples that game scene in such a way that he becomes almost a hard counter to many, many things as a single champion. There are very few champions that do that.
From our own end, one thing I'd ask is for patience. We're actively now trying to get better at this but I'll explain a specific pain point here: scale. We have so many players right now that we were trying to communicate with as many of them at the same time. Unfortunately, that lead us down the path of constructing bullet-proof messaging (or so we thought) that sounded an awful lot like monologues with no discussion. Discussion is inherently a small scale concept, and when you deal with the scale that we're dealing with, it gives me headaches every day. Imagine trying to have an empathetic discussion that brings others to your mental model when there are millions of players out there. How do you even coordinate that?
But that's not an excuse, it's just what our problem space is. I agree that Lee Sin could have / should have been communicated better over a longer course of time and with more discussion to bring you on board. Leeson learned.
I understand your point but there's a lot to consider here.
We value counterplay on a player-by-player basis and a team-by-team basis. Both of those. If we only valued counterplay on a team-by-team basis, you'd probably see individual lane hard counters that get smoothed our with team compositions. We value it all and that's a super important value. I know for me being able to be the "best X in NA" to hit Diamond is a real thing that can happen, and our value of no hard counters is partially what drives it.
As to the rest of your points, I'll let SmashGizmo post the full changes and his philosophy, and let's go from there!
And you touch on a good point of individual skill. I think counterplay is powerful insofar as a player "knows" it's there. If you know what you should have done but couldn't execute and you know you can't execute, that's a unique problem space. From my perspective you eventually need to bite the bullet and say "here's our fundamental expectation of someone who plays League of Legends." And we design from that. One thing I'd mention is that counterplay relates to mastery and mastery of the game is your knowledge of your how much executional mastery you have and how you can manipulate that in the game space. So playing within your mechanical boundaries is... a form of mastery! But that's now me rambling.
Also I 1day temp banned that one dude who was spamming with super aggro comments. It's not to say that I can't take super aggro comments, but insofar as they are unconstructive and they set a negative precedent for both conversation and a healthy environment, it's tough.
Full circle indeed.
For melee AD fighters / carries, a lot of their fallback mechanics (famine) is basically to split push because they just can't contribute meaningfully to a team fight. I won't get into the larger discussion of how to counter split pushing, but if your fallback mechanic is largely to not fight, that's not great. Proxy Singed is the most egregious version of this, but the scale goes down.
Rengar being able to split push super effectively while taking down towers insanely fast makes him want to do that as opposed to actually fighting. When we were initially dealing with the Rengar rework, most high level Rengar players just didn't team fight because they were like "I'M SPLIT PUSHING THAT'S WHAT RENGARS DO MAN." I think that's a problem space they want to solve. We had a game this morning where Rengar was hunting down the enemy Vayne every fight and jumping on her. The chaos he sowed was amazing as we fell into the fight, and only Rengar could have engaged from such a far range. I think that's a pretty cool thing to encourage rather than split pushing all day and providing general pressure. Might be fun for Rengar but...