Players of League of Legends are always willing to weigh in on the balancing adjustments Riot makes to the MOBA. However, a prominent developer claims that there is one item that the community always gets incorrect, which makes their job considerably tougher.
You can discover a few players advocating various balancing adjustments if you look through the replies to any Rioter’s tweets. There are always concerns regarding the condition of the game, whether they involve requests for more Zeri nerfs, a rework for their preferred champion, or a minor change to certain systems.
With more than 160 champions available, it is challenging to create a “perfect meta” that appeals to all players. The community frequently pushes back on Riot’s adjustments because of how they will impact the meta.
While Riot generally gets most balance changes correct, they have made disastrous mistakes in the past. There have lately been teething problems following the durability update, with champions such as Nilah, Sivir, and Master Yi having extraordinary victory rates at one point or another.
The community occasionally claims they can do it better, but League of Legends lead designer Matt ‘Phroxzon’ Leung-Harrison claims there are a few things they get wrong about game balance.
“I think the community has no idea, at all, how difficult game design is. Just think about the number of permutations and combinations of every possible thing. Not only do we have to think about these things, we have to think about them ahead of time.”
Phroxzon on his podcast in August
Let’s say you’re making an item. You have to think about how that item is used on every possible champion and rune combination, in any team comp — and that’s just how it’s optimized. That’s not talking about the design quality of the thing: Is the thing satisfying when you press a button, is it intuitive, does it have counterplay? All of those esoteric values that the community doesn’t consider
Phroxzon
Riot teases their patches ahead of time and puts things in testing on the PBE with a broad notion of how it will affect the game. Riot, according to Phroxzon, gets it ‘right’ about 70-80% of the time – that’s a 1% victory rate.
The community loves to talk big, but no one actually draws a line in the sand about any changes, which is understandable given how difficult it is.
“It’s very difficult to predict balance changes ahead of time,” he continued. “You get really good at predicting what the outcome is going to be. We will predict what the outcome is going to be for every skill bracket, and we’re quite accurate I’ll say.
“These things are really hard to estimate. There are so many moving parts. There could be item changes going in the patch, there could be champion interactions, or the play rate could increase which will decrease the win rate. If more players play it, there are probably more new players and that changes the way the win rates play out. There’s a lot of factors involved.”