Should Riot focus on unplayable champion remakes?
I was browsing around Riot’s forums this morning and stumbled upon an interesting comment that got a few upvotes. The thread was a discussion of Kayle’s current status and whether or not she should receive another remake. Here’s the comment that caught my eye:
“Evelynn too, while you’re at it. I dislike how I spent IP on the champ and RP on her skin only for you to literally make her unplayable to the point where I will be reported for playing her.”
This is not a new concept – far from it, I know. It is, however, an issue that has never really affected me. I’ve been writing about the game for almost as long as it has been a game. I’ve had every champion for probably a year, and I play enough that I have the IP to buy new champions every time they release. At least, I did until now. Now that my time is spread between a wider variety of games, I don’t have that luxury. Champions I buy will be the result of a long, slow IP grind, and you can bet I won’t be spending RP on them. At this point, too many champions have stagnated, in desperate need of a remake. When I had a seemingly endless fountain of IP this was no big deal – I always had another champion I could be playing.
But what about people who spend cash to unlock champions as they go. When those champions get nerfed beyond viability, it’s essentially a hit to their pocketbook. Again, this isn’t anything new. Players of all kinds of games have seen potential “investments” deteriorate as the result of nerfing. Any MMO player knows the pain of putting a couple hundred hours into the class, spec and gear that goes behind a character just to have it wiped out by developers. A game like LoL seems unique though, because while I may still be able to participate in large portions of an MMO with an underperforming character, most of the lower-tier champions in League can’t hope to compete with any reliable success. The options those players have to enjoy the game diminish far more quickly than those of an MMO player in most cases. Sure, there are always the free champions, but players don’t pay for access to free champions. The champions that have been purchased should have some viability.
So what do you think? Should Riot be spending more time and resources on remaking underplayed/unplayable champions or does the current method suit you just fine?
Oh man the shit I whent through when this game came out, I used to Play katarina when I was brand new she got a nerf that hurt her pretty bad coupled with a bug that absolutely crippled her. It made her ult daggers like 1 2 ………34567…910 it took riot 9 months to rework katarina an she’s still a highly situational pick and arguably still not worth it during her favored conditions.
When Kat became unplayable I switched to shaco, back In the day he was reasonably balanced (stronger than he is now but nothing insane, I learns to jungle after almost 100 games as a retarded laneing AP shaco I made the switch to AD then finaly to a jungler. Then riot gave him the clone aura stack buff that made him grossly overpowered. Riot nerfed shaco repeatedly in an attempt to control him and didn’t think to remove the real problem that was aura stacking until the verry last his current state is a pathetic pile of poor desighn and I’ve grown to despise my old mainstay as time passed. He’s been picked 3 times in iem Kiev for 3 crushing defeats.
After shaco whent under I switched to nunu an amazing roamer, jungler, counter jungler, ganker with a crappy late game transition. After his massive success in dreamhack he got massive nerfs that destroyed him instantly, he could use small buffs to handle this new jungle and hopefully reach a newly balanced state. To add insult to injury maokai an lee sin are better than nunu ever was.
Orianna, talon, xin zhao never see them anymore either. Let’s not forget the intentional dismantling of eve and twitch
Those three disasters got me all the way to level 30 were I picked up Warwick and Ashe as my go to champs as I gained more experience, and I’ve branched out to just about every jungler imaginable in te present day.
The jungle rework shook alot of jungler out of viability Warwick, fiddlesticks, Shen come to mind first, Warwick and Shen were already not looking good with their slow clear speed, weak late game transition, and nonexistent pre6 ganks but the new jungle completely destroyed them as they have no hope of keeping up with the likes of udyr,skarner,shyvana,lee sin, nocturne, gangplank, maokai.
The worst part was when the community pointed out that fiddle and Warwick had no place in te new jungle riot just increased creep damage and called it a fix. that’s not any better speed junglers cleared with 30 less hp and the sustain junglers were still way too slow to justify useing them.
There are currently too many horridly UP champs at the moment and they need to blitz out some fixes like they did with the fiddle/kayle/gangplank triple rework patch.
I might have complained alot but I trust riot, and the game is more balanced now than it has ever been before. They just need to step it up pushing out some rewirks and tenetive buffs in the meantime fir champs on te rework eaiting list like they did for mundo in the sejuani patch.
They shouldn’t be afraid to tweak numbers by .05 AP or so until tey get it right.
I think:
Delete Eve. Refund IP/RP.
Problem solved!
^
That would mean that after a month of useless debate about it,19231231 announcements would be posted,50% of them bragging about how Riot finally made a decision and is in the process to refund the IP/RP,the other 50% telling the players how they’re lucky to have “the most player-focused company in the world” working for them.
First phase in the above-mentioned process is the contemplative phase,which lasts around 5-10 months.Then come more announcements,then the refund,with 50% of the players receiving 5x the IP/RP they spent,and the other 50% receiving _|_.
From my perspective unless at a very high level of play, many champions are seen by the community as very unnecessarily weak. Take for example pre-nerf eve.
She was thought to be the worst champion in the game bar none. She then ended up getting played in europe to great success, the person playing her climbed to the top of the solo queue ladder. Since then she has been called op, imbalanced and has since been nerfed in a huge way with the removal of her stun. Do I believe eve to be a very strong pick anymore? Not really, but there are still many high elo players who love and dominate games with her.
There are champions that could use tweaks for sure, I am very for giving weak champions stop gap number tweaks to boost their viability. However, I believe that the community undervalues many champions which aren’t only viable, but are very strong picks.
Another example is ezreal, who stomped games for quite some time in NA. As a result, got heavily nerfed. Players now see ezreal as a subpar, weak ad carry. However, if you look to the asian servers, ezreal is an always must pick or must ban because he demolishes every game he participates in.
Do I think that there are some champions that need buffs, tweaks, or re-works to be viable in high level play? Most certainly. However, I am firm in the belief that most every champ can, has and will continue to be played in all but the very top levels and will continue to perform well. Could they use little boosts, probably. But they are definitely not as weak as players make them out to be.
Personally, power creep of new champions far trumps any nerfs done to old ones. (ie graves)
Someone once posted on the forums and said “Regardless of how bad you think a champion is, there will always be the person who plays it so well it scares you.”
From when I started playing league of legends, this game has come a long way, and I really can’t complain too much in terms of balance.
LOL Voidbane. You are probably right 😀
Eve occupies a special place in my heart: I hate to see her on my team. I hate seeing her on the other team.
Jeff, I think the number of unplayable champions is shrinking; they seem to want to cycle through who is flavor of the month, ever patch or so
Yeah, I kinda agree. Riot should do more effort trying to balance the game instead of creating new content that will disturb the balance anyway. It is sickening to see that less than 30% of the champs are being played because they are “reliable” and that you get flammed for playing fun but underpowered champs. As for maintaining the community and fun, they could vary the custom game mods for example.
Maybe some champions are balanced around Dominion or TT. Things like Xin,Mundo,Shaco,Eve,Teemo,etc.They’re all great picks on TT and/or Dominion and maybe Riot doesn’t think they need to be good on SR too.
Riot mentioned they balance around SR exclusively, which is why IMO TT is so unplayable.
Also that eve example drives me crazy she was NOT sleeper OP she received a large buff out of the blue one patch that made her such a fast jungler an fierce ganker that they had to hotfix nerf her. She wasn’t sleeper OP she got a buff that’s just regular OP. all the time before the patch and after the hotfix she was complete garbage. Also all of this happened near the time that gunblade was introduced to the game which is quite useful on her.
The notion that bad champs can reach great success comes from two bits of miss information, one is that people might not read patch notes diligently and not notice large number tweaks and assume that a new play styles were discovered. Others are simply mistakes, when judging relative power at high level play it is assumed that verry few or no mistakes are made on either side of te field. Champions who can easily survive mistakes made by the user or punish mistakes made by opponents become less valuable as both teams increase in skill.
For me I beleive theres ~80 champs I think. 20 are top picks/bans. The next 20 are Pick worthy. The 20 after that are either slightly sub par they are either situational picks or a champion of a similar role has steady been picked / banned but you need it for your team comp. the remaining 20 make me cringe when I see them on my team. And should be priority one for reworks / number tweaks. Champs in the pipes for reworks should get small number tweaks to hold them over during the waiting period.
Another verry important balance issue in my mind is skill / auto attack animations and travel speeds, and base stats that are too weak for no apparent reason. Morgana is an excellent example of this problem getting fixed her auto attack animation and dark binding cast time were far too long and the travel speed on her auto attack were slower than caster minions it made last hitting and auto harassing a nightmare. As for base stats Ashe is an excellent example, her base AD, AD per level, base armor, base mana, base health, health per level, are all below average compared to other ranged carries. Her only exceptional stats are her range which is 50 higher than average and her attackspeed per Level which is one of the highest. Ashe is a utility carry I accept that fact but theres no reason for these aweful base stats, she has no steroid so naturally she can’t keep up with vayne / sivir / graves / kogmaw / triatana. Her base stats should atleast be on par so she benefits as much from new items as the other carries. Combine that with her outrageous 20 – 4 cooldown scaleing in her volley and it’s no wonder she can’t compete with the other carries. She doesnt scale as well late game but she has the worst early game to top it off. Wasn’t picked even once in iem Kiev which is a shame her and urgot are the only utility carries.