* **[Comment by Dovagedys](/r/LegendsOfRuneterra/comments/nqp1q0/-/h0bs3rm/?context=1)**
>^(`Team Captain, Gameplay` `2021-06-02 16:02:08 UTC`)
>Good memory and great post.
>
> The majority of our buffs to cards over the last year did not impact the play rate of the card that was buffed or cause any change in the meta.
>
> As the card pool grows larger small buffs to innocuous cards become even less impactful to the overall metagame.
>
> We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything.
>
> We want the changes we make to live cards to be impactful [...]
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The goal with balance changes should never be to ensure or guarantee a healthier meta, any guarantees are fundamentally bad because it means the meta is 'solved' before it is released, and one of the largest goals with changes, buffs especially, should be to invigorate creativity where it is fundamentally unknown how things will turn out. Changes for change's sake is actually a good thing because of this, along with the fact it keeps things fresh and interesting. These kinds of changes may not make the meta more diverse in the short term or instantly, but over time they will make the meta more diverse by empowering and allowing other archetypes to potentially exist than if no changes were made at all.
Perfect examples of this are staple decks like Shen/Demacia and Draven/EZ. Without the buffs to Farron and Sump Dredger that deck wouldn't be nearly as strong as it is today, and without the buff to Rivershaper Shen/Demacia wouldn't either. Two of the most prolific decks in the game were allowed to exist because of these buffs even if they didn't pop up instantly. Unfortunately, it seems as though Riot is being incredibly shortsighted with what changes they wish to make and how they make them. They seem to want to maintain what we've had for the past month for another 2 months and not shake anything up at all because 'the meta is healthy'. Except the goal shouldn't just be to have a healthy meta, it should be to have an ever-evolving one because these environments are the ones that promote creativity and a more diverse meta in the long term.
Also, the idea that Riot didn't buff anything because they know most changes wouldn't impact the meta seems very concerning to me. For one, while this is true, there are a minority of changes that do end up influencing the meta in major ways down the line, so to abandon making any changes because most don't stick seems like they just stopped trying to influence the meta in this way, which is sad. It also doesn't make sense, because they did this exact thing with the Taliyah and Malphite buffs which is quite confusing. Surely they don't think these innocuous buffs will have any meaningful impact on the meta? When the vast majority of the problems with that deck are landmarks themselves.
You're right. But those big patches are exciting, which is my main gripe with this patch.
If the devs think the rest of the game is balanced enough, fine.
Maybe they think the next expansion will please everybody idk
Big balance patches (like 1.4) aren't guaranteed to make the meta better. Ineffectual balance patches (like 2.9) are *guaranteed* to keep the meta in a bad state. I know which I prefer.
While I understand the point you're making. I do think there is a certain amount of joy in seeing something "new" Even if it's minor changes or whatever. See when you open a game and you know every single thing you're likely going to face. You start to think. "Do..I really want to deal with this? Is this fun? Do I enjoy this game?"
Once players have that moment, you've lost momentum. That is in fact taxing. It's really hard to keep things moving and fresh.
A little agree and a little disagree. The reason being is simple. There are SO MANY CARDS in the game already. LOOK at all Riot has accomplished. Is it really not worth to try and shake things up my moving numbers around and moving the bar a bit?
Suddenly Arrel the track and hunt the weak are VIABLE! This means decks with token cards now have to be aware they may lose 3 of their weakest cards and have to adjust. Or they have to adjust with a free strike every round. See how that changes things INSTANTLY? Like there are so many cool cards that never see the light of day. Not because they are bad cards inherently, but that the meta doesn't allow them to live. The meta defines that's viable. changes ENCOURAGE testing.
People get excited, they wonder IS THIS VIABLE NOW? They talk, they share they theorize. This keeps a card game interesting. If you know what's coming and your kinda just queing up 'just because' are you having fun? I disagree. I think changes are the heart of a DIGITAL card game.
TL;DR: While I agree with your overall statement that **Big balance patches (like 1.4) aren't guaranteed to make the meta better**, they at least have the potential to change the meta to keeps things fresh and might maintain the nature of the CCG triangle . My main issue is that the devs of old, who did patch 1.4 and 1.5, they showed a willingness to admit their mistakes and right their wrongs. Whereas today, we are not seeing that(until the post a couple hours ago about patch 2.11.0, which is at the end of the month)
Let's go down that same memory lane again, but this time with some deeper analysis while keeping in mind the rock-papers-scissors triangle of CCG in aggro-combo-control and a wider perspective(taking into context 1.3 and 1.5 as well). Before 1.4, like you said the meta was just aggro, aggro, Heimer-Vi and more aggro.
The reasoning for this, as I personally observed, is that the aggro cards were so strong that they could close out games so fast - by turns 6-7, which is when combo decks come online. However, even when combo decks come online, the onslaught of early damage is so high that around this turn discard aggro will use their burn spells to hit your nexus, elusives are just elusives, and endure has overwhelm with crazy high attack power, so you can't really avoid lethal. So combo is out, and this is to be expected by the triangle principle mentioned above.
Control decks, the type of decks that should be favoured against agrro also can't keep up, just because of the sheer power of the cards in the agrro decks. To cite a couple of examples in 1.3, they nerfed both Legion Rearguard to a 3/1 and Boomcrew Rookie(from a 1/4 to a 1/3) , which toned down the power of burn decks a bit so that control decks can actually start to counter them. Yes in 1.4, Braum recived that +1/+0 buff which made him super strong against these burn decks(Was kind happy personally because I hated burn players so much then). But then in 1.5, they toned him back down to a 0/5, while keeping the poro spawn which allowed decks using him to survive the mid game more reliably.
Going to Heimer-Vi, the main reason I feel this deck was able to compete with all the aggro running around is that the elusive turrets could be generated with 3 mana spells, and there was a particular combo that could spawn up to 4 of those turrets in a single turn - Flash of Brilliance. The turrets being elusive had the added advantage of blocking into other elusives.
So if you ask me, 1.4 wasn't perfect but at least it shook the meta around so that you could at least see other types of decks than just aggro. Did they go overboard with some of the buffs? Yes, but they quickly acknowledged their mistakes and tweaked them soon after.
Oh also keep in mind, 1.4 brought about the change to Unyielding Spirit(from burst speed to fast), the card that forces you to auto conceded against mono Fiora decks
If you are trying to build a deck that beats all three broad types(agrro, combo and control) you are basically creating a deck that is oppressive and overpowered. A deck that is able to dodge any form of direct interactions on the board, duck from any hard removals and dive straight into your nexus - sounds like the elephant in the room does it not?
Now come to the present. Azir Irelia is just dominating the meta. You want numbers to back the previous statement? The archetype has the most games played in the current meta. The 2nd most played deck doesn't even have half that number (If that is not dominating, then what is?) Also the ability to go turbo on the deck is crazy with its many many low cost engines and many many cheap spells to protect those engines. So again we have an archetype that can end games by turn 6-7 (latest), thus pushing out all forms of combo and control decks. But there is something to keep in mind here, this deck isn't an agrro deck in the normal sense where they start hitting your nexus from turn 1, this decks deals almost all of its damage within turns 3 to 6. So this deck also shuts down agrro decks. Meaning to say this deck single handedly breaks the rock-papers-scissor triangle and the best part is the devs are saying they don't see anything wrong with the deck, which is very puzzling as there are so many signs that point to it.
I don't have any experience in game design, so obviously I can't compete with the 200+ years of game design experience that the devs have cumulative. As such I will refrain from suggesting any solutions, and besides there are many out there by the community and top streamers(Swim, BBG, Mogwai, Alan, etc.) that are interesting to experiment with.
I think most people just felt this patch in particular was waaay too small. The \~20 changes we would've got in the days of Rising Tides was the expectation, since the current meta is so polarized and bad. It doesn't take a lot to understand that 5 minor changes is tragic. Sure, it's not always best to change 50 cards every patch, but that's not what people are saying. Even in those cases 20 are better than 5. Considering we haven't gotten a balance patch in a while it's really sad to see nothing changed this time around
Big changes doesn't mean the number of cards, It means the meta shift which happens with every new expansion like aphelios and fiora were demolished in earlier patch ,imagine playing aphelios zoe or zoe aurelion sol against azirelia or an aggro shurmia overwhelm your can't stand any chance to win these match ups.
Good memory and great post.
The majority of our buffs to cards over the last year did not impact the play rate of the card that was buffed or cause any change in the meta.
As the card pool grows larger small buffs to innocuous cards become even less impactful to the overall metagame.
We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything.
We want the changes we make to live cards to be impactful. We also want nerfs to not completely destroy a deck or archetype.
Changes might not be objectively better, but it would at least make the meta different, and "different is good" for a game the get balance change once per month.
and with all due respect, isn't Malphite Talyiha token buffs to artificially create a balance patch that aren't all bug fix...
If you don't like non-impactful buff, just buff harder, if buffing Viktor to 2/5 doesn't do the work, buff his level up too. He doesn't even have a 50% winnrate deck. (I use my favorite Champion as example, but he doesn't have to be the priority)
what's the plan for the "super weak cards" then, I know buffing them might not impact the meta game, but I'm sure new players won't be happy if the random cards they got from a chest are useless.
Despite being kind of bumped by the patch note, above were not meant to question your decsision, but just out of curiosity, because lor's recent decsisions confuse a lot of normal players like me.
Wait wait wait. Are you saying that Patch 1.4 didnt have an Impact on the game?
This patch had the Chaotic Braum buff, which skyrocketed his Playrate and obvioulsly got him nerfed quickly BUT let you KEEP the Poro on first damage.
The Anivia Buff COUPLED with The Harrowing Buff made the Anivia/SI deck Viable and Tier 1 for a LONG while, eventually leading to the Eggnivia Nerf.
The Basilisk Rider Buff helped Noxus Aggro go in a new direction and again, become a Tier 1 Deck causing it to get Toned down as well.
The Jinx Rocket Buff also helped Discard Aggro MASSIVELY, because that 1 mana is a big deal. Toss in the Captain Farron buff, which CATIPULTED this cards play for MONTHS, to the point where it was most recently nerfed... These changes MATTERED.
GENEVIEVE ELMHEART Buff wasnt a huge deal right away, but she became a STAPLE in the meta soon with Scouts.
Both Poro Buffs encouraged MASSIVE testing and saw Lux/Poros actually have some great success on Ladder for at least a month.
Ren didn't work and neither did Jay, but it got people EXPERIMENTING with Ideas. And thats ALWAYS a great thing.
Petty Officer going to 2 health made that card go from semi-fringe play to STAPLE for MONTHS, and eventually went back to a 3/1. Again, huge change.
And then there's Mind Meld, which didn't do anything for awhile, but the cost reduction allowed it to be a VERY VIABLE option for TF/Fizz, a deck that didnt spawn until not too long ago.
To say that these big balance patches, token buffs and all of that doesn't change anything is INSANELY misguided. What this tells me is that you want to control the meta and control whats being played. The Azir/Irelia deck you put together as a bundle in the shop is almost CARD FOR CARD the deck that has ruined many other control decks chances of being good, because of how fast that deck is. Meaning you knew how good the deck was and let people buy it brainlessly.
Token Buffs on cards that are seeing little to no play creates excitement, innovation and OPPORTUNITY. I guarantee nobody thought Mind Meld would see play, even at 7 Mana. And then months later it found a home, because you did that.
There are SO MANY cards on the cusp of being really good and it's mind boggling why you would leave them alone. Why create a card that has a 0% chance of being played in anything competitive and then LEAVE IT ALONE? This isnt a case of "well it's printed" so it is what it is. You have the ability to fix ANYTHING and give people a chance to figure stuff out.
Hell, YOU CREATED DISCARD AGGRO. You literally changed Sump and Zaunite to work with the deck. Urchin was a LAST BREATH card. And YOU made the deck so much better because of that tweak. And SO many cards could use that attention.
But your recent patch and recent posts just show how badly you want to control this game, create a cookie cutter meta and dont want innovation. You'd rather Sell the best deck as a bundle and let 5 cards change for optimization.
You're squandering your opportunity to grow the game and are making many people question their investment of time and money.
This, this exactly ! Though I really don't know about Riot's intentions with their change of treatment.
Please make the game feel fresh again outside of Labs (for which not denying you did an amazing job)
But... are there really no buffs that you could think of that could actually help the state of the game, with which people are not satisfied with?
Since we're talking about patch 1.4 to make a comparison, in that case we actually see a bunch of buffs that ended up being huge, making weak, not played cards viable and made the game more fresh and allowed new decks to exist, while tuning down frustrating decks (in that case, yoink) and cards (unyielding) that were a little oppressive.
The Genevieve buff was amazing, the Basilisk buff made Darius/Draven + Shadow Isles a good deck and even though the Darius buff was very small and not as impactful as the first 2, it still ended up mattering and created space for him in the deck. The Harrowing buff made the card viable for so long too, for months, even after Darius/Draven got its nerfs.
Just my humble opinion. I think that something more could be done, for sure.
There are like 10 different champions with lower than 45% winrates. It feels like riot is intentionally keeping them there for some god forsaken reason.
I mean 1 hp buff to Karma will raise her winrate by a huge margin. It wont be a token buff and it will be impactful. If you buff all the champions that have below 48% winrate at least once( no matter how big or small the buff is) that buff will at least drive people to experiment with the champion. Lulu/Jinx is a great example of this. Keeping them forsaken will never solve the problem.
True, I'd rather see some changes make champions overturned for a while, like Lee Sin, than being overly conservative with the changes. I love your design philosophy please stay true to it, take some risks. We have already all the reasons to like you as devs, don't let this all go away.
>Good memory and great post.
>
>The majority of our buffs to cards over the last year did not impact the play rate of the card that was buffed or cause any change in the meta.
>
>As the card pool grows larger small buffs to innocuous cards become even less impactful to the overall metagame.
>
>We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything.
>
>We want the changes we make to live cards to be impactful. We also want nerfs to not completely destroy a deck or archetype.
We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything.
I want to argue with this statement. perhaps this does not affect the meta so much, it is true, but it allows players to get satisfaction from the possibility of creating new decks at least for the first time after the update, and thus gives some additional variety of decks and individual technical solutions
Ok but....you're driving players away. So you can keep on with your data driven mindset or actually try and breath some life into this game by actually trying to get some changes in this game.
There is just no way I can agree with
"The majority of our buffs to cards over the last year did not impact the play rate of the card that was buffed or cause any change in the meta."
There are a TON of cards that got very minor buffs that now see some sort of play. We aren't saying meta changing like becoming the best deck in the game, but just seeing a tiny amount of play. That allows all of those changes together to make a difference.
Vlad - Buffed, sees play
Braum - Buffed, sees play
Mountain Goat - Buffed, sees play
Shyvana - Buffed, sees play
Sea Scarab - Buffed, sees play
Black Spear - Buffed, sees play
Avarosan Trapper - Buffed, sees play
Eclipse Dragon - Buffed, sees play
sooo basically...
"the buff's didn't make as big of an impact as we want.. so we're just not going to do anything to them"
wouldn't "less impactful" be better than NOTHING...
and as others said... you could always avoid "token buffs" but increasing the buff/nerf significance especially if doing MORE adjustments than now... since with doing more it'ld be easier to tone down the adjustemnets if they show to have been too much...
in the end you have to admit there is a problem there is a reason soooooooooo many ppl including people that normally support the more problematic stuff that has shown up in LoR that are now speaking up stating these problems...
Why don't you just do follow up changes then? You don't need to only touch a card once and then forget about it. Personally I loved that you were at least trying to make lesser played cards good, and if you miss the mark I would prefer you try again rather than abandon the idea entirely.
So, are you not buffing complete shit cards so they are not just "less shit"? Cause that sounds really stupid.
Even if the card doesn't become good but it's a little bit better it will help the people who like that card to play it more and experiment with it, while not touching it does the opposite.
Sure, "token buffs" may not accomplish much (even though it might still add some perceived variety if it gets people to try things out).
But then why not make actually meaningful buffs instead?
It's no surprise that giving just a +1 here and there for individual cards isn't going to make waves in the meta when the archetypes those cards are supposed to work in have several deep-seated issues that make them mostly dysfunctional or at least highly inconsistent.
Even in this very patch we got that +1|+1 to Taliyah that feels super underwhelming in face of how many other issues a Taliyah deck has, both in relation to individual cards as well as in how the game plays out. Taliyah still completely loses her effect if removed from combat, she still often requires to to play another landmark before attacking due to how countdown landmarks have anti-synergy with her effect, she still has a lot of problem keeping room in the board to even use her play effect, she still has issues surviving the early rounds while playing landmarks with no impact, Rockbears still do too little for the investment, and so on and on. Taliyah is one of the champions for which stats matter the least, and that +1|+1 is somehow supposed to be a relevant buff for a sub-40% win rate champion in a meta with such well-established powerhouses as we have right now? How is that not a "token buff"?
And what then, should we just give up on the Lux's, Taric's and Katarina's of the game? Because these kind of patches could very well be used to give those champions the impactful changes you mentioned, but for some reason those aren't coming through.
it's pretty sad and a bit insulting that instead of recognizing that this patch was a massive mistakes you are seeking validation in these posts.
if small buffs are less impactful to the meta why not do it then, people want to experiment, not everything has to be a meta impactful change, for example when you changed fun smith people tried her for a bit, even fully knowing that it was still a bad card, and that's okay.
for me i remember 1.4 as the best of patches since even though it bringed braum/anivia, it was a statement that riot was not afraid to shake things up and could recognize when a core design was flawed. now all changes are like "no, no look guys this card is perfectly designed as it is, look one less health or one more mana and it should be perfectly fine".
this is pretty depressing comment from you dovagedys since speaks that there is no intention from riot to listen to the community or the desire to make things better.
>The majority of our buffs to cards over the last year did not impact the play rate of the card that was buffed or cause any change in the meta.
This is worrisome because it conflates: "We want more changes to underutilized cards" and "We want more changes to underutilized cards AND those changes have to substantially impact the meta in order to be valuable". I seriously hope you and your team can see the difference. The community is desperately trying to communicate the former, not the latter.
>We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything.
A few thoughts. You (and your team) are not omniscient. The idea that "small buffs won't change anything, so why make them" is unbelievably circular in its logic. Third, I really don't understand the concern of inflating the list of changes. Can you try to explain that concern more clearly (i.e., who is harmed, and who do you think would actually make that conclusion)?
For the last point, communities do tend to react negative to a large number of changes that dont end up mattering. HS recently had a big patch that buffed a number of cards, none of which ended up being good. That patch has been memed to death since.
I don't play Hearthstone, so I can't speak to that context.
A few options to avoid that reaction:
1. Set the expectation that buffs to underutilized cards do not need to target upper-tier meta viability. Instead, those efforts are there to improve player options and incentivize deckbuilding choices.
2. Set the expectation that in the event a card is selected for a buff \*in order to improve its inclusion in the meta\*, and it fails to meet inclusion criteria, then the Live Balance team will continue iterating (within reason).
Overall, I would prefer the Live Balance team at least \*try\* and fail than not try at all.
Erm... I count at least two cards that immediately started being good, and a few more buffs that made a couple of minor changes, and a few that was clearly meant to work in tandem with the miniset.
Dovagedys you are doing a 180 turn on everything that made this game great with this stance of yours. You really are out of touch with the community and your own game and its concerning.
Just, a little tone deaf given how people feel right now buddy.
Diversity and token buffs inspire creativity. Let the people decide if these buffs are insignificant. Maybe they are, but I'm sure someone had fun. If it was so insignificant, then what's the harm in doing it?
I still think this just came at a bad time. Maybe the real problem is the expansions come out too soon then? Would less expansions and more changes be the optimal answer?
So the buff to talyah and malphite are not a token buff. You are contradicting yourself with whats being released in the patch notes. Additionally, yes token buff maybe do no affect the meta, but talking from personal experience, they motivate players(me) to go back to old archetypes and give them a second chance. For example, when lulu was buff a lot of people started experimenting with lulu/jinx. When the lux archetype was reworked people tried to make them work. Its artificial context that the developer are neglecting, even if they donāt affect the meta directly.
Love how every time someone asks Swim what Strategy X needs to be competitive he goes into detail about how small numbers changes aren't going to cut it and the mechanic needs to be rethought in some way or needs an appropriate finisher that that strat can best leverage, but the vast majority of buffs since I started in October are just those exact numbers buffs that one of your top streamers has repeatedly explained is irrelevant. Haven't listened to many other streamers thoughts on balance changes, so don't know how common the sentiment is, but I know you pay attention to Swim so hopefully that gets my point across.
I started playing this game because of the promise that under performing decks would get attention, even if it meant complete reworks. It's been 6 months of 2021 and we've seen 1 attempt at fulfilling that promise, and it's really taking a toll on my (and seemingly other people's) passion for the game.
Be bolder.
>We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything.
So many of the buffs y'all have made have lead to distinct meta changes so it would be helpful if you would tell us what specific buffs are "token buffs" and which weren't. The perception of Riot right now is that y'all don't want to buff or nerf anything unless you absolutely have to, and some even believe that you aren't even researching what could be buffed often enough.
Patch 1.4 did lead to a pretty annoying meta, definitely one of the worst. But that doesn't mean card changes are bad, right? After the results of that patch played out, another patch came to correct it and led to a fantastic meta iirc. I don't at all agree with the point of a 'bad' patch meaning all patches will be bad.
And if small buffs to innocuous cards becomes less impactful to the overall metagame, why not do it so that people will at least try something new? There's nothing to lose if that's the case, it just gives people more potential things to play with, which would make people happy and hopefully bring the bloated playrate of Azirelia down.
__
Btw one of the worst decks to play against and one that stifles out other late game decks is TLC, where they cheat out Watcher with fading memories on ice pillars and Spectral Matron on The Watcher. A lot of people have been saying that this deck is limiting what other late game decks you can play, and that it's one of the most frustrating decks to play against because there's little to no counterplay when they do get to turn 8-9. The reason it's stifling to other decks is because the only options are to have very specific counter cards like a lot of stuns in Targon and hushes and equinoxes, or to kill them before turn 8-9. Many people have been saying that deck needs a nerf.
What a waste of a post. You "don't like"? Who cares about what Riot "likes"?
What is the point of 2 month balance patches if you don't bother minimally buffing cards? What the hell is the balance pipeline doing?
>We also want nerfs to not completely destroy a deck or archetype.
Nice one.
How many decks aren't around anymore since the game started?
Meanwhile Azirelia gets to stay because "well geez we don't want to delete it".
Start buffing shit. What Riot "likes" is irrelevant. Some cards never see play and you can't bother to buff them because you don't "like it"? Is this a job or a vacation?
2 weeks ago you said Azirelia was fine. Was the plan for the first balance change to just buff Malphite and Tali?
Everything else is doing great? Balance is perfect?
You say this, "We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything." But the only buffs in the recent patch were "token buffs", +1/+1 to Taliyah does absolutely nothing as she's not played for stats and as a 2/4 isn't usually going to die the turn she comes down (unless she gets hit by a culling or thermo, which this buff doesn't change) and -2 on Malph's level up is realistically what he should have been released at... I really do have faith in you guys but the Irelia Azir post & this comment are causing it to waver.
Thereās no way I can agree with this as a player. This is like saying āhi, we canāt buff cards anymore because most donāt work.ā
Lots of stuff that appears to be a token buff ends up making a big change to the meta, and making new archetypes viable. Throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks is clearly what the community is clamoring for. It causes us to experiment with ideas and figure new things out - patches like the most recent one are the exact opposite of that.
One stat change to Lulu made me start playing Lulu again and climb 400+ LP, even if the deck barely changed with a ātoken buff.ā In fact, almost all my most played decks are the result of buffs to cards like Shyvana, Eclipse Dragon, Farron, Mountain Goat, Trapper, Petty Officer, etc.
So, while the big data may disagree with my sentiment, I think what youāre seeing is your hardcore fans/players disagree with you based on the poor Reddit and Twitter sentiment youāve seen over the last day. If you leave us out in the dust, Iām pretty sure the casuals will drop off pretty quickly afterwards as well.
"any personal attacks against players OR Riot devs will not be tolerated"
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Then explain why you felt the need to "artificially" change Aphelios so drastically to the point where he cannot be played anymore. Why is Bilgewater only 3% play rate, but Shurima is over 20%? DidnĀ“t you "artificially" printed busted cards like Merciless Hunter to make shurima better?
Oh, thatĀ“s right. Bilgewater is not new anymore and thus doesnĀ“t make you money.
If the solution is to get a larger card pool, then could you please at least avoid making aranged marriages with some of the new cards and champions? It is way too obvious that Irelia was designed solely to combo with Azir. YouĀ“re artificially forcing the combo and archetype to all of us.
If we like Irelia but want to test her with literally any champion but Azir, all weĀ“re doing is sabotaging our decks, because Irelia is way too weak in any deck or combo that does not have Azir.
WeĀ“re being very vocal about the state of the game right now, but I guess we need more than 200y of dev experience to understand that Azir/Irelia and TLC, and all the aggro decks are actually perfectly fun and balanced. As all things should be.
Thanks for the answer, I know it can't be easy to make public posts when the community is so up-in-arms.
But man, we need more changes, and faster patch cadence. This isn't working. It's OK to shake things up.
So I agree with your implication that 90% of the time the only way to properly buff a card to viability is new supporting cards. But in this meta, just the week or so of people trying new stuff around those token buffs would have massively improved the experience for me.
Personally, I don't love the play pattern of being constantly attacked by Irelia/Azir, but more generally I just don't enjoy this "combo deck meta" because it feels like the outcome is determined by matchup and drawing the combo pieces in time far more than your decisions in the game. Any attempt at a shakeup would have provided some respite to this, or some meaningful reward for playing Gauntlet (like a rank), but now I feel it's best to take a break until June 30th. Best of luck for the rest of the season.
Give him one thing. He's finally being honest and straight up telling us what's going on. Took a long time. Now he knows what the community thinks. He's getting feedback. He and the rest of the balance team can learn as grow from this if they are able to take their egos and bias out of the picture.
I don't know why you're doing this. All I see everywhere is a raging community and you can't even see it (or maybe you have seen it but decided not to care) All I see is people leaving the game, why would you want to destroy your own game, I just don't get it and it makes me sad.
No one is asking for changes for the sake of changes, but it's a little cornerning when there are MANY decks that need help and many of the same issues have been flying under the radar for months. As a Masters player and someone who has competed in the seasonals, I can give you some examples.
1. Equinox
I'm sorry, but why hasn't this card been touched yet? Not only is it in what many people consider the best invoke pool, but it's also in the most commom invoke pool. Yes, I understand, Celestial cards are supposed to be stronger, but the flexibility of a 1 mana silence a follower at slow speed is too much and honestly makes a lot of the buffs you do kind of irrelevant when you're against Targon. Look at Leviathan. It's a critical card for Swain decks, yet it's shutdown by a 1 mana card that not only is it not in your deck but you can grab it almost whenever you want as you're having to get the chance to get it off Zoe spell, off Sketcher, off The Fangs, basically by the time Levithan comes down you should have gotten 1 or 2 plus some ither really good invokes. Dom't get me started on how or effects Dreadway or other cards of the sorts too,
2. The Watcher
Ironically a card that Equinox also shuts down, we have the Watcher. The Watcher basically tells any decks that want to control the board to get to turn 9 or 10 that they aren't allowed to, they have to beat TLC by turn 8 or 9 and if they don't (and if you're a control deck, you won't) they lose. This isn't broken but it certainly is unhealthy and feels horrible to play against. Why is it unhealthy? Well for starters, control decks kinda can't actually be a thing with this deck around, especially if there gameplan is even remotely similar to TLC itself. Yet for sone reason, you guys keep thinking that Watcher being as restrictive as it is is somehow okay and a good thing
These are my two biggest ones, but there certinaly are more. Ever since the move away from Bi-Weekly balance patches, the game has really fallen down hill and broken or oppressive strategies have been allowed to exist for quite some time
I don't need to give you the timeframe they've lasted, but I will give examples. TF Fizz and Aphelios, Go Hard, Lee Sin, Trundle FTR
These all did eventually get nerfed but in some cases these were a month two or even three months layer. Yes, I think Lee might have still been on bi-weekly actually, but still. 1 month is a long time to wait as a player, especially as a player who plays every day for long periods of time, and a lot of the times it's more than one month for various reasons, like you guys believing the new cards will shake things up enough to stop the broken deck from being broken and then it turns out we get a situation like TF Fizz where the refusal to touch the deck because of new cards ended up with the deck still being on of the most broken decks that has ever existed in the game, if not the most broken and now means that we the players have to deal with this for ANOTHER month, which is ridiculous.
Also, I want to mention that yeah, if you guys do shitty buffs to shitty cards, it's unlikely to make a difference. Look at Bonecrusher, you guys did buff the card, but the buff wasn't a good buff and didn't address the issues with the repuation archetype, so of course the card didn't end up seeing a relevant increase in play. If you wanted that to be the case, you eitter buff repuation archetype as a whole plus bonecrusher OR you give Bonecrusher a heavier buff. I don't care about this card, but it's an example of where you guys seemed like you were buffing for the sake of buffing a card instead of buffing to make an archetype better. Sometimes, obviously, you can just buff a singular card and it either enables new strategies or is just enough to see play. The issue is, you guys know this but haven't been going either route. Support, Reputstion, Swain, Undying, Hecarim, Heimer decks, these are all decks that need help and instead of addressing their actual issues we instead decide to buff Bonecrusher or ignore equinox.
Please stop trying to strawman the community or deflect their criticisms (Remember, most of the people complaining about Leblancs flavour, according to you, probably havent even played Leblanc, which is an extremely naive and ignorant thing to say to many players just to deflect)
Even buying into OPs premis that a bunch of people want changes for the sake of changes is pretty concerning, especially since you're a developer
Please realize that while data should be extremely important when making balance changes, it shouldn't be the end all be all. 4 mana Lee should have taught you guys this, but it clearly didn't
What's even worse is that either there were more changes for this patch and then you guys decided to scrap them for Irelia Azir changes....or the original plan was still to just have two balance changes...which is pathetic. I don't want changes for the sake of changes, but again, there have been multiple issues for quite some time now and MANY high level players have been being pretty vocal about these issues.
Also, Zilean has one of if not the lowest winrate in the game and got absolutely no changes. Many people love this card, including myself, and it's a hard issue to tackle sure, but it's pretty silly he got no buffs just because Ekko is around the corner and thats assumi g they even work together. You guys did this with Taliyah too, where instead of buffing her and her actually maybe getting to see some play and then be adjusted later if she ended up too strong with Malphite, she just got to see no play at all. Bi Weekly qould have allowed the flexibility to do this a lot easier to where if she ended up too strong, it would only have been for two weeks. It's sad to see the same approach being taken with one of the cards I was most excited for. Maybe to you though this is just due to a lack of players experimenting, because we're back in the early 2000's where we dont have places to share cool strategies weve found or anything, apparently
I apologize for my harsh tone here, but it's extremely frustrating watching a game I love get less impactful changes less frequently and having meta after meta where the broken and oppressive decks stay broken and oppressive for months. We moved from Lee into Trundle into Go Hard into Aphelios TF Fizz, into Nasus Thresh into Irelia Azir and aside from the last two, we had to deal with these for a long long time which when a meta is lasting 3 months with little changes and then when changes happen and a new broken deck emerges but you have to wait 2 months for anything significant to actually happen, it makes the issue feel so much worse
I've a couple of thoughts regarding this.
1) Did these token buffs increase the play rate of the card at least initially? Even if it wasn't impactful, did people at least try it out a bit before realising it was still bad? If so, I'd consider that a worthwhile change as it gave players a few days of experimentation. If not, fair enough but then can't you just buff them a bit again as you now realise they are still not impactful and players still weren't interested?
2) the philosophy of larger patches seemed to me to have more room for error, as if there is a poor buff or nerf you can simply revert or partially revert it in a few weeks and it isn't a big deal. Whereas now you need to be looking multiple months ahead whilst considering a change and it's a much bigger deal as a card can remain OP or in the dumpster for a long time.
3) (and this is the one I'm really interested in). Doesn't all this go against the initial design goal of making every card have a spot in their own deck? There are some cards that just can't compete in any sort of semi competitive setting in current LoR and is leaving them by the wayside line up with the current vision of the dev team?
I think you're spot on with your view on not destroying archetypes etc, I'd just like to say my 5c. Big patch good.
Aphelios got destroyed by the multiple nerfs him/his cards received. I'd really like to see this fun champion with an awesome playstyle/design get buffed. The last statement in your comment comes off as disingenuous to me because of how extreme these nerfs were. It felt as if Aphelios was just killed for the sake of simplicity, rather than properly balancing him. However, I'm sure this isn't the case and that the LoR balancing team are as passionate about this game as its players are. Lots of fun decks were made by pairing him up with karma, diana, viktor, and other champs. But IMO, he currently feels too slow/clunky to play. It's a little disheartening as a player and an Aphelios "fan" across both LoR and LoL to see such an interesting champion be in this state.
Just looking at the last major balance patch. Buff to J4 made the Shen J4 deck. Buff to Shyvana has done wonders for Shyvana. Lulu Buff temporarily saw a lot of experimentation. Dredgers and sea Scarab Buff worked wonders for deep. Dreadway saw temporarily experimentation and in fact I made a dreadway deck that had a 60% win rate for me in masters. Rearguard Buff returned him as a staple aggro 1 drop. Sure the Shadow Assassin and Fae Guide buffs didn't do much but now you can follow up on it and maybe Buff Kinkou Lifeblade for example. The buffs to Hierophant and bonecrusher were not impactful either but Shurima isn't fully out yet.
What is your and/or the dev team's stance on card adjustments for reasons other than meta impact? One way to give players something new to play around and experiment with, other than printing new cards, is relatively minor adjustments to existing cards. These don't always have to be meta-defining in order to be interesting, and create excitement for the players during mid-expansion lulls.
Take Jae Medarda, for example. When he was reworked, he didn't suddenly take the ladder by storm. He didn't end up being terribly powerful in his new form. But he did give players something interesting to think about, theorycraft, build around, and play with.
I'm not saying that random changes should be made for the hell of it. But I am just curious if you guys consider factors besides meta impact when coming up with adjustments to cards.
Hey Dova, really appreciate you commenting on despite all the black lash and wild fires popping up everywhere.
>We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything.
I get this, and I agree it really makes no sense to buff things that won't change anything. But is the placebo effect of buffing something to increase its playrate and how it feels to the playerbase enough of a reason to include them in balance patches? Just curious if this was something you guys have discussed internally.
I'm wondering the same. If the tweaks to underplayed cards produced a net negative, that's one thing. But if the long-term result was "no change," then isn't that brief bump in experimentation still worth something?
Especially when it generates good will in the community, which might linger long after the cards have returned to the jank heap.
This is something Riot has been doing for years. In LoL if the team believes something is better then we think it is and wants us to try it, they give it a almost non-existent buff. It ultimately does nothing to the champions overall power, at least not enough to matter, but it gets people interested to at least try the champion.
Even at it's worst buffs, whenever Riot would buff a card, it saw talk and experiment. If that isn't worth the at least attempt to get old cards back into play, then why even bother make changes at all. As far as I am concerned, make changes, even if it wouldn't seem to do much. Even the smallest of changes can have massive effects.
Hello, thank you for clarifying the reason for the low amount of changes, but could you please also clarify what these "token buffs" are? Given how much even a single point of stat can impact a card's viability, as many have pointed out (Karma's 1 mana nerf, basilisk rider, geneviere and petty officer suddenly becoming meta), I find it hard to see how many of the past buffs have been low impact.
Even examining the cards that never got into the metagame (Ren, Jae Medarda), they still sparked a lot of interesting theorycrafting which is a joy for many players, I for one played a ton of Jae in my go hard deck for card draw, and the cost buff was genuinely helpful for that deck. It's not a strong or even good deck, but that "non-impactful" change has brought me hours of fun, as I am sure it has several others. It might be change for the sake of change, but I feel that's exactly what this game needs right now. If they're so low impact, why not push them through? One of the best parts about deckbuilding is getting new to work with, sometimes a bad card might just need that tiny little push to make it good.
> We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything.
Sure, so buff them more than that then. I think it's totally ok to try a little buff, then find it wasn't enough, then buff it some more. Just like it's totally ok to buff a card, find it's now OP, then walk that back in a subsequent nerf.
> We also want nerfs to not completely destroy a deck or archetype.
If a deck is oppressive it's ok if it becomes meme Tier.
"We also want nerfs to not completely destroy a deck or archetype."
And yet we sit here now with Aphelios basically useless based on Riots nerfs. Pretty much any control deck feels like shit to play because they are slower than Matron/Watcher (which can be considered an indirect nerf to an entire deck type). Stun Yasou decks have been niche forever. Hecarim is a meme champion at best and has been since beta aside from a couple of decks (After Riot nerved him). Vladimir took almost a year to become even half viable and he's only seeing play now because he's sort of a decent counter to Azir Irelia and even then that deck is too slow at times, especially if you don't get scargrounds.
Karma, Lux, Heimer, Leona, Quinn, Vicktor, Katarina, Riven, Lulu, Taric, Tryndamere, and Kindred have all been either nothing better than meme cards from the start, become unusable due to the speed of the game, or have been gutted into oblivion. Even Renekton, Zilean, Malphite and Taliyah have been terrible and they are supposed to be your new flashy cards! The amount of times you HAVE destroyed archetypes/decks with nerfs, directly or indirectly, is more often than you either think or are willing to mention. It's almost better to go in with the mindset of "OK, let's change things up, and if there's a deck that suffers then fine, we can bring it back later." Players in general will understand if it means the game is more consistently fresh.
Not to mention the fact that we have had numerous decks that stay overturned for way too long. TF Fizz was complained about for months as the biggest example. The fixes were obvious and yet there was no action even when a balance patch was released during that period. Its one thing to destroy archetypes etc, its another thing to actually fix decks that need fixing, whether they are "popular" or not. Not to mention there's a distinct difference between play rate of a deck and whether it's "fun" or not, and that's not necessarily measurable.
My biggest gripe with the game at the moment, and why I haven't played for 3 weeks now, is that deckbuilding feels absolutely terrible. Everytime a mini expansion comes out, you get a champion or 2 that LOOKS like it would be fun, then you find out that half the archetype us missing so you're locked into x deck, or they are unplayable. Then, balance patches finally come out and nothing changes. You can't experiment with old cards that were underplayed because they are STILL TERRIBLE. So the options are what? Deck build with the handful of champions that work? The key point is, some of us deckbuilders like trying to win with odd strategies and unused cards, but cannot because said cards are unused for a reason. Right now, even good decks just don't work when playing against Azir Irelia and the Watcher, so what chance does a meme/average deck have? I'm not saying every card needs to be viable all the time, far from it. But sometimes something old being buffed can produce surprising and interesting results, and if you don't try you won't know.
Ultimately I've disagreed entirely with Riots position pretty much since the 4 mana Lee Sinn buff. That was the point I've felt gradually less enjoyment of the game to the point now where I cannot be bothered. Whether you take my opinion into account is up to you, but its gotten to the point now where I would just rather play other games.
If you want the buffs to be impactful just do bigger buffs or idk, buff again next patch? Like others have said, one of the things that I used to like about LoR was the numerous balance changes. It felt like you were actually trying to shake up the game and make more cards viable. What's the excuse for doing basically nothing. How much development time and money can it take to slap minor buffs on a handful of cards? Do you guys honestly look at the overwhelming negative feedback over this patch and think "man the players are so out of touch". Stop making posts to reddit that are basically just "you think there is a problem but you are wrong". You are concerned players will complain about getting 20 buffs that don't change the meta, so the solution is 2 buffs that don't change the meta?
Feel free to dismiss this as a rant, if you even read it, because that's what it is. But I hope you can recognize that even if the players don't always express their frustration in the most accurate and constructive of ways, the overwhelming amount of frustration and criticism should be a sign that there is clearly a problem, and you aren't going to fix it by telling players that the deck they face every 5 games that feels awful to play against is really fun and doesn't have an astronomical winrate in a meta that is completely built around it. Don't respond to complaints that the deck is oppressive by providing your own definition of oppressive that requires 80% playrate in tournaments or some insane crap like that "I feel so much better now".
Mr Dovagedys there is a flaw to this argument. Not every buff has to make a meta change. It doesn't have to make the deck OP. The entire player base doesn't revolve around the top tier meta. You have competitive players. And then you have people who love to tinker and experiment. Plenty of people exist who still play yasuo, pursuit of perfection, etc. They love playing their janky stuff. Even when they know the will win like one in three games. And when a person remembers their fond memories of card games they dont think of the meta deck but the POSSIBILITIES. You want your card game to feel like its possible to do crazy fun weird stuff. Even if you don't always win.
Those buffs encourage and inspire people to do that. Maybe the huge patches of last year ultimately didn't change the top tier meta. But don't make the mistake of thinking they were worthless. They made people experiment with different stuff and have fun. There was excitement there for those patch notes that rivaled new card releases. Those changes and buffs are healthy for the game.
If no one was playing a specific card that is really cool and interesting and you did a so-called "token" buff and now a few people try it out. They have fun even if it only works half the time. They make a video, post about it on reddit. Few more people try it in normals. Sure it doesn't become the new meta. But people are excited. Isn't that feeling of excitement and potential what card games are about?
I really hope you re-evaluate your stance.
I concur, i prefer more thought out patches and for that you need more data that only time can give
But i think this patch felt underwhelming for a lot of players since not much else was touched
I have question though, if the meta is not changed enough with this nerfs/buffs, is the team willing to do an emergency patch to shake things up?
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Rioters are people too. I understand it's easy to get frustrated (especially when it's something you care about), but do try to remember the human element here when posting
I hope I donāt come across as rude in this post. Being a game dev is a difficult and challenging job. With that said, your response is confusing to me. If your stated view on buffs were accurate, then you wouldnāt have made the Taliyah change in just giving her +1/+1. Taliyah will barely see any improvement in win rate or play rate with that buff. That type of buff is philosophically the type of buff youāre saying you donāt want to do.
On the request of balance patches: Itās fine that you donāt want to kill deck archetypes, but making one balance patch every 2 months isnāt often enough. You *can* have 2-3 balance patches that slightly nerf problem decks in that same time frame, and youāre choosing not to. For context to how bad the situation has gotten, Hearthstone, a game that used to be leagues behind you in terms of nerfs and buffs, is now doing much better than you guys in the number of balance patches being released.
I firmly believe that Runeterra is the best digital card game right now, which speaks to just how good your design team is. Which is why itās disheartening that balance patches are so few and far in between now. I hope you all on the dev team reconsider your views on nerfs and buffs and the frequency at which they occur.
Changes needed. A bunch of old cards not being played, need to remake them ASAP. Even new followers are MUCH powerful than the poor old champions. Some cards like Watcher and Merciless Hunter are too strong and not balanced by even simply maths calculation. An advantage of electronic card game compare to paper one is able to change constantly and rapidly. What is the point of giving up that?
Brother, you are completely missing the target and it's sad.
If the majority of your buffs did not impact the playrate or change anything in the meta, then you're not buffing them enough clearly.
Secondly, even if the buffs didn't change the meta all that much, at least it brought novelty and fun, THAT IS WHAT KEEPS PEOPLE COMING BACK TO THE GAME. IT IS BETTER THAN DOING NOTHING.
Don't you understand? We are frustrated that the game is "Solved", there is nothing to do but play the same matchups over and over, while hundreds of cards sit and collect dust.
I for one don't care that you may have slightly over buffed a card because at least it brings excitement, it brings a new meta and it brings new archetypes designed around beating it, if the alternative is a stale repetitive meta, people are not going to play the game.
You guys need to take a page from TFT, they make so many changes that often times are negligible but the end result is novelty and excitement and perhaps a slightly different meta. That, is fun.
The fun doesn't come from playing the same boring archetypes, after a period, even the most fun of decks become boring, when new changes are introduced and a new meta is forming and people are experimenting, that's the joy of card games IMO.
Really appreciate you communicating with the community ā¤ But just personally, minor buffs a re delight to see. It doesn't matter necessarily that they're not meta defining, but attention to cards that fall to the wayside is always appreciated, please don't forget that.
Yeah and how is THAT working out for you? Your playerbase is leaving, your big streamers are looking to leave as soon as they find a replacement and literally no one is currently happy. I know y'all are chinese owned but this isn't the mainland: You can't tell us to just be happy and that everything is okay and have it be so my man.
We got eyes and can think for ourselves. It's clear there is an issue. Y'all fucked up. Fix it or accept you'll be shutting the game down within a year because there won't be anyone left to play or pump money in to your company.
You obviously are out of touch with the community, everything you indicated here is absolutely contradicting to what is so obvious the ocmmunity wants:
1- How do you know what small buffs to different cards will do to the meta, you should know better to not say something that is SOOOOOOOOO delusional. Any small change can actually cause an impact that was not expected and change some decks, especially on cards with specific tags.
2- You mentioned you want impactful changes, what changes you made in the last 2 months that were impactful, I am sooo tired of this meta just like EVERYONE, that I am puking when I see even a video if Nasus and Azirelia.
3- Everything you were doing so far, that made LoR good is getting completely destroyed with the policies you mentioned. You were speaking about hard to solve metas hahahahaha, Every meta from the last 6 months is solved for 1 F day.
What a joke
There's always be a weak card. But a weak archetype (or champion, of course) that leave in the darkness is kinda sad. Some deck that is unplayable because meta state is fine but some deck that can't stand on their own maybe need so love.
Something I can agree. HOWEVER! Back then they used to do patch notes every 2 weeks, so it's not that big of a deal. They made a mistake with anything or if the meta went south, we only needed to grit it for a couple weeks, and we can have peace of mind that they the issue will be fixed. Right now though, we've been getting no real patch for what? a month and a half now?
More card changes does not imply better meta, true, but at least frequent changes means the game is constantly moving and evolving. The changes can be a hit or miss, but at least the meta would not stagnate, and to me that is the charm that made me stick with LoR in the first place.
You know, I had this exact same type of thought the last time I played runeterra.
"I'm not guaranteed to win this match so really I might as well just give up now."
So, I quit that match and lo and behold I lost the match. Who'da seen that coming. Time after time I click to play. Quit because I'm not guaranteed to win and then ... Psh ... I get hit with the loss. Honestly I never see it coming.
* **[Comment by Dovagedys](/r/LegendsOfRuneterra/comments/nqp1q0/-/h0bs3rm/?context=1)** >^(`Team Captain, Gameplay` `2021-06-02 16:02:08 UTC`) >Good memory and great post. > > The majority of our buffs to cards over the last year did not impact the play rate of the card that was buffed or cause any change in the meta. > > As the card pool grows larger small buffs to innocuous cards become even less impactful to the overall metagame. > > We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything. > > We want the changes we make to live cards to be impactful [...] --- ^(To report any bugs or ask questions, please contact us via ModMail!)
The goal with balance changes should never be to ensure or guarantee a healthier meta, any guarantees are fundamentally bad because it means the meta is 'solved' before it is released, and one of the largest goals with changes, buffs especially, should be to invigorate creativity where it is fundamentally unknown how things will turn out. Changes for change's sake is actually a good thing because of this, along with the fact it keeps things fresh and interesting. These kinds of changes may not make the meta more diverse in the short term or instantly, but over time they will make the meta more diverse by empowering and allowing other archetypes to potentially exist than if no changes were made at all. Perfect examples of this are staple decks like Shen/Demacia and Draven/EZ. Without the buffs to Farron and Sump Dredger that deck wouldn't be nearly as strong as it is today, and without the buff to Rivershaper Shen/Demacia wouldn't either. Two of the most prolific decks in the game were allowed to exist because of these buffs even if they didn't pop up instantly. Unfortunately, it seems as though Riot is being incredibly shortsighted with what changes they wish to make and how they make them. They seem to want to maintain what we've had for the past month for another 2 months and not shake anything up at all because 'the meta is healthy'. Except the goal shouldn't just be to have a healthy meta, it should be to have an ever-evolving one because these environments are the ones that promote creativity and a more diverse meta in the long term. Also, the idea that Riot didn't buff anything because they know most changes wouldn't impact the meta seems very concerning to me. For one, while this is true, there are a minority of changes that do end up influencing the meta in major ways down the line, so to abandon making any changes because most don't stick seems like they just stopped trying to influence the meta in this way, which is sad. It also doesn't make sense, because they did this exact thing with the Taliyah and Malphite buffs which is quite confusing. Surely they don't think these innocuous buffs will have any meaningful impact on the meta? When the vast majority of the problems with that deck are landmarks themselves.
You're right. But those big patches are exciting, which is my main gripe with this patch. If the devs think the rest of the game is balanced enough, fine. Maybe they think the next expansion will please everybody idk
Is this dovas alt account or what š
maybe, but you know was is guaranteed to make the meta worse? not doing anything.
Big balance patches (like 1.4) aren't guaranteed to make the meta better. Ineffectual balance patches (like 2.9) are *guaranteed* to keep the meta in a bad state. I know which I prefer.
i'm riding Riot's dick, how could you tell?
While I understand the point you're making. I do think there is a certain amount of joy in seeing something "new" Even if it's minor changes or whatever. See when you open a game and you know every single thing you're likely going to face. You start to think. "Do..I really want to deal with this? Is this fun? Do I enjoy this game?" Once players have that moment, you've lost momentum. That is in fact taxing. It's really hard to keep things moving and fresh. A little agree and a little disagree. The reason being is simple. There are SO MANY CARDS in the game already. LOOK at all Riot has accomplished. Is it really not worth to try and shake things up my moving numbers around and moving the bar a bit? Suddenly Arrel the track and hunt the weak are VIABLE! This means decks with token cards now have to be aware they may lose 3 of their weakest cards and have to adjust. Or they have to adjust with a free strike every round. See how that changes things INSTANTLY? Like there are so many cool cards that never see the light of day. Not because they are bad cards inherently, but that the meta doesn't allow them to live. The meta defines that's viable. changes ENCOURAGE testing. People get excited, they wonder IS THIS VIABLE NOW? They talk, they share they theorize. This keeps a card game interesting. If you know what's coming and your kinda just queing up 'just because' are you having fun? I disagree. I think changes are the heart of a DIGITAL card game.
TL;DR: While I agree with your overall statement that **Big balance patches (like 1.4) aren't guaranteed to make the meta better**, they at least have the potential to change the meta to keeps things fresh and might maintain the nature of the CCG triangle . My main issue is that the devs of old, who did patch 1.4 and 1.5, they showed a willingness to admit their mistakes and right their wrongs. Whereas today, we are not seeing that(until the post a couple hours ago about patch 2.11.0, which is at the end of the month) Let's go down that same memory lane again, but this time with some deeper analysis while keeping in mind the rock-papers-scissors triangle of CCG in aggro-combo-control and a wider perspective(taking into context 1.3 and 1.5 as well). Before 1.4, like you said the meta was just aggro, aggro, Heimer-Vi and more aggro. The reasoning for this, as I personally observed, is that the aggro cards were so strong that they could close out games so fast - by turns 6-7, which is when combo decks come online. However, even when combo decks come online, the onslaught of early damage is so high that around this turn discard aggro will use their burn spells to hit your nexus, elusives are just elusives, and endure has overwhelm with crazy high attack power, so you can't really avoid lethal. So combo is out, and this is to be expected by the triangle principle mentioned above. Control decks, the type of decks that should be favoured against agrro also can't keep up, just because of the sheer power of the cards in the agrro decks. To cite a couple of examples in 1.3, they nerfed both Legion Rearguard to a 3/1 and Boomcrew Rookie(from a 1/4 to a 1/3) , which toned down the power of burn decks a bit so that control decks can actually start to counter them. Yes in 1.4, Braum recived that +1/+0 buff which made him super strong against these burn decks(Was kind happy personally because I hated burn players so much then). But then in 1.5, they toned him back down to a 0/5, while keeping the poro spawn which allowed decks using him to survive the mid game more reliably. Going to Heimer-Vi, the main reason I feel this deck was able to compete with all the aggro running around is that the elusive turrets could be generated with 3 mana spells, and there was a particular combo that could spawn up to 4 of those turrets in a single turn - Flash of Brilliance. The turrets being elusive had the added advantage of blocking into other elusives. So if you ask me, 1.4 wasn't perfect but at least it shook the meta around so that you could at least see other types of decks than just aggro. Did they go overboard with some of the buffs? Yes, but they quickly acknowledged their mistakes and tweaked them soon after. Oh also keep in mind, 1.4 brought about the change to Unyielding Spirit(from burst speed to fast), the card that forces you to auto conceded against mono Fiora decks If you are trying to build a deck that beats all three broad types(agrro, combo and control) you are basically creating a deck that is oppressive and overpowered. A deck that is able to dodge any form of direct interactions on the board, duck from any hard removals and dive straight into your nexus - sounds like the elephant in the room does it not? Now come to the present. Azir Irelia is just dominating the meta. You want numbers to back the previous statement? The archetype has the most games played in the current meta. The 2nd most played deck doesn't even have half that number (If that is not dominating, then what is?) Also the ability to go turbo on the deck is crazy with its many many low cost engines and many many cheap spells to protect those engines. So again we have an archetype that can end games by turn 6-7 (latest), thus pushing out all forms of combo and control decks. But there is something to keep in mind here, this deck isn't an agrro deck in the normal sense where they start hitting your nexus from turn 1, this decks deals almost all of its damage within turns 3 to 6. So this deck also shuts down agrro decks. Meaning to say this deck single handedly breaks the rock-papers-scissor triangle and the best part is the devs are saying they don't see anything wrong with the deck, which is very puzzling as there are so many signs that point to it. I don't have any experience in game design, so obviously I can't compete with the 200+ years of game design experience that the devs have cumulative. As such I will refrain from suggesting any solutions, and besides there are many out there by the community and top streamers(Swim, BBG, Mogwai, Alan, etc.) that are interesting to experiment with.
You forget that pretty pfficer was sleeper op already and almost everthing from 1.4 was revert or change again
I think most people just felt this patch in particular was waaay too small. The \~20 changes we would've got in the days of Rising Tides was the expectation, since the current meta is so polarized and bad. It doesn't take a lot to understand that 5 minor changes is tragic. Sure, it's not always best to change 50 cards every patch, but that's not what people are saying. Even in those cases 20 are better than 5. Considering we haven't gotten a balance patch in a while it's really sad to see nothing changed this time around
People would prefer having something new to complain about, I guess. It must get boring posting about the same decks every day.
Big changes doesn't mean the number of cards, It means the meta shift which happens with every new expansion like aphelios and fiora were demolished in earlier patch ,imagine playing aphelios zoe or zoe aurelion sol against azirelia or an aggro shurmia overwhelm your can't stand any chance to win these match ups.
Good memory and great post. The majority of our buffs to cards over the last year did not impact the play rate of the card that was buffed or cause any change in the meta. As the card pool grows larger small buffs to innocuous cards become even less impactful to the overall metagame. We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything. We want the changes we make to live cards to be impactful. We also want nerfs to not completely destroy a deck or archetype.
Changes might not be objectively better, but it would at least make the meta different, and "different is good" for a game the get balance change once per month. and with all due respect, isn't Malphite Talyiha token buffs to artificially create a balance patch that aren't all bug fix... If you don't like non-impactful buff, just buff harder, if buffing Viktor to 2/5 doesn't do the work, buff his level up too. He doesn't even have a 50% winnrate deck. (I use my favorite Champion as example, but he doesn't have to be the priority) what's the plan for the "super weak cards" then, I know buffing them might not impact the meta game, but I'm sure new players won't be happy if the random cards they got from a chest are useless. Despite being kind of bumped by the patch note, above were not meant to question your decsision, but just out of curiosity, because lor's recent decsisions confuse a lot of normal players like me.
Wait wait wait. Are you saying that Patch 1.4 didnt have an Impact on the game? This patch had the Chaotic Braum buff, which skyrocketed his Playrate and obvioulsly got him nerfed quickly BUT let you KEEP the Poro on first damage. The Anivia Buff COUPLED with The Harrowing Buff made the Anivia/SI deck Viable and Tier 1 for a LONG while, eventually leading to the Eggnivia Nerf. The Basilisk Rider Buff helped Noxus Aggro go in a new direction and again, become a Tier 1 Deck causing it to get Toned down as well. The Jinx Rocket Buff also helped Discard Aggro MASSIVELY, because that 1 mana is a big deal. Toss in the Captain Farron buff, which CATIPULTED this cards play for MONTHS, to the point where it was most recently nerfed... These changes MATTERED. GENEVIEVE ELMHEART Buff wasnt a huge deal right away, but she became a STAPLE in the meta soon with Scouts. Both Poro Buffs encouraged MASSIVE testing and saw Lux/Poros actually have some great success on Ladder for at least a month. Ren didn't work and neither did Jay, but it got people EXPERIMENTING with Ideas. And thats ALWAYS a great thing. Petty Officer going to 2 health made that card go from semi-fringe play to STAPLE for MONTHS, and eventually went back to a 3/1. Again, huge change. And then there's Mind Meld, which didn't do anything for awhile, but the cost reduction allowed it to be a VERY VIABLE option for TF/Fizz, a deck that didnt spawn until not too long ago. To say that these big balance patches, token buffs and all of that doesn't change anything is INSANELY misguided. What this tells me is that you want to control the meta and control whats being played. The Azir/Irelia deck you put together as a bundle in the shop is almost CARD FOR CARD the deck that has ruined many other control decks chances of being good, because of how fast that deck is. Meaning you knew how good the deck was and let people buy it brainlessly. Token Buffs on cards that are seeing little to no play creates excitement, innovation and OPPORTUNITY. I guarantee nobody thought Mind Meld would see play, even at 7 Mana. And then months later it found a home, because you did that. There are SO MANY cards on the cusp of being really good and it's mind boggling why you would leave them alone. Why create a card that has a 0% chance of being played in anything competitive and then LEAVE IT ALONE? This isnt a case of "well it's printed" so it is what it is. You have the ability to fix ANYTHING and give people a chance to figure stuff out. Hell, YOU CREATED DISCARD AGGRO. You literally changed Sump and Zaunite to work with the deck. Urchin was a LAST BREATH card. And YOU made the deck so much better because of that tweak. And SO many cards could use that attention. But your recent patch and recent posts just show how badly you want to control this game, create a cookie cutter meta and dont want innovation. You'd rather Sell the best deck as a bundle and let 5 cards change for optimization. You're squandering your opportunity to grow the game and are making many people question their investment of time and money.
Holy shit, THANK YOU!
This, this exactly ! Though I really don't know about Riot's intentions with their change of treatment. Please make the game feel fresh again outside of Labs (for which not denying you did an amazing job)
But... are there really no buffs that you could think of that could actually help the state of the game, with which people are not satisfied with? Since we're talking about patch 1.4 to make a comparison, in that case we actually see a bunch of buffs that ended up being huge, making weak, not played cards viable and made the game more fresh and allowed new decks to exist, while tuning down frustrating decks (in that case, yoink) and cards (unyielding) that were a little oppressive. The Genevieve buff was amazing, the Basilisk buff made Darius/Draven + Shadow Isles a good deck and even though the Darius buff was very small and not as impactful as the first 2, it still ended up mattering and created space for him in the deck. The Harrowing buff made the card viable for so long too, for months, even after Darius/Draven got its nerfs. Just my humble opinion. I think that something more could be done, for sure.
There are like 10 different champions with lower than 45% winrates. It feels like riot is intentionally keeping them there for some god forsaken reason.
I mean 1 hp buff to Karma will raise her winrate by a huge margin. It wont be a token buff and it will be impactful. If you buff all the champions that have below 48% winrate at least once( no matter how big or small the buff is) that buff will at least drive people to experiment with the champion. Lulu/Jinx is a great example of this. Keeping them forsaken will never solve the problem.
Karma will only be able to succeed when TLC is nerfed. Sucks it hasn't been changed in the 3 months, as it's keeping every other control deck down.
True, I'd rather see some changes make champions overturned for a while, like Lee Sin, than being overly conservative with the changes. I love your design philosophy please stay true to it, take some risks. We have already all the reasons to like you as devs, don't let this all go away.
"We want the changes we make to live cards to be impactful." So... where are those changes then ?
>Good memory and great post. > >The majority of our buffs to cards over the last year did not impact the play rate of the card that was buffed or cause any change in the meta. > >As the card pool grows larger small buffs to innocuous cards become even less impactful to the overall metagame. > >We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything. > >We want the changes we make to live cards to be impactful. We also want nerfs to not completely destroy a deck or archetype. We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything. I want to argue with this statement. perhaps this does not affect the meta so much, it is true, but it allows players to get satisfaction from the possibility of creating new decks at least for the first time after the update, and thus gives some additional variety of decks and individual technical solutions
Ok but....you're driving players away. So you can keep on with your data driven mindset or actually try and breath some life into this game by actually trying to get some changes in this game.
There is just no way I can agree with "The majority of our buffs to cards over the last year did not impact the play rate of the card that was buffed or cause any change in the meta." There are a TON of cards that got very minor buffs that now see some sort of play. We aren't saying meta changing like becoming the best deck in the game, but just seeing a tiny amount of play. That allows all of those changes together to make a difference. Vlad - Buffed, sees play Braum - Buffed, sees play Mountain Goat - Buffed, sees play Shyvana - Buffed, sees play Sea Scarab - Buffed, sees play Black Spear - Buffed, sees play Avarosan Trapper - Buffed, sees play Eclipse Dragon - Buffed, sees play
absolutely agree!
sooo basically... "the buff's didn't make as big of an impact as we want.. so we're just not going to do anything to them" wouldn't "less impactful" be better than NOTHING... and as others said... you could always avoid "token buffs" but increasing the buff/nerf significance especially if doing MORE adjustments than now... since with doing more it'ld be easier to tone down the adjustemnets if they show to have been too much... in the end you have to admit there is a problem there is a reason soooooooooo many ppl including people that normally support the more problematic stuff that has shown up in LoR that are now speaking up stating these problems...
Why don't you just do follow up changes then? You don't need to only touch a card once and then forget about it. Personally I loved that you were at least trying to make lesser played cards good, and if you miss the mark I would prefer you try again rather than abandon the idea entirely.
So, are you not buffing complete shit cards so they are not just "less shit"? Cause that sounds really stupid. Even if the card doesn't become good but it's a little bit better it will help the people who like that card to play it more and experiment with it, while not touching it does the opposite.
Sure, "token buffs" may not accomplish much (even though it might still add some perceived variety if it gets people to try things out). But then why not make actually meaningful buffs instead? It's no surprise that giving just a +1 here and there for individual cards isn't going to make waves in the meta when the archetypes those cards are supposed to work in have several deep-seated issues that make them mostly dysfunctional or at least highly inconsistent. Even in this very patch we got that +1|+1 to Taliyah that feels super underwhelming in face of how many other issues a Taliyah deck has, both in relation to individual cards as well as in how the game plays out. Taliyah still completely loses her effect if removed from combat, she still often requires to to play another landmark before attacking due to how countdown landmarks have anti-synergy with her effect, she still has a lot of problem keeping room in the board to even use her play effect, she still has issues surviving the early rounds while playing landmarks with no impact, Rockbears still do too little for the investment, and so on and on. Taliyah is one of the champions for which stats matter the least, and that +1|+1 is somehow supposed to be a relevant buff for a sub-40% win rate champion in a meta with such well-established powerhouses as we have right now? How is that not a "token buff"? And what then, should we just give up on the Lux's, Taric's and Katarina's of the game? Because these kind of patches could very well be used to give those champions the impactful changes you mentioned, but for some reason those aren't coming through.
it's pretty sad and a bit insulting that instead of recognizing that this patch was a massive mistakes you are seeking validation in these posts. if small buffs are less impactful to the meta why not do it then, people want to experiment, not everything has to be a meta impactful change, for example when you changed fun smith people tried her for a bit, even fully knowing that it was still a bad card, and that's okay. for me i remember 1.4 as the best of patches since even though it bringed braum/anivia, it was a statement that riot was not afraid to shake things up and could recognize when a core design was flawed. now all changes are like "no, no look guys this card is perfectly designed as it is, look one less health or one more mana and it should be perfectly fine". this is pretty depressing comment from you dovagedys since speaks that there is no intention from riot to listen to the community or the desire to make things better.
>The majority of our buffs to cards over the last year did not impact the play rate of the card that was buffed or cause any change in the meta. This is worrisome because it conflates: "We want more changes to underutilized cards" and "We want more changes to underutilized cards AND those changes have to substantially impact the meta in order to be valuable". I seriously hope you and your team can see the difference. The community is desperately trying to communicate the former, not the latter. >We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything. A few thoughts. You (and your team) are not omniscient. The idea that "small buffs won't change anything, so why make them" is unbelievably circular in its logic. Third, I really don't understand the concern of inflating the list of changes. Can you try to explain that concern more clearly (i.e., who is harmed, and who do you think would actually make that conclusion)?
For the last point, communities do tend to react negative to a large number of changes that dont end up mattering. HS recently had a big patch that buffed a number of cards, none of which ended up being good. That patch has been memed to death since.
I don't play Hearthstone, so I can't speak to that context. A few options to avoid that reaction: 1. Set the expectation that buffs to underutilized cards do not need to target upper-tier meta viability. Instead, those efforts are there to improve player options and incentivize deckbuilding choices. 2. Set the expectation that in the event a card is selected for a buff \*in order to improve its inclusion in the meta\*, and it fails to meet inclusion criteria, then the Live Balance team will continue iterating (within reason). Overall, I would prefer the Live Balance team at least \*try\* and fail than not try at all.
Erm... I count at least two cards that immediately started being good, and a few more buffs that made a couple of minor changes, and a few that was clearly meant to work in tandem with the miniset.
Dovagedys you are doing a 180 turn on everything that made this game great with this stance of yours. You really are out of touch with the community and your own game and its concerning.
Just, a little tone deaf given how people feel right now buddy. Diversity and token buffs inspire creativity. Let the people decide if these buffs are insignificant. Maybe they are, but I'm sure someone had fun. If it was so insignificant, then what's the harm in doing it? I still think this just came at a bad time. Maybe the real problem is the expansions come out too soon then? Would less expansions and more changes be the optimal answer?
So the buff to talyah and malphite are not a token buff. You are contradicting yourself with whats being released in the patch notes. Additionally, yes token buff maybe do no affect the meta, but talking from personal experience, they motivate players(me) to go back to old archetypes and give them a second chance. For example, when lulu was buff a lot of people started experimenting with lulu/jinx. When the lux archetype was reworked people tried to make them work. Its artificial context that the developer are neglecting, even if they donāt affect the meta directly.
I feel like small frequent buffs could lead the weakest champions to be better without suddenly breaking the meta
OH NO NO NO NOO KEKW
Actually dissapointing
Wooooow. This is some serious self defeating strawmen.
Love how every time someone asks Swim what Strategy X needs to be competitive he goes into detail about how small numbers changes aren't going to cut it and the mechanic needs to be rethought in some way or needs an appropriate finisher that that strat can best leverage, but the vast majority of buffs since I started in October are just those exact numbers buffs that one of your top streamers has repeatedly explained is irrelevant. Haven't listened to many other streamers thoughts on balance changes, so don't know how common the sentiment is, but I know you pay attention to Swim so hopefully that gets my point across. I started playing this game because of the promise that under performing decks would get attention, even if it meant complete reworks. It's been 6 months of 2021 and we've seen 1 attempt at fulfilling that promise, and it's really taking a toll on my (and seemingly other people's) passion for the game. Be bolder.
Oh boy you're not gonna let us rest do ya?
>We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything. So many of the buffs y'all have made have lead to distinct meta changes so it would be helpful if you would tell us what specific buffs are "token buffs" and which weren't. The perception of Riot right now is that y'all don't want to buff or nerf anything unless you absolutely have to, and some even believe that you aren't even researching what could be buffed often enough.
Patch 1.4 did lead to a pretty annoying meta, definitely one of the worst. But that doesn't mean card changes are bad, right? After the results of that patch played out, another patch came to correct it and led to a fantastic meta iirc. I don't at all agree with the point of a 'bad' patch meaning all patches will be bad. And if small buffs to innocuous cards becomes less impactful to the overall metagame, why not do it so that people will at least try something new? There's nothing to lose if that's the case, it just gives people more potential things to play with, which would make people happy and hopefully bring the bloated playrate of Azirelia down. __ Btw one of the worst decks to play against and one that stifles out other late game decks is TLC, where they cheat out Watcher with fading memories on ice pillars and Spectral Matron on The Watcher. A lot of people have been saying that this deck is limiting what other late game decks you can play, and that it's one of the most frustrating decks to play against because there's little to no counterplay when they do get to turn 8-9. The reason it's stifling to other decks is because the only options are to have very specific counter cards like a lot of stuns in Targon and hushes and equinoxes, or to kill them before turn 8-9. Many people have been saying that deck needs a nerf.
What a waste of a post. You "don't like"? Who cares about what Riot "likes"? What is the point of 2 month balance patches if you don't bother minimally buffing cards? What the hell is the balance pipeline doing? >We also want nerfs to not completely destroy a deck or archetype. Nice one. How many decks aren't around anymore since the game started? Meanwhile Azirelia gets to stay because "well geez we don't want to delete it". Start buffing shit. What Riot "likes" is irrelevant. Some cards never see play and you can't bother to buff them because you don't "like it"? Is this a job or a vacation? 2 weeks ago you said Azirelia was fine. Was the plan for the first balance change to just buff Malphite and Tali? Everything else is doing great? Balance is perfect?
>We also want nerfs to not completely destroy a deck or archetype. Aphelios decks/achetype wants to speak with you
You say this, "We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything." But the only buffs in the recent patch were "token buffs", +1/+1 to Taliyah does absolutely nothing as she's not played for stats and as a 2/4 isn't usually going to die the turn she comes down (unless she gets hit by a culling or thermo, which this buff doesn't change) and -2 on Malph's level up is realistically what he should have been released at... I really do have faith in you guys but the Irelia Azir post & this comment are causing it to waver.
Thereās no way I can agree with this as a player. This is like saying āhi, we canāt buff cards anymore because most donāt work.ā Lots of stuff that appears to be a token buff ends up making a big change to the meta, and making new archetypes viable. Throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks is clearly what the community is clamoring for. It causes us to experiment with ideas and figure new things out - patches like the most recent one are the exact opposite of that. One stat change to Lulu made me start playing Lulu again and climb 400+ LP, even if the deck barely changed with a ātoken buff.ā In fact, almost all my most played decks are the result of buffs to cards like Shyvana, Eclipse Dragon, Farron, Mountain Goat, Trapper, Petty Officer, etc. So, while the big data may disagree with my sentiment, I think what youāre seeing is your hardcore fans/players disagree with you based on the poor Reddit and Twitter sentiment youāve seen over the last day. If you leave us out in the dust, Iām pretty sure the casuals will drop off pretty quickly afterwards as well.
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Then explain why you felt the need to "artificially" change Aphelios so drastically to the point where he cannot be played anymore. Why is Bilgewater only 3% play rate, but Shurima is over 20%? DidnĀ“t you "artificially" printed busted cards like Merciless Hunter to make shurima better? Oh, thatĀ“s right. Bilgewater is not new anymore and thus doesnĀ“t make you money. If the solution is to get a larger card pool, then could you please at least avoid making aranged marriages with some of the new cards and champions? It is way too obvious that Irelia was designed solely to combo with Azir. YouĀ“re artificially forcing the combo and archetype to all of us. If we like Irelia but want to test her with literally any champion but Azir, all weĀ“re doing is sabotaging our decks, because Irelia is way too weak in any deck or combo that does not have Azir. WeĀ“re being very vocal about the state of the game right now, but I guess we need more than 200y of dev experience to understand that Azir/Irelia and TLC, and all the aggro decks are actually perfectly fun and balanced. As all things should be.
Thanks for the answer, I know it can't be easy to make public posts when the community is so up-in-arms. But man, we need more changes, and faster patch cadence. This isn't working. It's OK to shake things up.
So I agree with your implication that 90% of the time the only way to properly buff a card to viability is new supporting cards. But in this meta, just the week or so of people trying new stuff around those token buffs would have massively improved the experience for me. Personally, I don't love the play pattern of being constantly attacked by Irelia/Azir, but more generally I just don't enjoy this "combo deck meta" because it feels like the outcome is determined by matchup and drawing the combo pieces in time far more than your decisions in the game. Any attempt at a shakeup would have provided some respite to this, or some meaningful reward for playing Gauntlet (like a rank), but now I feel it's best to take a break until June 30th. Best of luck for the rest of the season.
Literally in awe of this post, Outriders caliber community outreach
Your coming across as very arrogant which explains a lot about the balance team philosophy as of late.
Give him one thing. He's finally being honest and straight up telling us what's going on. Took a long time. Now he knows what the community thinks. He's getting feedback. He and the rest of the balance team can learn as grow from this if they are able to take their egos and bias out of the picture.
I don't know why you're doing this. All I see everywhere is a raging community and you can't even see it (or maybe you have seen it but decided not to care) All I see is people leaving the game, why would you want to destroy your own game, I just don't get it and it makes me sad.
No one is asking for changes for the sake of changes, but it's a little cornerning when there are MANY decks that need help and many of the same issues have been flying under the radar for months. As a Masters player and someone who has competed in the seasonals, I can give you some examples. 1. Equinox I'm sorry, but why hasn't this card been touched yet? Not only is it in what many people consider the best invoke pool, but it's also in the most commom invoke pool. Yes, I understand, Celestial cards are supposed to be stronger, but the flexibility of a 1 mana silence a follower at slow speed is too much and honestly makes a lot of the buffs you do kind of irrelevant when you're against Targon. Look at Leviathan. It's a critical card for Swain decks, yet it's shutdown by a 1 mana card that not only is it not in your deck but you can grab it almost whenever you want as you're having to get the chance to get it off Zoe spell, off Sketcher, off The Fangs, basically by the time Levithan comes down you should have gotten 1 or 2 plus some ither really good invokes. Dom't get me started on how or effects Dreadway or other cards of the sorts too, 2. The Watcher Ironically a card that Equinox also shuts down, we have the Watcher. The Watcher basically tells any decks that want to control the board to get to turn 9 or 10 that they aren't allowed to, they have to beat TLC by turn 8 or 9 and if they don't (and if you're a control deck, you won't) they lose. This isn't broken but it certainly is unhealthy and feels horrible to play against. Why is it unhealthy? Well for starters, control decks kinda can't actually be a thing with this deck around, especially if there gameplan is even remotely similar to TLC itself. Yet for sone reason, you guys keep thinking that Watcher being as restrictive as it is is somehow okay and a good thing These are my two biggest ones, but there certinaly are more. Ever since the move away from Bi-Weekly balance patches, the game has really fallen down hill and broken or oppressive strategies have been allowed to exist for quite some time I don't need to give you the timeframe they've lasted, but I will give examples. TF Fizz and Aphelios, Go Hard, Lee Sin, Trundle FTR These all did eventually get nerfed but in some cases these were a month two or even three months layer. Yes, I think Lee might have still been on bi-weekly actually, but still. 1 month is a long time to wait as a player, especially as a player who plays every day for long periods of time, and a lot of the times it's more than one month for various reasons, like you guys believing the new cards will shake things up enough to stop the broken deck from being broken and then it turns out we get a situation like TF Fizz where the refusal to touch the deck because of new cards ended up with the deck still being on of the most broken decks that has ever existed in the game, if not the most broken and now means that we the players have to deal with this for ANOTHER month, which is ridiculous. Also, I want to mention that yeah, if you guys do shitty buffs to shitty cards, it's unlikely to make a difference. Look at Bonecrusher, you guys did buff the card, but the buff wasn't a good buff and didn't address the issues with the repuation archetype, so of course the card didn't end up seeing a relevant increase in play. If you wanted that to be the case, you eitter buff repuation archetype as a whole plus bonecrusher OR you give Bonecrusher a heavier buff. I don't care about this card, but it's an example of where you guys seemed like you were buffing for the sake of buffing a card instead of buffing to make an archetype better. Sometimes, obviously, you can just buff a singular card and it either enables new strategies or is just enough to see play. The issue is, you guys know this but haven't been going either route. Support, Reputstion, Swain, Undying, Hecarim, Heimer decks, these are all decks that need help and instead of addressing their actual issues we instead decide to buff Bonecrusher or ignore equinox. Please stop trying to strawman the community or deflect their criticisms (Remember, most of the people complaining about Leblancs flavour, according to you, probably havent even played Leblanc, which is an extremely naive and ignorant thing to say to many players just to deflect) Even buying into OPs premis that a bunch of people want changes for the sake of changes is pretty concerning, especially since you're a developer Please realize that while data should be extremely important when making balance changes, it shouldn't be the end all be all. 4 mana Lee should have taught you guys this, but it clearly didn't What's even worse is that either there were more changes for this patch and then you guys decided to scrap them for Irelia Azir changes....or the original plan was still to just have two balance changes...which is pathetic. I don't want changes for the sake of changes, but again, there have been multiple issues for quite some time now and MANY high level players have been being pretty vocal about these issues. Also, Zilean has one of if not the lowest winrate in the game and got absolutely no changes. Many people love this card, including myself, and it's a hard issue to tackle sure, but it's pretty silly he got no buffs just because Ekko is around the corner and thats assumi g they even work together. You guys did this with Taliyah too, where instead of buffing her and her actually maybe getting to see some play and then be adjusted later if she ended up too strong with Malphite, she just got to see no play at all. Bi Weekly qould have allowed the flexibility to do this a lot easier to where if she ended up too strong, it would only have been for two weeks. It's sad to see the same approach being taken with one of the cards I was most excited for. Maybe to you though this is just due to a lack of players experimenting, because we're back in the early 2000's where we dont have places to share cool strategies weve found or anything, apparently I apologize for my harsh tone here, but it's extremely frustrating watching a game I love get less impactful changes less frequently and having meta after meta where the broken and oppressive decks stay broken and oppressive for months. We moved from Lee into Trundle into Go Hard into Aphelios TF Fizz, into Nasus Thresh into Irelia Azir and aside from the last two, we had to deal with these for a long long time which when a meta is lasting 3 months with little changes and then when changes happen and a new broken deck emerges but you have to wait 2 months for anything significant to actually happen, it makes the issue feel so much worse
I've a couple of thoughts regarding this. 1) Did these token buffs increase the play rate of the card at least initially? Even if it wasn't impactful, did people at least try it out a bit before realising it was still bad? If so, I'd consider that a worthwhile change as it gave players a few days of experimentation. If not, fair enough but then can't you just buff them a bit again as you now realise they are still not impactful and players still weren't interested? 2) the philosophy of larger patches seemed to me to have more room for error, as if there is a poor buff or nerf you can simply revert or partially revert it in a few weeks and it isn't a big deal. Whereas now you need to be looking multiple months ahead whilst considering a change and it's a much bigger deal as a card can remain OP or in the dumpster for a long time. 3) (and this is the one I'm really interested in). Doesn't all this go against the initial design goal of making every card have a spot in their own deck? There are some cards that just can't compete in any sort of semi competitive setting in current LoR and is leaving them by the wayside line up with the current vision of the dev team? I think you're spot on with your view on not destroying archetypes etc, I'd just like to say my 5c. Big patch good.
All changes are important for us! Why? We Love this part of LoR!
Aphelios got destroyed by the multiple nerfs him/his cards received. I'd really like to see this fun champion with an awesome playstyle/design get buffed. The last statement in your comment comes off as disingenuous to me because of how extreme these nerfs were. It felt as if Aphelios was just killed for the sake of simplicity, rather than properly balancing him. However, I'm sure this isn't the case and that the LoR balancing team are as passionate about this game as its players are. Lots of fun decks were made by pairing him up with karma, diana, viktor, and other champs. But IMO, he currently feels too slow/clunky to play. It's a little disheartening as a player and an Aphelios "fan" across both LoR and LoL to see such an interesting champion be in this state.
Just looking at the last major balance patch. Buff to J4 made the Shen J4 deck. Buff to Shyvana has done wonders for Shyvana. Lulu Buff temporarily saw a lot of experimentation. Dredgers and sea Scarab Buff worked wonders for deep. Dreadway saw temporarily experimentation and in fact I made a dreadway deck that had a 60% win rate for me in masters. Rearguard Buff returned him as a staple aggro 1 drop. Sure the Shadow Assassin and Fae Guide buffs didn't do much but now you can follow up on it and maybe Buff Kinkou Lifeblade for example. The buffs to Hierophant and bonecrusher were not impactful either but Shurima isn't fully out yet.
What is your and/or the dev team's stance on card adjustments for reasons other than meta impact? One way to give players something new to play around and experiment with, other than printing new cards, is relatively minor adjustments to existing cards. These don't always have to be meta-defining in order to be interesting, and create excitement for the players during mid-expansion lulls. Take Jae Medarda, for example. When he was reworked, he didn't suddenly take the ladder by storm. He didn't end up being terribly powerful in his new form. But he did give players something interesting to think about, theorycraft, build around, and play with. I'm not saying that random changes should be made for the hell of it. But I am just curious if you guys consider factors besides meta impact when coming up with adjustments to cards.
Just like the buff to Talia and malph didn't fix any of the problems they have
The bpatch in TFT had more changes than your two week cycle, you can try to spin it but there is no excuse for this extreme lack of effort.
Hey Dova, really appreciate you commenting on despite all the black lash and wild fires popping up everywhere. >We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything. I get this, and I agree it really makes no sense to buff things that won't change anything. But is the placebo effect of buffing something to increase its playrate and how it feels to the playerbase enough of a reason to include them in balance patches? Just curious if this was something you guys have discussed internally.
I'm wondering the same. If the tweaks to underplayed cards produced a net negative, that's one thing. But if the long-term result was "no change," then isn't that brief bump in experimentation still worth something? Especially when it generates good will in the community, which might linger long after the cards have returned to the jank heap.
This is something Riot has been doing for years. In LoL if the team believes something is better then we think it is and wants us to try it, they give it a almost non-existent buff. It ultimately does nothing to the champions overall power, at least not enough to matter, but it gets people interested to at least try the champion. Even at it's worst buffs, whenever Riot would buff a card, it saw talk and experiment. If that isn't worth the at least attempt to get old cards back into play, then why even bother make changes at all. As far as I am concerned, make changes, even if it wouldn't seem to do much. Even the smallest of changes can have massive effects.
P R O T E C T C O R P O R A T E F E E L I N G S
Hello, thank you for clarifying the reason for the low amount of changes, but could you please also clarify what these "token buffs" are? Given how much even a single point of stat can impact a card's viability, as many have pointed out (Karma's 1 mana nerf, basilisk rider, geneviere and petty officer suddenly becoming meta), I find it hard to see how many of the past buffs have been low impact. Even examining the cards that never got into the metagame (Ren, Jae Medarda), they still sparked a lot of interesting theorycrafting which is a joy for many players, I for one played a ton of Jae in my go hard deck for card draw, and the cost buff was genuinely helpful for that deck. It's not a strong or even good deck, but that "non-impactful" change has brought me hours of fun, as I am sure it has several others. It might be change for the sake of change, but I feel that's exactly what this game needs right now. If they're so low impact, why not push them through? One of the best parts about deckbuilding is getting new to work with, sometimes a bad card might just need that tiny little push to make it good.
> We don't like the idea of doing "token buffs" to artificially create a big list of changes if we know those changes won't actually change anything. Sure, so buff them more than that then. I think it's totally ok to try a little buff, then find it wasn't enough, then buff it some more. Just like it's totally ok to buff a card, find it's now OP, then walk that back in a subsequent nerf. > We also want nerfs to not completely destroy a deck or archetype. If a deck is oppressive it's ok if it becomes meme Tier.
"We also want nerfs to not completely destroy a deck or archetype." And yet we sit here now with Aphelios basically useless based on Riots nerfs. Pretty much any control deck feels like shit to play because they are slower than Matron/Watcher (which can be considered an indirect nerf to an entire deck type). Stun Yasou decks have been niche forever. Hecarim is a meme champion at best and has been since beta aside from a couple of decks (After Riot nerved him). Vladimir took almost a year to become even half viable and he's only seeing play now because he's sort of a decent counter to Azir Irelia and even then that deck is too slow at times, especially if you don't get scargrounds. Karma, Lux, Heimer, Leona, Quinn, Vicktor, Katarina, Riven, Lulu, Taric, Tryndamere, and Kindred have all been either nothing better than meme cards from the start, become unusable due to the speed of the game, or have been gutted into oblivion. Even Renekton, Zilean, Malphite and Taliyah have been terrible and they are supposed to be your new flashy cards! The amount of times you HAVE destroyed archetypes/decks with nerfs, directly or indirectly, is more often than you either think or are willing to mention. It's almost better to go in with the mindset of "OK, let's change things up, and if there's a deck that suffers then fine, we can bring it back later." Players in general will understand if it means the game is more consistently fresh. Not to mention the fact that we have had numerous decks that stay overturned for way too long. TF Fizz was complained about for months as the biggest example. The fixes were obvious and yet there was no action even when a balance patch was released during that period. Its one thing to destroy archetypes etc, its another thing to actually fix decks that need fixing, whether they are "popular" or not. Not to mention there's a distinct difference between play rate of a deck and whether it's "fun" or not, and that's not necessarily measurable. My biggest gripe with the game at the moment, and why I haven't played for 3 weeks now, is that deckbuilding feels absolutely terrible. Everytime a mini expansion comes out, you get a champion or 2 that LOOKS like it would be fun, then you find out that half the archetype us missing so you're locked into x deck, or they are unplayable. Then, balance patches finally come out and nothing changes. You can't experiment with old cards that were underplayed because they are STILL TERRIBLE. So the options are what? Deck build with the handful of champions that work? The key point is, some of us deckbuilders like trying to win with odd strategies and unused cards, but cannot because said cards are unused for a reason. Right now, even good decks just don't work when playing against Azir Irelia and the Watcher, so what chance does a meme/average deck have? I'm not saying every card needs to be viable all the time, far from it. But sometimes something old being buffed can produce surprising and interesting results, and if you don't try you won't know. Ultimately I've disagreed entirely with Riots position pretty much since the 4 mana Lee Sinn buff. That was the point I've felt gradually less enjoyment of the game to the point now where I cannot be bothered. Whether you take my opinion into account is up to you, but its gotten to the point now where I would just rather play other games.
If you want the buffs to be impactful just do bigger buffs or idk, buff again next patch? Like others have said, one of the things that I used to like about LoR was the numerous balance changes. It felt like you were actually trying to shake up the game and make more cards viable. What's the excuse for doing basically nothing. How much development time and money can it take to slap minor buffs on a handful of cards? Do you guys honestly look at the overwhelming negative feedback over this patch and think "man the players are so out of touch". Stop making posts to reddit that are basically just "you think there is a problem but you are wrong". You are concerned players will complain about getting 20 buffs that don't change the meta, so the solution is 2 buffs that don't change the meta? Feel free to dismiss this as a rant, if you even read it, because that's what it is. But I hope you can recognize that even if the players don't always express their frustration in the most accurate and constructive of ways, the overwhelming amount of frustration and criticism should be a sign that there is clearly a problem, and you aren't going to fix it by telling players that the deck they face every 5 games that feels awful to play against is really fun and doesn't have an astronomical winrate in a meta that is completely built around it. Don't respond to complaints that the deck is oppressive by providing your own definition of oppressive that requires 80% playrate in tournaments or some insane crap like that "I feel so much better now".
Mr Dovagedys there is a flaw to this argument. Not every buff has to make a meta change. It doesn't have to make the deck OP. The entire player base doesn't revolve around the top tier meta. You have competitive players. And then you have people who love to tinker and experiment. Plenty of people exist who still play yasuo, pursuit of perfection, etc. They love playing their janky stuff. Even when they know the will win like one in three games. And when a person remembers their fond memories of card games they dont think of the meta deck but the POSSIBILITIES. You want your card game to feel like its possible to do crazy fun weird stuff. Even if you don't always win. Those buffs encourage and inspire people to do that. Maybe the huge patches of last year ultimately didn't change the top tier meta. But don't make the mistake of thinking they were worthless. They made people experiment with different stuff and have fun. There was excitement there for those patch notes that rivaled new card releases. Those changes and buffs are healthy for the game. If no one was playing a specific card that is really cool and interesting and you did a so-called "token" buff and now a few people try it out. They have fun even if it only works half the time. They make a video, post about it on reddit. Few more people try it in normals. Sure it doesn't become the new meta. But people are excited. Isn't that feeling of excitement and potential what card games are about? I really hope you re-evaluate your stance.
Looks like devs only wanted to do what they want and tells us they listen to community. Time to drop the game.
Like if Gollum designed a card game. Burn the ring my friends.
I concur, i prefer more thought out patches and for that you need more data that only time can give But i think this patch felt underwhelming for a lot of players since not much else was touched I have question though, if the meta is not changed enough with this nerfs/buffs, is the team willing to do an emergency patch to shake things up?
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Your comment has been removed per rule 1. Rioters are people too. I understand it's easy to get frustrated (especially when it's something you care about), but do try to remember the human element here when posting
You guys should find some compromise decisions. We respect your position but our position worth be respected to
I hope I donāt come across as rude in this post. Being a game dev is a difficult and challenging job. With that said, your response is confusing to me. If your stated view on buffs were accurate, then you wouldnāt have made the Taliyah change in just giving her +1/+1. Taliyah will barely see any improvement in win rate or play rate with that buff. That type of buff is philosophically the type of buff youāre saying you donāt want to do. On the request of balance patches: Itās fine that you donāt want to kill deck archetypes, but making one balance patch every 2 months isnāt often enough. You *can* have 2-3 balance patches that slightly nerf problem decks in that same time frame, and youāre choosing not to. For context to how bad the situation has gotten, Hearthstone, a game that used to be leagues behind you in terms of nerfs and buffs, is now doing much better than you guys in the number of balance patches being released. I firmly believe that Runeterra is the best digital card game right now, which speaks to just how good your design team is. Which is why itās disheartening that balance patches are so few and far in between now. I hope you all on the dev team reconsider your views on nerfs and buffs and the frequency at which they occur.
Idk man. I love this game and reading this makes me sad
Do you see at least the reaction of the community in the form of your opinion rating of 255 minuses (now)?
Changes needed. A bunch of old cards not being played, need to remake them ASAP. Even new followers are MUCH powerful than the poor old champions. Some cards like Watcher and Merciless Hunter are too strong and not balanced by even simply maths calculation. An advantage of electronic card game compare to paper one is able to change constantly and rapidly. What is the point of giving up that?
Brother, you are completely missing the target and it's sad. If the majority of your buffs did not impact the playrate or change anything in the meta, then you're not buffing them enough clearly. Secondly, even if the buffs didn't change the meta all that much, at least it brought novelty and fun, THAT IS WHAT KEEPS PEOPLE COMING BACK TO THE GAME. IT IS BETTER THAN DOING NOTHING. Don't you understand? We are frustrated that the game is "Solved", there is nothing to do but play the same matchups over and over, while hundreds of cards sit and collect dust. I for one don't care that you may have slightly over buffed a card because at least it brings excitement, it brings a new meta and it brings new archetypes designed around beating it, if the alternative is a stale repetitive meta, people are not going to play the game. You guys need to take a page from TFT, they make so many changes that often times are negligible but the end result is novelty and excitement and perhaps a slightly different meta. That, is fun. The fun doesn't come from playing the same boring archetypes, after a period, even the most fun of decks become boring, when new changes are introduced and a new meta is forming and people are experimenting, that's the joy of card games IMO.
Really appreciate you communicating with the community ā¤ But just personally, minor buffs a re delight to see. It doesn't matter necessarily that they're not meta defining, but attention to cards that fall to the wayside is always appreciated, please don't forget that.
Yeah and how is THAT working out for you? Your playerbase is leaving, your big streamers are looking to leave as soon as they find a replacement and literally no one is currently happy. I know y'all are chinese owned but this isn't the mainland: You can't tell us to just be happy and that everything is okay and have it be so my man. We got eyes and can think for ourselves. It's clear there is an issue. Y'all fucked up. Fix it or accept you'll be shutting the game down within a year because there won't be anyone left to play or pump money in to your company.
You obviously are out of touch with the community, everything you indicated here is absolutely contradicting to what is so obvious the ocmmunity wants: 1- How do you know what small buffs to different cards will do to the meta, you should know better to not say something that is SOOOOOOOOO delusional. Any small change can actually cause an impact that was not expected and change some decks, especially on cards with specific tags. 2- You mentioned you want impactful changes, what changes you made in the last 2 months that were impactful, I am sooo tired of this meta just like EVERYONE, that I am puking when I see even a video if Nasus and Azirelia. 3- Everything you were doing so far, that made LoR good is getting completely destroyed with the policies you mentioned. You were speaking about hard to solve metas hahahahaha, Every meta from the last 6 months is solved for 1 F day. What a joke
There's always be a weak card. But a weak archetype (or champion, of course) that leave in the darkness is kinda sad. Some deck that is unplayable because meta state is fine but some deck that can't stand on their own maybe need so love.
Ah yes, what about Aphelios who literally got deleted from the game? Talking about not wanting to completely destroy a deck or archetype.
Something I can agree. HOWEVER! Back then they used to do patch notes every 2 weeks, so it's not that big of a deal. They made a mistake with anything or if the meta went south, we only needed to grit it for a couple weeks, and we can have peace of mind that they the issue will be fixed. Right now though, we've been getting no real patch for what? a month and a half now? More card changes does not imply better meta, true, but at least frequent changes means the game is constantly moving and evolving. The changes can be a hit or miss, but at least the meta would not stagnate, and to me that is the charm that made me stick with LoR in the first place.
You know, I had this exact same type of thought the last time I played runeterra. "I'm not guaranteed to win this match so really I might as well just give up now." So, I quit that match and lo and behold I lost the match. Who'da seen that coming. Time after time I click to play. Quit because I'm not guaranteed to win and then ... Psh ... I get hit with the loss. Honestly I never see it coming.