Interesting stuff..

[Hoax]

http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=22119&page=2

There are videos on Youtube of the tournament finals recorded by one team's Malphite (TreeEskimo).  This guy obviously is on the losing team in those finals and he's upset.  I think its kind of a bullshit whine, more maps and draft would fix the only real problems he's listing.  Some buffs or nerfs tossed around would be good too but there will always be a top tier set of champs, that is how metagames work.

What I found interesting and why I'm making this thread was Riot's response:

This is an excellent post. I don't think that these problems are that hard to solve, but they do require some new content and a lot of adjustments. They will require us about a month to mostly address, but we can incrementally address them through that time. I have (prior to your post) been spending much of my day, and working late, to shift around priorities and get the appropriate content designed to resolve the metagame issues that have slowly been emerging. Fortunately, this only affects a small portion of players right now -- but the unfortunate part of being a top player in a new game is that you get to discover and abuse the problems, and sometimes those are fun (CryOPhoenix), and sometimes they are stagnant ( 7 minute nashor, the current top tier metagame, etc). So, we feel the pain, and we want to solve it ASAP, and we really appreciate that you guys are leading the charge on competitive play and discovering these issues.

As a note, I think the 5 man gank squads were an improvement over the prior farmfest... So its really about finding the middle ground. In addition to addressing your other tangential opportunities to improve the overall gameplay.

That is some pretty smart shit, right there and honest.  If nothing else I do appreciate stuff like that.

1) We are adding items that give you reduced % damage from area-of-effect spells. You can buy these selectively in response to an AE stacked team
2) We are adding a cleanse-o-matic click item that gives you self cleanse for a reasonable price.
3) We continue to address individual champion balance problems. I think we can all agree that the gap between low and top tier is not enormous, even though it is significant. Especially in comparison to the state of the game 4 or 5 months ago. There are a few must-have champions right now, such as Amumu OR Malphite and Morgana, but beyond that, there are a lot you can swap -- for a caster you can play Annie, Anivia or Karthus. For a DPS carry, you can play Ashe, Corki, Jax, Master Yi, and even Tristana. And even soraka is effective now, where she was atrocious 3 patches ago. The requirements to assure a top tier win are generally centered around tank initiators and black shield right now.
4) Morgana, Malphite and Amumu are getting the nerf bat. Morgana is a little later, but we are nerfing the power of malphite and amumu's initiation stuns.

I think those nerfs are going to be overkill.  Amumu's stun is a skill shot, Malphite's is stupid but its an ult.  They would be better off adjusting the other things that makes them that much better then the other tanks then changing their signature abilities but we'll see I guess.  The item changes are interesting and the Morgana change is obvious.  She is without question the best hero (still) in the game, all of her abilities are amazing, she can have synergy with just about anyone, she can initiate ganks and black shield is still crazy good.

1) We are adding click items of significant power. Blink dagger, Dagon equivalent, cleanse-o-matic, scroll of tp, and a weaker version of refresher orb. All of these require significant skill to use effectively, and are slightly OP when used correctly or intelligently.
2) We are making fog falloff faster for champions.
3) We are adding cheap vision wards, which break down the 5 man roving gank squads somewhat, and facilitate a defense against the 5 man gank squad of farming the map and dodging them, thus forcing them to do a 3 and 2 man gank squad, which you can then counter-gank potentially.
4) We are making it so that while you are dead, you gain no ambient gold and no gold from gold per 5 items.
5) We are adding additional minor snowball items that scale as you get champion kills (like mejai's)
6) We are adding additional magic penetration items to facilitate casters being able to become carries in extreme situations.
7) We are attempting to explicitly design more high-skill-requirement champions like Karthus, Anivia, Blitzcrank and Corki. For example, we are trying to make a fragile DPS carry right now with extreme mobility and skillshots -- basically stronger than Ashe if you can play it really well.
8) Aligning incentives such that late game farming pays off vs the risk (which adds a value to risking getting 5 man ganked). This probably takes the form of more minion gold later, and maybe more minion gold early too.

While we do not want to achieve hyper-carry status like DOTA where you can 5v1, we would like to facilitate carries that can 3v1 in extreme cases.

Really interesting stuff there.  Not sure if it'll be good or bad.  More individual skill though is a goal I can appreciate and if the matchmaker works it should make the game more fun across the board.  If it doesn't it can lead to /ragequit

Starcraft still isn't balanced, it's just stable and maps are different enough to revitalize the metagame. Siege tanks and the terran factory are balanced??? Nope, they distort the game massively. You have to build maps around making these counterable, and along narrow lines.

There are two approaches to competitive games:
1) Reach a "perfect" balanced state where theres a stable metagame
2) Evolve the content constantly to keep things interesting and react as the metagame falls apart, using stable metagame points that feel fun as the basis for an e-sports season.

We intend to primarily do #2.

He then references MtG as an example of the type of metagame balance they want.  Which is smart, something evolving so each season the metagame is new and fresh.

 


 

[Ragnoros]

Yeah I read through that yesterday. As many people here and elsewhere have stated, the folks over at Riot really seem to have their act together. While it would seem they didn't quite have things ready for their launch on time, to put it a bit mildly. I had an absolute blast in beta and I'm sure they will get things back shipshape in no time.

[Megrim]

Just having a quick read through some of that stuff, but the impression i get is that their thoughts overlap some of mine in relation to LoL. I've gone back to playing DotA since, quite in part due to the shortcomings i feel that LoL has. Going to have to read some more.

[Thrawn]

He then references MtG as an example of the type of metagame balance they want.  Which is smart, something evolving so each season the metagame is new and fresh.
 

Just hope that doesn't lead to the need to buy characters/items from the store every few months to keep competative.

[Hoax]

Well that is the genius that I hope they see.  If they release new characters (they will be imba) because it makes good business sense and also power creep is hard to avoid.  But if they restrict those new characters to practice during a season then you have a whole season of practice and a preseason's worth of normal play to balance them before gross power creep becomes a problem.

As long as they are aiming to create more individual skill champs though the first year or so is going to be tons of fun.  I am really happy to have a new DoTa that I'm in on the ground floor on + proper matchmaking.  Really really happy.

[Thrawn]

Well that is the genius that I hope they see.  If they release new characters (they will be imba) because it makes good business sense and also power creep is hard to avoid.  But if they restrict those new characters to practice during a season then you have a whole season of practice and a preseason's worth of normal play to balance them before gross power creep becomes a problem.

I just saw MTG and thought right away of a system that will every few months make some old champions completely useless and make a bunch of new "must have right now" champions that will cost a lot of $$$.  They of course have to stay in business and will have to do something like that to keep cash flow, so I guess it will just be a question of how they handle it.  A system like you said (having them playable and balanced during a practice only season) seems like it would be pretty fair.

[Prospero]

I dunno, I'd say if they follow in MtG's footprints they'll ban all the original champions for being too good and sell a bunch of gimped ones with baffling powers.

[schild]

I dunno, I'd say if they follow in MtG's footprints they'll ban all the original champions for being too good and sell a bunch of gimped ones with baffling powers.

I can't wait for the Homelands expansion from the Waffling Cycle.

[Prospero]

The sad thing is I'm not sure if that is a real expansion or not. You didn't mention any race of angry mystical fish people, so I'm going to call fake.

[schild]

Homelands came out after a series of FANTASTIC expansions in Magic. It was filled with Spore counters and all sorts of new design on cards that just turned the game into a terribly slow playing piece of shit where people had more glass counters on the table than they had cards. It was terrible and almost completely killed the game in Virginia.

The Waffling Expansion refers to when they went back and forth between card restrictions and power creep.

[Prospero]

Christ, can't believe I forgot that one. That's what made me quit playing Magic.

[schild]

Christ, can't believe I forgot that one. That's what made me quit playing Magic.

Me too sir, me too.

[Ard]

That was Fallen Empires.  Homelands sucked a bit less.  The fact that I know this makes me sad.

[schild]

That was Fallen Empires.  Homelands sucked a bit less.  The fact that I know this makes me sad.

Whoops, you're right. Fallen Empires.

Homelands was even MORE boring. You had it backwards. Homelands was the most uninspired piece of trash set ever. Fallen Empires was just a mess.

[Thrawn]

Since the thread is horribly derailed now anyways -



The set was so bad they made a card that destroys it. 

[Teleku]

Haters, I loved my Fallen Empires death by token deck  . 

But yeah, kind of an odd era there, as Homelands and Fallen Empires were all crap cards that everybody hated.  But then they followed it up with Ice Age, Alliances, and Mirage, which I thought were all good fun.

[Ard]

Yeah, I got homelands mixed up with alliances.  God, what a pile of festering crap.  I'd completely forgotten about that set, and with good reason it appears.  I'd rather have the LoL version of the token fiesta that was Fallen Empires.

[Prospero]

Wasn't Ice Age before Homelands? I vaguely remember going back to Magic to play sealed deck Ice Age tournaments because it didn't have thallids, but then throwing my hands up in disgust when a whole new expansion came out like 3 months after Ice Age.

[schild]

Ice Age came out inbetween Fallen Empires and Homelands. It was supposed to be a "core set" in that it had 380ish iirc and not part of the first cycle they did. They reversed that when they added Alliances as an expansion to Ice Age and came out with Cold Snap a couple years back.

Ice Age is probably why people weathered through the bullshit of Fallen Empires and Homelands because of amazing cards like Force of Will and Jester's Cap.

[Hoax]

That was when I quit MtG also.  White and Black got some fun stuff around that time and everyone else was basically hosed.  Mono black rush was pretty fun though with some of those creatures.  Fallen Empire though?  Yikes, that entire set was trash.

[Slayerik]

That was when I quit MtG also.  White and Black got some fun stuff around that time and everyone else was basically hosed.  Mono black rush was pretty fun though with some of those creatures.  Fallen Empire though?  Yikes, that entire set was trash.

This.

I actually started playing in Mirage I think. But I remember getting a box full of fallen empires trash my friend didn't want. Horrible shit.

[Teleku]

But the artwork for the set was so Amazing!

[Thrawn]

I actually started playing in Mirage I think. But I remember getting a box full of fallen empires trash my friend didn't want. Horrible shit.

I quit around Mirage and picked it up again around Coldsnap.  Still play it pretty seriously but been on a hiatus since Zendikar, lots of stuff I wasn't too happy about in the set.