Changes don't necessarily mean weak. In more cases it is because of superior balance that most of the changes come about. It is also often times only there becaue the spectrum to which a champion can operate is so severely polarized, that they either 100% will dominate, or they won't because of strong indirect sources (old old jax. His passive plus dodge in generally made him neigh god mode).

I had a similar experience a while back.

Way back when I worked with some guys, one in particular named DirtyMinuth when he was rolling out a perks system for Zombie Fortress, a Team Fortress 2 mod.

(Perk system let you "specialize"' per say, you got an extra power ranging from the Spitter attack in L4D2 to 100% critical rate if you were the final survivor.)

We caught hell for months while trying to get things right because people kept finding new abuse cases. (It turns out balance testing things is impossible with 4-5 guys, so we didn't get that luxury. All our iterations went live and we worked with what we had.)


It was hard. I can't imagine it's easier for Blizzard, or you guys. People had huge expectations and when we didn't deliver, especially when we thought we had something awesome, it was a terrible experience for everyone.

But hey, it was a learning experience!


tl;dr I've been there (sorta), nothing but respect for design teams after doing some.

Lets see, Shogun 2 was a horribly buggy mess.

X-Com 2, with the added bonus on having all strategy stripped out in favor of 'stream-lining' the game.

SC2 was a big disappointment, all about APM and zero strategy. Where-as SC1 and WC3 had big tactical components to them, in SC2 everyone does the same thing, same builds, same units, same building placements, ect... Got old real quick.

D3 was a horrendous mistake. Pay-to-win FTL.

LOL is buggy and exceptionally unbalanced, coupled with the season 3 patch changes and the new SC2-wanna-be ranking system (which didn't work for them so why does LOL think a buggier version will work for them is beyond me) its gone from 'fun for ****s'n'giggles' to 'WTF were they smoking' bad.

The last game that I truly enjoyed and went 'wow that was cool' was Mark of the Ninja. Its sad when indie games have better production values that multi-million AAA games.

they did ban players for "skiing" initially though because they thought it was hacking

I have never been more buttfrustrated over a game in my life, than with Mass Effect 3.

I couldn't sleep the night after beating it. I just couldn't process how a franchise could have been fantastic for so long to **** it up so hard in the last twenty minutes of the final game. I sold it a week later, along with ME 1 & 2. I couldn't play them anymore. When the "fixed" endings came out I YouTube'd them and plunged right back into that seething rage. At this point, I'm so very tired of it. I don't even want a fix anymore; I just want an admittance from Bioware that they were WAY off base.

I've played a lot of terrible games. I think what frustrates me the most is that it wasn't bad, it just seemed like the last half hour was a rushed, half-baked affair in which the entire basis of the game was taken out back and shot like a lame horse.

Ever play Red Alert 3?

That game bothers me so bad, since every unit has a special ability that has to be activated manually, but a lot are spammy things and have to be swapped around a lot.

Desolator infantry? Which fire mode do you want to be in? Oh right, you have to swap back and forth rapidly.

Allied tanks? You should have a couple in target laser mode, but make sure they're on separate targets, also make sure to swap others if you lose one.


Some of those fights were entirely APM based on units, bothered me so bad.

Good points, however, I would like to point out that as a player it is also disappointing to realize that the champion you have played for so long has little depth once you reach a certain level, that you spend all this time learning a champion that you cannot play better because your experiences and skill means little difference since you first picked the champion up.

It is also disappointing to learn that the designers realize that it is a sub par design but cannot change it because it would alienate the current players. You should not be afraid to diminish his popularity with the entry level players, but more worried about how his popularity will wane in the more experienced players who realize that vlad is actually quite boring and lack innovated play experiences.

If you are willing to take a risk in redesigning already boring champions such as ryze and kat why be scared to adding some synergy (not power or a complete overhaul) to vlad to optimize his play? I argue that vlad can be remade to optimize design without a drastic change, after seeing some of the kat and ryze changes that made them more interesting than their older selves.

@morello


It's weird, like 90% of your posts are very pragmatic and well though out. I think to myself this Morello guy, he's super smart. But then every now and then you say something which I think makes no sense at all. It makes me think I'm generally missing something.. As it turns out, a lot of the time later I find out I am. However I just cant figure out riots culture of hiding information.

For example in regards to the new league system, No one has really answered why it doesn't show both Divisions and Elo, one to represent the amalgamation of your play, and the other to represent the current quality of the players you are versing. More information is always better to accurately self assess.

The only reply I saw on this was something along the lines of Elo not being really representative, but this is complete lie. When I was on a downswing (or unlucky streak). I'd lose maybe 200 elo. At these times I'd swap to a pubstomp champion for carrying hard and quickly win my way back. Or on an up swing, I'd play more 'safe' characters to try and curb my feeding.

There's a tonne of other information I know you guys track, but just don't let us see. Can you tell us the reasons for this?

The problem I see here with this stale lane setup is there is a huge lack of innovative lane setups. We have no super awesome lane setups PL/KoTL, Juggernaut/CM, Venge/Veno/CK. You have basically shoved all the cool abilities that you could have a cool lane setup with into the ultimates. The closest thing to innovation like this is when we have "kill lanes".

Personally I hate how the game has gone from important strategy at the beginning (Lane setup, which lane, what would we be versing?) I mean FFS LoLking tells you which god damn lane you've been playing in by the assumption that X champ goes into Y lane. The funnest combo I've ever had will and always has been Cho/Taric and Eve/Zilean . Holy hell was that fun. Now the best thing to that is Varus/Taric without getting flamed at for being innovative in a normal game. If I saw a lane like CM/Juggernaut and they went top lane; I as a solo would piss myself silly and beg someone on my team to come top in hope that they can stop the rape train from starting.

If you stopped putting the abilities that have synergy with a lot of champions on the R key maybe we can get something to work. Look at Taric his point and click stun alone makes him an amazing support because he has synergy with EVERY carry(Yes even the melee one).

The jungler has become too core to team comps that it's stupid. You need to scale back junglers to the point where the biggest reason you jungle is because you get 2 solo lanes as a strategy. Granted this is probably the most optimal one even in DoTA.

I would actually enjoy the game more if champ select actually meant a damn thing. Right now it's Top/Jungle/Mid/Bot all being called at once. There's no "Hey guys let's make this comp with this lane setup". Nope if I want to Fiora/Trynd/Yi/Sion/GP bot as the ADC of the team I'm out of luck because they're top/jungle champs. Who the hell said that these champs had to go there? My friend who liked the game a lot left for DoTA2 because "Riot keeps enforcing these lame lanes and team comps it's annoying. I like how I can do whatever I want in DoTA pubs. I'm not restricted by the **** community."
The funnest games I have had in DoTA was when we had a team of 5 carries. We as a team had to work as a better cohesive unit than the obviously better equipped for the early/mid game team.

On a side note to make the laning experience for melee ADC in a better spot why not just scale back the base AD of all ranged ADC? When a ranged ADC can walk into lane with 90 damage early game I swear there has to be a balance problem.

I know this is long and drawn out but the game will eventually become stale for the older players because even though this is supposed to be an innovative game the early game is really boring when you've done the same lane setup for teams 50,000 times in a row.

The game has gotten a lot better. Inferno is an actual difficulty now(no longer 2 shot gg unless you're barb/monk with epic gear) and truly diehards can play up the difficulty. Farming isn't nearly as bad, many legendaries got buffed into usefulness(many i60-62 weapons are worthless though), etc.

Most people wanted the game to be easier in inferno so they could at least try to farm the gear to do the later acts, so they introduced the monster power system. Some people QQ now that it's too easy, which I believe is wrong. The base level of inferno is fine. People have just figured out better builds and some builds got buffed, etc.