Riot is Planning a More Robust Way to Handle League of Legends Balance
Balancing is one of the most important challenges facing the developers of any major online competitive title, and for Riot, the challenge is greater than most. As the studio behind League of Legends, they need to ensure that their game’s balance is a serious priority. Now, it seems that the studio is planning a more robust new system; a new and different way to tackle power imbalance among the LoL champions.
Riot’s New Plans to Tackle Overpowered League of Legends Champions
This plan was recently divulged by David Capurro, Game Design Manager at Riot. According to Capurro, Riot’s approach until now has been to balance the game for “Plat+ play”; essentially, balancing for the most high-tier, competitive area of play. While it’s fair to say that this area is perhaps the area most in need of fine-tuned balancing, this approach may also cause problems, and Riot appears to have recognised this. Their new system will instead define four different categories of players, and the definitions of power imbalance will differ between each one.
“While some may argue that the game should be balanced around only the very best players of the game,” explained Capurro; “we think a balanced experience is an important part of what makes League compelling regardless of skill level.”
His point certainly makes sense. League of Legends is one of the most popular, and most played, games around. Plus, of course, the vast majority of their audience does not play at a “Plat+” skill level. As such, the studio needs to ensure that catering only to the most skilled doesn’t result in a game which is difficult for newcomers to get into. While each of the four groups define the term “overpowered” differently, Riot will address any of the League of Legends champions deemed overpowered by any of the groups. If a champion is deemed underpowered, however, they will only be addressed if they are considered underpowered by all of the groups.
The Four Player Groups for Defining Balance
The first of Riot’s four groups is “Average Play”. This group comprises the game’s entire player-base except for the top 10% of solo queue players. This group will define power primarily with win rates and ban rates. If a champion wins more than 54.5% of their matches, or are banned less than 7% of the time (the average ban rate), they may be deemed overpowered. Further details on percentage rates can be found in Capurro’s blog post.
The second group, “Skilled Play,” contains the top 10% of solo queue players. This group is mostly the same as Average Play, but the percentage rates are lowered slightly. The third group is “Elite Play,” and includes only the top 0.1% of solo queue players! Because this group is so small, win rate doesn’t factor in at all. Instead, Riot will use pick rates and ban rates to determine power and balance. The final group is even smaller than Elite Play, and contains only professional players. Once again, this group defines power purely from pick and ban rates. However, champions will be considered overpowered if their pick and ban rates combined is 90%+. (80%+ in future patches.)