Recent News
- Champion and Skin Sale March 25th - March 28th
- Free Champion Rotation 2014 Season Week 10
- 3/24 PBE Update: More Pantheon Changes
[ Continued ] Please Nerf Responsibly
Following yesterday's talk on recent balance decisions and specific champion cases, Morello returned to the forums to continue the discussion!When asked to elaborate on his comments about Nidalee's spears, Morello answered by explaining tradeoffs and how they play an important role in balancing the game.
"Nidalee spears are fun, satisfying and take skill. That's good. They also basically will eventually hit with good players involved because you can throw SO many of them. If Nid's had an OK game, then that spear will throw a teamfight into a big swing after just one good hit. This is good if there's a window, some downtime, something. Right now, it's so constant and so impactful, it removes the real tradeoff to the skill. It's a simple cooldown problem to me (and to finish, shouldn't you have to commit a little? Should you be a "ranged assassin"?
Because if we brought a character up to Gragas, we'd have to overload them and remove their downsides - this is the part that's so damning about these designs. You're seeing at as a buffs/nerfs axis, which is not the axis to look at here. What matters is "what do champions give up for their strengths". Most really dominant characters answer with "very little."
You can dislike adding tradeoffs as we do it, but I think it's critical; afterall, how does a character with tradeoffs get balanced against one without if they're roughly the same overall power? That's really tough to do when reliability and consistency is so important in good play - or on the other side, you risk those characters having to be completely flat to support their multitude of power sets. Elise is one of the most terrible examples, as she's the poster child for this stuff. Only via bad scaling is she not a complete mess."
When asked about Vladimir and if these recent balance decisions will play out in his favor, Morello commented:
"The backlog's pretty big; I think Vlad's at least playable, if a little niche.
It does mean when we do new ones, we'll be following up on them if a real "kneecap" is required. The reworks team will be working closely with the balance guys to get the backlog of less-emergency champs (Heimer for an somewhat-recent example) sorted out."
As for Darius and his previous thoughts on how to fix him up, Morello simply commented:
"I put the thread up in the community beta to get people's thoughts. It's in testing now."
When asked for his opinions on Kha'zix and Wukong, Morello commented:
"I actually think Kha'Zix is one of the better assassin patterns in our game. He hits hard, has good mobility, but is pretty subject to getting caught and killed. His pulsing stealths and leap can let him weave around a fight well too. I just think he's numerically too good if anything.
Ever since we've shifted his power off ranged and into melee, I've though Kha'Zix is a good assassin pattern to have. It has quite a bit of gameplay and is satisfying to use.To follow this up, he also replied to someone asking about the most recent Kha'Zix R changes turning out so powerful:
Wukong - I like his W a lot. I like his utility for his team in R. That's all the nice things I can say for Wukong :)"
"I'll have to review - was at GDC last week."
As for criticism regarding his comments about Renekton being the "standard we judge power by", Morello noted:
"(I'm going to regret this reply, I can see it now).
I'm not going to talk about the inflammatory stuff like "bias" or anything, as I'm never going to win over your heart Ralik. Instead, I'll try to clarify because I did put my foot in my mouth here.
I should have let Statikk explain this as I'm pretty sure I made a mess of the concept. The idea shouldn't be that Renekton is overpowered and that's fine because it's not Darius/etc, it should be because it's whack-a-mole up there (whether inadvertently or purposefully, there's a state of "top pick" on top that we will most definitely effect either through action or inaction).
This is part of the tradeoffs discussion - what do champs have as strengths and weaknesses? Right now, the answers are poor for most fighters. I'll have Statikk talk more about this one."
When asked if the team is currently working on "light fighter itemization", he replied:
"We're working on fighter classifications and then what those classifications mean for work and solutions. Items have a couple prototypes to support, but nothing conclusive."In response to some criticism on how long this has taken, he commented:
"Haha. Turns out this is really hard to focus on when you're building the plane while it's in the air o.o
We did just separate the balance and systems and reworks teams to allow this focus though!"
Morello also dove into a discussion regarding fighters and properly identifying their niche
"Quote:
[ snipped ]How can you be sure the niche of a each of these fighters is in aligment with their fantasy? If one or two of the fighters overlap in their respective niches, how can you differentiate between them while respecting their identities?
You can't be sure, honestly. The exact result you talk about cannot be predicted for each champion (especially in the matrix of champions and items). It has to be iterative on this, especially where you get into "work more to get something done that someone else might not have to for" - and how you shore that up.
I don't claim it's an easy task, but you eat an elephant one bite at a time. We've, so far, let the scariness of it paralyze actions."He continued:
"A lot of the strangeness is how fast something like League runs away from your own brain in the face of growth like what we've seen - and it's made it so the problems and priorities are shifting. What we used to be able to do to solve small problems is hard to scale with a larger team and company (IE, I just can't walk into the pit and say "let's discuss X!" and expect meaningful change to occur without us -really- sorting it out and doing some heavy duty project management). That's probably been the craziest thing.
My goal, above all, is for LoL to be a deep, competitive game for a long, long time. I think we have to pay off some debt in design, tech, art, everything to get there. And step one is to articulate what this means with players."
Night Hunter Rengar Pulled from PBE for Additional Changes
In response to community feedback, the new Night Hunter Rengar will soon be pulled off the PBE while the team focuses on adding additional features and making him "as awesome as possible".
Here's Wilwariniel with more info:
"Hey folks,
We’ve gotten some really great feedback about the Night Hunter Rengar skin! One of the things that seems to keep coming up is the suggestion that either his hood comes down during his ultimate, or else maybe a toggle ala Neon Strike Vi’s sunglasses to control the hood being up or down.
We hear you guys, and we think doing something with his hood is a really cool idea, too! So we are going to explore what we can do with it and what works best for the skin.
Since we have a new (technically complex) idea to explore and work on, we are unfortunately going to pull Night Hunter Rengar from the PBE until we have another version suitable for testing. We’re sorry about that, but we want to make sure he’s as awesome as possible!
What does that mean for you guys? For those of you who purchased the skin on the PBE, we will remove him from your accounts and give you a refund soon. Otherwise, if somebody tries to load into a game with him, it can crash, and that’s no bueno.
As soon as he’s ready for a new round of testing, Night Hunter Rengar will definitely reappear on the PBE! You’ll be able to repurchase him then and check out his new and improved state. Thanks for being understanding about this, and we hope you will like what we wind up doing with him!
Since you guys will have to wait a little longer for this bad boy, here’s a poem:
Knife kitty,
night kitty,
put you on a slab.
Stealthy kitty,
hunter kitty,
stab stab stab."
Ahri's Q Returning if she dies
When asked if it was possible to make it so that Ahri's Q returns to her even if it's mid flight and she dies, ricklessabandon commented:"Quote:
As in, even if ahri dies, if she throw her q, it will do the full rotation
.okay, done. i also made it so that the orb will always return if ahri is in stasis, instead of only when stasis is triggered after the return has started. this should make it into the 4.5 patch.
Quote:
Is the green orb + charm debuff bug still present? (charm doesn't amplify passive enhanced spells)
no, i'm pretty sure i fixed that a while back. i can't get it to happen now in any case—if you can still get the bug to happen, let me know (which as much detail as you can) and i'll look into it."
No comments
Post a Comment