[2019] "Yasuo is universally hated." Also, China is not part of the universe. (Group think)

*dons the scarlet letter 'Y' on his chest*

I read a comment earlier today where someone mentioned Yasuo being "universally hated." This is not meant to be a call out for that individual. The group think here is just blowing my mind.

In a player survey, Yasuo was reported as the 137th's most unfair champion to play against in NA. And the 24th in China. How does reddit interpret that? Is it possible that group-think plays a very strong part in these perceptions? Should we be a little more cautious about believing everything we read on the internet (not including this post, heh)?

I could see an argument being made that maybe Yasuo is just more popular in China, but from looking at regional stats at https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/main-stats/na, I don't think Yasuo is actually significantly less popular in NA. Blaustoise backs this up. NA plays the f*ck out of him with him being the 8th most popular champ to main or something, even while being permabanned.

To be clear, I'm not arguing whether he is "fair" or not "fair", I'm just suggesting that common perception on this might be influenced by many factors outside of actual gameplay.

Anyways hit me with your best "but they are balanced in Vietnam" memes!

Sauce:https://youtu.be/h8ww-yKPN9c?t=4267

tl;dr: look at the picture I guess

Edit: From another post about ban rates:

You can check stats for this type of thing. https://u.gg/lol/tier-list?rank=master_plus

In masters+, bad katana man has a ban rate of 23%, worldwide (but this is not including regions that aren't tracked by riot api like china).

LAN: 40%

BR: 31.9%

NA: 20%.

LAS: 19%

EUN: 22%

EUW: 12%

KR: 9%

OCE: 7%

You might be onto something. Clearly the way to git gud and become a korean challenger is to stop banning Yasuo so much (unless you are Oceanic). /s*0.5

External link →

I've seen some people saying "it's just a meme" and OP mentioned "group think" and I could see how memes or the mores of the western communities give the perception of "katana man bad", but I think that players fundamentally engage with League (and other games) differently across the globe.

Another high n survey that we recently ran didn't focus on champions, but rather on core gameplay perceptions that I would have expected would be more universal than champion preferences. We asked a sort of "Goldilocks" question about damage in League of Legends: is damage too low, just right, or too high (the actual question was more specific; also on a 5-point scale).

Taking a look at the results, we saw pretty substantial differences in the perception of damage across regions, especially comparing North America and China.

There's a lot I could write/discuss about this, but the quick hypothesis I have is that there are substantial regional differences in how players engage with and enjoy the gameplay of League of Legends. This can include arguably more simple and manageable differences like visual/aesthetic preferences, but is increasingly including major gameplay differences around champion balance (Riven in Vietnam!), champion frustration (Yasuo in NA), and even the perception of damage in League.

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