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Its sad seeing people bash on champ design every new release. The champion team creates a champion that is fresh, rewarding to play as and against. The balance team has to get it close to balanced before release, knowing that its winrate will increase ~10% over the first patch.

Champions will be released "overpowered" because people associated fun with winning. If your champion releases at 35% winrate, even if that is long-term balanced when looking at a mastery curve, that champion's playrate will never recover.

Another thing I see, "WHAT ARE THE PLAYTESTERS DOING? THEY SUCK AT THEIR JOB."

Okay, first of all, the playtesters are phenomenal an all high diamond to challenger (and there are even master-challenger designers on the balance team)

Second, playtesters have a few different jobs during the lifespan of a champion.

  1. Assess the pattern of the champ (abilities, playstyle, role, etc) and make sure it is fun and doesn't have long term problems (Note they advise here, they don't make final decisions)

  2. Help make sure iterations in development align with the designer's goal. Easy.

  3. Help roughly tune the champion for release. (note this isn't perfect balance, but rather projecting the winrate for players with 30, 50, 100 games and how the winrate will be on day 1 and so on

I probably missed something but those are the big points.

TLDR champ design, balance, playtesting, all hard jobs. I guarantee 99.9% of you all would be awwful at them. Give them a chance, they all want to make the game better because they love this game as much or more than you

Link to the tweet thread

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over 4 years ago - /u/endercasts - Direct link

Hey, just seeing this now. I know I popped off in the last tweet, but I hate seeing senseless flame (thats what it was directed at). For the rest, I dont want to stifle discussion or criticism, believe me I have had disagreements with decisions that have been made in the past. But I hope we can level up and understand why things are the way they are and be more informed when we do criticize.

over 4 years ago - /u/endercasts - Direct link

Originally posted by SHITPOSTER42069

Funny, or you could hire a team of all master tier + players instead of silver/gold league one tricks so ur balance team actually has a mindful opinion cuz they can actually play the characters that are being brought up. :thinking:

All playtesters are high diamond - challenger (I think 3 challenger players atm). There are at least 2 master/gm players on the balance team.

over 4 years ago - /u/endercasts - Direct link

Originally posted by endercasts

Hey, just seeing this now. I know I popped off in the last tweet, but I hate seeing senseless flame (thats what it was directed at). For the rest, I dont want to stifle discussion or criticism, believe me I have had disagreements with decisions that have been made in the past. But I hope we can level up and understand why things are the way they are and be more informed when we do criticize.

Also, I dont mean to defend Samiras current state. I'm focused on worlds. But rather to address how we talk about new champs.

over 4 years ago - /u/endercasts - Direct link

Originally posted by Nevran

Many people here will blame the "redditors" but honestly a lot of people here fail to actually understand how a company work and just take some step back when they get frustrated about a champion.

They only think about what they want, which is not being beat by a way they consider unfair (something they don't have any objectivity or fact about). They don't think about improving the game, about going further, about doing better, etc.

Many here say they do but I think they just lack the critical ability to realize no they don't. Because it take dedication and a lot of time, I try to invest myself in theorycraft more and there is tons of thing I forgot or fail to see until I playtest for a longtime or learn my mistakes, etc. And I am not even a creative person, so let's not talk about making a identity, something unique and fun, etc.

People don't get that Ender went from both sides, he can understand why people get angry or frustrated but he knows what a company, what the workers, what the management want and deal with when doing things.

One thing I wanted to get across was they've been working on it for a year and have certain expectations of what will happen on release. They may be wrong, but they have specific plans for if they under or overshoot her projected power level. So seeing the quick reactions and extreme takes is disheartening.