League of Legends Dev Tracker

This is a great point. While the Game Analysis Team is one of the more known teams at riot in part for their higher tear perspective/experience, theres a ton of value to be gained from other perspectives on the game. Theres plenty of things we miss or don’t have as much insight into because we arent seeing those different levels of gameplay ourselves, and thats where our other partners on Gameplay help us learn much in the same way we help share our perspective.

Predictive accuracy is the relevant KPI for the examples you mentioned. We do make predictions on changes going out in a patch (typically for how much winrate change they'll result in, sometimes broken down by role or skill bracket). The Summoner's Rift Team makes the final decisions based on the data we provide, but it's a very collaborative relationship - we usually agree on things. Veigar and Senna were examples of missed results here. In Senna's case it's not shocking because the more creative higher scope changes are more likely to result in needing some followup, but Veigar is a sadge.

We've had champion release plans for a while, I think Pyke was when we started doing them. Skimming through it, we had plans for:

• Too Weak In Lane
• Laning Phase is Low Interaction
• Too Strong in Lane
• Too Tanky (or hard to punish) in the Midgame
• Late Game Presence Too Strong
• Fails To Function in Team Fights
• Team Fight Presence is Too Potent With Little Risk (fishing for Qs/Rs is sufficient)
• Optimal Build is Pure Tank
• Much Stronger at High MMR
• Much Stronger at Low MMR
• Played in a Solo Lane
• Too snowbally
• Leaves Lane / Roams too much
• Allied duo laner doesn’t feel like the lane is a collaborative effort
• Using R successfully proves too difficult; many games end without a single reset
• Pyke burst against squishies is too high. For instance, in normal situations Pyke can burst a squishy while missing E or Q
• Long term ban rate is too hi...

We try to balance the game for every player as best we can. For Champions, they can't be allowed to be OP in any bracket of play, but also have to be viable in at least one bracket of play. Amumu is a lower elo skewed champion, so whenever he's too strong that's where he's too strong, even if he's already weaker everywhere else. The changes we did made him balanced in lower elo, but we definitely overshot the targeted nerfs.

For Qiyana, we actually do have a big Qiyana player on our team who consulted on all of the changes that have been shipped for her recently. I can't say there's a main for every champ on League (we don't have 158 League game designers or QA) but I can't think of any champion that no one who works on the game balance in some way plays. I know it can feel bad to see changes not agree with the context, but we don't do any changes without hearing multiple perspectives first.

Former pros - yes. World Champions, I don't believe so. Maybe later this year when NA wins Worlds.

monitor my op.gg - when I hit platinum that is when yuumi 2 will launch

Mostly just table stakes, other context will matter like versatility & experience but it's unlikely that someone who hasn't demonstrated they can reach Diamond 4 in whatever the most recent season is will be able to keep up in the role. Not impossible but we'd probably look at other candidates first.

yep

Big shoutout to Blake and everyone else involved for making this great article and awesome champion, super excited to see her out there for everyone to enjoy!

Shaco jungle. It feels so hard to fit into a team comp

Kassadin. You're hoping the mid laner is a god because you're going to give up mid prio for 20 minutes and then lose otherwise

The four brackets we typically use are:

• Normal - everyone up through gold
• Skilled - platinum through ~D2
• Elite - D2+
• Pro - Professional play only (evaluated different than the rest)

"High MMR" for me would be in that Skilled+ range, aligning with your latter take (the top % of the ladder is meaningful despite what popular sentiment often says). With these brackets you see meaningful differences in data, which makes them useful. In Elite specifically the data is less reliable due to sample size, particularly on more niche champions or strategies.

My personal take as someone not on the SR team: over time, yes, League has become more data driven when it comes specifically to patch-to-patch balance. There are pros/cons to the approach, like how it removes bias in the process, but also how it removes room for creativity and doing things that would just be cool to do. On the whole though, I'd still confidently say that League and Riot aren't blindly driven by data.

The Game Analysis Team. To apply we look for a rank of Diamond 4 or higher so that we're able to keep the playtests reasonably competitive. We playtest and analyze most content that goes into Summoner's Rift to predict and prevent risks, and also empower designers to take risks by providing evidence that they'll work out (example: Akshan's revive won't break the game).

pyke mid is op btw

ironically, you're on a team where being good at the game is a job requirement :⁾

A lot of Rioters who design Legaue aren't even low elo either. I still remember when Meddler made a quick gameplay thoughts and linked the op.ggs of the Summoner's Rift Team lol

Love this article

One thing I'd add to being entirely data driven is that at the end of the day, it's humans playing your game and what they think and perceive matters a lot, arguably moreso than what data says. This is one reason why we look at banrate when considering changes for a champion - something can be balanced "objectively", but banrate is an indication of if players are rejecting something for subjective reasons, which we should also take into account. And we do act on it when something is banned beyond a certain threshold, regardless of what the other data says.

Riot in general is starting to invest more in that space, and League has been pretty good about it for a few years now. Our Game Analysis Team (Diamond+ QA) gives feedback on all of the gameplay content that goes into Summoner's Rift and gets to pitch changes for every patch, sourced both from data and from experience playing the live game. They can't all be worked on, but there's always an earnest discussion about priorities and what's painful or going really well in the live game, and that helps keep the game designers in touch with the high rank perspective. Many of them play a lot on their own too in anywhere from Silver to Diamond, which gives us a diversity of perspectives on the game that lead to better changes.

On a case by case basis I think that's often been true. But as new players come into the community and see dev rank being used as a common way to criticize decisions, they might start using it too without having the personal experience that helps veteran players read between the lines and understand that dev rank isn't actually the source of the problem. Eventually as the playerbase shifts over the years and those younger players become the main core, the community overall starts thinking that "dev rank is the problem" is a reasonable belief, because that's what the individuals within it have said for the entire time they've played League.

IMO conversations like this post helps reset the drift so we don't reach that point -- but yes, as a result it might feel like an overreaction because we're not at that point yet.

(BTW, this is different than if 'lol silver balance team' really was clearly just a meme and never used seriously -- communities are pretty goo...