[2020] Megamogwai/Swim create meta on ladder

Thanks for the post.

This is frustrating and the effect is something we talk about frequently.

It's awesome that streamers are playing the game and showing off new decks. It's awesome that their fans can easily copy those decks and try them out.

The frustrating part is when the meta can seem small or when you feel you're facing the same decks repeatedly. We hear that frustration. But the streamers are not to blame. They are awesome!

The problem is about asymmetrical information and sometimes misinformation. I'll share some examples.

1. Mobalytics "meta" - The mobalytics data is biased, because it only shows information from peoplel with the app installed and the majority of those people have similar player motivations. When we look at our internal data, which shows all games of all players, we see a very different meta than what mobalytics represents. This is not mobalytics fault. We think mobalytics is awesome and doing a great job. However, many you rely on the information of mobalytics, which can sometimes lead to the belief that the meta is more narrow than reality. It also reduces the number of decks you all think are viable. When that happens then the perception slowly becomes the reality as more and more players feel they are required to play a mobalytics deck if they want to win. We are working on a way to be able to share more data with everyone more broadly. We don't have an estimated date yet, but we think it is extremely important to show you all the possible competitive decks that are available. The number is much larger than data aggregation sites currently represent.
2. Cognitive bias - If a person sees a deck on stream, mobalytics, reddit, or wherever, then when they see that deck in game they recognize it faster and are more likely to have a response (positive or negative) toward it. As an example, if I see Mogwai playing Swain/TF and then I play 10 games, then I’m more likely to remember each game my opponent’s play those same champions and less likely to remember other decks my opponent’s play.
3. Small population echo chamber - This subreddit is incredible. It is so positive and it's clear most of you love the game. And we love you back. But it is critical to understand that reddit, streams, other forums represent a small number of the community. Legends of Runeterra is played by millions of people all over the world, but our subreddit is English only and usually has around 1.5-3k people online. That is an extremely small percentage of the player base. Each individual community (Reddit, stream chat, etc) are generally made up of like minded people. As an example, I love watching BBG stream LOR, but BBG's audience is different from Swim or Mogwai or Grapplr or whomever. Different people like different streamers. And that's awesome! I watch a ton of different LOR streamers and I like almost all of them for different reasons. Unfortunately, there is an echo chamber effect that can develop over time within communities, which can then lead to people feeling like everyone agrees with them or that their viewpoint is shared by a larger percentage of the total population.

One of my favorite things about Legends of Runeterra is that most cards are playable and that leads to a very large deck diversity. One of our core goals has always been to have a very high number of decks in our meta game. Originally, the goal was to have 10+ decks. Over the past few months we have seen double or triple that number. It’s very exciting for us to see with internal data.

Unfortunately, the number of meta decks looks much smaller to the community because of the reasons I listed above. We know that is frustrating and we are frustrated by it as well, because we want you all to have as much information and as many choices as possible.

We want to help give more information. We don’t want you all to feel like you must play the same 6 or 7 decks to have success. We want everyone to have the option to play 30 decks and have success.

All of that said, we know the meta fluctuates from time to time. We take live balance very seriously, because we know it’s important to you all. We aren’t perfect and we will make mistakes, but we will always focus on addressing those mistakes as quickly as we can.

I hope sharing this helps and I hope we can share more data on the meta with you very soon.

Excellent post, Uthgar! You and your team are amazing and doing awesome work. We are lucky to have you and your team working so hard for our community!

Interesting fact for the LOR community, Uthgar and I met playing WoW in 2005. We were long time guild mates and raiding buddies. Fast forward more than 10 years later and we have randomly met in our careers with me working on LOR and him working on Mobalytics. He is one of the smartest and kindest humans I know.