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This wall of text has a video version with my-style pictures in case if you don't want to read.
Hello, I have some thoughts regarding this Ghostcrawler response about balancing in League. The point I want to address at first is this: He basically said that League doesn't want players to lose at picking screen, because you got counterpicked.
Seems logical to me: let the players pick the character they want to play and assure them they can't be outpicked, so they can enjoy the game. Meaning no matter what you pick, you will have a decent, balanced match. Reasonable enough. Fighting games do this all the time, because you can’t afford having counterpicks in the genre. However, this doesn't mean you can apply this logic onto everything. Because this approach requires every single character, to meet some kind of criteria, to fit into the standards of the game.
Which is not a bad thing per se, but this sets up the boundaries and determines how far game designers can go from this established box of strong and weak points of a hero.
If a character has a really explicit weak point, that means he is weaker than others in some specific regard, which opens the room to be counterpicked or outplayed. And vice versa, if a hero has an obvious strength that others do not have, why would anyone pick any other hero aside from the strong one? I mean, you can pick Leshrac in 6.84 over any other hero in the entire pool and it will never be a mistake.
Trying to fit all the characters in the box, creates this interesting circumstance where instead of the rock-paper-scissors kind of dynamic in drafts, you have this paper-paper-paper dynamic. Which leads exactly to what League wants - you can't do wrong with your pick. My points is, why would you draft paper1, if paper2 is just flat-out better? Maybe not by a high margin, but, better nonetheless. If there are no counterpicks that means there are just straight-up better ones. And this is why I believe League physically can not escape these low percentages of picked champions in competitive environment.
I want to point out is that balancing a 5v5 game is completely different from balancing 1v1. This is where the logic of “make equally powerful characters” crumbles for a game like dota.
For a 5v5 team based game, counterpicks, even completely ridiculous counterpicks, like absolutely demolishing and soul crushing ones are… perfectly fine.
Let's imagine this situation.
Team A picks a Rock first phase, because this Rock is too strong this patch to leave it in the pool. Team B, being the smart guys they are, responds with a Paper pick.
“Oh no!”, starts to moan and cry Team’s A leader, “Our pick is already trash!”. A sane member of the Team A, that has a critical thinking capability calmly says: “Now, Team B has a Paper, and we can grab a Scissors for ourselves since there is a hundred of other heroes”.
Team A members look at the guy simultaneously in their shocking disbelief. “Oh my god, you are right”, and the captain proceeds to pick one of the Scissors. The final Draft ends up with a slight Team A disadvantage in the mid game but with a stronger late game. The game sets to be entertaining for the viewers and interesting for the players.
In this illustration, you can clearly see the point I’m trying to make - you don’t have to keep all the characters under some kind of a ruler to make the game fair and balanced, simply because it is a TEAM GAME. There are 5 of such characters on one side and 5 other characters on the other side. It’s much better to balance a team game on a team scale, rather than trying to keep all the characters fair.
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Additional notes that I haven't thought about before I assembled the video.
One of the counter points to this write-up might be an example of Counter-Strike - 5v5, team based strategy game, since all characters are the same, in fact, there is no such thing as a "character". Good example.
I want to list some things that CS has:
1) Round based gameplay where your previous performance matters until you switch side after 15 rounds. I'm pointing this out specifically because it is not Best Of 30, since your AWP you've saved stays with you and teams do not start from complete scratch before the switch.
2) Attacker vs Defender. Two different goals to win and therefore two completely distinct approaches to the game. Unlike a fighting game or dota or starcraft where goal is the same even though the "style" is different.
These two doesn't matter too much I feel like, however I think it can contribute to the discussion. So, the most important one is
3) It is an FPS game.
Imagine CS with this top-down, RTS / Dota-like view and mechanics.
An opponent shows up and you instantly kill him, because in dota/rts you issue an attack command and a unit attacks. The thing is, in FPS games your input doesn't directly translate into what you actually want to accomplish.
First off, you, as a player, don't see the entire surroundings, because you have a Field of View of ~90.
Second, you issue a command to attack (to shoot) and believe it or not, but a lot of times you miss. In other words, in FPS your "refining mechanics", aside from grenades and strategies, is aiming at stuff. It increases the reliability of you successfully hitting a person upon an attack command being issued. This is something you as a player can control and HAVE to control. And have to learn how to control it, since 90% of the game is about aiming. As you grow more efficient with it, the more reliable (better) as a player you become, simply due to your abilities to fend off enemy player more reliably and with higher chance of success.
Which is not the case in dota/rts whatsoever.
Let's flip it and imagine that in CS:GO you would have the perfect aim. Seems like a good idea in theory: just give players what they want to accomplish - to hit a target - without some bullshit obstacles such is aim. How good this game would become? There is no game anymore, since 90% of the game is about aiming.
And as a counter point to this counter-counter point: "a passive debuff that makes a player miss hits". You hit and you miss, seems similar, however aim you can and have to control whilst "miss" just makes you miss aka you can't control it via your input.
Personally, I found this Ghostcrawler's response quite interesting, hopefully this little write-up will spring a discussion.
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A small update after 2 weeks.
I thought about this for a while and found out that R-P-S dynamic is not the complete one. In fact, it looks like this:
+ Show Spoiler +
Because you can't really update the game with drastic patches and keep it balanced at the same time even with all the safety nets like BKB, Glimmer cape, force staff and other items. Inevitably some of the pool is going to end up as Plasma guns and some as Dumpsters.
Yes, I believe you can make a relatively balanced game of Dota with 100 situationally playable characters. However you need the metagame to stale at first, then you have to tune it accordingly and most likely more than once.
But this is not what the designers truly want: they want the game to be chaotic, unexplored and thus being fun, therefore achieving "The balance" would result in a more boring game because it will be more stale and figured out, which makes it less entertaining.
There is this concept called "The Book", listen to this Radiolab podcast to get the idea if you aren't familiar yet.
If the price for a fun game is to have 10 weak and 5 strong characters out of 100, I'd take it any time. You don't even need new characters: a little rebalance in conjunction with new or somehow changed mechanics can keep the game fresh.
League / HoN has this obvious economy model: introduce a plasma gun first and after everyone buys it nerf it down to the rest.
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Is his basic premise true? "My understanding of Dota is that counterpicking at champion select has a much stronger influence than it does in League."
When I -did- play League (...three... years ago? Maybe?) there were "counterpicks" and there were overarching strategies, IE teamfight / splitpush... noteable examples being Janna functioning something like Naga does in DotA - her ult was a teamfight reset and really valuable against AoE-heavy lineups, and Twisted Fate, who was actually quite similar to a dagon Furion, in an odd sort of way. Is it not the case that there's a somewhat diverse meta and heroes that thrive with and against certain lineups anymore? I'd be kinda sad for League if that was the case; I definitely didn't mind the collection of metas it had, when I played.
Honestly, the worst "counterpick" heroes we have in Dota right now is Antimage vs Storm, but otherwise it's mostly just hero picks that keep other heroes in line, like drafting something that can deal with TA in lane, or drafting stuff to punish one/several greedy cores. Even Silencer vs Enigma isn't totally hopeless for Enigma, it just means his game becomes a lot less about black hole and a lot more about support items / push.
League has always had something of an awkward-sounding "un-fun / nerfing" approach to balance, but their numbers imply they're doing something right, even if it isn't the same as dota does.
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their number implies they took the easy way out by making all the female characters baes while dota kept it real and the female characters actually looks like conceivable normal human beings.
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That is as valid as SuperiorMoba players saying dota is a more toxic and hateful environment.
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On August 20 2015 07:32 Fleetfeet wrote:
Is his basic premise true? "My understanding of Dota is that counterpicking at champion select has a much stronger influence than it does in League."
When I -did- play League (...three... years ago? Maybe?) there were "counterpicks" and there were overarching strategies, IE teamfight / splitpush... noteable examples being Janna functioning something like Naga does in DotA - her ult was a teamfight reset and really valuable against AoE-heavy lineups, and Twisted Fate, who was actually quite similar to a dagon Furion, in an odd sort of way. Is it not the case that there's a somewhat diverse meta and heroes that thrive with and against certain lineups anymore? I'd be kinda sad for League if that was the case; I definitely didn't mind the collection of metas it had, when I played.
Honestly, the worst "counterpick" heroes we have in Dota right now is Antimage vs Storm, but otherwise it's mostly just hero picks that keep other heroes in line, like drafting something that can deal with TA in lane, or drafting stuff to punish one/several greedy cores. Even Silencer vs Enigma isn't totally hopeless for Enigma, it just means his game becomes a lot less about black hole and a lot more about support items / push.
League has always had something of an awkward-sounding "un-fun / nerfing" approach to balance, but their numbers imply they're doing something right, even if it isn't the same as dota does.
It's true in the sense that dota heroes have a much larger variety of concepts, whereas most lol heroes fit within 2-3 overarching concepts within their predefined role, so outdrafting people is definitely easier to accomplish in dota.
There are also a lot more counterpicks that are harder to play than the example you gave. You'd also have to define during which stage of the game which hero is a counter to what other hero. Storm i.e. is actually really strong vs am for the fist ~20-25 minutes. Lots of mid matchups aren't really tenable for the disadvantaged hero either.
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league kind of has a responsibility to make every character decently even in terms of character interactions because, unlike in dota, most players cannot play every hero in the game due to the hero purchase system. i'd feel betrayed if the character i worked so hard to purchase was just unplayable vs certain other heroes. like imagine you save up for like 20 games to buy broodmother but then you play every game vs an axe.
in dota if you get counterpicked it's part of the risk-reward paradigm - if they have no counterpick to your huskar you're going to ball out of control, and if you are counterpicked you'll have 30+ minutes of misery. you can only really blame yourself for putting yourself in a situation to be countered.
the comparison of league to fighting games that you made is pretty good i think. people get very attached to their characters in league much like they do in fighting games, so there is more of a responsibility to make the characters even. like yeah, there is the occasional sf4 bison/guile or st chun-li/sagat matchup and there are weak characters but generally you can find a way to win in most matchups if you are smart or play better than your opponent
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On August 20 2015 07:32 Fleetfeet wrote:
Is his basic premise true? "My understanding of Dota is that counterpicking at champion select has a much stronger influence than it does in League."
When I -did- play League (...three... years ago? Maybe?) there were "counterpicks" and there were overarching strategies, IE teamfight / splitpush... noteable examples being Janna functioning something like Naga does in DotA - her ult was a teamfight reset and really valuable against AoE-heavy lineups, and Twisted Fate, who was actually quite similar to a dagon Furion, in an odd sort of way. Is it not the case that there's a somewhat diverse meta and heroes that thrive with and against certain lineups anymore? I'd be kinda sad for League if that was the case; I definitely didn't mind the collection of metas it had, when I played.
Honestly, the worst "counterpick" heroes we have in Dota right now is Antimage vs Storm, but otherwise it's mostly just hero picks that keep other heroes in line, like drafting something that can deal with TA in lane, or drafting stuff to punish one/several greedy cores. Even Silencer vs Enigma isn't totally hopeless for Enigma, it just means his game becomes a lot less about black hole and a lot more about support items / push.
League has always had something of an awkward-sounding "un-fun / nerfing" approach to balance, but their numbers imply they're doing something right, even if it isn't the same as dota does.
I don't know if there's anything really hardcore right now, but Razor used to super-hard counter OD back when OD was somewhere above garbage tier, Bloodseeker used to hard counter Slark (except for the part where BS was trash and lost games on account of that), Axe used to hard counter Brood, and so on. There are still some fairly significant counters, like WW countering Wisp and so on, and the way Brood takes over games if she isn't countered, so describing DOTA2 as a reasonably counter-oriented game doesn't seem off base.
I know jack all about League.
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On August 20 2015 13:07 Acritter wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2015 07:32 Fleetfeet wrote:
Is his basic premise true? "My understanding of Dota is that counterpicking at champion select has a much stronger influence than it does in League."
When I -did- play League (...three... years ago? Maybe?) there were "counterpicks" and there were overarching strategies, IE teamfight / splitpush... noteable examples being Janna functioning something like Naga does in DotA - her ult was a teamfight reset and really valuable against AoE-heavy lineups, and Twisted Fate, who was actually quite similar to a dagon Furion, in an odd sort of way. Is it not the case that there's a somewhat diverse meta and heroes that thrive with and against certain lineups anymore? I'd be kinda sad for League if that was the case; I definitely didn't mind the collection of metas it had, when I played.
Honestly, the worst "counterpick" heroes we have in Dota right now is Antimage vs Storm, but otherwise it's mostly just hero picks that keep other heroes in line, like drafting something that can deal with TA in lane, or drafting stuff to punish one/several greedy cores. Even Silencer vs Enigma isn't totally hopeless for Enigma, it just means his game becomes a lot less about black hole and a lot more about support items / push.
League has always had something of an awkward-sounding "un-fun / nerfing" approach to balance, but their numbers imply they're doing something right, even if it isn't the same as dota does. I don't know if there's anything really hardcore right now, but Razor used to super-hard counter OD back when OD was somewhere above garbage tier, Bloodseeker used to hard counter Slark (except for the part where BS was trash and lost games on account of that), Axe used to hard counter Brood, and so on. There are still some fairly significant counters, like WW countering Wisp and so on, and the way Brood takes over games if she isn't countered, so describing DOTA2 as a reasonably counter-oriented game doesn't seem off base. I know jack all about League.
Razor never super hard counter OD, he just allowed to go even against OD so OD would not cruise his way to late game after crushing the midlane.
They can't really make too many hard counters in league because all heroes farm basicly the same way and you can't switch lanes as there is no TP and neutrals are already taken. Roaming is also pretty bad as the linear curves make heroes irrelevant without at least decent xp and gold, there is no lvl 2 shaker 5 mintues in, the poor sacrifical lamb does not exist in lol.
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The key difference is that outpicking is ok in one game because people have access to the entire pool wheras in a certain superior moba most players have a very small portion of the pool and therefore being #outpicked is not as ok when people can just p2outpick
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The key difference is that outpicking is ok in one game because people have access to the entire pool wheras in a certain superior moba most players have a very small portion of the pool and therefore being #outpicked is not as ok when people can just p2outpick
Yea this is a decent point, however, typically, people who play this genre, and especially League of Legends where the team structure is much more forced and actually required to maintain in order to just start a decent game, these people usually stick to one role, such as mid or support. Or they play different roles, but the thing is, their hero pool is not 100+ heroes, but about 10, maybe 20 at best, so it's like 3-4 offlane heroes, 2-3 mid heroes, 1 or 2 carries etc.
Because of the competitiveness of the game, you don't want to play heroes you are not comfortable with in the first place. And because a common player himself is not a progamer he's basically on this weird verge of competitiveness/casualness.
He is sane enough to restrict himself to a certain pool. If you aren't a meepo/storm/tinker/etc player you won't suddenly pick such a hero in a ranked game.
So my point is, you can do just fine with 5-7 heroes and it is not too hard to grind / buy.
Usually there are a lot of counters to the thing that needs to be countered. Plus good itemization plays a role, or at least should play, since items are universal - anyone can buy it. Items is what basically keeps the game balanced even in the environment of OP bullshit all around: bkb, glimmer, fs, consumables especially.
So let's say there is this new invisible hero that can do insane magic sustained damage, aka leshrac 6.84 with riki invis instead of lighting and he does no damage to neutrals. The only way for him to farm up is to kill towers and other heroes. Meaning he does it well, and snowballs from it. But, because there is bkb and glimmer and fs and just the fact your HP increases with levels this dynamic of him killing your entire team has a timing, after which he becomes countered.
I have no clue about this last paragraph actually, seems like it makes sense but not completely, I'll leave it these w/e.
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On August 21 2015 01:47 misirlou wrote:
somewhat relevant
Would not be surprised if this was true. I was friends with a League pro from Dota back before League was a thing and he expressed the same "This game is a joke but it's so easy I can make money off it" opinion. Granted this was before LCS so I don't know if the rest is true.
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On August 21 2015 02:02 TomatoBisque wrote:Would not be surprised if this was true. I was friends with a League pro from Dota back before League was a thing and he expressed the same "This game is a joke but it's so easy I can make money off it" opinion. Granted this was before LCS so I don't know if the rest is true.
People who have that opinion never end up actually winning any money in the "easy" game so it's really not worth mentioning.
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On August 21 2015 02:04 dismiss wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2015 02:02 TomatoBisque wrote:On August 21 2015 01:47 misirlou wrote:
somewhat relevant Would not be surprised if this was true. I was friends with a League pro from Dota back before League was a thing and he expressed the same "This game is a joke but it's so easy I can make money off it" opinion. Granted this was before LCS so I don't know if the rest is true. People who have that opinion never end up actually winning any money in the "easy" game so it's really not worth mentioning.
He has since retired but I know he has made a fair amount of money from it. Popular streamer etc. I've seen the opinion expressed that he's mediocre/bad though so you may be right.
The conversations were mostly with regards to poor balance in the game, and this was also a long time ago (shortly after Ezreal was released)
I may also be totally biased/misremembering since these conversations were like 5+ years ago
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considering 2 pros replied as if it were legit and with empathy rather than just disregarding it as a troll I'm pretty sure it's true, especially the part about riot employees saying those things about their own game
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Well Leshrac could be countered by BKB and AM. Countered/counter picking doesn't mean auto win in Dota. Different levels of execution give you different options to countering things.
I don't believe there is any hero that can be counter picked so badly to be auto lose in a game. Of course if the other team commits their whole line up to dealing with your hero (in pub) then you would hope for your team to take advantage or that.
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On August 21 2015 03:15 Reson wrote:
Well Leshrac could be countered by BKB and AM. Countered/counter picking doesn't mean auto win in Dota. Different levels of execution give you different options to countering things.
I don't believe there is any hero that can be counter picked so badly to be auto lose in a game. Of course if the other team commits their whole line up to dealing with your hero (in pub) then you would hope for your team to take advantage or that.
huskar?
playing huskar vs a lina is practically an auto-lose
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On August 21 2015 03:15 Reson wrote:
Well Leshrac could be countered by BKB and AM. Countered/counter picking doesn't mean auto win in Dota. Different levels of execution give you different options to countering things.
I don't believe there is any hero that can be counter picked so badly to be auto lose in a game. Of course if the other team commits their whole line up to dealing with your hero (in pub) then you would hope for your team to take advantage or that.
Dota is a phase game. The heroes that are strong in all phases are the top competitive picks. Then there are heroes like brood that just stomps early and mid game while then falling off pretty fast in many cases. So I would say there are a lot of heroes that are auto lose in certain phases (within 1k mmr difference) if you see the game as a 1v1. In a 5v5 you can always do something else than lane that lane so that is why it works out.
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On August 21 2015 03:14 misirlou wrote:
considering 2 pros replied as if it were legit and with empathy rather than just disregarding it as a troll I'm pretty sure it's true, especially the part about riot employees saying those things about their own game
Funny enough the guy I was friends with responded to that thread calling the guy a fake
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Ghostcrawler's concepts on balancing in every game is stupid. Look at WoW when he was around. Granted, it is crap at the moment, but it was repugnant when he was around.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/t1Z316V.png)
