[Patch 3.14] PreSeason 4 General Discussion - Page 55

On November 24 2013 08:42 obesechicken13 wrote:

Apparently. It's a mastery in the offense mastery. Pretty soon the casters will be saying it too along with final spark and marksman.

On November 24 2013 09:08 TheRabidDeer wrote:

Interesting, the way you describe it it seems like it could be worth it for solo lanes even.

On November 24 2013 09:27 Alaric wrote:
Problem on Windwall is that it's instant, so you can't even be baited. Just negate every Chain of Corruption or ECA thrown your way. Unless Zenith Blade isn't blocked (it seems like Bandage Toss and Dredge Line are, so it should be as well), then you'll need Malphite, Hecarim or Skarner to initiate a fight against him, every time.
He can just reactively stop Orianna and most other champions relying on projectiles from getting to you.

As for his Q, iirc CDR is supposed not to work on it, only AS, and his E mark duration can't be reduced either, so it's not as bad as it appears, and his E's ratio is only a numbers' thing so it can be put in line.

On November 24 2013 09:50 onlywonderboy wrote:
Prolly just tweeted he is a free agent. col was looking solid too. Yay challenger scene.

On November 24 2013 09:08 TheRabidDeer wrote:

Interesting, the way you describe it it seems like it could be worth it for solo lanes even.

On November 24 2013 10:03 GolemMadness wrote:
Not really. If there's no one around to proc the passive, you're only getting 175 health and 12 health regen. Spend 410 less gold and get a doran's shield, which is almost as good as those stats.

On November 24 2013 04:14 xes wrote:

Forced design is also just bad from a design standpoint.

I like to think about competitive games as a series of hills (or a differentiable 2-manifold) where the high peaks are a combination of characters/units and strategies that are currently strong (to borrow the Sirlin metaphor). Stability of a game can then be likened to a ball rolling in this landscape (or the stability of solutions to equations on our manifold). When are few oppressive "strong points," then the only equilibrium is for our ball to sit at the peak of the hill, extremely unstable and liable to escape. But should there emerge multiple strengths, then we can have areas that contain a bounded field of interactive play. Stable balance comes from the interaction of independent elements.

This contrasts to the artificial complexity that Riot has been introducing. Theses gimmicky changes, in the sense of extremely complex and conditional design of elements and how they interact, are like building fences on your landscape (or just having an artificially bounded submanifold). Playstyle and balance becomes fiat, rather than the equilibrium of emergent strengths. What is optimal is because Riot has said so, and what is allowed is hard coded into the game. This isn't to say that we should go back to playing Pong, because the individual elements in that game are nondescript, and the space for interaction is also minimal. The game has no depth and no interest (but is indeed very balanced).

But there has been a history of the greatest competitive games involving very straightforward elements, and simply a landscape that allows very complex interactions. Chess and Go have huge depth despite the fact that each piece is completely nondescript because the space for interaction is so large. From within eSports, the most standout games were never designed to be huge, longstanding, competitive dynasties: Brood War, Melee. But despite very few balance patches, these games have had stable competitive scenes that at the same time continuously evolved to improve the longevity of the game.

Of course, this is a very biased selection. There have been plenty of games with very little balance that have completely failed, with short lifecycles an no impact. Still, it is worth taking a look at what has made these games survive for so long. And perhaps find a set of necessary conditions (though as failed games in these genres have shown, not sufficient).
1. Very simple elements, with very complex manipulation. Out of sheer luck, these games have elements that have incredible depth without a bunch of conditionals built on them. Wraiths do 3 things: cloak, shoot lasers at the ground, and shoot missiles at the air. Vultures shoot canisters and have an option to lay mines. There's no mechanic for them taking less damage while stealthed, or having the first shot in stealth do bonus damage, for gaining movement after killing something; you can describe the basics of what these do to a 6 year old. But while these elements are simple themselves, the group actions are highly granular. Damage delay, tuning, and acceleration are what makes the Wraith and Vulture highly manipulable.
2. Consistent and explainable gameplay. You hit people and it builds up damage, and the more damage they have on them the further they fly. You get money and build an army and win when you kill all their buildings. Dudes fly based on how heavy they are.
3. Map balance. To say that Brood War didn't have balance patches is a bit misleading, because custom maps offer a huge amount of variation. Different maps favor different races and playstyles, different characters and matchups.
4. An almost unlimited interaction space. If Riot had to balance Brood War, some of the most interesting interactions would be removed on being toxic. Eraser tricks, Dark Swarm, Corsairs, these all very abusive within their sphere of influence, yet because of the sheer amount of complexity, aren't heavily destabilizing. Infinite chain grabs and ledge control are also extremely frustrating to new players but aren't nearly as broken as someone may complain.

However, Riot's position is far more difficult. Brood War and Melee are flukes. They are the 4 sigma event. They are by nature impossible to design, because where they ended up wasn't their design goal. And Riot hasn't completely flubbed on these points either. Fizz, Lee Sin, Thresh, and Orianna are just some examples of champions with incredible manipulation potential, without having very bizarre mechanics (Lee's double activations on E and W are borderline). The 3.14 inhibitor change is great, because its unintuitive that destroying a gem in one lane makes the other lanes push harder. The brush changes are interesting; an attempt to balance the map since League doesn't have multiple maps. Yet at the same time the Wright camp makes no sense. Why is the Wright camp there? "Because we wanted to give junglers access to another camp for more gold." Why are there these random high conditional gold items that you can only have one of? "Because we want to directly influence gold distribution in a very restrictive and limited way."

Finally, Riot has the responsibility of producing both a game and a sport, a position I'm not envious of at all. The same mechanics that make competitive Brood War interesting, simultaneously make ICCUP impossible. Yet the game that people enjoy and the game that is competitive don't necessarily have to be the same: League has ARAM, and normal blind pick; Brood War has BGH and Fastest. Yet there are still fundamental design paths that can enable both:
1. The game should make sense. Optimal play should be optimal in an unrestricted sense, as the source of the current strongest emergent playstyle, rather than by fiat power.
2. Interaction should be granular rather than binary. Players must be able to do what they want when they want with a high degree of control; loss of control must be something that can be reacted to and responded against (something that Fungal and Force Field ruined in SC2; tripping destroyed in Brawl; CC is in general fairly well done in League).
3. Accept that the highest competitive manifestation of gameplay is completely different from fun and casual play. Pretending that they are the same will only lead to design limitations and arbitrary in game restrictions.

On November 24 2013 10:55 TheYango wrote:
It's been discussed a million times. You incentivize support gold by creating items that are worth giving supports money to buy. Concentrated farm is favored by multiplicative scaling. You reduce multiplicative scaling (cut back on the number strong multiplicative scaling stats and their availability) while introducing strong cost-efficient slot-inefficient low/mid-tier support items such that supports are incentivized to get gold to buy these for the team.

If you recall, this 0 gold wards Sightstone nothing support wasn't even a thing through all of S3. It only happened in the wake of the Aegis/Bulwark/Locket nerf that stripped supports of any reasonable alternative items to buy. Because as much as some people liked to pretend otherwise, none of the other shit support items that Riot added in S3 were actually good enough to warrant buying over more wards.

On November 24 2013 10:55 TheYango wrote:
It's been discussed a million times. You incentivize support gold by creating items that are worth giving supports money to buy. Concentrated farm is favored by multiplicative scaling. You reduce multiplicative scaling (cut back on the number strong multiplicative scaling stats and their availability) while introducing strong cost-efficient slot-inefficient low/mid-tier support items such that supports are incentivized to get gold to buy these for the team.

If you recall, this 0 gold wards Sightstone nothing support wasn't even a thing through all of S3. It only happened in the wake of the Aegis/Bulwark/Locket nerf that stripped supports of any reasonable alternative items to buy. Because as much as some people liked to pretend otherwise, none of the other shit support items that Riot added in S3 were actually good enough to warrant buying over more wards.