EPTRiot already balances resourceless champs around having weaker skills to compensate for a superior resource management scheme. Why is the converse not also appropriate?
[Patch 4.3] Vel'Koz General Discussion - Page 57
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TheYango
United States47024 Posts
Riot already balances resourceless champs around having weaker skills to compensate for a superior resource management scheme. Why is the converse not also appropriate? | ||
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Ketara
United States15065 Posts
Either approach would work. It looks like they're going for the latter approach, which I know you don't agree with, but it's not necessarily bad. | ||
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Slusher
United States19143 Posts
On March 06 2014 11:27 Ketara wrote: I used Anivia as an example, but I hope you see what I mean. There are champions right now that basically have to buy Athenes as their first item or you can't play them. That's a problem. The entire point of having items in the game is to give meaningful choices to the player, so if there's no choice in what to buy, there's a game design issue there. And it's not a problem with the item. It's a problem with the champions. If you fix the problem with those champions, you can then fine tune the item and make things more balanced for everyone. In my opinion Athene's does more to zone Anivia out of the current playable mids than nerfing it would tl;dr Chalice and/or RoA is a lot stronger on Anivia than her opponents who are currently abusing Athene's because he base damage is good and her ult has (essentially) no cd you are also skipping over the fact that her mana costs were already 2014'd, so she's a pretty horrid example for your point. | ||
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TheYango
United States47024 Posts
The fact that they systematically refuse to explore the "long-term gated, short-term gated" design space IS bad, because it's restricting diversity of champion design for no real reason. | ||
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Ketara
United States15065 Posts
The best may be that Riot may have made the decision that player experience is better when you have mana than when you don't. They want you to be playing against other people, not playing against the games internal resources. Going to cast that last skill and then looking down and seeing you have no mana and dying instead doesn't feel good. It's happened to me before, it makes me feel like a dumbass. Having lots of mana constraints may make the game more complicated and diverse, but it's not necessarily a good thing. Having NO mana constraints may not necessarily be a good thing either, mind. | ||
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TheYango
United States47024 Posts
This is what doesn't make sense to me about that argument. Being gated by your resource in the short term is ok. Being gated by your resource in the long-term is ok. But being somewhat gated by both with skill power to compensate is somehow a bad player experience when the components individually aren't? | ||
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YouGotNothin
United States907 Posts
Edit: it seems they want to cater more towards the gogo make big plays and sweet combos/skill shots type of player skill over the strategic/calculating kind of skill. | ||
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Ketara
United States15065 Posts
And I still think energy is a stupid mechanic. It seems like Riot agrees. There are 5 energy champions out of what, 118 now, and their release dates were Shen, Akali and Kennen in 2010, Lee Sin in early 2011 and finally Zed in 2012. I would be willing to bet the only reason Zed has energy is for the thematic reason of "because he's a ninja" On March 06 2014 11:45 YouGotNothin wrote: Riot for some reason seems to think its players are becoming incapable of the patience, tempo, and planning that are required for proper mana management. This is weird to me because they seem to be releasing champs with increasingly more complex kits with combos, difficult skill shots, etc. Edit: it seems they want to cater more towards the gogo make big plays and sweet combos/skill shots type of player skill over the strategic/calculating kind of skill. This isn't strange at all. The less you have to require of the player in terms of resource management the more you can require of them in terms of combos, difficult skillshots, etc. The latter is cool and interesting from a spectator perspective and the former is boring, so it's an obvious choice. When was the last time you saw a caster talk about how well a player is managing their mana? | ||
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Slusher
United States19143 Posts
On March 06 2014 11:48 Ketara wrote: and the former is boring, Because Gragas/Ziggs instaclearing waves whilst 2 manaless top tanks farmfest top, all on a 1 item timing, is like freebasing while driving down the highway in a stolen car. | ||
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Ketara
United States15065 Posts
On March 06 2014 11:52 Slusher wrote: Because Gragas/Ziggs instaclearing waves whilst 2 manaless top tanks farmfest top, all on a 1 item timing, is like freebasing while driving down the highway in a stolen car. I don't know what freebasing is but I like this post anyway. | ||
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TheYango
United States47024 Posts
On March 06 2014 11:48 Ketara wrote: This isn't strange at all. The less you have to require of the player in terms of resource management the more you can require of them in terms of combos, difficult skillshots, etc. The latter is cool and interesting from a spectator perspective and the former is boring, so it's an obvious choice. When was the last time you saw a caster talk about how well a player is managing their mana? That's somewhat analogous to the simplification of the mechanical aspect of macro going from BW->SC2. And of course, I'm also entitled to think BW is the better game. | ||
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phyvo
United States5635 Posts
For one, from levels 1 to 5 Kog has to conserve mana for W often for last hits or to support any engages and harassment that happens. This skill is flat out removed on the PBE. After 6 Kog can more easily go OOM while trying to harass, but you still have to keep in mind that you'll need some mana for all your Ws over the next bunch of minutes, and you have to balance you mana usage between nabbing distant last hits, harassing, and farming the jungle faster. And since you never buy mana items you can easily go OOM up to the very end of the game if you choose to just by farming with W alone. If the PBE changes go through a bunch of those considerations become less relevant because your primary damage skill is now manaless. If you go OOM before a teamfight it's no longer a deal breaker, you can still DPS pretty heavily. If you go OOM in lane spamming Q/E/R you can still W to harass, DPS, and last hit. Meanwhile you can spam W in lane as much as you want with no repercussions for your other skills. How is this *not* an entirely different kind of mana management compared to before? Just because it's still possible to go OOM doesn't mean the difference isn't real, that an aspect of mana management skill hasn't been lost! | ||
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arb
Noobville17921 Posts
keep trying to relate it to starcraft and its making me cringe | ||
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Ketara
United States15065 Posts
On March 06 2014 11:54 TheYango wrote: That's somewhat analogous to the simplification of the mechanical aspect of macro going from BW->SC2. And of course, I'm also entitled to think BW is the better game. Yeah well, I think SC2 is the better game. That means I have to turn in my TL badge, right? User should have been warned for this post, but the banling exercised restraint. | ||
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Zess
Adun Toridas!9144 Posts
Right now champions that have to manage mana are either completely eclipsed or end up buying Athene's. This ultimately restricts gameplay diversity, rather than enabling it, because to compensate for Athene's, Riot has retuned damage to be more in line, and thus you end up with Cheep's original complain that every champion is being tuned to the same power curve (which would be fine, except they're not because that is very hard to do while keeping champions unique, and so you just end up with some champions being totally irrelevant). If mana was actually a resource (maybe if Athene's didn't exist), it gives you another dimension to balance across, which means you can alter metrics in the other dimensions, and thus have a broader champion pool in the dimension space, further increasing viable gameplay options and diversity. For example, if a champion lategame was very strong but heavily gated by mana, it means you can win decisive teamfights, but can't do the current garbage "run around the map for 5 minutes without backing." | ||
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wussleeQ
United States3130 Posts
unless of course i read this wrong and you meant stop applying sc to lol which means i'm just not reading correctly | ||
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Slusher
United States19143 Posts
On March 06 2014 11:54 arb wrote: for some reason the word "timing" in league annoys me. keep trying to relate it to starcraft and its making me cringe so like naked RoA is 12 min, or Tear + RoA is usually 16 ish. the old Flame Ryze top with tear + RoA + SV parts usually came online around 18-20 these are timings I don't know what else to call them Dota has timings, I think ~12-14 is a decent safe lane not killed Battle Fury timing if I'm not mistaken? Starcraft is far from the monopoly on timings. | ||
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TheYango
United States47024 Posts
On March 06 2014 11:56 xes wrote: If mana was actually a resource (maybe if Athene's didn't exist), it gives you another dimension to balance across, which means you can alter metrics in the other dimensions, and thus have a broader champion pool in the dimension space, further increasing viable gameplay options and diversity. Well the implication of Riot and Ketara's line of thought is that varying certain dimensions too much creates a gameplay experience that's unpalatable for the average player anyway (for example, you can balance a champ that's a complete lane dominator through weakness in other aspects of the game, but playing against such a champion in lane is so un-fun that it shouldn't be considered an option), so that level of variation is unnecessary. This is what I believe leads to the homogenization in question, which many of us dislike but apparently is acceptable to Ketara and to Riot. | ||
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Chrispy
Canada5878 Posts
Also there are totally timings in League... they're just mostly called power spikes by casters and are all based on items. Like a a dude gets Trinity Force. | ||
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Ketara
United States15065 Posts
If you want your game to be popular with everyone, you have to find that line where it has the right amount of complexity and diversity so that everyone will enjoy it. | ||
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