After years of being criticized by the League of Legends community for their champion balancing capabilities, which has left many frustrated, Riot Games has recently released a short documentary to “clear their name” regarding their game balancing team.
With charming and vibrant illustrations, the clip describes the champion balancing process in the most concise way possible. According to it, the top criterion for Riot to put a champion under “scrutiny” is their win rate.
If a champion has a win rate that is too high or too low (usually outside the 45% – 50% win rate range), they will definitely be put on the operating table. However, this figure also needs to be analyzed based on win rates at different ranks.
In addition, more popular and favored champions will receive more focus for balancing. The balancing team even “admits” a fact that sometimes, certain champions are included in the balancing list simply because… they are their personal favorites.
Nonetheless, as we know, Riot’s champion balancing process has never received more than an average rating from the gaming community. Explaining this, the creator of League of Legends believes that keeping all champions in a state that is neither too weak nor too strong is impossible. The reason is that players are just too… smart.
They can quickly discover ranking formulas or break the power limits of champions through a little research based on their knowledge of the game. This makes a two-week update cycle insufficient compared to the adaptation speed of League of Legends players. In any version, they will find strong choices that overshadow the rest, leaving Riot Games’ balancing team feeling quite… distressed.