“Balance” is an extremely vague concept in gaming; it’s like a target that game developers strive for but can never quite reach. This is true for both the MOBA genre and auto-battlers, where publishers constantly have to release patches, but after each update, new forms of “imbalance” tend to emerge.
The reason is quite simple; take League of Legends, for example. Each champion has its own unique set of skills, so interacting with them differs greatly depending on the other champions involved. Unlike chess (a game that might be called balanced), where each piece has only one way to move, champions in League of Legends can be built in countless ways and have various skills… and this aspect is what makes the game somewhat “imbalanced”.
Players don’t care much about this and frequently demand that Riot Games adjust things that are too powerful, while also insisting that League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics must always feel fresh and exciting.
Riot Mortdog – the lead designer of Teamfight Tactics – has received many such requests since Teamfight Tactics is actually much more complex than League of Legends. You will have more than 5 champions in a team composition, along with the influence of traits and origins. Riot representatives responded to these player demands by stating that “Balance is actually the wrong way to develop a game”.
Riot Mortdog: “What we realized from designing Season 2 is that balance is actually the wrong way to develop a game. If everything is balanced or too simple, the meta becomes incredibly boring, and no one wants to play anymore. So in Season 3, we will focus on interesting interactions and champions rather than trying to achieve perfect game balance.”
This can be seen as a very correct way to develop Teamfight Tactics, as Season 3 is significantly more appealing than Season 2. Many strong compositions and playstyles have emerged, diversifying the meta compared to the previous season. Perhaps this philosophy should be learned by the League of Legends development team as they are heading in the wrong direction by trying to adjust champions like Aphelios or Senna that cannot be balanced, while they should be upgrading outdated champions like Skarner, Dr. Mundo, and Sivir… to create a more varied meta.