League of Legends (Vietnamese name: Liên Minh Huyền Thoại) has become the most beloved MOBA game in the world today. First widely released to the public on April 21, 2009, League of Legends launched its Closed Beta Test on the North American server. At that time, the reward for testers was the King Rammus skin. This was also the gift for every player who completed the newbie quest later on.
To date, League of Legends has existed for 11 years, providing gamers around the globe with an incredibly engaging team-based game, filled with unforgettable memories and emotions. Throughout this time, Riot has been busy changing the meta, creating new champions, releasing new skins, introducing new game modes, and fixing bugs after various updates. Oh, and balancing champions too, despite having 200 years of experience.
However, Riot often has some truly baffling decisions, especially regarding meta balance. Do you think only champions in League of Legends experience power discrepancies, while other aspects like buffs, jungle monsters, dragons, Baron, and crabs are completely fair? Then let Vandiril smack that “belief” you’ve held for 11 years.
Accordingly, “the bug detective” Vandiril pointed out the imbalance in one of the most important elements of this game: The attack range of minions on the red team is 280 while on the blue team it is 300.
The most astonishing thing is that this bug is not new; it is not a consequence of any update or minor patch. The exact difference in attack range has been present since the game was still in the testing phase, approximately 11 years ago.
The attack range of minions affects many factors, the most important being the unbalanced lane pushing ability, as the minions on the red team will have to take a few more steps before they start attacking, meaning they will take damage first. To back this up, Vandiril conducted an experiment where minions from both sides fought each other, and the results were truly shocking: The score was 7:4 in mid and 16:6 in the top and bot lanes, completely favoring the blue team.
In fact, some aggregated statistics even show that, while not significantly different, the win rate of the blue team is still higher than that of the red team. Could it be due to the “assistance” of that 20 attack range discrepancy?
Coincidentally, a few days before this video was released, a Riot Games employee also discovered this bug while reviewing minion information. He added that they would quickly fix this issue so it wouldn’t persist any longer.
Some comments from gamers:
– Riot has been too busy making music videos to pay attention to these issues.
– No wonder I always go 0/20 when playing Yasuo, turns out it’s a game bug.
– Could it be that the red minions are the villains, hence they have a shorter attack range?
– When creating a practice room, if minions fight each other, the blue team always wins… can anyone explain that?
– Adding Baron buffs would probably increase that by 80.
– The green minions’ guns are smaller => the green minion’s bullets are smaller => lighter => lower gravity, both guns have equal power => green minion bullets travel further => balance.
– Oh is that so? Such a heavy bug, no wonder I keep missing minions while playing Yasuo.
– Thank goodness Riot, it took you 11 years to discover this bug, truly commendable.