Legends of Runeterra
Does Riot really have a plan for this game?
Full disclosure - I stopped playing LoR right around the time they started introducing Gauntlet and Labs. Between a certain amount of burnout on CCGs in general and a fair amount of disappointment with Riot, I just decided it was time for a break.
With all that in mind, I've been following the latest expansion in the hopes that the new cards might renew my interest in the game. And some of what I've seen has been really encouraging:
- A much more significant emphasis put on the Support mechanic (which I always felt was one of the more interesting - yet least utilized - mechanics in the game)
- A major uptick in Regeneration in the Freljord. A while back on this forum I had noted that Regeneration is a form of healing, and that while it didn't show up on many units anywhere, that it made sense as the Freljord expression of the healing identity. At the time Riot said healing was a big part of the identity of the Freljord, but it plainly wasn't in the actual cards, so this is encouraging.
- The Gem token card. This one is a little obscure, but I like that Riot is willing to make a Burst speed spell that can't be cast in combat or in response to a spell. That is exactly what I think Glimpse Beyond ought to be, and I've said as much at least a couple of times on this forum.
- More sources of Obliterate. So far this is just Passage Unearned, but I'm glad there are tech cards that can respond to some of the crazier revive effects that have often created some very frustrating top tier decks. It might be a little too good against those decks, but hopefully it's weak enough against many other decks that it sees only limited play (which would be perfect for a tech card).
So, even without reveals from many of the regions, there's a lot here that makes me think this could be good for the game.
At the same time, I'm pretty worried about yet another massive influx of mechanics. With only a few regions having revealed cards so far, they've already introduced SpellShield, Nightfall, and Behold. Maybe there won't be too many new things with this set, but given how much was introduced with Rising Tides (Powder Kegs, Toss, Plunder, Nab, Deep, Vulnerable, Scout, Attune) it seems unlikely that this set will end up with a short list of new mechanics.
It may seem counter-intuitive to complain about new mechanics in a new set, but I think the Riot approach feels a bit like its not well thought out. By introducing so many new mechanics, and placing them in only small subsets of the regions, you end up in a state where content is much harder to balance. When new mechanics are paired with the new region and some supporting region (e.g. Toss in SI/Bilgewater) you can't think about how to balance new mechanics in isolation from the pre-existing balance issues between the regions more broadly. Moreover, any new mechanic is inherently harder to balance because the devs have no experience balancing it and have no audience feedback about the mechanic in action. So, it's way better to limit the surface area of new content to ensure balancing can be done well from the get-go.
By contrast, in games like MTG and Hearthstone, expansions typically highlight only one or two new mechanics, and they put those mechanics in each color/class/region, which allows developers to think about how fit that new content to the identity of each color/class/region. These mechanics also often deviate only slightly from existing content (e.g. Proliferate in MTG, which adds counters to cards that already have counters, or Spellburst in Hearthstone, which acts as a one-time "after you cast a spell" trigger). Following these patterns makes it easier to think about whether the mechanic is too powerful or too weak in isolation, or if it is too easily abused by a subset of the colors/classes/regions.
Ultimately, I fear this reflects a continued reality with Riot's dev process, where they feel like they can constantly dump a lot of new content because they're constantly rebalancing the game. It's a philosophy that seems to emphasize "exciting new content" over "fun, balanced gameplay." In that way, it feels like there's a certainly lack of ownership in the quality of the initial work, and that bothers me.
(One related note - I have no idea how to judge the decision to break the expansion up over multiple months. Given how often LoR is rebalanced, the high frequency influx of new content may be fine and have no outsized impact on the way the metagame is formed. But it may also reinforce this apparent design philosophy that it's better to constantly throw out shiny new content in place of balanced content.)
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Full disclosure - I stopped playing LoR right around the time they started introducing Gauntlet and Labs. Between a certain amount of burnout on CCGs in general and a fair amount of disappointment with Riot, I just decided it was time for a break.
With all that in mind, I've been following the latest expansion in the hopes that the new cards might renew my interest in the game. And some of what I've seen has been really encouraging:
So, even without reveals from many of the regions, there's a lot here that makes me think this could be good for the game.
At the same time, I'm pretty worried about yet another massive influx of mechanics. With only a few regions having revealed cards so far, they've already introduced SpellShield, Nightfall, and Behold. Maybe there won't be too many new things with this set, but given how much was introduced with Rising Tides (Powder Kegs, Toss, Plunder, Nab, Deep, Vulnerable, Scout, Attune) it seems unlikely that this set will end up with a short list of new mechanics.
It may seem counter-intuitive to complain about new mechanics in a new set, but I think the Riot approach feels a bit like its not well thought out. By introducing so many new mechanics, and placing them in only small subsets of the regions, you end up in a state where content is much harder to balance. When new mechanics are paired with the new region and some supporting region (e.g. Toss in SI/Bilgewater) you can't think about how to balance new mechanics in isolation from the pre-existing balance issues between the regions more broadly. Moreover, any new mechanic is inherently harder to balance because the devs have no experience balancing it and have no audience feedback about the mechanic in action. So, it's way better to limit the surface area of new content to ensure balancing can be done well from the get-go.
By contrast, in games like MTG and Hearthstone, expansions typically highlight only one or two new mechanics, and they put those mechanics in each color/class/region, which allows developers to think about how fit that new content to the identity of each color/class/region. These mechanics also often deviate only slightly from existing content (e.g. Proliferate in MTG, which adds counters to cards that already have counters, or Spellburst in Hearthstone, which acts as a one-time "after you cast a spell" trigger). Following these patterns makes it easier to think about whether the mechanic is too powerful or too weak in isolation, or if it is too easily abused by a subset of the colors/classes/regions.
Ultimately, I fear this reflects a continued reality with Riot's dev process, where they feel like they can constantly dump a lot of new content because they're constantly rebalancing the game. It's a philosophy that seems to emphasize "exciting new content" over "fun, balanced gameplay." In that way, it feels like there's a certainly lack of ownership in the quality of the initial work, and that bothers me.
(One related note - I have no idea how to judge the decision to break the expansion up over multiple months. Given how often LoR is rebalanced, the high frequency influx of new content may be fine and have no outsized impact on the way the metagame is formed. But it may also reinforce this apparent design philosophy that it's better to constantly throw out shiny new content in place of balanced content.)
I'll try to respond by enumerating what I understand to be your points and responding to them one at a time:
1.) Does Riot really have a plan for this game?
I'm not sure if you meant this question literally or figuratively. For the former: they absolutely have plans, and they have been very open about them on their patch notes, YouTube channel, and Twitter. For the latter: that is subjective; I personally have been extremely satisfied with LoR to the point of dropping HS completely, but it sounds like your personal experience was the reverse.
2.) Concern that the new release will be radically unbalanced (specifically due to new mechanics)
This paragraph is going to come off as cynical, so apologies in advance. I don't believe balance is critical for a CCG's success. Consider the last three releases of Hearthstone:
Of course, that's just the high-side of balance. There's also the low side: cards which aren't powerful enough to be viable, and in many ways that's even more heart breaking. It's become common practice to designate legendaries and epics as "safe to disenchant" because everyone is convinced that Team 5 won't ever buff them, so their own value is as a resource to craft other cards.
I'm not as familiar with MtG, but I think they've had similar recent Day 1 misfires via Oko and companions.
I don't say these things to throw shade at those games. Rather, I submit them as objective evidence that--despite what forum posts and twitter rants imply--players are actually extremely tolerant of imbalance issues and willing to forgive so long as any overly-powerful archetypes are eventually addressed through patch / rules change. In other words: for the most part, it doesn't alter players' long-term behaviors.
That said: I've been not but impressed with how Riot has been balancing LoR--both in terms of timeliness and quality. They buff and nerf, the meta shifts on an almost weekly basis, and every champion has at least one home that is if not competitive at least viable. Again: if this was a true priority for players, I would expect to see more defecting from those games to LoR or at the very least being more vocal in their comparisons between LoR and their games of choice. Regardless, I am very confident Riot will continue to excel with this expansion.
3.) Concern that adding many different mechanics will compromise their ability to balance
I actually have the opposite concern: that not having enough mechanics makes the game too linear to balance well. Recently, many of the top tier meta decks have had a theme of "just add good cards" (e.g., Ashe Noxus, Ezreal TF, less recently bannerman and kinkou elusives). These decks don't invest heavily on any particular synergy and instead just look to make big plays with the minimal amount of moving parts. You can tamp down on this somewhat through nerfs as both the latter 2 decks have seen, but if the gameplay is too linear then all you're doing is encouraging a card substitution as seen when elusives dropped Inspiring Mentor and picked up Omen Hawk.
Put another way: experts have theorized that the reason why chess hasn't been "solved" has been because of the knight. His unusual pattern and ability to hop over other pieces add a lot of unique options to that game, whereas if he moved like a rook he would ostensibly be more individually powerful but also more predictable.
I think that's all I've got. I sound like I total Riot-fanboi now, don't I? :-P
You mentioned in your first point that you dropped HS completely yet included Scholomance Academy in one of your 'examples'.
It's unfortunate, but I agree that Ashes of Outland's Demon Hunter meta was dominating the ladder for at least the first half of Ashes of Outland. Anyway, Day 1 meta is not an accurate representation of what the meta would become. In your example, you mentioned that Big Druid (I'll assume you meant Guardian Animals Druid because Big Druid is a totally different archetype and has not seen play in Day 1 of Scholomance) was dominating the ladder. I wouldn't go as far as saying it dominated the ladder as the deck was far from optimized and it was a very 'all or nothing' deck. Highlander Priest and Pure /Libram Paladin were also very prevalent in Day 1. And if you are in the loop about the high legend meta (as early as Day 3, there were fewer players who were playing Guardian Animals Druid as it was hard countered by Tempo/Highlander Mage decks). Although it came back with some minor adjustments, like Living Dragonbreath and Animated Broomstick. And it will be culled with the upcoming Kaelthas nerf.
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I stopped playing Hearthstone for two months so I could try LoR. I had fun, but I find some of the nerfs frustrating. They are pushing Midrange so bad they nerfed fun archetypes like Deep and Nab. They also nerfed the the only fun Control deck(Heimerdinger) and the only fast Aggro deck. Before I came back to HS, LoR meta was basically all Midrange(Freeze Ashe, Hecarim Ephemerals, Yasuo, Demacia Rally). It was about the time Mogwai took a break too. Every game just felt braindead to me.
I think you bring up a very interesting point here.
There is a Youtube Channel called Tolarian Community College, where a guy talks about MtG. He has a video about each different archetype, Aggro, Control, Combo, Midrange, and Tempo. When he was talking about Midrange, he said that many players feel like it is the most "pure" way to play. People get frustrated when their opponent clears the board every other turn, people also get frustrated when their opponent barfs out their hand and kills them on turn 4, and people also get frustrated when their opponent does nothing but stall and then deal 100 damage in a single turn. Midrange encourages smart trading, which is interactive but not as annoying as a board clear. And it also closes out the game late enough that your opponent feels like they did something, but not so late that it gets boring.
I am not saying Midrange is the best archetype and that the only viable deck should be Midrange, but I think this is the manner of thinking that a lot of players have. Midrange 'feels' fair to play against because it doesn't lean too far into any kind of extreme like Aggro or Control. I think the result of constant balance changes is sooner or later going to result in a lot of Midrange decks.
I am not trying to make a specific point, I just think this is an interesting thing to think about.
Carrion, my wayward grub.
Your assumptions are true--I haven't actively played since AoO, so my data points were based solely off of what I recalled from browsing articles. I have edited in your corrections; thank you. To your point about hard countering: I would argue that would mean the original deck is still defining the meta which, while not as reprehensible as having high-played rate + high-win rate, is still a red flag for balance issues.
It's interesting to me--you specifically call out LoR's nerfs to the Deep and Nab as part of the reason why you left, but in my eyes both those archetypes are still alive and well. Conversely: if I compare to the last big HS balance patch I recall, the January 9 DoD patch (yeah I know; it's been a minute), that nerfed Ancharrr (Pirate Warrior), Necrium Apothecary (Deathrattle Rogue), and Dragon's Pack (Galakrond Shaman) to a degree that--in my eyes--killed those archetypes. I makes me wonder how much is in the eye of the beholder.
So, I definitely meant the title question rhetorically. They clearly have a lot of plans for the game, but it feels to me like the lack discipline in their approach to game development and balance.
I don't mean to suggest that either MTG or Hearthstone do a perfect job at balance, but there are a couple of things which I think they do consistently (even if they make mistakes from time to time with individual cards) that help to ensure some balance at the start of a metagame:
The former is important because when you add too much new stuff, you're left reinventing the wheel every time you try to balance the game. The latter is important because it helps iron out the identity of each color/class in the game.
Regarding your specific examples, while I don't think the Ashes of Outland example is fair, I think Galakrond (and even Death Knights before it) is a prime example of the sorts of bad behaviors I'm talking about.
So first, with Ashes of Outland, Blizzard needed Demon Hunter to be super powerful to make it attractive to players and bring people back into the game. Oddly enough, due to the seismic nature of adding a new class after years of having only nine classes, this is one of few times where I think an emphasis on fun, exciting new content over balance makes sense. That LoR wants the same kind of thing (i.e. adding new regions) to be commonplace with updates only further demonstrates what I mean - they're constantly designing in a way that will create chaotic balance. There was a lot of fear that Demon Hunter wouldn't have enough of a unique class identity. Riot risks that all the time.
For Galakrond, and Death Knights before it, I think Blizzard presented it as a single mechanic (A new "Death Knight" mechanic, the "Galakrond package" for E.V.I.L classes). By imagining that it was some single mechanic, they fooled themselves into thinking they were in that typical expansion world where they were adding one or two shared mechanics across classes. But because each of those heroes were so different in practice (with Galakrond Shaman being particularly unfair from a tempo perspective), the balance was way off. That's what Highlander Shadowreaper Priest was such a butcher for so long. Again, this is something Riot seems to do by design - giving different regions wildly different mechanics and hoping it will shape up into a balanced metagame. The thinking seems to be: Pick a Champion -> Pick mechanics that support the "fantasy" of that Champion -> Add those to the identity of the Champion's region even if it doesn't really fit pre-existing identities. This pattern will always emphasize adding tons of new stuff that may or may not fit well into the game as it is.
In a perfect CCG, the metagame wouldn't be determined by a buff/nerf cycle, but rather by creative deck-building to answer the top tier decks. That doesn't happen perfectly anywhere, but I do believe Riot's nerf/buff cycles weaken deck-building for all but the most dedicated players. Their goal is to ensure every region gets to shine at the top of the tier list for a while, and that every champion is eventually in a good deck, but they do that by frequently tweaking the meta themselves. Sometimes this is done in small ways, but other times (like the major Epic overhaul) it's a big change to how cards work. I can already see that coming for "Behold" - the number of 8+ drops you'd need to run to consistently land your "Behold" synergies on curve is too high to make a viable deck.
The game is always going to need to add new mechanics, and that was especially true with Bilgewater since the game was so new. But at this point, Riot has already added a lot of mechanics to the game that they can play around with and explore - things like Challenger, Freeze, Barrier, Vulnerable, Quick Attack, and Regeneration. But because they spend so much time and effort exploring new mechanics instead of playing around with the design space available with these older mechanics, it's entirely unclear that they've mastered balancing them to a level where they'd be able effectively balance a new card like Uzgar the Ancient (which features two of those core mechanics). There are lots of interesting ways to play around with these ([Hearthstone Card (Caught in the Cold) Not Found] is a decent example), but that's not where they seem to want to spend their time, so the game is caught on a sort of balance roller coaster.
Welcome back!
Your post is pretty much Spot On Meisterz.
Just 2 points i want to discuss:
Personally, i am a bit worried the new Support cards might be a bit too hard to balance.
If the support units have too little stats, they will be too undewhelming and see no play; but if they have a bit too much, might become a tempo problem that needs answers as soon as they hit the field or will snowball out of control.
With the lack of cheap removals and only a few regions having acess to decent board clear spells, Snowball cards are way more dangerous in LOR then any other CCG.
I agree dumping too much new content at once is bad. But given what we see on patch notes, i don't think they are getting out of their philosophy.
I believe they must be satisfied about the balance subject right now, so most of their work can be focused on other priorities like developing new content to attract players, don't you think?
I also believe one of Riot's goals is to make sure every Champion has at least 1 playable deck to call it home.
And IMHO, they did a spectacular job on that regard! (Vladimir aside).
Hearthstone: Me vs Firebat -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09NCE81owjo
I'm probably going to be in the minority here but I feel like a lot of the cards being introduced seem a little under the power level required to be playable. I think troll dude is probably bad because ramp is unplayable right now, support synergy is interesting but again no good support cards other then chef, and nightfall is really going to need bilgewater for warning shot which is a little disappointing.
Yeah, I do think that LoR does have a problem with introducing lots of mechanics, and I think it comes out of them trying to faithfully translate the LoL champions into LoR. For example, the Spellshield keyword seems to exist mainly because several champions in LoL have Spellshield abilities, rather than because the developers thought it would be a good keyword. I think that Spellshield is an okay keyword, but given than it's basically just a worse barrier in 90% of cases, I think the decision to include it was based in large part to it being necessary to translate LoL mechanics into LoR. Champions also disrupt region identity because in cases like Vladimir, they break region identity in favor of fulfilling the theme of the champion (Vladimir has Drain, while no other Noxus cards have Drain and Healing is meant to be a weakness of Noxus). For the most part this hasn't become a huge problem yet, but as they add champions whose themes contrast with the identity of their region they'll have to make sacrifices in either the theme of the champions or the identity of the region.
I usually don't do those kind of posts anymore as i quickly realized from past experiences that players don't like negativism/realism related to new cards/content. So those posts, even when accurate, will often be downvoted to oblivium. And God help you when you get one wrong... your sentence is being flamed to death!
That being said, the new cards might work but i also share the thought most of them are not powerfull enough to see competitive play.
So i'll stick alongside with you on this one Nifty. Take my upvote at the very least ;)
Hearthstone: Me vs Firebat -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09NCE81owjo
Honestly, if I have any complaint at all about LoR, it's quite the opposite of the OP. I would say the game is TOO balanced. What do I mean by that?
Basically this - when I play a session of, say, 5 games (I'm a casual player), I often don't see the same deck twice. The variance among the decks I come up against is absolutely massive. The result of this is that I don't really learn how to play against specific decks very well. Sometimes, I don't even have the slightest clue what my opponent's deck is even trying to do.
The variety in the meta is insanely huge. There must be upwards of 20-30 decks that are competitively viable, if not more. While it makes it quite hard for me to get a read on the "meta" and optimize my plays, this can only be interpreted as a good thing.
To your and Hellcopter's points about the cards being underwhelming - I don't entirely disagree. I think there are some pretty good cards in the new set - Lulu seems like a powerful Champion for a token deck, Risen Mists is very interesting since it generates a Mistwraith at burst speed, etc. But I agree that there are some cards and mechanics that seem underwhelming. As I mentioned above, the Behold mechanic seems pretty weak. You'd probably have to run something like six to ten 8 drops to consistently get value out of your synergies on curve, but the ramp tools in the game are so weak running that many expensive cards will often just ruin your game plan. If Riot decides they don't see enough Behold on ladder after a few weeks, I'd expect them to change it. This is entirely in line with their dev process. "We wanted people to latch on to this new thing we added, but they didn't because it wasn't well implemented, so we're giving it a buff to make it more appealing to players." This is basically the reasoning behind the buffs to Monkey Idol and Slotbot.
I think we should be careful not to conflate variety with balance - the two are deeply related, but they're not the same. A balanced game features a wide variety of decks, but in my mind the kinds of wild variance you're describing reflects less a balanced metagame and more a lack of a metagame (at least outside of top ranked play). In that way, this is a different symptom of the same chaotic design process. The development of the metagame never really slows because nerfs and buffs come in so frequently, and new content is so varied in power and consistency that it is inherently imbalanced from the start.
Typically meta shifts would slow down as pro players (who have the earliest useful datasets on match-ups) start to determine what they think the best decks are. As players in lower ranks and more casual forms of play start to net-deck those "best decks" and learn how to play them, you will in turn start to see a fairly consistent metagame across ranks. The order here is really baked into CCGs - the people who play the most will always set the meta because they have the most data and they spend the most time iterating on strategies. The more casual a player you are, the less time you have to spend playing the game, so the more stable the meta needs to be to make deckbuilding meaningful.
But the nerf/buff cycle means the players at the top tier rarely settle into an idea of what the best deck is - what's best today will not be in a couple of weeks. Those problems are exacerbated as your go down to lower ranks and casual play, where keeping up with those changes is expensive (in a temporal sense); if you're playing more casually then you have less time to learn the new top decks and how they interact with other top decks. If the decks don't trickle down in a bigger way from top tiers to lower tiers, then there's even more chaos at those lower tiers of play.