On October 16th, Legend of Runeterra's Live Design Lead, Steve "RubinZoo" Rubin, visited Alanzq's Twitch stream. After Alan asked him a question about landmarks, he started fielding general questions from Alanzq's chat creating an impromptu Q&A session. Topics included underplayed champions, design principles, insight into how balance patches are made, and confirmation of upcoming nerfs to Lee Sin and Make it Rain (spoiler: Steve doesn't confirm the exact nature or ETA of those changes).
Below is an abridged summary of his comments, lightly edited for spelling and formatting.
Landmarks
- Star Spring is certainly really strong.
On landmarks taking up a unit space:
- We considered [not having them take up a unit space], it's unfortunately REALLY hard to do since we have to change our entire UI and such.
- At the moment, it's probably not going to happen. But, I think it's something to consider for the future.
- If they didn't take a slot on the board the timing of the round start/end effects would be much more static. Which would be another benefit.
On landmark removal:
- Each Region will have a landmark removal spell once Call of the Mountain is fully released.
- There are 4 now for 4 regions, and there will be 4 more for the remaining 4 next release.
Lee Sin & Ionia
- We've got a change locked in already.
On whether it will be the right adjustments:
- I hope so, but we try to retain most of the card's strength post nerf.
On Ionia as a region:
- Ionia was struggling before the Lee Sin changes happened, which was part of the reason we did that.
- Lee change was actually exciting since we thought that put Ionia in more of the spell combat type space which it clearly wants to be but wasn't ever good enough.
- I think [Ionia's former identity as a control region] was more of a result of Karma/Will of Ionia being overtuned instead of deliberate. After those cards moved up in mana I think Ionia lost its control role a bit.
Vladimir
- I'm currently working on some potential Vladimir adjustments, no promises though (most of our changes we try out don't end up going through).
- Vlad just has some fundamental issues with his archetype - I doubt any change will magically fix that, unfortunately. The change will be focused on better usability.
- I bet I could hit Rank 1 with Vlad, LOL -- but yeah his archetype needs some help.
- Vladimir is a bit tough since his archetype has a ton of cards, but fundamentally damaging your own units is bad.
- I've got some small QOL plans for him but nothing major.
Regarding supporting followers:
- This is one of the reasons that archetype champs like Vlad are hard to balance. For instance, when Crimson Disciple was 2 damage she was just played in all sorts of non-Vlad decks.
Other Unrepresented Champions
Regarding Taric:
- Taric is really tough to crack. You need him in play, an ally to support, the attack token, and some mana and spell in hand to use. Makes him really hard to use.
- He's got the same problem as all "attack" champions (Taric, Vlad, Lulu). They all have the same flaws when it comes to competitive viability.
About Katarina:
- Katarina is a bit tougher [to balance], since when she's good she creates deterministic play patterns/wins that are rather unhealthy.
- We've actually had Katarina L2 at 3 mana. Unfortunately, the play pattern is just a bit toxic and unexciting - since it the rest of the game you just pump mana into only playing her.
On Fizz:
- I think Fizz is super strong honestly. A few seasons ago I was rinsing people with TF/Fizz.
- One and two mana champions are REALLY hard to balance without them just being [overly powerful].
Bastion
- The Bastion buff was to help out Taric, Heimerdinger, and such -- but it went a BIT haywire unfortunately.
- Given the timeframe we had to make the [Patch 1.12] change, it was a bit hard for us to [revert the +1/+1 effect].
- I do really like the proactive casting of Bastion a lot, but the card was a bit overtuned.
Design Principles
- In general, protection and pump spells are MUCH better than removal in our game.
- There are a ton of design reasons for that. The biggest ones being allowing champions to be in play multiple turns (no other CCGs do this) and have proactive based gameplay where you get rewarded for attacking and making plays.
- Champions in LoR are actually allowed to bend the region rules. That's why cards like Thresh can have challenger, or why Lux can be so spell oriented in Demacia.
- There will eventually be rotation, but nothing we're talking about right now.
Tournaments
- I'd bet that given we're planning on having 6 seasonal tournaments each year (one for each season) that we might change the structure over time to improve it.
About aggressively buffing cards in the near future:
- With seasonal tournaments upcoming we're trying to be a bit more careful.
Regarding formats with sideboards in the future:
- We're open to other tournament formats -- but a single deck with side decks is not really something we've designed for.
Patches
On how long it takes to incorporate a change into a patch:
- We generally have to lock in our changes 2-4 weeks ahead of time. There are a lot of reasons for this, checking for bugs, localizing the text in 20+ languages, confirmation with Apple and Google Play stores.
- That said, one of the biggest things we need is changes that are a much faster loop.
- I'm working on getting us better tech for it, but nothing immediate in that regard.
- Any change needs to be inline with champions, regions, their already existing VFX and VO -- etc.
- We actually want to get back to 1-month patches, since we're a bit behind on stuff. But generally, we lock in changes 2-3 weeks ahead of time.
About how balance is decided:
- We use data, like winrates and playrates. Though we've been moving more away from it.
- Our more successful patches sometimes are when I sort of play the meta and balance like a player (with data and design chops to back it up).
- We care a bit more about underperforming regions than overperforming ones because for gameplay health.
- We say we're data-informed, not data-driven. Otherwise, a robot would replace me.
- We do think that buffing is better than nerfing for metas. Though we have seen changes like Basilisk Rider and Bastion go a bit haywire.
- When we buff a card, it's likely going to become a meta card a decent amount of the time since even bad cards are close to good.
Bilgewater & Make It Rain
- Bilgewater has been strong for sure.
- We've got an upcoming change to Make it Rain along with Lee Sin to try and settle the meta down a bit.
- Bilgewater has many many good cards, and if we nerfed some others will replace them.
- Bilgewater champions are CRACKED -- Miss Fortune, Gangplank, and Twisted Fate are all just so strong compared to baseline
Emotes
- I think the new Aurelion Sol "Smooth Move" emote is the new MVP.
On in-match chat with your opponent:
- No, in my experience chat is used negatively 90%+ of the time.
- I actually think the emote system is working out surprisingly well.
Regarding emotes' correlation to win/loss ratios:
- Sad Poro emote is the lowest winrate in the game, and Miss Fortune "Gotcha" emote is the highest winrate in the game.
- MF is so high because players only use it when they are casting a lethal spell or attack -- it's got like a 90% winrate.
Those are the highlights; you can replay Alanzq's stream and read the full conversation. A big thanks to Steve Rubin for taking his personal time to engage with fans.
Comments
So what they gonna do to make it rain? 3 mana? 2 targets?
Can't hit nexus?
We need a chart of emotte/win rate we need to see the meta!
jk, of course sad poro has low win rate :( people use him when they lose..
People also use him to fake a loss. You can play some serious mind games with opponents and get them to make a mistake, using emotes. People joke about the "emote meta," but there actually are some things you can do to win games with emotes.
I'm going to avoid being judgemental and assuming the worst, I want this game to succeed so badly. That said I worry about some of the things mentioned here. Like why is it that they openly admit to Miss Fortune, Gangplank, and Twisted Fate all being way too powerful yet they offer no solutions, nor any guarantees there will even be a solution? I'm fine with them taking as many swings at the problem as they need. Even if it takes 30 attempts to make a card balanced I'd rather see the attempt then just leave it to fester.
I was really interested by the comment that “We do think that buffing is better than nerfing for metas.” I’m used to Hearthstone’s approach where nerfs are common but buffs are rare. (And until a year and a half ago, they were flatly against any buffs.)
Reading between the lines, it sounds like the Runeterra team is trying to keep as many archetypes viable as possible. A buff is a good way to push another one into the meta. On the other hand, the Hearthstone team doesn’t seem worried if there are only a few competitive decks. They just smack one down when it get too oppressive.
Yet in Runeterra, players always seem happy with nerfs, which have generally been very even-handed. Too often when Riot buffs a card, the meta becomes a cesspool of misery. (Except for poor Jae Medarda ... don't know what happened there ...)
Shen emote would have a higher win rate, but some people like to open with him.
My takeway from this is that they have no idea how to fix underpowered archetypes, and no idea how to bring the most overpowered ones (aggro and burn) into check. So they faff about in the middle ground, hoping people will find that interesting in spite of everything else.
The only way to keep aggro/burn decks in check is to make one sided board clears available. I may be wrong, but most board clears in the game right now hit both sides. The only exception I'm aware of is ASol's Skies Descend spell.
Another alternative to control aggro would be to create more units like monkey idol available or dragonling available. Units that provide unique benefits, but weak stats at a temporary cost (ephemeral).
Another idea I had would be units that can be summoned with a burst spell (similar to the mistwraith spell that SI currently has) but would have the text "This unit has ephemeral while attacking and lifesteal while blocking"
Something like this: (apologies for the crude design, just spit balling here).
Withering Wail only hits opposing units. Same with TF's Red Card and Make It Rain. And Riptide Rex as well, incidentally. And while Avalanche hits both sides, that is almost never a problem for decks that use it. So, let's be perfectly clear here - "most board clears hit both sides" ends up describing exactly these spells - Avalanche (already mentioned that the "both sides" almost never matters), The Ruination, and Singular Will (which no one uses). So that brings us down to exactly one card that causes equal problems with both sides of the board: The Ruination. Which brings us to an important point - if they print one-sided board wipes, those are useful to literally every deck ever, even aggro. There is a VERY good reason that one-sided board wipes are extremely rare in card games, and this is it.
As for aggro and burn, they are absolutely not overpowered - there are very hard counters to both of those (for aggro, it's Avalanche/withering wail/TF red card; for burn, it's basically any kind of healing). Midrange is also a problem for aggro as well, since their dudes are bigger and 2-for-1 the aggro player like crazy.
The problem right now is not that aggro is too good. It's that LEE SIN is too good. If you play decks that counter aggro (control and midrange), you lose to Lee Sin. THAT is the problem. Aggro has been nerfed so hard so many times, it is not actually a problem in itself. (The sole exception here is Pirate Aggro, and only that because of Make It Rain and Jagged Butcher, which are way too good compared to other cards.) Aggro is only having success right now because Lee Sin is preying on everything that's good against aggro and pushing them out of the meta.
You don't get to say, "Aggro and burn are perfectly fine except for this one archetype that has been at the top of the charts since the game launched." Just take it as given that when people are talking about overpowered aggro/burn, they are talking about that archetype. Obviously there are less powerful aggro decks out there, but there's no reason to discuss the ones that are reasonable.
And yes, Lee Sin is a problem, but we're not doing ourselves any favors if we pretend he's the only problem. Pirate aggro was too good long before Lee Sin even existed. Nerfing Lee Sin will not fix everything else that's wrong with the way this game is being balanced.
Here's what's really happening: Card games start to go bad when developers see players' positive reactions to big, flashy effects. So they decide to lean into that, creating more and more extreme content, and it's not long before the whole thing becomes literally impossible to balance. But the truth is that cool, interesting effects do not have to be so extreme. With a little finesse, it is possible to keep the game interesting without making every top deck into a polarizing monstrosity.
You're free to exaggerate if you like, but Pirate aggro has definitely not been at the top of the charts "since the game launched," even if you consider the launch to be the release of Rising Tides (which is fair, since that was the official launch, though the game existed for at least half a year before that). And before you ask, "No, I do not play Pirate aggro." -Me
Gangplank was almost completely ignored for at least a full month after Bilgewater launched, and probably more like 2 months. Miss Fortune was initially played almost exclusively with Bannerscouts during that same timeframe.
The current iteration of Pirate Aggro didn't hit the top of the charts until about 6-8 weeks ago.
Perhaps you're getting confused with TF/Swain when you're talking about "the archetype that has been at the top of the charts since the game launched"?
First, yes, when I say launch, I mean launch, not beta.
And I was referring to TF/Swain, not Gangplank. TF/Swain is a midrange burn deck (some might even say control burn), and it is the poster child for the kind of problems that arise when any card game prints too many burn cards. You reach a critical mass, and boom, there's your archetype, with almost no way for the meta to recover until some of those burn cards are either removed or nerfed into oblivion.
Except that in LoR, you have Champions that require burn for their very existence (and here I do include not just Swain, but also GP and Sejuani, and even Ezreal), so making burn too unappealing also guts those Champions. Riot doesn't want to cause a revolt by killing some very popular Champions all at once, so here we are, downtown Burnsville, with no cellphone or even a roadmap to find our way out.
Ok, well it was just a big misunderstanding then. As you said, TF/Swain is generally classified as a control deck, maybe midrange, but definitely not aggro. And I was talking about Pirate Aggro, which specifically refers to Miss Fortune/Gangplank combined with Noxus.