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Legends of Runeterra | Posted by | 4 years, 3 months ago
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Hot Take Card Inbalance Is Healthy For CCG's

Ladder experiences are driven by heroes and Villains. You as the deck brewer have something to prove you want to beat that meta deck into the ground everyone else says is so op, but what happens when there are no villains anymore.

Lor is a fascinating case study because it is essentially the most balanced digital card game in existence to the extent that they will never need to rotate cards and only live balance changes will effect potential deck performance outcomes.

Case and point, Pirate aggro! People stopped playing this deck largely out of boredom but it still puts up numbers I'm talking 57% percent winrates currently right now making it essentially one of the best decks in the game.

But it isn't a villain and it's isn't played enough to be worth counter brewing against and very little satisfaction comes from beating it.

Lee Sin by comparison is not an amazing deck hovering between 51 and 52 percent winrate but it's play patterns are dynamic enough to stick in the mind of the looser.

You are getting beaten 100% when Lee Sin kicks you down to 0. My point is for me personally I find myself playing LOR far more when there is essentially a boss deck to beat, and far less when people can run any midrange soup and win.

Don't pressure the devs to hotfix too fast in the future, enjoy each stage of the meta as it progresses, and let things breathe a bit...otherwise it's just gonna be Bilgewater for literally the next 10 years of this games life cycle.

 

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  • Ladder experiences are driven by heroes and Villains. You as the deck brewer have something to prove you want to beat that meta deck into the ground everyone else says is so op, but what happens when there are no villains anymore.

    Lor is a fascinating case study because it is essentially the most balanced digital card game in existence to the extent that they will never need to rotate cards and only live balance changes will effect potential deck performance outcomes.

    Case and point, Pirate aggro! People stopped playing this deck largely out of boredom but it still puts up numbers I'm talking 57% percent winrates currently right now making it essentially one of the best decks in the game.

    But it isn't a villain and it's isn't played enough to be worth counter brewing against and very little satisfaction comes from beating it.

    Lee Sin by comparison is not an amazing deck hovering between 51 and 52 percent winrate but it's play patterns are dynamic enough to stick in the mind of the looser.

    You are getting beaten 100% when Lee Sin kicks you down to 0. My point is for me personally I find myself playing LOR far more when there is essentially a boss deck to beat, and far less when people can run any midrange soup and win.

    Don't pressure the devs to hotfix too fast in the future, enjoy each stage of the meta as it progresses, and let things breathe a bit...otherwise it's just gonna be Bilgewater for literally the next 10 years of this games life cycle.

     

  • Interesting opinion but it's not one that I agree with.

    Unbalance make it impossible to build a good deck due to the polarizing match up table.

    For example the only way to counter Azir/Irelia during it's prime was to play aggro decks, these decks got farmed by Tresh/Nasus  if you tried to build something to counter Tresh/Nasus then it would get farmed by Azir/Irelia, there was no way to build a deck that was good or even decent against both. And let's not get into Trundle/Lissandra who made any deck that couldn't win before turn 8 unplayable. 

    Finally you can't just base a deck power level based on win rate alone, Pirate Aggro always had a solid win rate due to how easy to play it is. You just play on curve and go face then finish your opponent with burn effects but if your early aggression get countered you might just well hit concede. Lee Sin/Zoe despite the the lower win rate is much better deck than pirate because of all the counter play it provides.

  • I understand where you're coming from, winrate alone isn't a sole measure of deck performance but when you measure the performance over time it gets far more informative.

    Like gangplank Sejuani for example another meta bilgewater staple is always just happy at the top of the meta, reminds me of what Shen decks used to be...I consider pirate aggro to be similar based solely on its solid performance longterm.

    But when updates come in and new decks aren't outperforming these old archetypes why play them at all? Then you run into a problem where longterm players just get bored of seeing the same thing over and over, 

    Like you could play Kenin right now with bounce girl, there are versions of that deck that do very well and are arguable far better than Lee Sin but until that list is perfected and is crystallized into something longterm nobody is gonna play.

    Then even worse potentially, without a dominant new deck to speak of, you then have nothing to build and tech against. Yes Azir Irelia might have been op (sitting at 53% right now very respectable) and TF Fizz (dead) so they needed hard nerfs and it took too long, I just think there's a happy medium.

    We want to see new decks at the top if the tier list but not oppressing players to the point of frustration.

    • I actually agree with Nifty on this one. Back when they first managed to fix Azir/Irelia I put out a post similar to his.

      It’s painful fighting the same thing over and over again. Especially if you can’t beat it. 

      Conversely, fighting a wide variety of decks, but all of them feel the same, is pretty boring. 

      Personally, I like it when there is a big enemy to fight. What I don’t like is when every person I fight is that big enemy

      • Quote From BingoNoEyes

        Personally, I like it when there is a big enemy to fight. What I don’t like is when every person I fight is that big enemy

        You realize that this is impossible to attain, right?

        If the enemy is big, it will have an enormous slice of the playrate pie, and you will fight it often (aka "every person I fight" in the common ccg slang).

        If it does not have a huge playrate, it's too small to be "the big enemy."

        That's just how the genre works. I don't know of any exceptions.

        • I’m aware that’s how it works. It’s the unfortunate bi-product of card games

  • You like card imbalance? No problem,  Hearthstone devs got your back.  As for LOR imma hard pass on that.