Defining a balanced meta can be a little tricky, and of course there are various data points and metrics that the team is constantly monitoring and trying to improve. And I love the point made by synyster3 - Perfect balance isn't necessarily the target...the goal is a meta that's fresh, fun, and interesting. A meta where every deck has a 50% win rate, but they are all miserable to play and miserable to play against is not the target :)
But I agree with ChrisFly_ as well that sentiment and how we all feel when we play the meta are important indicators of how we're doing!
In our short time in Open Beta, I believe we've already observed three situations in the global meta, with pithy names I've chosen to categorize:
1. Flavor of the month - Whether we're looking at data or at community consensus, there are 1 or 2 decks that sit alone as top tier and there's not much debate.
Flavor of the week - Many decks seem to be OP, and there's no consensus between them. But the same handful of decks have staying power and don't see much rotation.
Flavor of the day - The community might latch on to one or two decks at a time, but they rotate in and out of power as their counters and are discovered and gain in popularity.
I think we could largely agree that Flavor of the Month is not where we want to be, and you'll notice our Live Balance effort will generally focus on that problem first and foremost. Between #2 and #3 is probably the sweet spot.
I know that game Live Balance teams typically get meme'd on, and TCGs are notoriously difficult to balance thanks to the sheer combinatorics....but I'm very proud of LoR's Live Balance and I hope you all are excited about them too! Although it's a lean team, they are passionate, incredibly knowledgeable, incredibly skilled, and they have already delivered a lot of positive changes since the first Preview Event. And they are only going to get better with time!
So keep the feedback coming! We'll be listening and continuing to work behind the scenes to make LoR better for you all.
Have there been any talks about the BO1 nature of the game? I feel like most of the complaints comes from players not being able to respond to many scenarios unless they dedicated their entire deck to just responding to the opponent. MTGA’s BO1 ladder became so unpopular for a while since the only decks you could bring in were decks that completely ignored your opponent by killing them or completely ignoring the opponent by taking nigh infinite turns and that’s because any deck in between wouldn’t be able to switch gears to deal with both styles of decks after they were matched up against them.
Hypothetically, would a BO3 format ever be possible for LoR?
Great points. Yep, we've definitely had discussions about the topic. We don't believe it's such a large problem that we need to focus on solving it now, but it's in the back of our minds. And I imagine we'll learn more if/when more of a competitive scene develops around the game.
BO3 and sideboards are probably the two most common ways to try to solve this, so I'd say they are hypothetically on the table but to not expect anything along these lines in the near future.
riotstrokke
Defining a balanced meta can be a little tricky, and of course there are various data points and metrics that the team is constantly monitoring and trying to improve. And I love the point made by synyster3 - Perfect balance isn't necessarily the target...the goal is a meta that's fresh, fun, and interesting. A meta where every deck has a 50% win rate, but they are all miserable to play and miserable to play against is not the target :)
But I agree with ChrisFly_ as well that sentiment and how we all feel when we play the meta are important indicators of how we're doing!
In our short time in Open Beta, I believe we've already observed three situations in the global meta, with pithy names I've chosen to categorize:
1. Flavor of the month - Whether we're looking at data or at community consensus, there are 1 or 2 decks that sit alone as top tier and there's not much debate.
Flavor of the week - Many decks seem to be OP, and there's no consensus between them. But the same handful of decks have staying power and don't see much rotation.
Flavor of the day - The community might latch on to one or two decks at a time, but they rotate in and out of power as their counters and are discovered and gain in popularity.
I think we could largely agree that Flavor of the Month is not where we want to be, and you'll notice our Live Balance effort will generally focus on that problem first and foremost. Between #2 and #3 is probably the sweet spot.
I know that game Live Balance teams typically get meme'd on, and TCGs are notoriously difficult to balance thanks to the sheer combinatorics....but I'm very proud of LoR's Live Balance and I hope you all are excited about them too! Although it's a lean team, they are passionate, incredibly knowledgeable, incredibly skilled, and they have already delivered a lot of positive changes since the first Preview Event. And they are only going to get better with time!
So keep the feedback coming! We'll be listening and continuing to work behind the scenes to make LoR better for you all.
riotstrokke
Great points. Yep, we've definitely had discussions about the topic. We don't believe it's such a large problem that we need to focus on solving it now, but it's in the back of our minds. And I imagine we'll learn more if/when more of a competitive scene develops around the game.
BO3 and sideboards are probably the two most common ways to try to solve this, so I'd say they are hypothetically on the table but to not expect anything along these lines in the near future.