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.)
