The Legends of Runeterra Competitive subreddit, /r/LoRCompetitive, hosted an end-of-year "2020 Wrapped" roundtable discussion that included one very special guest: Legends of Runeterra's Live Design Lead, Steve "RubinZoo" Rubin. Most of the discussion was around the recent seasonal tournaments and some of the design philosophies behind LoR's balancing, but Steve did allude to how the holidays are delaying balance changes and ask for some player patience.
"When is the next balance patch coming? A lot of people expected 1.16 to be a balance patch [hoped for some Go Hard nerfs], but there was nothing."
Quote From Steve 'RubinZoo' Rubin This is definitely an interesting time for us, and I’ll say that this next balance patch is going to probably be a bit off our normal cadence because of how the holidays are working out. We definitely want to get in those balance changes as we see fit, but we also need to adhere to our release schedule. As much as I’d love to throw in a bunch of changes, nobody's working right now. This is actually my first day off for Winter Break like all of Riot.
The next patch unfortunately is probably not going to be until early February. We have a patch lined up for January, but it is a situation where a lot of those changes have already gone in. We are looking to hopefully have some player patience with us getting this next patch out, though we have a long time to work on it and make sure that it really resonates with the players.
We already knew that under normal circumstances, the lead time for balance changes is 3-4 weeks total; however, this is the first news we've heard about how the seasonal holidays might affect this schedule. We also know that most of that time is spent testing the changes, but a significant amount is spent distributing the changes through the necessary channels to have it ready for simultaneous deployment on all platforms (e.g., iTunes and Google Play store). Within the game client, we can also see from the Labs' splash screen that all 3 won't expire until Tuesday, January 12th, which usually heralds the next patch. If that's the balance patch that Steve Rubin alluded to, that could mean we won't be seeing any changes to any of the new Cosmic Creation cards until 4 weeks later -- February 9th.
Of course, as awful as 6 more weeks of a The Grand Plaza meta sounds, it's important to remember what is disrupting the patch schedule -- our Riot devs enjoying a much-deserved holiday respite.
You can watch the full video of /r/LoRCompetitive's roundtable discussion below.
How do you feel about this potential delay in balance changes? Let us know below!
Comments
The problem is not that they take 2 months (December and January) to introduce balance changes. The problem is that we are going to get to January and they are not going to solve the real problem of the game (kda cards and landmark interaction) and people are going to feel quite dissatisfied. I don't know, I'm a little tired of the excuses that they don't make balance changes because of tournaments. Tournaments can be played with an older patch...
Two months without a balance change is a bit too long. That being said, it doesn't bother me that much. Runeterra is not my only game in my catalog.
I’m torn. I do believe that game developers deserve a good work-life balance, and I want to play games that promote that. But does this mean we have to go two months without balance fixes? I work for a software company that manages a good work-life balance, and there are still enough people in the office around the holidays to keep support and sales working like normal. I suppose the difference is that we have a large enough staff to allow us to maintain critical processes even while most people are vacationing. I get the impression that LoR’s team is actually pretty small.
So, is the size of LoR’s team appropriate, or are penny-pinchers in management keeping it too small? I would like to believe that a game as successful as this could handle basic balance changes, etc. around the holidays without overworking their employees
I don't think we know the size of the entire team, but Live Design, the group responsible for balance patches, is two people: Steve Rubin and Dave (I forget his last name). Steve mentions that he has other duties as well; I'm not sure about Dave.
If that sounds small, compare to Hearthstone who has no dedicated Live Design team and has to pull developers off other projects whenever they do a balance patch. Candidly, that's why when Hearthstone "balances" a card, they usually just make a popular card unplayable -- that doesn't take as much labor as tuning a card to be fair but still viable, or improving unpopular cards.
Thanks. The more I think about this from my perspective as a software developer, the more it seems like a problem. A process that I assume is high-priority can be disrupted for a month or two because one key person takes a week off. That should not happen in a mature software development process.
Either they don’t actually consider balance to be a priority, or they don’t have the staff to deal with predictable interruptions, or they have an inflexible process that depends on key people despite having a large staff. All of those would be concerning for different reasons.
They give every impression that balance changes are a priority, but maybe they aren’t. That would come as a surprise to me and most other people who read news and comment online, though maybe the game has a silent majority who don’t care as much about that. I’m not sure. It would certainly change my opinion of the game if I learned that balance was an afterthought, though.
If balance IS a priority, then they should be able to do something about issues like this. My company has handled several emergencies during the holidays, even though normal development has slowed down significantly. I would think that balance decisions like this need a team of several people, and in a pinch decisions can be made by any two of them. Of course, they’d USUALLY want most of the team (including the lead) involved, but they could have a process for a skeleton staff to still tweak a card at this time. Maybe one lead is involved most of the time, but for the other people this would be 8-10 hours a week alongside their other responsibilities. That means that in the budget, the balance team requires about 2 FTEs.
If they can’t afford 2 salaries to balance a competitive game, then I worry about the viability of the genre. Sure, I’d understand a small indie company responding slowly over the holidays, but if one of the biggest online CCGs can’t afford it, then the hobby may be in trouble.
Maybe they DO prioritize balance and DO have the budget for enough staff, but they just don’t have a process that allows them to do anything when Steve Rubin is out. That’s an understandable situation for a newish development team to find themselves in, but I hope that this serves as a wake-up call. Being overly dependent on one person can lead to huge disasters.
I suspect that that last possibility has a lot of truth to it. When Bastion’s balance was off, Rubin said “[The things] I’m working on make it a bit hard for LoR Live Design to keep up... patch day is incredibly stressful for me.” If I were the manager of a key employee who felt the need to say that publicly, I’d certainly do something about it.
EDIT: Here’s the source for the quote above. That article does confirm that it’s just two people (Steve Rubin and Dave Smith) making balance decisions.
Once upon a time there was a card game that had balance patches on the fly huge support from the devs and gave the community the deserved feedback. I guess success has defeated their will to work harder
I think they might lock in changes sooner if the state is too dire
I don't think the grand plaza is that big of a deal, maybe the health buff it's a bit too much, but i'd say the power of the card is all right.
Go hard on the other hand is sickening, it actually works only in 1 deck, TF go hard, because other decks even if they draw like crazy can't tutor it. The problem is that in that particular deck the card is broken.
After they have pack your bags in hand, if they play a bit smart, they lock your board while continuing to develop their's. You aren't safe if they have a single spell mana available.
TF go hard has some weakness like fearsome or big overwhelming dudes, but it ends there. It's not even possible to outhealing it with control decks like zombie anivia or some targon things because Ledros takes care of that.
What is worse is that go hard counters plaza decks, so if the plaza see a lot of play go hard will even more
The current Go Hard deck is really what's keeping me from playing ladder. It is so tedious to play against.
The Grand Plaza all day, every day until February 9th. Sounds like a wonderful opportunity to work through my Steam backlog, work out, or do just about anything other than playing LoR.