League of Legends patch 26.18 is here, and Game Design Lead Matt ‘Phroxzon’ Leung-Harrison has taken it upon himself once more to address the frustration in the room. While balance can often be boiled down to a character feeling strong or winning too often, it also matters if they’re annoying to play against. Tackling this isn’t a simple job, however. Not only is Phroxzon a believer in the importance of keeping some friction in the meta, but he also explains how dramatically opinions can vary between different player groups.
Phroxzon admits frustration has “been a major topic” in the League of Legends community of late. He’s even earned himself a reputation as ‘The Frustration Man’ for claiming that the MOBA needs a certain amount of pushback in order to create “highs and lows and texture and variety.” He stands by that stance: “We really value variety, and variety can sometimes be frustrating or difficult to play against.”
In the case of ‘mages bot,’ which has been among the hottest topics in more recent League of Legends metas, Phroxzon notes that “there’s a significant group of players who enjoy playing mages bot,” but also adds that the team wouldn’t want to remove the strategy entirely “because we think that it’s healthy to play against mages bot sometimes.” He says Riot is aware that there’s a level where it can get “too far out of line, which is why we made a bunch of changes to make support roaming a lot less effective, or to make playing against mages bot a little more tolerable.”
He notes that frustration can be displayed in a wide range of ways, and explains that the likes of ban rates and player feedback can vary significantly between regions. For example, frequently banned champ Zed has always avoided much attention in China, while Morgana gets removed more frequently there and Caitlyn is a much more “high-popularity, high-frustration champion.” Seraphine “rates very highly on our frustration surveys” among western audiences, but “is basically not really complained about in eastern regions.”
“One of the things that we’ve just kind of accepted is that we can’t make everybody happy at the same time,” Phroxzon continues. Another common discrepancy is between pro play and ordinary public matches. “We prioritize the average players of the game very highly, and we also want to prioritize the pro game having a great viewing experience.” That naturally causes clashes: making a ‘simple’ champion like Nasus viable in pro could push him to “a level of power that might be considered frustrating for regular players.”
With 173 champions and climbing, it’s understandable that balancing League of Legends perfectly is “practically impossible to do.” Phroxzon believes that helps make the game “really exciting day to day, and week to week,” however. For the most recent patch, he says Riot was “looking at addressing some of those frustration outliers.” That includes nerfs to the likes of Syndra and Seraphine, while light fighters such as Master Yi and Viego get some love.
The most changes in League of Legends patch 26.18 are for Cassiopeia. Phroxon says Riot is “trying to thread the needle” because while Cass is considered “extremely powerful” in pro play, she isn’t as strong among regular players. “Hearkening back to the champion fantasy conversations, we think it’s really important that Cassio is a strong mage in the early levels,” Phroxzon explains, but “she’s carried a lot by her base damage.” As such, her ‘power budget’ is being shifted “away from the early game and into scaling AP ratios that we think are better utilized by regular players.”
Phroxzon hopes his frank conversations add some “perspective and transparency” about how Riot considers balancing around the more ‘frustrating’ members of its roster. “We want certain champions to be strong in the ways they express their fantasy, and that can be frustrating sometimes, especially when it’s something that’s not seen very often.”