What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
Reworks are generally designed to make champions more healthy, for example by fixing up broken
mechanics, but often times this results in making them a lot less fun to play.
We wanted to explore this topic and consider the different things that go into reworking
a champion, and how those changes actually affect how interesting or exciting they are
to play.
We’ve talked a ton about reworks in the past, but we’ve never actually sat down
at discussed whether they are actually FUN to play or not, so it seemed like a pretty
good idea to talk about broken mechanics, clunkiness and the perception of fun.
And if you enjoy the video definitely hit that like button because if this video hits,
let’s say ratings, then I’m gonna .
Riot Fizz Enthusiast was recently talking about the concept of fun and how that ties
into the rework process.
There’s a handful of reasons that Riot uses as criteria for picking out which champions
need reworks the most, and one of the most popular reasons is to fix unhealthy mechanics.
So we’ve talked about unhealthy mechanics before, and how Riot believes that if a champion
can’t do something that makes the enemy at least a little frustrated, then the champion
isn’t worth playing, but you have to draw a line somewhere and a lot of the time reworks
come around as a result of mechanics being more frustrating to play against than they
are fun to play.
Fizz Enthusiast weighed in on this concept using Fizz as his example, since a lot of
players haven’t been all that happy with the Fizz rework.
So before his rework, Fizz had some pretty serious insta-kill potential that players
obviously had a ton of fun using.
Using W-Q to burst out a squishy was insanely fun to Fizz players, there’s no doubt about
that.
The issue was that it hurt the amount of fun the enemy team could derive from playing in
that game, and it was hurting it to the point where people just hated playing League if
they had to play against Fizz.
Fizz Enthusiast explained this point by talking about holistic fun - essentially the amount
of fun that everyone in the game is having as a group.
Say for example that before Fizz’s rework, getting insta WQ kills was giving you a solid
10 points of fun out of the maximum of 10.
Now also assume that thanks to the Fizz that is destroying everything, no one else on your
team is having a bad time so they would be at a 10/10 as well.
That means on your team, out of 50 points of fun, you’ve nailed all 50, great!
But for the enemy team playing against the fed Fizz and getting instakilled?
It’s probably more like 2/10 each.
Add it all together, and you’re getting only 60 points of fun out of the maximum of
100.
This is where these ‘health-driven’ reworks really come into play, it’s not just about
changing how players enjoy one champion, it’s about making that champion better for the
game in general.
Let’s use that same example to talk about Fizz after his rework - where he’s arguably
a lot less fun, maybe something like 6/10.
As the Fizz player, the game isn’t nearly as fun as it was before the rework, but the
rest of your team is still having a great time at 10/10.
But for the people playing against Fizz, let’s say the game is a little more fun for them.
Even if it only increased a tiny amount - like up to 3/10 instead of 2/10, that would make
a huge difference.
Yes, the Fizz player has lost out on a bit of the joy of dominating with Fizz, but the
game is now less frustrating for the enemy team and overall, people are enjoying the
game more.
In this case, it would be 61/100 - 6 points from Fizz, 10 from each of his teammates,
and 15 for the enemy team.
Obviously these numbers are pretty arbitrary and it’s a weird way of looking at it, but
it’s just an example of how changes to champions might make them seem less fun, but it’s
really important for the game health overall.
Riot will always value ‘fun to play’ higher than ‘frustrating to play against’ but
they have to strike the right balance.
A huge part of this is trying to find a way to give the fun back to the reworked champion
in a healthy way.
If reworked Fizz without the W-Q instakill was at 6/10, Riot needs to find a way to give
him that 4/10 back, with one catch - it has to be fair so that it’s not too frustrating
for the enemy team.
This is really the main reason that reworks can result in less exciting gameplay - when
you pick up a champion to play a game with, you want to abuse their broken and frustrating
mechanics because those things are obviously really fun to use.
But for the enemy team, that game now sucks because you’re doing those things, meaning
it’s all out of balance and just kinda bad for the game.
One pretty successful example of Riot doing a good job with this is the Katarina rework.
She might have been a 10/10 fun pub-stomper before her rework, but afterwards she was
definitely less raw fun to play in terms of using frustrating, unstoppable mechanics against
the enemy team.
To add fun back into Katarina, Riot used the dagger mechanic to offer her new ways to reset
Shunpo and keep skipping around the map.
This was a really health change because it encourages both reactive and proactive thinking,
while being fun to both play and play against.
You feel awesome if you pull off an awesome move with her dagger resets, and it feels
like you have a fair chance to outplay a Katarina that is trying it against you, so that’s
fun too!
This is the main reason that Riot is always going to get backlash when they rework popular
champions.
The things players love about a champion tends to be the things that are most frustrating
for enemies - and that means popular champions that need reworks are pretty much always doing
something unfair, and Riot are forced to find a way to compensate for that without introducing
any more broken shit into the game.
On the flip side, boring champions that get reworks are usually really well received,
because they usually had awful gameplay beforehand so any kind of update is a welcome change.
The next thing related to fun that was touched on by Fizz Enthusiast was clunkiness, which
is actually a pretty tricky concept to nail down by the easiest way to think about is
to play some Lucian or Yasuo and then swap to another champion.
Lucian and Yasuo both feel seriously smooth because their auto-attacks, movement abilities
and damage abilities all flow together in a really fluid way, which is a huge part of
why they are both seriously fun to play and really satisfying to outplay people with.
Riot can’t design every single champion to have a fluid kit though, because it only
occurs in a certain cases where it suits the champion, and having a lot of really smooth
champions will just make everyone pick that over the closest clunky alternative just because
the kit is more fun to use.
Fizz Enthusiast pointed out that a while ago, there was a time where almost every blind
pick game had Yasuo and Lucian in it - even though those champions weren’t particularly
strong at the time.
People eventually started banning Lucian despite the fact that he had a winrate below 50%,
simply because they were totally fed up with playing the same game every time - just with
and against Lucian.
A big part of not being clunky is having an escape mechanic, because it adds the feeling
of fluidity into a champion’s kit.
This was a big part of why Lucian was popular over other ADCs like Jinx - why pick someone
that does the same job but is slow and can’t escape, making them riskier and maybe even
boring?
Riot have a tough time designing champions because of this, because they know that there
has to be SOME clunkiness to introduce variety into the game, while the player base just
wants rid of clunkiness entirely.
This is actually one of the biggest issues that League players have when they are trying
out DOTA actually - because DOTA has one mechanic present on all heroes that is innately clunky.
It’s called turn speed, and it means exactly what it sounds like - unlike League of Legends
where moving in the opposite direction will occur instantly no matter what champion you
play, all DOTA heroes have a delay where they have to turn to face the new direction before
they will start moving that way.
Compared to League, it makes movement seriously clunky and it can be really jarring for a
League player to deal with, but even though DOTA has this seriously clunky feature, almost
every single hero gets played in ranked or at the professional level.
Surprising, turn speed is a huge factor in keeping things diverse, because it’s essentially
a balancing lever for melee vs range.
For example think about something like Garen and Ashe.
You can’t really play Garen in High ELO League, because he’s simply too slow to
get into range to be effective, whereas Ashe can kite insanely well in order to dps and
stay safe simultaneously, just by walking back, attacking, and then repeating those
two steps.
Now compare that to what happens in DOTA, where turn speed is a thing.
If Garen was chasing Ashe and Ashe had a turn speed, she wouldn’t be able to orb-walk
as effectively because every attack and movement command would have that turn speed as a delay
in between.
Garen on the other hand would be able to just charge straight at Ashe without worrying about
turn speed - he’s only heading in one direction.
If Ashe wanted to turn around to attack Garen, she’d have to put herself in way more danger
to do so by giving Garen the chance to close the distance between them.
This is why heroes like Garen who totally suck at high ELO on League, are actually still
viable in DOTA - because ranged carries have to deal with that clunky turn speed to be
effective, it’s an extra cost they will have to pay if they want to keep dealing damage
from a safe distance.
This is a big part of what makes DOTA so diverse compared to League, and it’s a reasonable
example of clunky mechanics just being a part of the game that players have to accept will
always exist.
Anyway that just about wraps up everything we wanted to talk about regarding reworks
and making champions fun - balancing fun against frustration is hard to do, and Riot are always
looking for ways to add fun in ways that will cause minimal frustration as a result.
As far as clunkiness goes, it would be great in a perfect world where no champion was clunky
so there was no damage to champion variety, but those champions take so long to design
to get that smooth effect that it’s not realistic for Riot to be able to do that.
As a result, they pretty much have no choice but to design champions that are at least
a little clunky, so that they won’t just be automatically ruled out of play because
of their more fun and fluid counterparts.
Make sure you leave us a comment with your thoughts on reworks so far, and whether you
think Riot has done a good job in making gameplay healthier without sacrificing too much fun
in the process.
And it looks like that’s gonna be it from me, if you enjoyed the video drop a like,
subscribe if you want, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you guys next time!