Can't speak for Riot Games, but "nobody tweaks the game design based on game analytics" is just what.
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Riot Games is introducing unlock achievements with real money system in League of Legends called Eternals
- Thread starter Becks'
- Start date
User banned (2 days): antagonizing and harassing a developer over their work, bad faith trolling over multiple posts in the thread
Great, and you were the only employee so every employee had your exact experience. Also, you would have no reason to be dishonest about this and I should take your word as 100% evidence even though we've never met.
Because you don't have to MAKE the content. Instead of having to design, code, and release a new skin you just tweak some numbers. All the content is already in place this way across the board. I have already addressed this.
Oh it's actually even dumber than that. Not only do they not do this, but NO ONE in the company even HAS analytics. And if you ignore then you're "that kind" of person who ignores EVIDENCE
Fair enough on the personal experience thing, though I would argue pick/ban rates actually do not fluctuate a lot. Some heroes will always be safe picks by a big part of the community, be either due to its kit (take Pudge, for example) or because of its flair/power levels that can be achieved by high levels of play (think Invoker, Anti-mage, Terrorblade).
I should be more clear, I'm talking about in League of Legends because of the thread, I have no Dota experience.
"Just tweak the numbers" is about the dumbest thing I've read with regards to balance design in eons. A competitive game with millions of players and the world's biggest esports franchise is gonna "tweak the numbers" to sell some extra cheevos eh?
As I said in my previous reply, it's clear you made up your mind already and aren't receptive to any input.
Except I could 110% see them doing this lol Are we going to pretend Riot is some bastion of sophistication? This is the company where the COO was known for literally farting in his employee's faces right?
I know, though I believe one thing translates to another quite comfortably, considering how similar they are. Anyways, my point is that this is nothing new and I don't see this changing their design decisions any more than they already are by the desire to sell other cosmetics.
You vastly underestimate the amount of work needed to rebalance heroes, or really - how game development works in general.
You're not gonna change the entire balance of your game with millions of daily active users because you want to sell a few extra 7$ packs...
Wish I could be that optimistic, but I'm just not. I think any way they can increase revenue, they will.
Riot has been called out repeatedly by investors for refusing to maximize its revenue in the past.
Which is exactly why they would be tempted for more predatory monetization strategies
It's still by any measure far easier to adjust a champion's strength than design/code a new skin
They are two entirely different, incomparable lines of work to be honest.
You pay for the achievements to be enabled, then you have to unlock them and you get a cosmetic reward.
Technically speaking, by definition of the word, Rhinos count as unicorns, lol.
Where did I say they were the same? I'm saying, one requires less effort than the other if you are only focused on making certain champions stronger and not the health of your meta.
They require different kinds of effort, and ideally you tweak balance for the health of the meta, if you're just buffing heroes on a whim, that's not doing a good job with balance and you might as well not be doing anything, in that case yeah it's "easier" but that's also doing a shitty job in the first place.
Actually, not necessarily. I'm not sure what Riot's pipeline is - But I'd imagine they have a lot more artists and developers than designers. And I'm guessing each hero rebalance has to be thoroughly tested etc. And then there's community reaction to think about...
I'd bet it'll be faarrr easier for them to produce a cosmetic skin.
I don't understand what is getting lost in the conversation here. We're talking about the hypothetical temptation to throw things like intense balance testing out the window in order to sell more of these packs
Your direct [albeit anecdotal] experience pales in comparison to baseless guesses and wild accusations!
The thing is, systems like this aren't designed for you. They're made for more susceptible targets; gambling addicts with lootboxes, people who are very affected by "have-have-not" with fancy skins, and in many cases literal children.
But that doesn't make any sense. Surely you would spend that dev time on the most popular champs at the moment instead of buffing less popular devs to hope people buy that content.
Maybe it's because we realize no one will ever risk ruining a game with millions of DAU that is played on a professional level and is dependent on its balancing to work - by throwing balancing out the window just to sell some achievement thing?
If that's your stance, totally fine. We can agree to disagree without completely misframing each other's arguments.
Possibly, and that is basically what they already do
My point is it would potentially be far easier because it requires less dev-time to make unpopular champions popular if you're not concerned about overall game health and so there's a temptation there that could potentially negatively impact the game.
Riot usually focuses on making skins for the popular champions, and tweaking mechanically the less popular ones.
It's why Lux has a bajillion skins and virtually unchanged move set since, like the beginning.
You primarily buy a skin for yourself, as you have to look at it the most, but other people can enjoy the way it looks as well. I'm sure there are people who buy them just to flex, but a different costume can change/enhance the feel of a character. Not only is there already a system in place to show mastery of a champion, this just puts a shell on top of that with the sole purpose of flexing.
To be honest, it's just lame. Like someone mentioned elsewhere, even letting someone with the mastery use a character's base splash as an icon would be better than this.
Honestly I'm not the a big fan of microtransactions but thinking about this and aside from the price I think this is... fine? I mean yes such stats should be tracked for everyone for free and then maybe you have to pay to show them off on your loading screen would be a better option in my opinion but I digress. This is just people paying to show off how "cool" they are and has zero impact on the game itself and not even on the aesthetics so if people really want to throw away their money to flex their muscles at others, so be it.
Pretty much. It's probably the same kind of people who bought or rented easy gamerscore/easy achievement games like Avatar The Last Airbender for the Xbox 360 for the sole reason of boosting their gamer points.
People have been doing this for years, ever since the dawn of the system. Avatar, Barbie games, etc.
This whole system seems stupid, but harmless. It's not gambling. It's not P2W. It's some dumb icons and a way to flex on people that you spent money. Shrug.
I don't think I misframed you argument?
Look, I get mistrusting companies like Riot, but at the end of the day, they thing they care about most is their game's health - They can't create new weird monetization plans without it, now can they? There's no reason to imply people at Riot would knowingly work to make their game worse.
But they're both equally cosmetic. You can just ignore both without having your game impacted in any way.
As far as monetization schemes go, this one is pretty harmless IMO.
Heya - actual Riot employee here.
Game & system designers, as well as most people in the company, don't even have permissions (let alone have a need) to view this kind of data. If anything, the separation between revenue-generating stuff & core systems stuff (aka balance, champ design, matchmaking, things of that ilk) are kept intentionally separate because of fears of this, but also because it doesn't improve the design/product quality of things they work on.
In my four years here, I think the only thing that's close to "they make balance or game system changes for $" is the idea about not making cosmetics or big system changes for champions that are up for some type of rework in the near future, which is mostly due to how that would feel as a player, than revenue reasons. Even in that scenario, a champ rework team isn't being held accountable to champs or skins sold, because sales != satisfaction. It's also pretty shortsighted shitty business to chase profit over game balance, so even the revenue people don't want them to care about that.
As for Eternals, I don't work on that feature so I can't really speak to the why and how, but can say that the team in charge of it (the publishers, the designers, the bean counters, and leaders) are paying attention to all the feedback players are saying about the system, including threads like this. It might not be the most satisfying answer, but it is the truth, and the teams involved with it are talking about what's being talked about.
You did, in fact you're misframing it even in this comment by saying "actively work to make their game worse", I have never said that. I said there's a temptation to be less concerned about overall balance in favor of champion popularity if the latter is monetized.
Do I think they'd just go? "hmmm how can we make the game worse today?" No, this is just absurdism. I'm just saying, maybe there's a champion who's been at the bottom tier for a long time due to a difficult to balance kit and now they're tempted to give it a huge number buff vs. putting in the work to fix the kit so they can capitalize on some sweet acheivement money.
The original misframing I feel is because my argument is saying it'd be easier to change these numbers than design new skins if you aren't concerned about balance, and you're saying "no it's harder because you have to be concerned about balance". My entire hypothetical is centered around them not being concerned about this. I agree that it SHOULD be harder, because they SHOULD be concerned and testing a lot, I'm just concerned they may NOT if there's financial incentive to ignore these things.
Yeah exactly. Not worth getting worked up over, let alone slinging shit at Riot.
I mean, I appreciate the sentiment, but I can't imagine this will sway anyone's opinion about it. Say I believed this introduction was 100% nefarious, would I just expect you to go into threads and admit it?
I agree it would be short-sighted to sacrifice satisfaction for sales, that's why I'm concerned in the first place.
I mean, is it not ok to discuss it? This is a video-game forum, in a thread about a game where I'd like to discuss said game.