Champion Mastery, Agency, and Balance | League of Legends

I hope you enjoy the video!

[redmouse]

Phreak: "20 minutes or less"
Runtime: 57 minutes

Gonna be a good one lol

[varelasensei]

Thanks for this video Phreak. Whether I agree or disagree, this type of transparency is insightful and important.

[Icerite]

Timestamps:
0:23 What is this presentation?
1:43 Why do champion balance?
4:57 Champion mastery
11:44 Intuitively high mastery champions
15:09 Unintuitively high mastery champions
18:14 Intuitively low mastery champions
21:07 Unintuitively low mastery champions
25:14 Champion agency
32:47 Agency 1: Power curves
36:46 Agency 2: Kit versatility
43:33 Agency 3: Counter-play
50:14 Addendum 1: Who is the game for?
51:31 Addendum 2: Player sentiment
54:24 Addendum 3: Objectivity vs. design instinct

[liare]

Phreak, you're a beast for being so open with the community regarding your thought-process on stuff like this, and having the energy to make this kind of content (on what I guess is your free time). Obvious you really really care about the game. Anyway great vid and looking forward to the next patch rundown 😊🤘.

[Netsuko]

Whether you agree or disagree with Phreak, I think it's safe to say that this level of direct communication between devs and players is commendable and sadly a very rare thing these days, especially when it comes to large games.

[Wigglewaggles]

So thankful the devs communicate this much with the community. Fans of other games know how truly rare that is

[LJ_Callisto]

I love these game designs breakdowns! One of my favorite parts about League and extremely helpful for not just understanding what changes are made but more importantly Why they are made. These videos give me so much hope for the future of League.

[scdocarlos]

Love these videos on the inner logic behind these patches. Cool behind the scenes stuff

[connormckinley]

I don’t know how many of these comments you read Phreak, but I just wanted to say that while you have made some decisions I disagree with before, the vast majority of the work that you do has been strictly correct decisions for the game. Balance changes have gotten much tighter, much less volatile, and far more effective in the time you have been the balance team lead as compared to times past (Been playing since season 6, I would remember). Beyond that you’ve been a major voice in making genuinely major changes to the game like boot prices, item and class balancing, runes, pro skew changes, and many more things I’m honestly probably forgetting.

Despite all the criticism you get - a portion of it deserved - I think you have been a greatly positive influence on league of legends, and the value of the advanced insights you have brought to the table during your time as the balance team lead are hard to overstate. League only gets harder to regulate as time goes on but I think the work you and your team have done has - for the first time I can recall - placed the developers at riot one step ahead of leagues complexity creep, and the game is looking better for it. It’s phreak season indeed; and the game would be worse if it wasn’t.

[denthance]

Super good video, a lot of people don't understand how rare this amount of communication and transparency is from game developers towards their players. Keep makin videos like this dude :)

[nathanfee]

Thanks for this insight Phreak! You're one of the few game devs who's willing to lay it out for the community!

[karmanomicon]

We as a comminity need to acknowledge that this level of communication and transparency is rare in the gaming world, regardless of where we stand with the content.

This is good.

[animagamer]

Hahaha, the running joke of Phreak saying "Let's see if we can get this done in x amount of time" then looking down to see that the video is more than double that length... It's just peak Phreak!

[divad_doodles]

As someone in college for Comp Sci and Game Design who wants do do things like this for a living, these videos are SOOOO COOOOL

[gingeas]

This is an insanely refreshing level of communication

[miraclehuman]

people get really angry when people say their champ is easy to play but how hard the champ is to play doesn't equal how good you are at that champ. thats why i usually regardless of the champ try to acknowledge how hard a champ is even if it isnt insanely hard

[jeanegreene]

Ivern's micro is more intensive than the vast majority of champions, mainly because to get good value out of his ult and his W passive you have to simultaneously kite at low range and micro Daisy so that she stays ontop of people after autoing.

[PalPlays]

Never lose the fire, Phreak! Your passion inspires me to keep at my DnD 5th Edition rework in the hopes of being a gamedev one day!

[ShadowBlade]

Thank you for taking the time to make this video! Learning this view point is helpful

[green]

I still enjoy these videos despite the fact I stopped playing due to vanguard privacy concerns. (so you're doing a good job)