MJ: The way the meta rapidly shifts with updates to champions, such as the Juggernaut patch and the Marksman patch, bringing new champions to the fore, how difficult is that for professional teams to adapt to? Especially when we're talking about events or international tournaments, where they haven't had a lot of time to prepare? Martin is an analyst for the European LCS and part of Riot’s broadcast team as well as a former professional player. Fortunately I had the expert analysis of Martin ‘Deficio’ Lynge to help me work through these thoughts. Nonetheless, balance is a stick often used to beat Riot, with players angry that their favourite champions have fallen out of favour, or simply feeling that changes to the meta go against that idea of overall balance rather than working towards it as a theoretical end point.įollowing up from my interview with Greg Street on what has sometimes been referred to as a ‘rotating meta’ in League of Legends, it seemed pertinent to try and analyse how these balance and design decisions impact on LoL as an eSport. Greg Street noted that he doesn’t think true balance is ever going to be possible for LoL, but that they use the concept as a framework or guideline for all of their changes instead. We’re in some ways conditioned to expect developers to support their multiplayer games for many years, with the nebulous never-ending goal of polishing their rough gem of a game into a dazzling diamond, while updating and adding to it at the same time. The idea of ‘balance’ as the supposed holy grail of any multi-player game, is out-dated. If you haven't already, you might prefer to have a read of the earlier interview first as it's a useful reference point for some of the topics of discussion! As a follow-up to his interview with League Of Legends' design director, Greg Street, Michael got in touch with professional player-turned-caster Martin 'Deficio' Lynge to discuss how ideas of balance and tweaks to the game by the design team impact the world of esports.
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