Wild Rift /dev: Keeping the Balance

This is part two of our /dev series on balance, featuring Lead Balance Designer, Alex “Wav3Break” Huang. The first part covers more of who the team is and our general philosophy around balance. Check it out here.

“-5 AD? LITERALLY unplayable!” “Why would you nerf Zed? EVERYONE can build Zhonya’s?!” Besides asking our trusty magic eight ball, we also inform ourselves with a lot of gameplay data when it comes to planning the buffs and nerfs for a patch. 

I’m going to shed some light on the basic thinking process we try to apply to each change we make and set the tone for how we will approach balance in the early stages of Wild Rift’s life cycle as a new game.

HOW DO WE DECIDE WHAT TO CHANGE?

As Jonathan wrote in his previous post, Wild Rift will employ a similar strategy to League PC in deciding on our changes for each patch. Much of our decision making will be guided by the differences between metrics like champion win rate and pick/ban rate over all skill levels in ranked play. The shape and degree of a change will depend on the nature of the issue.

For example, let’s suppose Ahri is pretty balanced in high-skill games but under-performing in lower-skill games to an alarming degree. This means we will likely look for a change that targets lower-skill players in particular while not impacting others. With that goal, we could decide to buff something like Ahri’s Mana Regeneration, as it would impact lower-skill players more; as we’d expect higher-skill players to be able to manage their mana more efficiently.

For each change however, there are often different options that could achieve the same desired outcome. Continuing with Ahri’s example, let’s suppose we also find that the item builds between low-skill Ahri players and high-skill Ahri players differ a lot. This could suggest that a recommended item set change is actually the better solution than adjusting Ahri’s numbers or mechanics. A designer would then find supporting evidence to make this pivot by examining how Ahri’s win rate fluctuates with what item she first buys and pitch it to the team. 

Since Wild Rift is a new game, most of the metrics available to us will be less reliable due to the relatively small sample size and competitive players still maturing their champion pools. This means there is a larger risk that the precision of our changes may sometimes be off. In situations where we have lower confidence, we will make changes in the direction we think is correct, but perhaps by a lower amount. 

Being new also means we are still learning what players like and dislike. It’s an exciting time for all of us as we try to solve the meta and come up with new strategies to win. That said, strategies that look numerically fair from data but straight-up feel un-fun to play against are things we are also prepared to address. These types of changes will likely take longer for us to evaluate however since we also don’t want to stifle your creativity!

WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT IN THE FUTURE?

Aside from the normal balance changes we will be doing on a regular basis, we are also looking to adopt some of the major gameplay systems that League PC has improved upon in the last couple of years. In particular, players have really enjoyed the variety that the Elemental Rift and Dragon Souls systems have created so we are currently exploring how to adapt these two systems into Wild Rift. We’re still a long ways off here, but we’re definitely looking into it!

We’re not aiming for complete parity with League PC due to our map being different, performance limitations, differences in dragon systems, and so on. Despite that, we do want League players to be able to carry over more of their knowledge from Summoner’s Rift onto Wild Rift. We hope to achieve that by keeping the most defining aspects of our future Elemental Rift and Dragon Soul systems similar to League PC’s. 

You might have also seen the item system rework over on League PC. While we’re still a long ways away from adapting most of those changes to Wild Rift, we are planning to replace Cooldown Reduction with League PC’s upcoming Ability Haste very soon. We are making this adaptation earlier since it lets us reap the benefits of removing the 40% Cooldown Reduction cap with relatively low cost. Once this shift is complete, Wild Rift’s item set will look more like League PC’s 2020 item set combined with the possibilities of uncapped cooldown reduction. Hopefully this leads to some interesting builds that feel unique to Wild Rift in their own right!

That’s all from me for now, and this look behind the scenes at Wild Rift’s balance. We’ll keep putting out balance changes and fixes as time goes on, so stay tuned to the patch notes!