League of Legends parody slams Riot devs on champion balancing issues

Comments made by a League of Legends developer regarding champion balancing sparked community backlash on January 9, leading to an epic parody video calling out Riot Games.

The LoL player base has been vocal about the imbalances seen in champions shortly after launch, such as Zoe, Aphelios, and Qiyana as well as reworked characters in Akali and Galio, just to name a few.

Riot Games have a great track record of considering community feedback when deciding on the buffs/nerfs they ship in every patch. But a series of interactions on January 8 between Nathan ‘RiotLutzburg’ Lutz and concerned players took a sour turn for the fan base.

In response to the conversation, popular League of Legends YouTuber ‘ForestWithin’ stitched together a montage of astonishing plays featuring Riot’s recent line of champs.

While watching the video, ForestWithin edited the compilation to have Lutzburg’s comments echoing throughout the clips as the carnage unfolds.

“Being good at playing a certain character in a video game is valuable,” said Lutzberg in reply to a player lobbying for the devs to listen to suggestions. “But I think I’ll take the 200+ collective years of professional game design experience.”

Though it should be noted that while the Twitter thread and Reddit post for ForestWithin’s video features noticeable pushback from the community, Lutzberg’s Reddit comment on r/Wukongmains about the chronology of Wukong’s rework is generally positive, at the time of writing.

It looks like the dev’s choice of words on Twitter got him in hot water, setting off waves of criticism toward the Rioter.

“While I agree in part with the Rioter in which sometimes one-tricks can over-exaggerate,” Reddit user ‘Lenticious’ said. “I also agree with the point that ‘200 collective years’ of experience don’t mean as much as he makes them sound when we consider abominations like pre-nerfed Zoe or Aphelios made it to live.”

“Another Rioter with a huge ego and cares more about coming up with creative ideas and to get praised by all the other mindless Rioters. Great champion design and balance team!” Twitter user ‘kurtaviousxanax’ said.

Since memes are a staple in the LoL community and patches are typically caused by the ebb and flow of over/underpowered Champs in the game, Riot might not have seen the last of dev’s comments used against them.