Riot explains why they refuse to change League’s “high damage” power creep

Riot Games has responded to League of Legends players’ concern about the game’s ever-increasing “high-damage” gameplay, admitting a balance patch for the power creep won’t be coming anytime soon.

Many in the LoL community believe the game’s damage is too high since it gives ‘one-shot’ potential to a lot of characters. And Riot seemingly agrees.

YouTuber HuzzyGames was invited to a developer meeting and gave his recount of the biggest talking points including their view on the current overall damage output, claiming that Riot “knows the damage is high,” but is happy to keep it because “in essence, regional preferences vary a lot. They specifically said China loves high aggression, high damage.”

The League YouTuber added: “So in essence, that is why we have a crazy amount of damage in League, and it’s why it’s not going to go away.”

Huzzy’s account of the meeting caught fire in the League community. People were as disappointed at Riot for their decision as much as why they chose it. Senior game designer Matt ‘PhRoXzOn’ Leung-Harrison clarified the devs’ position on Reddit, and confirmed regional preferences are a regular part of internal discussions.

“We did say that certain regions have certain preferences (this doesn’t just mean China for example) regarding damage. And that we have a lot of discussions internally about it,” he said.

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“In that meeting, we did NOT say that damage in League is staying the way it is ad infinitum. Nor that we are happy or unhappy with where it is currently.”

 

PhRoXzOn further clarified what the team aims for when balancing League but explained why its current state won’t change anytime soon.

“Notably, there are a lot of flow on effects from changing damage that require weeks, if not months of follow-up work and instability,” PhRoXzOn continued. “Including completely upending the meta and game understanding for Pro play, so that’s also one of the considerations.

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“It would not be as simple as reducing damage by X% and the game is fixed.”