In a random turn of events, while standing in the two and a half hour line for Riot’s League of Legends Riftwalk, a PAX East employee happened to notice my media badge. He asked me if I wanted to meet and chat with a Riot employee. Initially, being too starstruck to believe I could actually get such a chance, I shook my head no. (Really, Maggie. How silly could you be?!) I changed my mind rather quickly, and was put in contact with none other than Riot’s own Patch Notes writer, Patrick Scarborough aka Scarizard. After he explained how the Amumu cosplayer had just handed him a menacing lemon, I got to hang out with Scarizard for a 25 minute interview that answered some of the communities current questions.
Who are you, and what do you do at Riot?
– My name is Patrick Scarborough, I go by Scarizard. I work in what we call gameplay communications. I was a designer for a really long time. I work with what we call the balance team specifically, but the design discipline as a whole in League of Legends. In helping to kind of understand the narratives of the changes and kind of help draw them up in a way that players can understand when we put them out there. Stuff like patch notes writing is one, the podcasts that we do, the livestreams that we do, the run down that we did, and that we may do again.
Personally, what roll do you like to play? What champion do you main?
– Traditionally, I play a lot of top lane. Only because there is a wide range of things you can take there. My top four…I have lots of favorites. I play a lot of weird stuff. I do play a lot of Jihn (Not top though, good call Mr. Scarborough) At certain points in the season, I was top 100 in the world for Illaoi, Atrox, Mordekaiser, and Sion. The champions that I will say that I main would be Ekko, Sion, Illaoi, and Kha’Zix. Those are probably my top four. I have level five mastery on twenty one champions, ya know…gotta catch em’ all. I play around on a lot of different things.
Recently, it feels like the game balance favors tank/bruiser champions. Why doesn’t it feel like there’s an even balance across the game as a whole?
–Certainly, and I’d say probably in maybe..the last five patches or so, I would say that tank champions have been on the rise. If you look at the actual changes that have been made to the game, none of them are explicitly…I mean, you can even read through read through every patch note if you want…there are very few to none in terms of changes like ‘We want tank champions to be better!’ We did some kind of rejiggering of the resolve tree, because it just wasn’t good for tanks, that isn’t to say we made tanks better in that sense. We do a lot of shifts every year in pre-season, and we have wide narratives for things we want to accomplish, like marksman diversity. Making them feel different from one another, introducing a lot of specific item changes that are going to allow them to do that. That’s a stated goal, but it isn’t the only thing we do. We don’t want these patches for mid season. Mid-season has a mage focus, but we don’t want it to feel like, if you don’t play mages, that there’s nothing for you in mid-season. We’ve objectives tuning, a lot of item changes, and we have the elemental dragons and things like that…. But, if you want to say that recently tanks have been dominate, I can’t argue with you there. We are trying to make the game more balanced with the patches. I think if you look at 6.8, you’ll see big changes to frozen fist, grasp of the undying, corrupting potion, a lot of these things will change these champions, Ekko specifically. We have more things coming in 6.9, in the giant wash of things as well like sunfire cape and cinderhulk..trying to make cinderhulk a little better, and sunfire cape a little worse, but it’s stuff like that, where every single patch is focused on making a more level playing field. Sometimes, we will take baby steps toward our solutions, and sometimes we will take larger swings based on our confidence. I think the tank problem is one where, in my opinion..if you look at I think, 6.3-6.4, you saw Nautilus, Rammus..you were seeing true tanks, and then you started to get into the hybrid, fighter tanks. At first we thought, ok..maybe it’s just the champions, but as we started to flush that out, slowly and over time, we started to realize it’s also the itemization in the system. So, that means that when the tank champions are actually falling down, the top level abusers of the systemic changes, like Ekko, who is just the poster child for applying base damage quickly, being good with the sunfire cape, kind of rose to the top. So, to you I would say for mid-season and pre-season, we have these set sign posts every year, that are going to come and hit the spin cycle, and things are going to get a little different, but that in-between, we are always looking for ways to fix things, but it may not always be to the level that players want, because we’re afraid of doing too much.
Do you think that the upcoming dragon changes will be something that breaks/changes team strategies?
–At a basic level, yes. 100%, it would be impossible for it not to. This ensured a little bit by the random nature in which they spawn, but also by the wildly different buffs that they provide. There’s no real overlap in terms of what they do. The things kind of synergize, like fire and earth really go well together if you want to really fight them a lot. Those things are going to do really well, because you’re going to be able to force objective fights, and you’re going to be able to kill them when they get there. Water and air work really well together to say ‘Hey, we’re moving between towers and shrugging off poke.’ But then other combinations do a lot to push specific aspects of your team, and this is something that I think a lot of people aren’t focusing on. I can see where some are a little better or a little worse for certain comps, but this is less about saying like ‘oh, my poke team wants this, but doesn’t want this’. There is a minimum expected value for every dragon that you get. You are getting a stats that are valuable, that you need, and that you want. It’s actually your ability to react to the value of that dragon, and you ability to abuse that part of your team comp that is being amplified. My personal impression, is that the dragon changes make the game more exciting for me to play. I know not everyone will feel that way, but in the long term, the variance this brings is, I think, in the acceptable realm. Plus, we can always pull back on it. If we find out this is the worst change in history, and it’s going to kill everything, then we can say ‘hey, it’s not random anymore’, or we can add a logic to it.
There you have it! Some of the communities questions, answered. This was one of the most exciting interviews I’ve ever had the pleasure of conducting, and I extend a HUGE thanks to the folks at Riot that I had the awesome chance to chat with at PAX East, as well as Scarizard.
Mordor and Scarizard mean muggin’ the camera at PAX East 2016.
Find Scarizard’s Twitter here!
