Many fans view the Riot Games balance team as a mysterious force, but the League of Legends developer pulled back the curtain on exactly what it means to balance the popular MOBA.
The Gameplay Analysis Team is the group that tests the various changes brought to League of Legends ahead of those changes being pushed to the Public Beta Environment. For everything from new items to new game mechanics, the Gameplay Analysis Team’s job is to try and make sure that the implementation of new additions doesn’t destabilize the careful balance of such a massive MOBA. In a recent developer blog, Riot Games busted some myths about the reality of working on this aspect of LoL.
Fan rumors has theorized that there must be a rank minimum to have input on high-level decisions made inside of such a massive game, but according to Riot Games this isn’t true. Riot made clear that while many of the Gameplay Analysis Team members are highly ranked, there’s no strict cut off for what rank potential members need to have achieved.
Many of the changes that the gameplay team needs to focus on do require high-skill players, so having a strong roster of highly-ranked players allows the team to more easily see how changes aimed at elite-level play will pan out. Many changes made to League of Legends are specifically intended to affect the game’s vast professional landscape, so this sort of testing is a necessity.
Some of the other myths that Riot dispelled in its post were the ideas that the team only focuses on playtesting, or that their job is to focus on the live game.
The Riot Games gameplay team is also tasked with trying to design and iterate on new mechanics or concepts being added to the game. An example given is Crown of the Shattered Queen, with the design goals of providing an anti-assassin item that didn’t take away mages’ core weakness of being squishy. Members of the team are charged with checking on how such an item feels during play and how it will affect the game should it go live.
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