Was brainstorming a bit from a dev point of view, about difficulties regarding pinpointing of problematic runes and about collecting the data for making swift balance decisions in an efficient way. As you know just reading forum threads can be deceiving, as a small group of "laud" people can make a lot of noise based on the current trend (AA for example). Due to that a designer/dev is forced to commit extra time investigating each OP claim. The following idea popped in my head, I don't know if it has been suggested before or not: How about making a Weekly Ban of set of runes, based on a forced vote pool from active players? Example: On certain period (week/month/drums of war cycle etc..), a mandatory vote is required from the active players upon logging into client. By active players I mean people that have played a certain amount of ranked games, for the previous period(week/month/drums of war cycle). Based on the vote, at the end of the period, a set of runes (3/5/8 may vary) is automatically banned for the next period. This forces players to shift a bit from using banned champs(no AA week, no DE priestess week, etc.). This way after certain amount of cycles developers will have a clear overview about most hated champs. Best thing about such kind of system/feature, is that it is automated and self regulatory. Even if Developers don't have time/resources to address the problematic runes right away, truly OP runes will just sit in the BAN set most of the time. Maybe after 3 weeks for example AA sitting in BAN something more OP will appear and take its place? What do you guys think? I think such kind of system can be very healthy regarding ranked play. PS: Criteria for vote should be created in a such way so that most of the alts don't get to vote. 15-25 ranked games 8-10 min long(this is all based on how long the chosen period is(week/month etc..).
Personally I think with the amount of runes we currently have options to will have no real impact-at all But I wonder what's the thought behind this. Is it to cripple people who own OP cards in general? If so, then you have to consider that the wealthy people can work around this (by having 10 other OP decks to choose from and one card more or less in a deck with many legs wont be a dealbreaker for them anyway) and those who just were lucky enough to get one of those 3/5/8 cards will be crippled for a large duration. However, if your intention is to be able to play by skipping the OP cards, you're better off introducing a format where you can only use cards up to exotic, so there is more equal footing. A vote system like this would be a little weird as well. It would feel like 'jealous' budget people would probably be on one side voting for less 'powercreep' versus those who would be crippled if one of their only best cards simply vote for the least harmful cards to them. So can you ask yourself.. will that system truly get the right purpose in your eyes?
The basic idea is to use the system like a developer tool to spot on problematic runes faster, yes initially the impact will be small or not at all(depending on what variables the devs choose to use). But after certain amount of time and a bit of patching, there will be less problematic runes. Think of it as a forced shift out from meta for a few runes, based on voting(weekly/monthly basis). And if the rune stays banned for really long periods(stays on top of ban set for 2-3-4-5 vote periods), it clearly needs attention, and should be banned until such is given. It is not really targeted at big collectors as you think, as regular ranked players would surely choose a rune that they are getting problems with, rather than a doombringer/harpbringer/angel. Remember that right now some of the most powerful runes are not even limited/legendary/exotic, as the revamp hit hard on those runes.
It is an interesting suggestion, but there is a problem. Banning particular runes for a week to see how things shift there would have to be displayed in a way that convey the information as to what runes have the restriction. For those players who only play the game and don't engage much on the website or forums it could become very confusing. Also, for new players who don't have many runes such a feature would be very limiting to them. We have a lot of tracking tools for determining the use and how well a specific rune does. It just takes time for some of these types of things to be worked out.
I was thinking for something like a pop up message, "currently banned runes from ranked are: X, Y, Z ", upon entering lobby. Or in case you want to keep it less interfering with the player, a system message upon entering ranked lobby. I am also talking about a really small amount of banned runes, that should not give too much trouble to players with limited amount of runes. But give us active players some way to control over the top champs through a vote(should also help Devs with decision making and by giving you more time for hot fixing problematic runes).
@Senshu However, banning something like AA until it got fixed would be of great value because it would not disrupt play for many players. Having a ban list for balance's sake is a great idea. Many card collection games have this option, and they have more runes/cards than Pox.
Indeed, but if it is not automated/self regulatory(voting system), it will only create more strain on the developers with deadlines to fix the (manually)banned runes. Also a shorter periodic vote will mitigate the trending hate ban vote: If one rune stays banned for 2-3 periods, its general "treat" to the user will decrease, if it was only a ban vote due to people following a hate trend. Hence it will shift back in play, if not really problematic. What I think is that the positives of such a feature, greatly outnumbers the negatives(In case it is designed properly).
Well, another drawback of such a system is the amount of time it would take to implement and make sure it wasn't banning the wrong runes. Also, with a voting system the votes may not properly represent the actual problem runes. People could just vote for the runes they think are overpowered in which everyone has a different perspective.
Not a voted system, just a manual system that removes certain runes from play until they are balanced. This is a quick fix for AA and other KF units that are OP.
Why voting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd About the implementation time, well that is for you guys to decide if it is worth it. About testing voted ban system, I am willing to do outsourcing of QA tasks "pro bono" during the weekends(https://www.linkedin.com/in/yavorvasev).
Just because your deck cannot deal with a certain rune doesn't mean it should be banned. Such a system would just be annoying and force people to change their decks all the time which is annoying and time consuming enough in the first place. There will always be a best rune, instead of trying to balance every "OP" rune how about bring other runes up in power level? Or make a deck that can take that "OP" rune down. Just my thought on the "problem" which I don't really think is a problem.
