LoL Sejuani Patch/ Asymmetric design

This post is going to be a little specialized, since I'm going to discuss a gameplay change in League of Legends (LoL). The TL;DR of it is that I believe the removal of dodge as a global champion statistic is a great example of the problems that result from of imbalanced game design. The folks at Riot have discussed their rationale for removing the dodge stat, and studying their explanations is an intriguing insight into the mechanics of an extremely popular eSport. I want to provide a slightly deeper analysis of why completely removing a statistic from an already established game would be a good design choice.

Don't know what LoL is, or never played it? I'll try to explain everything in a way that will make it possible to understand what I'm talking about even if you don't play LoL.

(If you do play LoL, I would still suggest looking at how I'm explaining the design of the game.)

First, then, if you don't play LoL and you're curious about what it is, you can find an unending supply of recordings on YouTube. If live streaming is more your cup-o'-tea, you can find pro player channels on own3D. (I think I watch LoL streams as often as I actually play the game.) Like football or baseball, you don't actually need to play the game in order to understand the basics what's going on when others play it.

You can think of LoL like a sport: two teams of five attempt to infiltrate the base of the opposing team. First one to destroy the "nexus" wins the game. It's a bit like sudden death soccer/football/hockey/etc.

As a player, you control one champion, and you have various statistics and abilities that determine your viable actions in each match. The primary statistics that are immediately visible on your HUD are such:

Attack Damage	Armor	Health	Attack Speed
Ability Power	Magic resistance	Mana	Movement Speed

Now, my arrangement of the above table is intentional, because the champion stats in LoL come in pairs. Attack damage (AD) and ability power (AP) determine the amount of physical or magical damage that your champion deals. Players can counter physical damage with armor, and magic damage with magic resistance. Health helps in both situations. Mana, then, is the counterpart to health: mana enables you or your team to attack enemies. Placing the health and mana bars in the same location on the screen is more than an efficient way to display vital statistics, but also a reflection of their relationship to one another.

There are other statistic pairs that the game uses, too, such as life steal and spell vamp, health regeneration and mana regeneration, and armor penetration and magic penetration. Additionally, attack speed and movement speed don't maintain the same symmetry as the other six stats, but that's simply because they aren't intended to be a pair. The counterpart of attack speed is ability cooldown reduction. The counterpart of movement speed then, is attack range.

Champion gameplay styles, too, can be paired: AP or AD, melee and ranged, tank (typically high health and resistances, with lower damage) and carry (typically high damage but low health and resistance), etc.

Summoner's Rift

And, of course, the game arena is symmetrical. (Well, very close to symmetrical, in any case.)

Some asymmetries exist in LoL's design, however. In the most recent patch, dodge has been singled out for deletion because of its lack of "sensible counters", as Morello, lead champion designer at Riot, explains. Like armor or magic resistance, dodge was a "global stat", which means that it was available to any champion. Unlike resistances, however, dodge uses a percentage chance to negate a physical attack. Dodge ruins the symmetry in LoL's design; there is no global evasion stat for spells. Morello makes four main points in his post:

1. High dodge percentages completely counter attack damage (instead of merely reducing damage).
2. Critical Strike is a damage multiplier, while dodge is an alternative defensive statistic with no "sensible counters".
3. Only one champion, Jax, relies on dodge as an integral part of his gameplay style.
4. The "fun to un-fun ratio is poor" for dodge; there is too much chance involved.

Everything said and done, removing dodge makes more sense than leaving it in. Riot already created counters to dodge, such as the Sword of the Divine, which prevents dodge for a short time, but because dodge was only a problem if someone played Jax, the item was clearly intended to counter only one champion and therefore unfair to Jax players. 

Critical strike stands out as another stat with no obvious counterpart, hence Morello takes time to explain why critical strike is not a problem. Morello's explanation of why critical strike is only a damage multiplier, and not a new kind of damage makes sense. I'm not quite sure that critical strike is completely balanced, as Morello makes it out to be, however. Just as there is no dodging of spells, ability power champions do not have a statistic that offers them a percent chance to double the damage of their spells. (There is, of course, an item that increases AP by 30%. This is a discussion for elsewhere, though.)

Finally, as Morello's fourth point says in a rather indirect way, if this gameplay change gives players more control over their game, everyone will benefit. For Riot staff, dealing with never-ending balance issues and continuous community fallout because of one champion who takes advantage of an otherwise underutilized statistic is a monumental waste of time. For players, no dodge means that physical attacks are more predictable and their tactical choices are simplified. For Jax players specifically, by no longer relying on chance, Jax will be a more reliable champion.

Postblag--

As a Jax player myself, I'm interested to see how his redesign works out for him. We'll see what happens, and I'll probably post some updates once the patch goes live.