Power escalation should be avoided at all cost, according to Riot

Apr 18, 2013 07:28 GMT  ·  By

Recent League of Legends updates have introduced some big reductions in power (nerfs) for quite a lot of popular champions and this is largely because the developer, Riot Games, wants to once again control the power creep level, which has gotten out of hand.

League of Legends is one of the most popular Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games worldwide so you can bet that any change made by Riot Games to the title will end up with people who are thrilled with it and with some who might be quite upset.

Seeing as how recent updates have introduced a few big nerfs to different champions, many players have started complaining on the forums.

According to Lead Content Designer Ryan Scott, most of these changes were made because the power creep level got out of hand.

"The first high-level point to reconcile is that power creep has gotten out of hand," he said. "Much of our Season 3 initiative was directly centered on letting us fix that exact problem – which may be unintuitive at first."

Power creep appears when the game becomes unbalanced due to new content that constantly introduces new things and have the potential to lead to other modifications made to existing items or heroes.

"Power creep is very insidious over time, because it happens slowly and gradually – and a game with new content has greater risk of succumbing to it than more static games. This leads to a problem to where power gets in the way of decision-making and counter-play by creating an arms race between competing factors (champions, in many cases)."

Scott has also emphasized that the team continues to implement buffs to some champions or items, which increase their power or abilities, but they're often neglected by players.

"We actually do quite a bit, but these tend to be more easily-forgotten than nerfs. Additionally, some really outdated champs (Heimerdinger, for example) need heavier work to get them up-to-par. We have a relaunches team who is focused on just that," he added.

You can be sure that Riot will continue to constantly tinker with League of Legends and make other balancing tweaks, including buffs and nerfs, in the future.