[sudofail]

I agree with you, but I also wonder if balance is somewhat of an anti-pattern. By changing the balance of the game, they're influencing the meta builds and play styles, which keeps things interesting. So in a way, creating imbalances is a feature to keep the game fresh. All of this within reason of course.

[sali0]

I would agree with you IF you take traditional view of 'balance' in the way that LoL and other simpler games do. I would call that ideal a 'symmetric' balance, where they want each element in its category to be compared to all other elements in the same category. LoL definitely strives for this, as do many other games. Each champion is balanced against other champions of the same role. Items are relatively inflexible and augment the already present abilities of the champion. Each champion is essentially a complete package and each uses items to enhance what they already have. But when you have such rigid categories, power creep and best-in-slot champions will naturally appear, as whatever is best able to maximize their item's stats will be meta. My first competitive game was LoL back in its beta, and I was hooked, but what opened my eyes to what balance could be was DotA's approach.

DotA takes a systemic approach to balance. Each hero is a tool in the team's toolbox. Most heroes have very specific strengths and weaknesses, and their powerspikes are very pronounced. When you draft a team, you are specifically drafting a set of capabilities that you want to exploit against the enemy. This also leads to heroes having very hard counters. But I think the real beauty in DotA is it's item system, which allows you to patch holes in your team's composition and allow a huge amount of flexibility for each hero. I can keep going forever, as I really love its game design. But the most important thing that DotA does in terms of balance is its holistic approach that allows heroes to be individual components to a team, and have items to augment strengths or patch holes that the draft was not prepared for. (DotA's design and metagame sparked my interest in Complex Adaptive Systems, so I just nerd out about it any chance I get).

So to your point, I think the whole need to create imbalance is caused because of the way Riot balances their characters in the first place. I think it is fundamentally flawed from a design perspective, but it obviously makes them a ton of money. They really mastered monetization of multiplayer games. They also made their game very approachable for noobs, and that I have to commend them for.