So as anyone else in this subreddit I have been suddenly bombarded by posts about Phreak and Velkoz. This is a problem, as it’s taking precious Karma that could go towards T1 glazing posts that are needed to complete the T1 Jynx.

A lot of people have commented on azzap feedback as an example of good feedback, unlike what Phreak said. So I wanted to see what this community counts as good feedback and explore it!

I will preface this by saying two things, first some good feedback does not mean that you still have to parse through a kiloton of bad feedback. Two, I am not a game designer yet I find already many holes.

You can find azzap feedback on twitter, and I am only working based on that, if there is a longer post in video form that can clear some of the stuff up, feel free to correct me.

Azzap starts by saying he wants to approach this as a game designer rather than an OTP. Yet he immediately starts as an OTP. He says " We want a change that creates even more skill expression which will convert into champions impact to both lose and win games, which is why a trade off is necessary… Vel’Koz weaker early, harder early, support nerfed, mid lane buffed "

This is not the perspective a game designer would take, but an OTP that wants to play him mid at a high level. A quick look at OP.GG data will showcase that Velkoz mid-pick rate is almost stable across ranks, but is played in support between two to three times more, increasing the lower in rank you go. This means that a lot more people play it in lower ranks as both the player count and pick rate increase. So while in an actual professional setting, we would need more data, for reddit we can conclude we have found the actual player base of this champion. Support and vastly unskilled, like Keria this Sunday.

As a game developer, you are not supposed to cater to the most extreme fans of anything. That is what politics and T1 are for. Why should they comply with Azzap and make a champion that is preferred by low-skilled support players be a great mid-lane with a lot of skill expression? Increasing skill expression does not see good balance or game design. You could argue that this data is skewed, if he had more skill expression and was a lot more fun, he would be played more as a midlaner in high ranks! And if my grandma had wheels, she would be a T1 truck. You have no data to make such a claim. So the rest of his ideas, whether good or not individually, do not matter that much already, as he already started with a completely wrong and biased design principle in mind. They are mere requests asking for their favourite champ to play how they prefer it.

So what should a game designer do? Find if the bulk of the support players feel like the champ is off too ( assuming the bulk of midlane vel players do think so). Find out in more detail who the player base is, perhaps that “the bulk of the player base” I mentioned are Lux supp OTPS that default to Vel when their main is banned, or god knows…

After a lot of research you can then conclude design problems with the champion, and while I have no idea what the problems are, I can improvise some random ones that will most likely be as good as Guma´s Zeri:

-The design of the champion is too ambivalent. Is it a mid-laner or a support? His abilities, and his passive are neither here nor there - The fact that can be flexed into two very different lanes makes the balancing much harder, as you have to buff/nerf with two different lanes, and different power spikes… -Is velkoz the problem, or is the problem immobile artillery mages in general? -The focus on skill shots makes it a champion with a high skill cap, but the ease to dodge his skills and lack of mobility makes it easy to dodge and kill. Another ambivalence. Is it designed for skill players or high-level players?

This latter is the kind of feedback (I think) you can give, whether it is accurate or not, is another topic.