“Complicated”/mechanical (Ksante, Zeri), simple (Vex, Briar, Naafiri), or gimmick champ (Viego) it seems like a large section of the community hates new champions just for being new. They’ll be perma banned on release regardless of strength, and people usually say something along the lines of don’t want to deal with new champions. So as someone who thinks new stuff is cool what’s the mentality of new champion haters? Mostly because it has little to nothing to do with whatever the champ is strong or not, most release with giga terrible WR and may even get hot fix buffed because they’re that bad. There’s just a section of the community who doesn’t want anything new?
Couple reasons imo:
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Classic aversion to change, new champs are a new element added to the gameplay and people don’t like learning to play with or against new stuff
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It might not be what players want, people to tend skew towards wanting more of the same thing, but it’s up Riot to make things that people don’t know they want yet
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Game balance disruption, it takes a while for a champ to truly settle in the meta and even then long term health is a concern. As an example, Viego was actually mostly fine after his launch, however he started being an issue when he was finally enabled for pro play in the summer, like ban rate literally spiked in soloq after he started showing
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Name the last new release not named Rell to not have a completely overturned kit?
New champs have everything and lack clear weaknesses. Older champions had very clear weaknesses
I wouldnt call Milios kit overtuned. Its a strong kit but not overtuned i feel like
Naafiri either, she just has insane numbers cuz she is Assassin Garen
I think i have a different idea of overloaded kit than most, as i can’t really consider most champs overloaded. Release Ksante i guess was close if you actually played him well, but that meant putting in time to play him well. Briar is a stat checker that’s essentially WW with a stun instead of fear. Naafiri is a generic AD assassin. Who was before that milio, enchanter with a cleanse okay fine. This, and most of the other replies, sound more like “don’t wanna deal with learning to play against champ” than anything else. I’m a swain player and play swain into every new champ, i can’t remember ever thinking “this champ literally has no weakness wtf gg riot”. Briar runs in straight lines, Land E and walk away. Naafiri can get in but has no escape tools, dodge Q all in her with R. Etc. I’m just a lot more tolerant of learning things than most it seems
Vex, naafiri, millio, renata, briar all have clear weaknesses but ok buddy
Because we have to be the beta testers while devs kick back and they don’t have to deal with the messes they release. Months of micro nerfs and high banrates not to mentioned you almost feel punished for not banning the new op champ because they tend to feel that strong.
The fact that you have to ban a champ because of poor balance just says it all.
Banning a champ should be more about what you don’t like to play against or whatever counters your champ.
Not whatever champ Riot decided to giga buff thus became 54% winrate S+ tier champ and just ignores for 5 patches in a row.
New champs being broken only benefit meta frogs that only care about freelo. It encourages playing something because it’s easily exploitable not because people actually want to grow with a champion and learn them.
I think the people who hate a champ are way more vocal than those who think it’s meh or actually like it. Plus a lot of people will see hate on a champ and read a couple comments and get convinced, adding to the hate.
Because new champs have been released with overloaded kits and no drawbacks.
We want new champs. But we don’t want new champs that straight up break the game.
most people on reddit are older (grandpa gameplay) and don’t like to learn new things or to read the abilities of new champs, but lets be honest they don’t even read tooltips of the champs they play either … they just want to play 10 immobile point and click champs, so they are very negative towards new champions and mechanics in league.
lots of casual players just see a new champ and go “oh cool” and maybe try to pick it up if they’re interested in it.
it would be nice if they spent more time reworking older champs becuase there’s plenty to do there – i would like it if they slowed the release rate and improved existing characters
my personal reasons
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new releases are overloaded balance nightmares. time and time again new champions simply have more tools and options than older champs and are balanced through numbers tweaks, which leads to my next point…
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new releases are often released overtuned because riot doesnt want to risk harming champion popularity (read: skin sales). take naafiri and briar who have both seen nerf after nerf after nerf as players move along their respective learning curves while riot tries to keep the champs at ~50% wr. rather than have people figure out briar’s taunt mechanic organically, they just hotfix buff briar on release to make sure people aren’t tossing all their games and then have to repeat nerf her because it turns out she is an insane stat checker once people figured out her lethality build and how to play around her taunt mechanic
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riot allows people to take new releases directly into ranked. riot can’t control player behavior but CAN influence it. as it stands, people will first time in ranked, people troll if they don’t get the new champ, people ban their team’s pick so they don’t have to play with a first timer, etc. imo new champs should be disabled in ranked for 1-6 weeks depending on riot’s own assessment of the champion’s mastery curve (eg riot has said briar has one of the steepest mastery curves based on their data)
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related to my first point, there are several new champs that take up SO much dev resources post-release. ksante, yuumi, and zeri are three big offenders. how many mini-reworks are these champs going to get because they are overloaded and/or rule-breaking champs?
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lastly, i think the roster is already very large and there are plenty of old champs that could use some developer attention. too many old champions with simpler kits or low popularity have been left in the dirt.
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