Just wanted to weigh in on the Riven conversations that have been happening recently. We’ve also had some conversations about this in past and recently amongst the Dev team, so I’m representing a combination of theirs + my thoughts. Riven is certainly at one of the lower play rates she’s had for a long time, there’s a few reasons for this.
- Back in early seasons, Riven was one of the few high agency champions. 10 years later, we’ve released a lot more champions that fill some of those same flashy motivations, which is overall a good thing, but does result in a decline in popularity
- It’s valuable that we have champions with high skill cap in the game. Not every champion needs to be easy to play and we want to have a mix of simple champions and high mastery ones that are worth investing in. Simplifying every champ in the game is not something we’re interested in. Champions with hard inputs is a legitimate player desire that’s worth supporting (fits some fighting game player motivations) so long as there are some simple Champs to balance that out.
- Is fast Q something that we would intentionally ship on a champion today? No it wouldn’t pass the bar, because it’s too much input complexity for a non transformative output. If a player is putting a lot of effort into their inputs, we’d probably want that to be rewarded with something a bit more tangible and satisfying, rather than faster autos/Qs. But at this point, Riven mains have invested so much into this mechanic that it would be a disservice to them get rid of it. I don’t think anyone is signing up to play riven right now thinking she’s an easy champion that’s simple to master.
The future
- Having said that, Riven does have some legitimate problems. Firstly she’s a bit weak. Given that items are changing in Preseason, there’s not too much benefit to changing her now though… I see a lot of posts that reference winrate sites like lolalytics blindly. Please look at this to make sure the calculation is correct https://twitter.com/riotphroxzon/status/1683675824883646465
- Do we reward Riven appropriately for her mastery investment? Maybe, maybe not. For a champion that is one tricked a lot, her matchups are quite feast or famine. For example, there’s lots of champions like renekton that feel like getting your teeth kicked in. She’s also a lot more one dimensional than she used to be.
- There’s probably some good work to be done here that retains her mastery points, but gives her a clear game purpose. You play Renekton to dominate early mid and try to carry that through to a win, but you play Riven to do what exactly? She used to be a decent midgame spiking champ that could snowball and run over the game, but now there’s many Champs that do that better than her. It’s not clear what her strategic identity is meant to be…
I’d be curious on thoughts
I’m one of those 3% riven otp with 1mil+ , right now i’m playing riven kinda just fine farming for items , give me some riven buffs and I will do funny things to ppl
“She used to be a decent midgame spiking champ that could snowball and run over the game, but now there’s many Champs that do that better than her. It’s not clear what her strategic identity is meant to be…”
AKA Aatrox, yone, renekton, all do her job better right now and she needs buffs to match how hard she is to play.
Ahh yes let’s tweet something about a post on Reddit that “isn’t representive of our playerbase”.
Ahh yes let’s also tweet that when the post is braindead and the person that wrote that barely got past silver 2 in his lifetime.
Let’s not read and give attention to actual posts discussing actual problems in the game.
This is a good take from Phroxzon that they will not get rid of the skill required to pilot Riven. Players should not be crying about her being “too difficult” to learn, asking to tune skill ceiling down, only then to complain why League becomes more noob friendly; you can’t have it both ways! And this is not the first time Riven was considered unpopular, and there were moments where she was.
get phreak on her, he can give riven the rumble treatment
then again the Rumble post rework became weak in soloQ but very strong in pro so idk tbh
Rumble is not weak in soloq lol
Pro- is on a different patch. He was decent in solo queue for the worlds patch.
LoL she’s a menace in Diamond + , Carry’s most Teamfights.
It’s just that champion like Jax and Garen and Renekton and Fiora are overturned and needs nerfs
Why did people take a thread about Riven written by a enchanter two trick seriously in the first place?
Why is this an issue though? Wasnt half of the discussion around why people werent picking her up too rather than the mains alone having issues? If anything outside inputs as to why various types avoid her even if willing to learn, is valuable input among it all.
The dude was just straight wrong as well, but a lot of people agreed for some reason.
She also had the animation canceling when she was popular… which basically refutes his entire argument.
The real reasons she’s not played is that she’s no longer one of a few flashy champions, that she’s one-dimensional so she can’t be blind picked and relies too much on getting a lead (as well as relying on items being busted, such as when Ravenous Hydra was OP) and that there’s so many champs that can just outlast her in lane and be stronger later on.
I don’t think the details were taken seriously, but you have to admit that it at least sparked a much needed conversation on Riven. I think most people chimed in the post because out of the four horsewomen of top lane, Riven has felt like she was the most non-existent. The last time I saw a Riven was last season. I think more people less completely agreed with that person’s points and more concurred with the idea that hey Riven should be like Yasuo, a popular fun skill expressive champ. Where is she?!
You just had phroxon agreeing with me that the mechanic is stupid and unshippable.
It’s completely valid as a response to my thread to say that “well we are keeping it anyway”
I’m still right
A lot of scrubs on this subreddit. You can tell by how they complain about balance for this game.
People in both threads don’t even differentiate between animation cancelling and fast Q.
If you read the comments that much is obvious. This thread and that one have the most ridiculous comment sections. On both sides of the argument.
So why did they remove machine gun Caitlyn combos? That was the same thing…
cause cait is easy to mid difficulty
riven is supposed to be highcaits triple combo was a specific bug with cait
rivens fast combo is a long engine bugget diffed