Talk:Katarina/@comment-5077844-20150621194119/@comment-9705522-20150622134937

Now, lets go a little off-topic here, and answer to your suggestion. First, spellshield. Thats true, she is countered by on demand spellshields, and on demand untargetability. But thats simply a hard counter. Which is indicative of a  rock-paper-scissors design philosophy. And dont get me wrong, thats a perfectly valid design philosophy. If you make the game with it in mind. League isnt made with it in mind, and largely follows the philosophy of counterplay, and options.

Rock-paper-scissors design is not fit for a game like league, its more fit for strategy games, where every strategy has a hard counter, and it becomes a game of prediction and guile. So, thats sadly not an argument against Vi. Especially since, amongst her favourite targets, there is exactly 1 who can deal with her, that being Sivir.

Now the other 2 are simpler, because they are wrong. Proper positioning doesnt help against a 1550 range ult. Thats half of Luxs ult range. Thats 450 units, or 40% over max sight range (ignoring obstructions, of course). If she wants to ult you, you will, and no positioning will help you. Unless you meant "staying in base" by good positioning, but that has its own problems.

The support that peels. This one could work, if it werent for the fact that by the time the support can even start peeling, Vi will have brought down her target to 30% or less HP. While being tanky as all hell. And while her team is rushing in, killing your team. Its of course no surprise then, that the best strategy against Vi is relinquishing your ADC, and going for theirs, hoping for a 1 for 1 trade.

In case of a strategy game, this wouldnt be an issue. Its a sacrifice of a valuable unit for another valuable unit. But this isnt a strategy game. That "valuable unit" is a player. A player whose ability to play is removed by Vi. Of course, thats not just frustrating, its extremely anti-fun. Imagine if there was a champion who disabled your spellcasts for 15 seconds (Doom in Dota 2). That would be similiarly terrible. You just made that Ahri into a sitting duck.

But, enough of that tangent, lets get back to the point. No, game design does determine how fun, or anti-fun, a champion is to play against. You are right however in one thing. Player perception often skews that. But the question is, is the champion at fault, or the player whose perception skews it?

In that regard, an anecdote. A friend of mine used to work on a 2-D brawler. It wasnt exactly a game of Leagues size, but it had a resonable amount of players, I believe a couple thousand. One common complaint was that a character, lets call him X, was overpowered. They analyzed it, and didnt come to that conclusion. So, they made a test. They created patchnotes where the character supposedly got nerfed. But they never implemented any nerfs. Very quickly, the complaints stopped.

So, they observed it, thinking that, since X was the exact same, and supposedly was overpowered, the complaint had to start again, since he is the same, so when the people play, they shouldnt notice a difference. 4 months later, the complaints still havent returned. So, what does this mean? That sometimes, all you need to do is change a players perception. Because often, their perception is skewed.

Apologies for the second tangent, this is a passion of mine (game design that is), so I tend to go a little overboard. Now, your point. Well, here is the thing. Your sample size is inevitably too small. You are one player, and even if you played 10 games a day, each with different people, in a year you would only see 32000 players. In a game where millions play. So, your observations are worthless. Dont worry, it isnt your fault, its just that the game is way too big for personal observations to be worth a damn.

Sadly, I dont see a way to get the right amount of data. Ban rate is not a good metric, since its mostly banning what is powerful. Hence why Vi isnt even banned a lot. Looking at forum or reddit threads also doesnt work, since most players dont visit those either. So, truly, its impossible to fully judge. So, in this regard, we are stumped. I fear that we have reached a point where noone can do anything.

So, how can we judge a champions fun/antifun, if we dont have the metrics (I fear even Riot doesnt, the only thing they can see are vocal minorities. Very vocal, but minorities indeed). Well, design analysis. Did that. Its pretty simple. But otherwise, I fear we have nothing left here, since your argument mostly relies on a metric noone has. While mine relies on design, which you dont accept.

As for your question, Einsoph, no, actually resets are a good thing. They are limiters. Limiters are a very popular tool, because they allow you to make the game more interesting. It creates a greater spread of possibilities, while keeping the balance intact. There are many limiters to choose from, naturally. Ranging from timing, popular amongst brawlers, to the rock-paper-scissors design of strategy games (dark templar strategy in SC2 is a good example. Its devastating, and if the enemy isnt prepared for it, wins the game instantly. Is the enemy prepared however, you tend to lose).

A lot of limiters are of course simply gating. Cooldown, mana, ammunition, you get the idea. These are functional, but boring. However, on-kill effects, resets, conditional effects (Cassiopeias ult for example) are far more fun and interesting. There is only one issue. Selective memory. People tend to remember the rare, but amazing, over the common but boring. You are more likely to remember Katarinas teamwipe, over Katarina getting stunned by syndra and killed without accomplishing anything.