League of Legends lead Phroxzon says "frustrating" counters like Mel are part of the MOBA's "secret sauce"

“Loser’s queue doesn’t exist. You belong at your rank.” League of Legends lead gameplay designer Matt ‘Phroxzon’ Leung-Harrison has put his mental fortitude to the test by sitting down across from 20 players and answering direct questions. On the cards were some of the burning questions you’ll hear tossed frequently around the MOBA’s community, but the discussion that stood out to me most was the conversation regarding Mel. The Arcane star is a champion who can completely shut down certain opponents, something Riot has typically tried to avoid, but Phroxzon appears happy with her current state.

You need a certain level of resilience just to play League of Legends, so facing a group of players across a table might not be too much more of a stretch. In reality, Phroxzon comes into these discussions with the upper hand. He’s presenting his opinions as talking points, meaning the topics are all ones he’s had time to consider. The video as a whole comes across as more lighthearted discussion rather than serious debate, but it’s still good to hear the senior developer laying out his thoughts in a more candid fashion.

Phroxzon starts out the gate by talking about Mel’s state as “a balanced champion.” One of the players argues that her overall balance isn’t actually important, because she’s so unfun to play against in specific matchups. Phroxzon explains that Riot wants to make sure champions “have a wide range of experiences when they’re either played as or played against,” and he believes Mel fits nicely into that spot.

“She can have situations where there’s just sometimes nothing you can do, where Mel is ahead, it’s hard to get on her, it’s hard to bait out her W. But we think that’s okay. There are situations where that has to be okay, either for games to end or for champions to feel like they’re strong. If somebody was 12-0 on Rengar, for example, would we expect there to be counterplay in that situation? Not really.” He concludes, “One of the foundational premises of League of Legends is that when you get super ahead, you’re allowed to feel awesome.”

Another player brings up the way Mel’s matchups can feel particularly polarizing. Phroxzon admits that running into her as Seraphine, for example, is “a really frustrating experience” where it feels like Rebuttal nullifies your whole kit. He argues that attempting to find your way past a seemingly impossible matchup is “kind of one of the secret sauces of League of Legends,” and that it’s “valuable for players to play against things that are quite difficult to play against, and form a plan to be able to play against it next time.

“Assassins fall into this camp, really hard counters fall into this camp,” he notes. “Now, we can definitely overdo it just by having too many of those, but that’s the reason why we have them. We always try to push the limits of ‘how acceptable is the top end of that, and how much can that make the experience difficult to play, and how upsetting that is for players?’ So we try to balance that carefully.”

Addressing the topic of ‘loser’s queue,’ Phroxzon muses, “Humans are really good at pattern recognition. So they might see, ‘Oh I lost five games in a row, and it was always my top laner. I think Riot is making my top lakers specifically bad.'” He reiterates that the primary goal of matchmaking “is to make it so that, before the game starts, everybody has a 50% chance to win.”

Among the other discussions, Phroxzon talks about patch cadence and “how much change is too much change?” He also digs into the recent roster additions, where he remarks, “There is value in having our champion release sometimes draw a lot of difficult complaints about how to play against them. People learn how to play against them, and experience all of those ups and downs that come with the champion’s release.” It seems like the concept of hard counters, and even awkward matchups that push you to your wit’s end, is in Riot’s good books, for now at least.