Disclaimer: this article represents the opinion of the writer and not necessarily that of Team Dignitas.

It happens in all of our favorite games: a character or mechanic is too overpowered/underpowered, and game developers issue what's called a "patch" to remedy the situation. Sounds helpful right? Well, that's where it gets tricky. Game balance patches are for the most part good. They help revitalize and balance out a competitive scene in games like Smite, League of Legends, Overwatch, and the list goes on. Sometimes, however, that balance or patch ruins a character, item, or mechanic's power and viability. Is there an easy fix?

Let's say Aatrox from League of Legends stops getting played because his E is severely underpowered. Riot may entice players to come back to Aatrox by reworking his E (or whatever ability is underpowering), or giving it more damage. In the case of the image below, Riot is giving a sight buff in damage to Aatrox's E (Blades of Torment) ability. That's normally how game balancing patches work. Some (depending on game, meta, characters, developers, etc) are full or not so full of content. But regardless of how big or small a balancing patch is, each one has the opportunity and chance to change a game's meta forever (or at least for the time being).

An example of balancing patch notes, from Surrender@20.

So what's the big issue with patches then? Shouldn't the meta always change? Well, yes. Game patches aren't bad, really! They do a lot for a game, not just League. Smite, Heroes of the Storm, DOTA 2, Overwatch, Hearthstone - Any game that can be played online and competitively will have some sort of balancing patch. Those patches can throw in some new content, rework an old character, or just iron out a bug that made the game not-so-fun to play. So in that sense, game patches are good. But take a look at the never-ending patches that happened with Camille after her LoL debut, it'll be easy to see how a few patches might be able to ruin someone's favorite character. Camille had pretty good true damage crits on her 2nd Q cast, slight minion healing off of her W, and a lower E cooldown at the time of her release. A majority of that has been toned down severely or cut from her kit completely.

OK, so we already know that game patches are game changing. Literally. What say do we have in the changes? Good question. Some developers, like Riot, offer this exclusive limited environment called a PBE, Public Beta Environment. Each buff/nerf goes on the PBE for a few weeks before being shipped to live servers for everyone to play. This essentially means that if say Graves was getting a ton of damage numbers tweaked, players could experiment with the changes, give feedback back to Riot, and allow developers to analyze the gameplay. This means if nothing gets reported, but they see a sudden spike in Graves' winrate, those numbers might be tweaked or even reverted automatically. This kind of communication and personalization with game developers, not just Riot, is extremely healthy for the everchanging competitive scene. If your competitive game doesn't have this kind of feedback system, it's time to get typing.

So in all, game balancing seems pretty straightforward: underpowered mechanics get buffed, overpowered mechanics get nerfed, and the meta changes because of the buffs/nerfs. But for competitive games that rely on some sort of meta to be stable and in place, balance patches are extremely important. Not only can the core of a champion or hero get gutted and changed, but characters that were once viable may not be viable again. Most companies, like Riot and Blizzard, offer test servers to players so they can judge changes for themselves and give feedback, which is a great step in ensuring that not only are patches fair, but are also healthy to the competitive scene. We'll just have to see what other companies will do to also allow this kind of feedback in the future.

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