While still in early access, 2XKO shakes up the fighting games community: with the potential of extreme popularity and great balance.
The general battle balance and abilities of individual champions are a big topic in the community's discussion around 2XKO. After a pretty long wait period, players want the game to be perfect, even in the early access stage. When Ekko starts dominating the esports scene and Teemo proves to be a ranged monster, it causes worries.
Another thing people talk about is the available roster: it feels small for a tag-team game. With beloved LoL characters, we want so many of them to be in 2XKO — and sure, we want our favorite picks to be strong and competitively viable.
Riot Games addresses the current balance in 2XKO in their official blog post. It highlights the process of adding new champions and explains the philosophy behind the future patches. Let's take a look at the most important parts of the developers' message.
Creating 2XKO champions: More are coming
Riot's blog post dives into interesting details on the process of adapting LoL champions to the fighting environment of 2XKO. While the main idea is to explain the balancing stages, we can still read between the lines.
- More champions are coming to 2XKO. This process is slow due to the balancing challenges, but the team does not draw the limit line of the roster size. The game is built for a long lifespan, so the available picks will certainly be more vast and versatile.
Adding new champions involves many steps, including early testing, pre-launch polishing, and fine-tuning after the release. In a nutshell, the balance changes become more difficult to implement the closer a Champion is to its launch. Balancing released characters causes waves of changes for the entire roster.
Please check out the official post by Riot Games here for all the details.
Live balance during early access: One 2XKO patch per five weeks
Someone's gonna be nerfed!
- Ekko and Yasuo were named as outperforming champions in both roles, Point and Assist. Their pick rate reflects that.
- Teemo turned out to be too good as a range fighter, and he is also good up close. It wasn't intended this way.
These 2XKO characters are examples of the thorough creation process still going somewhat wrong. The following patches should fix the issues, as well as some bugs that cause imbalances.
As for buffs, Blitzcrank and Braum have lower win rates than expected, and it should be fixed, too. These characters struggle in neutral.
Riot revealed their plans for the upcoming 2XKO patches.
- During the early access period, updates for 2XKO can be expected every five weeks.
The blog post highlights the intention not to overdo these changes. Building muscle memory for combos is not a thing the developers want to interfere with.
2XKO Patch 1.0.3: To prove the point
Some of the ideas highlighted in the balance philosophy for 2XKO have already been implemented in Patch 1.0.3. Check out the full patch notes here. The key points are listed below.
- Nerfs for Ekko, Teemo, and Yasuo.
- Blitzcrank received buffs.
- Adjustments for Warwick and Ahri.
- New content and cosmetics in 2XKO.
All players in mind: from casual beginners to pros
It's not a statement you hear from fighting games developers too often. Skilled and dedicated players built up the core of the community. Making a game too beginner-friendly is a risky move, like it was with simplified inputs.
In terms of balancing 2XKO, Riot Games wants everyone in the community to be heard. The developers consider pick and win rates for all skill levels and plan the balancing accordingly.
- Beginners should have accessible and effective champions. Jinx and Blitzcrank are examples.
- Advanced players should have more power and more options as rewards for training difficult movesets and combos. Yasuo and Ekko are such characters.
It's a really good point to note by the developers. In esports media and the fighting games community, we often discuss champions at major tournaments, such as 2XKO Evo France, but rarely touch popular casual picks.
More versatile win strategies in the 2XKO battle balance
One more important aspect of the future 2XKO patches is to make the win strategies more versatile. Using a restrained, low-risk approach turned out to be universally good in the game. The developers want to fix that — not by nerfing defensive tools such as backdash but by strengthening forward movement.
"I can tell you that philosophically we'd prefer to make forward movement better, and attacking into a retreating opponent more reliable, rather than make backwards movement worse; we'd prefer to make punishing Assists more reliable and rewarding without making the Assist and tag mechanics worse; and we'd rather avoid implementing systems that disincentivize disengagement, like deducting Break or Super meter for moving backwards too often, because those mechanics often impose a singular strategic goal on champion combat design that we don't think fits our vision for 2XKO."
The official blog post from Riot Games makes the call for the community to help the 2XKO developers balance the game. We can do that by playing even more matches and discussing on socials what we have and what we want to get.
It feels like Riot really listens to players, and the following marathon of patches should prove how they reflect this feedback in the actual balance adjustments.
