Why does PBE really exist in LoL? Riot explains that it’s definitely not about balance

League of Legends

Riot August speaks about the data collected on PBE servers. Why are they useless?


League of Legends test servers allow fans to test patches in advance, which are later released on live servers. As the name suggests, the developers implement changes to the PBE in theory, so that a wider group of players can test upcoming fixes or news and provide a larger sample of information on which designers can base further changes.

The data received by the Rioters, however, are not entirely correct, and sometimes they can be even misleading. How is the situation on the test servers commented on by Riot August, the champion design employee?

Riot August about PBE servers

Virtually anyone can play on PBE servers. The only requirement is the honor level, which cannot be lower than 3, and the account cannot be blocked. Although fans appreciate the opportunity to test the content, sometimes the data collected by the creators can be confusing for them, which can translate into poor premieres or missed fixes.

Riot August mentions it during one of his broadcasts. In his opinion, determining gameplay balance based on what is happening on the test servers is a terrible idea.

What’s up with PBE? Why are all these characters coming out so… not correct? What’s the point of PBE, if not for skins?” I mean, it’s like… so important, I answer this all the time. PBE IS HORRENDOUS for determining balance. It is one of the worst places you could possibly go to understand if a character is balanced, because PBE games are not balanced, we do not balance PBE games because there just isn’t enough players.

Rioter cited a period of upcoming Skarner fixes on the test servers and compared it to the Chemtech map-related Rengar testing phase.

And so, the really easy way to discuss this is something I’ve said a few times before: Skarner update, when it came out to PBE, was… told by Skarner mains, completely garbage. They were like, all the Skarner players were like, “Skarner update is terrible. Useless character. Worst thing ever”. The character came out with a 60% winrate.

On the other side, Rengar goes on PBE and it turns out for whatever reason, there’s a lot of Rengar mains on PBE that just love abusing people with Rengar, and Rengar, when you see him on PBE, he goes like 20 – 0 every game. And then we did the Rengar update, that character who was going 20 – 0 every game, came out with a 44% winrate, that didn’t increase with time.

Rioter goes on to summarize the examples above, saying that champion win rates on the test servers really mean nothing and that players can only help out with bug fixes.

And so, it’s this thing that in the end of the day, winrates on PBE don’t matter. How a character feels and turns to balance doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. It’s useless information. PBE is not a place to find balance. PBE is a place to find bugs, to find like, abuse cases, it’s stuff like that. That’s what PBE is really, really useful for.

But if you’re out like, “HOW DID YOU NOT SEE THIS COMING ON PBE??” I’m like.. because, it’s impossible to see anything coming in regards to balance on PBE. That is not what PBE is for […]

Like, if you were to say, “AUGUST WHY DIDN’T YOU REALIZE THAT HURRICANE GAVE HER (Zeri) 15 STACKS??”.. I think that’s reasonable criticism. I probably should’ve realized like, the full extension of what Hurricane was doing, but guess what? In PBE, there weren’t a lot of people building Hurricane on her […]

Rioter concluded his extensive answer to the question with a summary in which he wrote that PBE is simply not a good place to determine balance. Many players use PBE when their favorite character receives changes, but due to the difficulty of determining the player’s level, the collected data is often not worth much.

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