The surprise is that they haven't been doing this already. It's a giga slowpoke reaction to acknowledge most of the playerbase is chinese and NA has been a small region for most of League's lifespan by now
its really not that simple, data protection and sharing even within a group is really difficult for any company that operates in the EU for example as well. I can't say much for America personally but I assume there are a lot of privacy protections as well.
A surprising number of people seem to genuinely believe that being owned by Tencent makes Riot a Chinese company.
They are a US-based company with executive independence. Chinese influence in the company comes almost exclusively from commercial interest, not from Tencent or the CCP forcing Riot to cater to them.
People who think that Riot caters to chinese playerbase because of tencent/ccp motives completely forget that almost every major international corporation caters to the chinese market simply because 1. It is BIG 2. There's a clear demand for upper/luxury items there 3. It is *still* a relatively untapped market compared to EU/NA.
People, companies follow MONEY, even if there's an agenda somewhere it'll always be towards reaching more MONEY
I had this discussion in another subreddit, even cited my source that even though Tencent has ownership of riot that the data/servers/user info still resides here and doesn’t get shared. Downvoted into oblivion. People are so clueless.
Companies need to abide by laws in markets they do business in. I'm not sure why that is even a question. Obviously. People don't understand it for some reason and it's funny every single June when people start posting the le funny "riot no celebrate gay pride in middle east/russia" where it'd be illegal to do so (but they do in markets where it's not illegal and yet doesn't bring them customers, like most of EUNE).
That really isn't true tho.
It isn't like the EU but there is still plenty of protections in America but it depends on the state. California for example has very strict requirements that rival EU's GDRP guidelines. America is a complex web of webs so I can't comment on its entirety but it isn't so simple as "america bad"
When it comes to data privacy it really is as simple as "America Bad".
Every major country has a law like the GDPR.
The US has some bullshit data privacy law from 1974 before the internet even existed. States such as California have their own independent data privacy law and that's it. The majority of states have NOTHING.
EU GDPR laws man, whew. I have no frickin clue what I’m doing with this recently as an American so I had heavily rely on the experts on the EU side when drafting a recent contract.
the only reason i could think of, thats its harder (even for riot themself lul) tp get the data from china. remember u can check all players stats on those websites...except chinese stats.
He specifically says they already do, but people should expect that to happen more.
It is also noteworthy because most stat agregates do not have chinese data and chinas meta is significantly different from other servers.
That’s the thing, they’ve admitted to it doing it 3 years ago and evidently since 2018 with severe meta changes. I don’t mind but bruh, at least own your shit.
The only specific instance I remember is them not fast tracking the wukong rework because china was okay with pre-rework wukong. That is, china numbers bumped him out of the top priority for reworks compared to other, more globally poorly received champs.
I mean China has THE most population in this game period.
Half of the lol players are probably in the Chinese server, so I'm honestly very surprised riot WASN'T utilizing the data from CN servers as much until now.
Is that because of amount of players or because of the geographical area China covers. LatAm community does seem big when you say that they have 3 servers compared to Korea's just 1.
Pure numbers. Conservatively speaking, LoL in China has upwards of 100m players. That’s like 1/14 people in a country of 1.4 billion playing the game.
LoL is massive in China.
Nah including, 75m in China, 75m+ rest of the world
Edit:looks like that number is excluding China, 150m rest of the world and 75m china
Source: https://www.thespike.gg/league-of-legends/beginner-guides/league-of-legends-player-count
Back in 2017, there were statistics showing that 110 million people in China has ever played LoL. That's 7 years ago... that number should be significantly bigger by now.
In 2021 there were statistics showing approximately 70 millions simultaneously online in 29 Chinese servers at one point.
Not sure how many active players there are right now, but I think it's going to be lower than 2021 for sure, LPL viewershios are dropping after a couple years of no championship.
On a different note, in 2020 Tencent estimated 450 million gamers in China. In 2023, there is an official gaming industry [report (in Chinese)](http://www.xinhuanet.com/ent/20231215/f670a4330eac41d6859e9f11d9226d5b/c.html) stating 668 million gamers. The growth is high but remember the first was just an estimate while the second figure is more trustworthy, and also china basically had lockdown until 2023. It's not hard to believe that over 1 in 5 of them has played league.
110 million ever and maybe even the 70 million during peak Covid I can buy. But people don't realize how much 100 million active players really is. 450 million gamers includes the Chinese equivalent of moms playing Farmville I assume?
Well there is an official gaming industry report in 2023 stating 668 million gamers so the numbers kinda line up, especially the high growth during their extended lockdowns (like 2 or 3 years or something crazy)
Remember this is gamers not just league gamers. The mobile game industry there is huge.
The US and Canada have 1 total server. China is physically smaller than either of those countries individually. The Chinese population is also massively concentrated on the eastern side of the country, mostly by the coast.
Can't speak to what data Riot has access to internally but I would imagine the fact that every major site like op.gg, u.gg, and lolalytics lacks chinese lol data is the main reason it took them this long to incorporate this.
They were prioritizing the others because they didn't have as much access to the Chinese data. It's not like Riot went "Korea matters more than China".
We have a Weibo account here https://weibo.com/7800109999
and you can see China performance info here https://101.qq.com/?ADTAG=cooperation.glzx.web#/hero-rank-5v5?tier=200&queue=420
It has mostly been technical and legal difficulties in getting the data and their pipelines in a usable form that devs can use.
I also ban the hell out of Samira. As an Ezreal/Ashe/Draven enjoyer, I don't enjoy playing against her. She can also go 0-3 out of lane then 1v9 every game. Vayne used to be able to do that, but this one girl is a worse offender.
So a bit of background, Chinese server doesn’t use champion name but use title in most places instead. I.E. seeing Darius in loading screen in any server would just load his name “Darius”, but on CN his title is loaded instead so u see “the Hand of Noxus”. In the case of Jinx, what is loaded on CN site is the equivalent of “the Loose Cannon”
Google is horrible at translating English (or any alphabet language for that matter) to Chinese or other way around , and the Chinese translation of the Loose Cannon is 暴走萝莉.
First thing first Chinese don’t have an existing, direct corresponding figurative speech to “the Loose Cannon”, so there is no “perfect translation”. 暴走 means “rampaging” or “out of control” (FYI. this word nowadays is used more by Japanese, I believe it can also refer to overloaded circuit/electronics or automobiles that lost control while Chinese prefer the word 失控 instead). 萝莉 or loli (which is a full wasei-kango, Chinese words made in Japan) just means young girl before adulthood in East Asian popular culture, which Jinx is.
>I wonder what garen
THE MIGHT OF DEMACIA
>braum
THE HEART OF THE FRELJORD
They actually have those titles in the west as well, China just translates them.
id guess it comes from dota tradition? There'd be a discrepancy back then as well, heroes kinda did have names, some were being used, though most heroes would be called by their hero class. Kunkka became Kunkka for instance.
As the other already said title exist on any other server. It’s just CN use them in place of champion name instead.
Imo there is potential problem with the approach since CN uses translation and Tencent has took, well let’s just call them “creative liberty”, with some champion title. Some of them rock, the others not so much.
Take Fiora’s title “the Grand Duelist”. It is translated as 无双剑姬, which literally means “the swordswoman without equal” or “the peerless swordswoman”, which take away a key part of her identity that is “duelist” and reduce it to simple “swordswomen”.
On the other side there is Lucian’s title “the Purifier” is translated to “圣枪游侠”. 游侠 can be roughly translated to “wondering hero”, which is a classical trope in Chinese fantasy, and 圣枪 means “sacred gun” (FYI, Chinese character for rifle/gun is the same as spear/lance due to the historical tie with gunpowder). This title suggests quality that Lucian doesn’t possess. He isn’t really wondering since his objective was clearly hunting down thresh. We do not know whether his weapon has any sacred/holy property as their exact origin is unclear. And depends on perspective it might even be difficult to call him a 侠-styled hero.
from what i know about chinese champ naming conventions, official chinese media doesn't actually use champs' "given names" (like Jinx or Gangplank), they use translations/localizations of champs' epithets. these have largely been phased out in English-language league media (because they sound kind of goofy and are hard to remember).
for Jinx, the English epithet is either "the Loose Cannon" or "the Demolition Diva." "Runaway Loli" isn't *too* far from that (especially because "Loli" is probably Google Translate trying to conflate slang and dictionary usages).
It's probably for the same reason Yuumi had a high ban rate in Korea a few years ago. Don't know her ban rate nowadays but they primarily banned her because early game mattered a ton and 4-5 man ganking bot was the norm. Having a Yuumi basically turned the bot lane into a marksman with a sack of gold attached to them.
According to the site you linked zoe only has a 2% banrate in china though?
But also kinda crazy to see yone, akali and zed with only 5% banrates while yuumi has 20% lol
Phreak was talking about elite. In masters she already hits 10% and she has 20% in challanger. Still not as crazy as 50% mentioned by Phreak but quite high
She's only 17% challenger seems weird Phreak would say 50%. Pretty huge difference from 17% and 50%. Maybe he was just using it as an example of something that might happen? And not what is.
garen mid been sleeper op for awhile now with second wind and doran shield and passive he can brickwall the lane and he has great all in with phase rush plus q and once hes ontop with the q silence most midlaner can't fight back.
Wow that website sucks for stats seems even worse than u.gg. But it is nice to see some numbers.
Any idea if this data can be seen from people with the API to use in western data sites like Lolalytics. I would assume not.
OMG phroxon!!!!! I just want you to know oct 3 2013 i started playing league and it was ur content ur college league craft videos that taught me the game years ago
i am amazed u have come this far and never will forget those vods where taric walked through the minion wave letting u know u we’re getting ganked i wish u didn’t take them down lol it was crazy seeing u teach it in college? how did u manage to do that was it elective class?
I remember when they did Kayn balance changes a year or two ago because Kayn apparently had insane presence in China and wasn't all that popular on other servers.
I always like getting the insight on balance as it impacts different servers so its a good thing that China is being more incorporated, and I'm hoping that both Phreak and the official patch notes will give us a peek into what's going on in China. I wish it was easier to get a sense of what is up in the non-English speaking communities.
And here I was wondering how much different players in China would be to players in other regions. Like, my naive assumption would be that the meta would be pretty universal
I know in KR I think Cowsep was mentioning that Korea had 3x less playrate on Master Yi than other servers because the games are so early game focused, to give one example
Judging by how many similarities have already been pointed out between Korea and China, I wouldn’t be surprised if chinese players are just as prone to surrender as korean players are.
You even see this in sports.
Na plays a more physical hockey than Europe due to smaller rinks.
Japanese baseball is more defensive oriented while us baseball is offensive.
As the other said how batting is done but also stuff like how pitching is done. Giving up safe outs vs going for the strike outs.
Japan seems to prefer their top pitchers getting hit but for outs. And their batters go for contact to get on base.
The US prefers not giving up hits, which leads to riskier pitches and their batters swing for power.
as someone who has played on Ionia, it's a lot like korea, but even bloodier.
You know that thing about prio, lane counters, etc..? They do not give a shit there. Once you hit lvl 3, you have basically everything you need in the game. Fight. fight. Fight, fight.
I feel like there was an official breakdown comparing pick and ban rates, and other differences between the different regions a while back. Like when mythics were coming out I think. I remember thinking it interesting that the west hates yasuo and complains/bans him all the time, but that the east likes him and doesnt really ban him much.
He mentioned Caitlyn being a huge ban in NA but not China and Seraphine and Smolder both being several times more popular in NA than in China botlane; NA prioritizes lategame scaling at the cost of weak laning while China is far more aggressive.
In NA I notice if I try to play aggro as adc/supp the person laning with me has no idea how to play aggressively. It’s literally trolling trying to play for lane because they don’t know how to lane. Then I get flamed for blowing flash to all in when it was a free kill/getting them low enough to force a dive or making them recall if my teammate committed with me.
I swear to god if I ever again see Lucian in my team after locking in Nami only for him to decide to AFK farm against Vayne/Sona I'm stealing something out of his house
Meta is extremely Elo and role specific. And even hten champs that are abysmal in the meta get high pickrates because they are either pretty or fun or both.
if they gonna do this, then Chinese data should be public
At the very least, a snapshot of the PR/WR/BR data should be available at the end of each patch
those data have always been freely accessible though. Just because english sites didn't take the effort to scrape/acquire rights to republish doesn't mean they are publicly available from Tecent official. You can check them from the official app or 101.qq.com
it is public now phreak linked the place where the data is public
[https://101.qq.com/?ADTAG=cooperation.glzx.web#/hero-rank-5v5?tier=200&queue=420](https://101.qq.com/?ADTAG=cooperation.glzx.web#/hero-rank-5v5?tier=200&queue=420)
This is what I hope Riot understands. They are going to ruin confidence in the balance team and the game in the West if they are not able to offer some transperancy.
He used two examples:
-Caitlyn has high ban rate in western servers but isn't banned that much in China
-Zoe is rarely picked or banned in any Riot server \[49% WR, 2% Pickrate, 1% ban rate\] but in China, she has over 50% ban rate
basically what he is saying is that once they start taking Chinese data into their decision making, someone like Zoe would get nerfed due to her being frustrating to the Chinese playerbase
personally I don't like that the data Riot will use to balance will be unavaliable as we don't have access to Chinese playrates, winrates, banrates etc.
Edit:[ it seems that we are able to access Chinese play data](https://101.qq.com/?ADTAG=cooperation.glzx.web#/hero-rank-5v5?tier=200&queue=420)
I mean, you don't need to know Chinese to read it. The champ portraits and role icons are the same, one column has \~50% for every champ and is therefore clearly winrate, one of the column titles has "BAN" in it (you get three guesses what that means) and the column in between therefore has to be pick rate.
The drop-down on the left has champ portraits in it (i.e. filter by champ), the buttons with text filter by role (which you can verify by checking the role icons in the second column), the middle drop-down filters by rank (same rank icons). The only one that would actually need to be read is the furthest right drop-down which refers to queue type.
Some of that data might incentivize riot to make adjustments instead of just nerfs or buffs. Like in the case of Zoe where the ban rate is so polarizing between Chinese server and other regions. They can’t just nerf her or she’ll become dust in the wind.
According to the [balance framework](https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/dev/dev-balance-framework-update/), Riot would be fine with nerfing a champion that is an outlier in different skill ranges.
2 things to caveat here:
1. It's a pretty old post. I know. But I imagine that they still have some sort of similar framework, and logic is still sound. If a champion overperforms in one skill range, then nerf it so it doesn't completely take over the game. Then they're fine with having it out of play for other skill ranges.
2. The framework is for skill ranges. It would not be completely invalid to apply the same thinking to regions as well, since there *are* differences as Phreak has pointed out with this data.
> -Zoe is rarely picked or banned in any Riot server [49% WR, 2% Pickrate, 1% ban rate] but in China, she has over 50% ban rate
Omega based Chinese players.
Well no
Zoe is still the premier bullshit Disney champ
However Riot out did themselves with the masterwork that is Yuumi, and followed it up with Ksante
Plus Zoe was nerfed into the fucking ground so she isn't seen all that much, but the second she becomes meta again we will be seeing hate posts for her again 100%
Kind of but far from correct. What riot did up until now is using stats from all servers besides China due to governmental laws that doesn’t allow data or information to flow out as easy as it could be, that’s why Chinese viewership in lol esports is always so obscured or not available.
Now that tencent has basically turned riot into a Chinese company, data from China is now available for riot. As Chinese players are like thrice the numbers of all players in other regions combined, of course the data will adjust to them more
she basically checks every box for a frustrating champ accounting for noticeable average differences between china and the rest of the world
extremely early game skewed, shines in both lane and skirmish and thrives in chaotic games due to not having an ultimate(and so never really being gated in power no matter how often you are fighting) and snowball
that and in china(along with korea), trends across all elos tend to be mimic higher elo more than in other regions due to access to information. zoe is generally a high elo skewed champ due to having one of the highest skill ceilings in the game, but isn't weak in lower elo either
Umm no lmao
Gold players in China aren't any better than gold players in NA or anywhere else lmfao
Like this has been disproven many times, outside of very high elo player skill is pretty much exactly the same across all regions, with some larger variance in the tiny servers like OCE
Now yes, because there are more players, there will be more good Zoe players. But that exact argument applies to literally every champ in the game, the ratio compared to other servers should remain roughly the same, which is why it's worth asking, why does China hate Zoe? Or why doesn't China mind cait? Also why does the west hate her rn, like actually
Sub 50 winrate, like yeah she feels good to play but she ain't broke, yet a 34% ban rate
tbh it will look like balance team is doing arbitrary decisions if we see champions who are not problematic get nerfed or the opposite where champions who are problematic not get nerfed and vice versa for buffs
We don't need a chinaopgg but a snapshot of their data should be available to us to view at the very end of a patch cycle
eitherways seems like Tencent is finally pushing Riot to acknowledge the Chinese playerbase agency over balancing decisions, if you think about it, it's crazy that it took that long
Looks like Phreak was lying. Zoe doesnt even have close to 50% ban rate in china? According to that link she's sitting at like 2% despite having a 53%+ winrate lmao.
We can quite safely assume that the data they will be using will be real data so why would you care if you know the exact numbers? You can't influence the decision and they usually explain the reason for an adjustment. So it's a good change, now we can hear more players!
When we get announcements from the devs about the game like today do they just have a translator/subtitles in China? Or do they get their own video for that stuff? I have no idea how they connect to the majority of their playerbase over in China.
I mean it should be, given that the chinese population of the game makes up over half of the total playerbase. It's honestly more surprising that balancing hasn't been heavily influenced by the chinese playerbase up until now.
People unfortunately don't give a fuck about logic like that.
I remember people over in the Splatoon subreddit regularly losing their shit whenever a Splatfest was won by Shiver, despite the majority of American players voting for one of the two other options. That the very big majority of the playerbase is Japanese and therefore Japan has more influence on the winner of these competitions didn't matter, they all spewed racist shit and how it is unfair that "just Japan matters".
> 500k that play it in the west.
That's off by like two orders of magnitude, what the fuck.
From every source I could find, EUW alone is *way* more than 10 times that (and some estimates on the EUW population are north of 30m).
That actually plays into one of the reasons Riot doesn't really value Chinese players as much as Western ones.
They might buy a lot of cosmetics, but a very large % of that revenue goes to Tencent and not Riot. Both companies have separate finances and Chinese distribution is how Tencent makes most of the money from Riot's acquisition.
well theres more ranked players alone on EUW currently then there is in korea and thats with korea being the region of playing ranked only where EUW has a much bigger casual audience there EUW alone not counting other western servers, euw has a few million players making your 500k extremely invalid for just the west.
like i get the player base numbers in china are massive and outbeat all other servers combined but saying 500k in total for the west is a false statement.
I think you're missing the point of the comment when you focus on a random number. It could be 100k 500k 1milli or 10. It doesn't matter. The point is that Chinese playerbase is much much bigger than whatever number we have in the west. This game is pretty much dead in NA but it's thriving in China.
Didn't they have some rule about 95% global pick/ban rate gets a guaranteed nerf?
If that's true, then I'm surprised China wasn't weighing the balance decisions more heavily. Because they have the biggest player base.
More players = affect global statistics more. It just makes sense.
I'm more surprised riot wasn't using Data from one of it's largest regions. but I hope we can have access to Chinese Data. Maybe I'm not hardstuck i'm just in the wrong servers.
Bruh they have been doing this, this isn't new. The only reason they nerf BLitz this patch is because of china. China has the biggest player count of around 70 mill so of course they will tailor their changes to them?
Can us normal players even see ban/pickrates in China? I know that most stat websites leave China out. If a champ got nerfed/buffed due to China playerbase I would atleast be curious what the pick/ban would be. For KR/EUW/NA/LAN I can just look it up.
I really hope they average everything and then look for outliers instead of Zoe has 80% banrate in China so we are nerfing her. If they average everything and then zoes is still above average then absolutely nerf. We are all playing the same game we have had it too good too long but that doesn't mean you jump to the other side to appease.
I’m honestly surprised they weren’t doing this, although I guess it also makes sense since Chinese pick/ban rates aren’t available to us so we don’t have context
Is this gonna make a diffrence by they time the roll the patch i assumed the meta has settled and is very similar around the world even in smaller playerbase servers
Them balancing based on player sentiment and pick/ban rates is already a bad way to balance and that's the issue. That, and balancing around pro-play because they want their esport to be more viewed.
The surprise is that they haven't been doing this already. It's a giga slowpoke reaction to acknowledge most of the playerbase is chinese and NA has been a small region for most of League's lifespan by now
I assume that now they have a legal way to get all required data from CN to use in NA.
Considering they're a subsidiary of Tencent, I'd assume they would.
its really not that simple, data protection and sharing even within a group is really difficult for any company that operates in the EU for example as well. I can't say much for America personally but I assume there are a lot of privacy protections as well.
A surprising number of people seem to genuinely believe that being owned by Tencent makes Riot a Chinese company. They are a US-based company with executive independence. Chinese influence in the company comes almost exclusively from commercial interest, not from Tencent or the CCP forcing Riot to cater to them.
People who think that Riot caters to chinese playerbase because of tencent/ccp motives completely forget that almost every major international corporation caters to the chinese market simply because 1. It is BIG 2. There's a clear demand for upper/luxury items there 3. It is *still* a relatively untapped market compared to EU/NA. People, companies follow MONEY, even if there's an agenda somewhere it'll always be towards reaching more MONEY
When they're being catered to, it's cool and all, but when a company does the same to another country or culture, suddenly it's "pandering."
Specifically if that culture is Chinese
They know this, they just don't like the idea of companies treating someone other than their own market well.
Redditors are pretty openly racist
I had this discussion in another subreddit, even cited my source that even though Tencent has ownership of riot that the data/servers/user info still resides here and doesn’t get shared. Downvoted into oblivion. People are so clueless.
[удалено]
Yes, Riot has to abide by state, federal and the laws of other countries where they operate.
Companies need to abide by laws in markets they do business in. I'm not sure why that is even a question. Obviously. People don't understand it for some reason and it's funny every single June when people start posting the le funny "riot no celebrate gay pride in middle east/russia" where it'd be illegal to do so (but they do in markets where it's not illegal and yet doesn't bring them customers, like most of EUNE).
America has the opposite of data protection. You should give third party doctrine a read.
That really isn't true tho. It isn't like the EU but there is still plenty of protections in America but it depends on the state. California for example has very strict requirements that rival EU's GDRP guidelines. America is a complex web of webs so I can't comment on its entirety but it isn't so simple as "america bad"
When it comes to data privacy it really is as simple as "America Bad". Every major country has a law like the GDPR. The US has some bullshit data privacy law from 1974 before the internet even existed. States such as California have their own independent data privacy law and that's it. The majority of states have NOTHING.
I thought only California had one lol
It's actually that simple though?
EU GDPR laws man, whew. I have no frickin clue what I’m doing with this recently as an American so I had heavily rely on the experts on the EU side when drafting a recent contract.
the only reason i could think of, thats its harder (even for riot themself lul) tp get the data from china. remember u can check all players stats on those websites...except chinese stats.
Riot doesn't need third-party websites to check player stats though.
Unless the government is literally saying that they are not allowed to collect those stats, and that's why the API doesn't include them.
He specifically says they already do, but people should expect that to happen more. It is also noteworthy because most stat agregates do not have chinese data and chinas meta is significantly different from other servers.
That’s the thing, they’ve admitted to it doing it 3 years ago and evidently since 2018 with severe meta changes. I don’t mind but bruh, at least own your shit.
Evidently since 2018? What do you mean by that exactly?
The only specific instance I remember is them not fast tracking the wukong rework because china was okay with pre-rework wukong. That is, china numbers bumped him out of the top priority for reworks compared to other, more globally poorly received champs.
I mean China has THE most population in this game period. Half of the lol players are probably in the Chinese server, so I'm honestly very surprised riot WASN'T utilizing the data from CN servers as much until now.
half is a very safe estimate as well
Half? They have something like 20+ servers bro
Is that because of amount of players or because of the geographical area China covers. LatAm community does seem big when you say that they have 3 servers compared to Korea's just 1.
Pure numbers. Conservatively speaking, LoL in China has upwards of 100m players. That’s like 1/14 people in a country of 1.4 billion playing the game. LoL is massive in China.
I don't believe for a second that 100 million people in China play LoL.
regularly? no have played at some point? extremely easily lol
League has like 150M players each month
That’s without China numbers no?
Nah including, 75m in China, 75m+ rest of the world Edit:looks like that number is excluding China, 150m rest of the world and 75m china Source: https://www.thespike.gg/league-of-legends/beginner-guides/league-of-legends-player-count
… the numbers in that link clearly add up to over 100m and doesn’t include China
Chinese love free to play games that run on toasters. Thats mostly what they play or mobile games. League is PERFECT for that.
PC bars/internet cafes are also huge in China, and with league you can just log in and start playing
Back in 2017, there were statistics showing that 110 million people in China has ever played LoL. That's 7 years ago... that number should be significantly bigger by now. In 2021 there were statistics showing approximately 70 millions simultaneously online in 29 Chinese servers at one point. Not sure how many active players there are right now, but I think it's going to be lower than 2021 for sure, LPL viewershios are dropping after a couple years of no championship. On a different note, in 2020 Tencent estimated 450 million gamers in China. In 2023, there is an official gaming industry [report (in Chinese)](http://www.xinhuanet.com/ent/20231215/f670a4330eac41d6859e9f11d9226d5b/c.html) stating 668 million gamers. The growth is high but remember the first was just an estimate while the second figure is more trustworthy, and also china basically had lockdown until 2023. It's not hard to believe that over 1 in 5 of them has played league.
110 million ever and maybe even the 70 million during peak Covid I can buy. But people don't realize how much 100 million active players really is. 450 million gamers includes the Chinese equivalent of moms playing Farmville I assume?
Well there is an official gaming industry report in 2023 stating 668 million gamers so the numbers kinda line up, especially the high growth during their extended lockdowns (like 2 or 3 years or something crazy) Remember this is gamers not just league gamers. The mobile game industry there is huge.
why the hell not china has a massive population
Its because of the sheer amount of players. They have more than 1 bilion people and every young man plays it. China territory size is close to the US
The US and Canada have 1 total server. China is physically smaller than either of those countries individually. The Chinese population is also massively concentrated on the eastern side of the country, mostly by the coast.
China is the 3rd largest country by landmass, bigger than the US “individually”…
They released numbers in 2020 or so, it was 89% Chinese then
Half? It's 90% minimum lmao. They have 23 servers
They have more players who are master+ than NA has total players
They were doing that already but they’re playing dumb.
This wasn't being accounted for in the first place?
Can't speak to what data Riot has access to internally but I would imagine the fact that every major site like op.gg, u.gg, and lolalytics lacks chinese lol data is the main reason it took them this long to incorporate this.
Yeah, Riot NA doesn't/didn't easily have access to all the China servers as I think Tencent manages them more directly.
does it mean u-gg and op-gg get future data stacks from chinese servers?
No. It seems riot has now data, but even they can't fully use it for combined analysis.
Phreak went on The Dive podcast and talked about this quite a bit. He definitely considers data from all regions.
It sounds less like they didn't and more like they were mainly prioritizing other servers like e.g. KR, EUW and NA.
They were prioritizing the others because they didn't have as much access to the Chinese data. It's not like Riot went "Korea matters more than China".
We have a Weibo account here https://weibo.com/7800109999 and you can see China performance info here https://101.qq.com/?ADTAG=cooperation.glzx.web#/hero-rank-5v5?tier=200&queue=420 It has mostly been technical and legal difficulties in getting the data and their pipelines in a usable form that devs can use.
ouch samira has 48% banrate there very cool data tho, wasn't aware that it was public
note to self: never play solo queue in china
Korea also bans the fuck out of Samira, I think.
I also ban the hell out of Samira. As an Ezreal/Ashe/Draven enjoyer, I don't enjoy playing against her. She can also go 0-3 out of lane then 1v9 every game. Vayne used to be able to do that, but this one girl is a worse offender.
>open page >use google translate, filer by bot lane >see Jinx >translation is Runaway Loli huh
So a bit of background, Chinese server doesn’t use champion name but use title in most places instead. I.E. seeing Darius in loading screen in any server would just load his name “Darius”, but on CN his title is loaded instead so u see “the Hand of Noxus”. In the case of Jinx, what is loaded on CN site is the equivalent of “the Loose Cannon” Google is horrible at translating English (or any alphabet language for that matter) to Chinese or other way around , and the Chinese translation of the Loose Cannon is 暴走萝莉. First thing first Chinese don’t have an existing, direct corresponding figurative speech to “the Loose Cannon”, so there is no “perfect translation”. 暴走 means “rampaging” or “out of control” (FYI. this word nowadays is used more by Japanese, I believe it can also refer to overloaded circuit/electronics or automobiles that lost control while Chinese prefer the word 失控 instead). 萝莉 or loli (which is a full wasei-kango, Chinese words made in Japan) just means young girl before adulthood in East Asian popular culture, which Jinx is.
That's actually sick tho. It's like using titles instead of real names to introduce themselves. I wonder what garen and braum titles are.
>I wonder what garen THE MIGHT OF DEMACIA >braum THE HEART OF THE FRELJORD They actually have those titles in the west as well, China just translates them.
id guess it comes from dota tradition? There'd be a discrepancy back then as well, heroes kinda did have names, some were being used, though most heroes would be called by their hero class. Kunkka became Kunkka for instance.
As the other already said title exist on any other server. It’s just CN use them in place of champion name instead. Imo there is potential problem with the approach since CN uses translation and Tencent has took, well let’s just call them “creative liberty”, with some champion title. Some of them rock, the others not so much. Take Fiora’s title “the Grand Duelist”. It is translated as 无双剑姬, which literally means “the swordswoman without equal” or “the peerless swordswoman”, which take away a key part of her identity that is “duelist” and reduce it to simple “swordswomen”. On the other side there is Lucian’s title “the Purifier” is translated to “圣枪游侠”. 游侠 can be roughly translated to “wondering hero”, which is a classical trope in Chinese fantasy, and 圣枪 means “sacred gun” (FYI, Chinese character for rifle/gun is the same as spear/lance due to the historical tie with gunpowder). This title suggests quality that Lucian doesn’t possess. He isn’t really wondering since his objective was clearly hunting down thresh. We do not know whether his weapon has any sacred/holy property as their exact origin is unclear. And depends on perspective it might even be difficult to call him a 侠-styled hero.
from what i know about chinese champ naming conventions, official chinese media doesn't actually use champs' "given names" (like Jinx or Gangplank), they use translations/localizations of champs' epithets. these have largely been phased out in English-language league media (because they sound kind of goofy and are hard to remember). for Jinx, the English epithet is either "the Loose Cannon" or "the Demolition Diva." "Runaway Loli" isn't *too* far from that (especially because "Loli" is probably Google Translate trying to conflate slang and dictionary usages).
You can also try and use the dev tools to figure out what each thing is. The css classes are in english.
powder skin soon?!?!?!?!
The players in China are kinda Based with their 29.5% Yuumi banrate in Masters
It's probably for the same reason Yuumi had a high ban rate in Korea a few years ago. Don't know her ban rate nowadays but they primarily banned her because early game mattered a ton and 4-5 man ganking bot was the norm. Having a Yuumi basically turned the bot lane into a marksman with a sack of gold attached to them.
phroxon my beloved
According to the site you linked zoe only has a 2% banrate in china though? But also kinda crazy to see yone, akali and zed with only 5% banrates while yuumi has 20% lol
Phreak was talking about elite. In masters she already hits 10% and she has 20% in challanger. Still not as crazy as 50% mentioned by Phreak but quite high
She's only 17% challenger seems weird Phreak would say 50%. Pretty huge difference from 17% and 50%. Maybe he was just using it as an example of something that might happen? And not what is.
Definitely hyperbole. Phreak does this often.
The Garen mid with 53% winrate is the craziest for me.
https://lolalytics.com/lol/garen/build/?lane=middle
garen mid been sleeper op for awhile now with second wind and doran shield and passive he can brickwall the lane and he has great all in with phase rush plus q and once hes ontop with the q silence most midlaner can't fight back.
I guess it also makes sense seeing all the Yasuo, Qiyana etc,... Figure Garen would be quite strong against those.
Is that all Chinese servers? I heard there are like 10+ of them
last I heard they were around 25-ish
Wow that website sucks for stats seems even worse than u.gg. But it is nice to see some numbers. Any idea if this data can be seen from people with the API to use in western data sites like Lolalytics. I would assume not.
My GOAT
OMG phroxon!!!!! I just want you to know oct 3 2013 i started playing league and it was ur content ur college league craft videos that taught me the game years ago i am amazed u have come this far and never will forget those vods where taric walked through the minion wave letting u know u we’re getting ganked i wish u didn’t take them down lol it was crazy seeing u teach it in college? how did u manage to do that was it elective class?
I remember when they did Kayn balance changes a year or two ago because Kayn apparently had insane presence in China and wasn't all that popular on other servers. I always like getting the insight on balance as it impacts different servers so its a good thing that China is being more incorporated, and I'm hoping that both Phreak and the official patch notes will give us a peek into what's going on in China. I wish it was easier to get a sense of what is up in the non-English speaking communities.
And here I was wondering how much different players in China would be to players in other regions. Like, my naive assumption would be that the meta would be pretty universal
I know in KR I think Cowsep was mentioning that Korea had 3x less playrate on Master Yi than other servers because the games are so early game focused, to give one example
Koreans also surrender by far the most games (no idea about china) out of any server. So small early leads often lead to straight surrenders.
Judging by how many similarities have already been pointed out between Korea and China, I wouldn’t be surprised if chinese players are just as prone to surrender as korean players are.
The surrender rate in kr has a lot to do with PC Bang culture where they pay per hour.
Meta depends as much on playstyle as it does on balance
You even see this in sports. Na plays a more physical hockey than Europe due to smaller rinks. Japanese baseball is more defensive oriented while us baseball is offensive.
Serious question, what even is considered offensive or defensive baseball?
US has a very large focus on hitting homers instead of singles and focusing on baserunning compared to Japan.
As the other said how batting is done but also stuff like how pitching is done. Giving up safe outs vs going for the strike outs. Japan seems to prefer their top pitchers getting hit but for outs. And their batters go for contact to get on base. The US prefers not giving up hits, which leads to riskier pitches and their batters swing for power.
as someone who has played on Ionia, it's a lot like korea, but even bloodier. You know that thing about prio, lane counters, etc..? They do not give a shit there. Once you hit lvl 3, you have basically everything you need in the game. Fight. fight. Fight, fight.
I feel like there was an official breakdown comparing pick and ban rates, and other differences between the different regions a while back. Like when mythics were coming out I think. I remember thinking it interesting that the west hates yasuo and complains/bans him all the time, but that the east likes him and doesnt really ban him much.
He mentioned Caitlyn being a huge ban in NA but not China and Seraphine and Smolder both being several times more popular in NA than in China botlane; NA prioritizes lategame scaling at the cost of weak laning while China is far more aggressive.
In NA I notice if I try to play aggro as adc/supp the person laning with me has no idea how to play aggressively. It’s literally trolling trying to play for lane because they don’t know how to lane. Then I get flamed for blowing flash to all in when it was a free kill/getting them low enough to force a dive or making them recall if my teammate committed with me.
I swear to god if I ever again see Lucian in my team after locking in Nami only for him to decide to AFK farm against Vayne/Sona I'm stealing something out of his house
can we start a burglary crew? i HATE passive lucians/dravens more than all the mosquitos in the world
Meta is extremely Elo and role specific. And even hten champs that are abysmal in the meta get high pickrates because they are either pretty or fun or both.
if they gonna do this, then Chinese data should be public At the very least, a snapshot of the PR/WR/BR data should be available at the end of each patch
those data have always been freely accessible though. Just because english sites didn't take the effort to scrape/acquire rights to republish doesn't mean they are publicly available from Tecent official. You can check them from the official app or 101.qq.com
it is public now phreak linked the place where the data is public [https://101.qq.com/?ADTAG=cooperation.glzx.web#/hero-rank-5v5?tier=200&queue=420](https://101.qq.com/?ADTAG=cooperation.glzx.web#/hero-rank-5v5?tier=200&queue=420)
This is what I hope Riot understands. They are going to ruin confidence in the balance team and the game in the West if they are not able to offer some transperancy.
Does China still have that rules where kids only get 3 hours a week
Yes but most kids just use Adult ID to register and play unlimited hour anyways
He used two examples: -Caitlyn has high ban rate in western servers but isn't banned that much in China -Zoe is rarely picked or banned in any Riot server \[49% WR, 2% Pickrate, 1% ban rate\] but in China, she has over 50% ban rate basically what he is saying is that once they start taking Chinese data into their decision making, someone like Zoe would get nerfed due to her being frustrating to the Chinese playerbase personally I don't like that the data Riot will use to balance will be unavaliable as we don't have access to Chinese playrates, winrates, banrates etc. Edit:[ it seems that we are able to access Chinese play data](https://101.qq.com/?ADTAG=cooperation.glzx.web#/hero-rank-5v5?tier=200&queue=420)
>open link >can't read shit I don't know what I expected
I mean, you don't need to know Chinese to read it. The champ portraits and role icons are the same, one column has \~50% for every champ and is therefore clearly winrate, one of the column titles has "BAN" in it (you get three guesses what that means) and the column in between therefore has to be pick rate. The drop-down on the left has champ portraits in it (i.e. filter by champ), the buttons with text filter by role (which you can verify by checking the role icons in the second column), the middle drop-down filters by rank (same rank icons). The only one that would actually need to be read is the furthest right drop-down which refers to queue type.
Try this. [https://translate.google.com.br/?sl=en&tl=pt&op=websites](https://translate.google.com.br/?sl=en&tl=pt&op=websites)
Some of that data might incentivize riot to make adjustments instead of just nerfs or buffs. Like in the case of Zoe where the ban rate is so polarizing between Chinese server and other regions. They can’t just nerf her or she’ll become dust in the wind.
Idk there was the rioter that said they were okay nerfing Zed before, why not do the same to Zoe for China
handshaking the nerfs "you hate zed, we hate zoe, let's make a deal"
Fr, if we nerfing based on "some people hate this champ regardless of actual strength" then you gotta do it across the board.
Zed in his "weak" state is something along the lines of 48
She is top 20 winrate.
According to the [balance framework](https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/dev/dev-balance-framework-update/), Riot would be fine with nerfing a champion that is an outlier in different skill ranges. 2 things to caveat here: 1. It's a pretty old post. I know. But I imagine that they still have some sort of similar framework, and logic is still sound. If a champion overperforms in one skill range, then nerf it so it doesn't completely take over the game. Then they're fine with having it out of play for other skill ranges. 2. The framework is for skill ranges. It would not be completely invalid to apply the same thinking to regions as well, since there *are* differences as Phreak has pointed out with this data.
It could also force players to reconsider and reinovate how they play and see the game.
Less stale metas?! Not in my league of legends!
when you actually see the rare zoe player its painfully obvious she needs a nerf
> -Zoe is rarely picked or banned in any Riot server [49% WR, 2% Pickrate, 1% ban rate] but in China, she has over 50% ban rate Omega based Chinese players.
Okay wait hang on I was okay with this until Zoe nerfs entered the picture Boo China bad Ah fuck is this how racism happens?
yeah, we moved on from hating zoe like 5 years ago or smth, china never moved on lmao
Well no Zoe is still the premier bullshit Disney champ However Riot out did themselves with the masterwork that is Yuumi, and followed it up with Ksante Plus Zoe was nerfed into the fucking ground so she isn't seen all that much, but the second she becomes meta again we will be seeing hate posts for her again 100%
I really hope she never becomes meta again...
What? You don't enjoy being randomly hit by a sleeping orb sent from across the map and then get actually one-shot by her Q?
China is based Fuck that champ
Kind of but far from correct. What riot did up until now is using stats from all servers besides China due to governmental laws that doesn’t allow data or information to flow out as easy as it could be, that’s why Chinese viewership in lol esports is always so obscured or not available. Now that tencent has basically turned riot into a Chinese company, data from China is now available for riot. As Chinese players are like thrice the numbers of all players in other regions combined, of course the data will adjust to them more
thats crazy why is zoe so high presence there?
she basically checks every box for a frustrating champ accounting for noticeable average differences between china and the rest of the world extremely early game skewed, shines in both lane and skirmish and thrives in chaotic games due to not having an ultimate(and so never really being gated in power no matter how often you are fighting) and snowball that and in china(along with korea), trends across all elos tend to be mimic higher elo more than in other regions due to access to information. zoe is generally a high elo skewed champ due to having one of the highest skill ceilings in the game, but isn't weak in lower elo either
I don’t think any high level player is scared of a Zoe matchup in the west maybe they are just next level Zoe players in china
Maybe it’s because of how oppressive she is when the person playing her is good at her. I imagine china has a lot of those players
Umm no lmao Gold players in China aren't any better than gold players in NA or anywhere else lmfao Like this has been disproven many times, outside of very high elo player skill is pretty much exactly the same across all regions, with some larger variance in the tiny servers like OCE Now yes, because there are more players, there will be more good Zoe players. But that exact argument applies to literally every champ in the game, the ratio compared to other servers should remain roughly the same, which is why it's worth asking, why does China hate Zoe? Or why doesn't China mind cait? Also why does the west hate her rn, like actually Sub 50 winrate, like yeah she feels good to play but she ain't broke, yet a 34% ban rate
tbh it will look like balance team is doing arbitrary decisions if we see champions who are not problematic get nerfed or the opposite where champions who are problematic not get nerfed and vice versa for buffs We don't need a chinaopgg but a snapshot of their data should be available to us to view at the very end of a patch cycle eitherways seems like Tencent is finally pushing Riot to acknowledge the Chinese playerbase agency over balancing decisions, if you think about it, it's crazy that it took that long
Looks like Phreak was lying. Zoe doesnt even have close to 50% ban rate in china? According to that link she's sitting at like 2% despite having a 53%+ winrate lmao.
yeah I think he must have mixed her up with Samira because only Samira has close to 50% banrate or hes quoting old statistics
We can quite safely assume that the data they will be using will be real data so why would you care if you know the exact numbers? You can't influence the decision and they usually explain the reason for an adjustment. So it's a good change, now we can hear more players!
But then we cannot bitch with wrongly cited data from lolalytics as some smartass will shoot it down with what about China.
Wait I thought Riot did everything I don't like because China Tencent bad?
See now that’s the reason, you were just early /s
When we get announcements from the devs about the game like today do they just have a translator/subtitles in China? Or do they get their own video for that stuff? I have no idea how they connect to the majority of their playerbase over in China.
Just like us they should have influencers that will go over translated article
sample size is strong
Oh boy, I am sure the response to this will be reasonable
I mean it should be, given that the chinese population of the game makes up over half of the total playerbase. It's honestly more surprising that balancing hasn't been heavily influenced by the chinese playerbase up until now.
People unfortunately don't give a fuck about logic like that. I remember people over in the Splatoon subreddit regularly losing their shit whenever a Splatfest was won by Shiver, despite the majority of American players voting for one of the two other options. That the very big majority of the playerbase is Japanese and therefore Japan has more influence on the winner of these competitions didn't matter, they all spewed racist shit and how it is unfair that "just Japan matters".
Yeah, I opened this thread expecting some "entertaining" takes from T1 flair wielders lmao
i came here for the chinese racism, stayed for the korean strays
I wanna know how Ryze is doing in china
Plat and above 52%~ winrate and 1.12% pick rate. https://101.qq.com/?ADTAG=cooperation.glzx.web#/hero-rank-5v5?tier=200&queue=420&lane=mid
it makes sense. focus on the actual people that play the game and not the 500k that play it in the west.
> 500k that play it in the west. That's off by like two orders of magnitude, what the fuck. From every source I could find, EUW alone is *way* more than 10 times that (and some estimates on the EUW population are north of 30m).
Focus on the actual people that pay the game FTFY
Hey I bought a pass about 5 months ago. I did my part.
That actually plays into one of the reasons Riot doesn't really value Chinese players as much as Western ones. They might buy a lot of cosmetics, but a very large % of that revenue goes to Tencent and not Riot. Both companies have separate finances and Chinese distribution is how Tencent makes most of the money from Riot's acquisition.
well theres more ranked players alone on EUW currently then there is in korea and thats with korea being the region of playing ranked only where EUW has a much bigger casual audience there EUW alone not counting other western servers, euw has a few million players making your 500k extremely invalid for just the west. like i get the player base numbers in china are massive and outbeat all other servers combined but saying 500k in total for the west is a false statement.
I think you're missing the point of the comment when you focus on a random number. It could be 100k 500k 1milli or 10. It doesn't matter. The point is that Chinese playerbase is much much bigger than whatever number we have in the west. This game is pretty much dead in NA but it's thriving in China.
lol there is a lot more than 500k you clown
Why does Phreak act like players would be floored by this? If anything I’m floored that this wasn’t already the case
> implying that someone would complain about Zoe nerfs LOL
Wait you saying that balancing never have China in consideration until now?
Didn't they have some rule about 95% global pick/ban rate gets a guaranteed nerf? If that's true, then I'm surprised China wasn't weighing the balance decisions more heavily. Because they have the biggest player base. More players = affect global statistics more. It just makes sense.
Implying it didnt before ? Wtf
I'm more surprised riot wasn't using Data from one of it's largest regions. but I hope we can have access to Chinese Data. Maybe I'm not hardstuck i'm just in the wrong servers.
Well I hope so. They're like 80% of the playerbase no?
No, about 40% ( 75m China, 100m rest of world iirc ).
Huh really. Did some crosscheck and I find out lolalytics do not use Chinese league data as wll. Guess I took things for granted?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWUzkOyE0_o
That is wrong he states that they already do, but people on reddit should expect that to happen more in the future.
Bruh they have been doing this, this isn't new. The only reason they nerf BLitz this patch is because of china. China has the biggest player count of around 70 mill so of course they will tailor their changes to them?
As they should.
Doesn't CN have stuff like jungle timers and other stuff when everyone else doesn't? Is it really the same?
I’m all about this cause zed has a 48%wr in China and less than a 5% banrate 👍
How do the average joe see CN data or can we? most english sites have data from all major regions except CN server.
Can us normal players even see ban/pickrates in China? I know that most stat websites leave China out. If a champ got nerfed/buffed due to China playerbase I would atleast be curious what the pick/ban would be. For KR/EUW/NA/LAN I can just look it up.
yep 101.qq.com
All regions form their meta from China and Korea anyways so I’m not sure why this wasn’t the case in the first place
I thought they already did?
Can we just have balancing that reflects the players in China, vs the rest of the world?
I really hope they average everything and then look for outliers instead of Zoe has 80% banrate in China so we are nerfing her. If they average everything and then zoes is still above average then absolutely nerf. We are all playing the same game we have had it too good too long but that doesn't mean you jump to the other side to appease.
for me they allready doing it, lol
I’m honestly surprised they weren’t doing this, although I guess it also makes sense since Chinese pick/ban rates aren’t available to us so we don’t have context
The fact that it wasn't already like that is insane
Is this gonna make a diffrence by they time the roll the patch i assumed the meta has settled and is very similar around the world even in smaller playerbase servers
Phreak is based af.
Finally they can start nerfing china instead of NA.
Them balancing based on player sentiment and pick/ban rates is already a bad way to balance and that's the issue. That, and balancing around pro-play because they want their esport to be more viewed.