2XKO: Live Balance Philosophy

Hi everyone! I'm Patrick ("pattheflip") Miller, the producer on 2XKO's Live Balance and Gameplay Analysis teams. We're tasked with keeping the day-to-day state of 2XKO's gameplay as healthy as possible, and ensuring that all our champion development pods have access to high-level gameplay perspective and insight. We've seen a lot of great conversation about the state of game balance in Early Access thus far, so I wanted to explain how we work on balance, share our perspective on the current state of the game (including Ekko, Yasuo, Teemo, and backdashes), and explain how your play time and feedback has been crucial for helping us refine the game in upcoming patches. As a longtime fighting game player and Rioter myself, I've always loved seeing the FGC and League players dig deeply into their games and think about how they could be improved, and my hope is that anyone who reads this would get a better idea of how we work and what you can do to help us make 2XKO better.

How game balance works on 2XKO

Our champions are built by a small team that generally includes one person from each game dev discipline needed to build them: a designer to build the combat moveset, an engineer to build the tech needed to make the champion work, a concept artist to give the pod clear and evocative images to work from, a character artist to model them, an animator and a tech artist to make them move, a visual effects artist to give their moves clarity and flair, a narrative writer to communicate their identity, a sound designer to give them a distinct sound, a producer to keep everyone working on time, and so on.

Early-stage pressure testing

This team also includes a member of our Game Analysis Team (GAT), our specialized team of high-skill QA analysts who are responsible for making sure that the team has access to a deep level of fighting game expertise, not just in 2XKO but in the entire genre. As the champion pod builds and iterates on the moveset, the GAT member is involved at each step to stress test and offer feedback on the kit's fun and power. The further a champion is in development, the more time and effort it takes to change things, so having the GAT involved early on helps us catch major balance issues before we have to redo a bunch of champion polish work. (It also ensures that the champion designer has the experience of getting bodied by their champion, which is an important perspective to maintain.) Of course, we're regularly playtesting champions as soon as their kit is fleshed-out enough to test, so if you think about the most obnoxious thing you've played against in 2XKO thus far, just know that it used to be even worse.

Near-launch polish

When the champion is close to launch, the designer will partner with our Live Balance designer Dawn ("Yohosie") Hosie for a finishing tune-up pass. At this point, most of the kit is set in stone, and Dawn will work with the designer and the GAT to identify anything in the champion that is unusually strong, weak, or inconsistent with how other 2XKO champions work. This includes mapping out expected combo routes for different skill levels, designing combo trials to help introduce the champion's tools to players, and finding small but impactful tuning levers that we can use to adjust the champion's power without requiring an animator or an engineer's assistance, since by the time the champion goes live, the original pod members will be working on a different champion. These tuning levers include damage, hitbox/hurtbox changes, hit reaction and pushback, hitstun and blockstun duration, and occasionally minor animation speed adjustments to change startup and recovery. Our highest priority is getting more champions out, so during this phase of development we have to make sure that we have the tools we need to tune a champion's power without pulling someone else off another champion and potentially delaying their whole pod's development timeline.

Post-launch tuning

After a champion launches, we closely monitor their performance at various skill levels, looking at pick/win rates, champion matchups, common pairings, move usage frequency, and much more. We also keep tabs on how players are talking about the champion to see how you feel when playing as or against them, since the emotional experience of playing into a frustrating matchup always feels worse than the actual winrate data indicates. (As of writing this, the worst matchup in our data is 54-46%, but I guarantee you everyone can think of a matchup that they feel is far worse than that.) Every day we're sorting through data, socials, streams, and every other feedback point we can find to identify the biggest issues that players are having with our game, brainstorm changes that will fix them without disrupting the rest of the team's work, implement and test them to see how they affect the game, and get them delivered in the next scheduled patch. (Or if the issue is big enough, an unscheduled patch; shoutout to the Release Team for working extra shifts to help us put out some fires in Closed Beta!)

Now that you have an idea of how our Live Balance team works, let's talk about what you can expect from us in the short-to-medium term.

What to expect from Live Balance (for now)

Our focus so far

Our top priority during these early months has been finding and fixing bugs that have dramatic effects on match outcomes. Many of these are bugs that give champions unintended power, like Yasuo's Turbulent Wind (mid-air missing damage scaling, Vi's Footwork () dash cancels allowing for infinite blockstrings, and Blitzcrank's Air Purifier () hitstun scaling bug. We know that it feels bad for your champion to get nerfed by a bugfix, and wanted to rip that band-aid off as soon as possible so we could get an accurate picture of every champion's power level when working as intended. We have also been prioritizing the bugs that create unexpected moments in a match: collision issues that cause champions to warp through each other, champion state issues that give moments of unintended vulnerability, awkwardly interrupted moments in throws and Supers that keep the defender stuck in a neverending hit reaction, and updog (the bug that caused Warwick to infinitely fly). Fortunately, we've managed to find and fix a lot of these for 1.0.3 and 1.1.1, so we can shift our focus to nurturing a healthy meta.

Balance patch goals going forward

Starting with Season 1 in 2026, we’ll aim to deliver balance patches approximately every five weeks, alongside all the other 2XKO content, with varying amounts of changes based on how much we think the game needs to be healthy. We’ll reserve the option to patch off-cycle if we see major bugs or balance issues that absolutely must be dealt with before the next patch comes, or change timing to avoid disrupting the game right before a major tournament. 

To be clear, we're not interested in changing things for the sake of changing things. As fighting game players ourselves, we understand the frustration of having to retrain your muscle memory after a patch shoots your go-to routes, and we think that as new champions and Fuses come out you'll have your hands full labbing the new stuff anyway. For now, you can expect changes to be a bit more disruptive as we continue to iron out the current set of bugs and balance issues, but the goal is to stabilize each champion's core functionality as soon as possible so you can feel confident that all your go-to tech will work from patch to patch.

In general, we want to give players a chance to develop and explore the meta in any given season. We've seen plenty of strategies in fighting games go from broken tier to B- as players learn to adapt, and we think nerfing/buffing/patching it out too early would deprive players of the satisfaction of overcoming a challenge. Fighting games don't have the highs without the lows, and we'll be aiming these balance patches mostly to prevent the lows from getting too low. So now let's talk about what we're focusing on to get 2XKO to a balanced, healthy state at all skill levels.

Our early 2XKO balance goals

Giving every champion a shot

When we talk about getting 2XKO to a balanced and healthy state, we have to start by looking at how players are playing the game across all skill levels. We're responsible for the play experience at every point on the skill spectrum, not just the high end, so our first goal is for every champion to have a fighting chance at all skill levels. It should be easy for new players to open up 2XKO and have fun pressing buttons, and if they feel like they're pushed into picking specific champions in order to have a good shot at winning a match, that's a problem for us. However, this is often a more challenging balance issue because not all players learn how to use 2XKO's universal and champion-specific tools in the same order. Blitzcrank and Jinx do a lot better at the beginner level, where many players aren't yet comfortable using defensive systems like Retreating Guard, Push Block, and Parry, or their character-specific anti-zoning tools, while champions that scale heavily with a player's technical skill like Ekko, Yasuo, and Ahri tend to do better at the advanced level of play. If we want to give Jinxcrank players an easier time at advanced skill levels, we need to do it without sacrificing the newer player experience by identifying and changing the tools more frequently used in advanced play.

Since beginners tend to be less visible in fighting game community discussion spaces, we look at game analytics to help us understand what kind of experiences they're running into. Like many other Riot games, we'll use win rates and pick rates at different skill levels, as well as team composition win rates, champion matchup charts, and move usage data, to help us identify which champions are causing issues and which players are most affected by them. As a starting point, we look for champions that have a win rate lower than 47% or higher than 53% and prioritize them for a balance investigation, especially if that champion has power in their kit that's more easily and reliably accessible than the others.

Rewarding strategic team composition in competition

When it comes to competitive play—think the top 10% of Ranked and tournament players—our perspective on balance is different. One of the things we love about the tag fighter genre is that it gives us space to design characters with very different strengths and weaknesses. This allows us to pull from characters across the League of Legends cast and get them to play together in a way that really feels authentic to the champion fantasy instead of cramming them into a box that makes them all feel same-y. However, this also means that each champion can feel like they're playing a very different game from each other, and individual character matchups won't always feel like they overlap as much as they would in a single-character fighting game.

For serious competitive play, we expect players to pair champions together with their strengths and weaknesses in mind, whether that means picking two champions that cover each others' gaps, or picking two characters that excel at a specific gameplan, and their success or failure will depend on how effectively they can thwart their opponents' gameplan and assert their own. We think players should be rewarded for thoughtfully developing unique teams with different champions and Fuses for solo and duo play, and as players grow in their mastery, we fully expect to see some players succeed by playing a wide variety of teams based on their opponent player and champion matchup, while others may choose to invest their time solely in their one true pairing. Some of the greatest moments in competitive tag fighting game history have been between players who go broad and players who go deep, and we think that this game has room for both character specialists and roster masters—especially for duos.

At higher levels, win rates can give us some insight, but the deviation here often isn't as noticeable (at the top 1% of play, no champion has gone past our 47-53% warning zone), so if we see a spike in a champion's pick rate at high skill levels, we'll take that as another indicator that victory-minded players have converged on a champion or team that is a bit too strong compared to the others. We believe that the hallmark of a deep and rewarding fighting game is that skilled players can disagree about the best way to play it, so if that's not happening, it's on us to fix that. However, the statistics here are often less important than the player experiences we see in lobby play, tournament streams, and social media discussions; we know that for the most engaged fighting game players, our experience of a game is often shaped by seeing the way it's played by a very small group of people. So now let's talk about what we've observed in balance trends so far.

Champion diversity in Closed Beta and Early Access

When we look at beginner play, our goal is for every champion to have a fighting chance, and that's exactly what we're seeing. As mentioned previously, we do see some outliers early on, like Jinx, Vi, and Blitzcrank, but they're still within the 3% win rate margin that we think is reasonable. Double Down is the most represented Fuse by a large margin, likely because it's strong and relatively easy to use, but also because it's the only team-based Fuse that doesn't require playing through the Fuse tutorials to unlock. Most of the frustration we've seen players in this cohort reporting has more to do with the learning curve of 2XKO's systems, mechanics, and inputs, which is of course something the 2XKO team will refine further, but not necessarily a balance concern.

For high-level play, champion balance looks more skewed, with Ekko and Yasuo both hitting too-high pick rates and win rates, Teemo with a too-high win rate, and Blitzcrank and Braum hitting win rates that are a bit lower than we'd like. Player surveys (you know, the ones in your email—you fill those out, right?) also report that perception of each champion's power levels generally correspond to where they fall on the win rate lists as well. When we dig into these champions qualitatively, we've identified these specific issues:

• Ekko and Yasuo are too effective in both the Point and Assist roles, to the point where they're pushing other champions out of feeling viable in competitive play.

• Teemo is very good at ranged combat, but also a bit too good up close, so we think he's winning more than he should because his intended weaknesses aren't sufficiently offsetting his intended strengths.

• Blitzcrank and Braum are both having a pretty tough time in neutral because the rest of the cast can keep them out with movement, projectiles, and big attacks (especially Blitzcrank); also, the fact that their fastest normals have 8 frames of startup makes it hard for them to scrap with the faster champions' 6-frame standing light attacks.

Ekko and Yasuo outperforming across roles

When it comes to Ekko and Yasuo, we want them to excel as high-mobility mixup characters on point, but we think they're going so hard that they're outshining other strong point characters like Vi, Warwick, and Darius. We want players to feel like there's a tradeoff between choosing highly mobile mixups and choosing point characters with bigger attacks and more Assist utility, but right now that isn't happening often enough. Instead, it feels like their Assists are also best-in-class (especially Ekko's), so picking anyone else feels like a downgrade across the board. And since players have discovered that they work particularly well with each other, it can feel like 2XKO is disproportionately focused on rewarding high-speed mix teams over anything else.

We think that both of these characters are fun and cool, but they get way less cool when you see them all the time, so we're aiming to reduce their power levels in 1.0.3. Ekko will see adjustments to his Timewinder () duration and blockstun, and his Chronostrike Assist  () will be a little slower, move a little less far, and have a little less blockstun to allow for some more counterplay during his time. For Yasuo, we'll be toning down some of his remaining damage outliers and mixup utility on his mid-air to make his mix a little less overwhelming and rewarding. These changes alone will not solve their game health problems, but we saw this as an opportunity to make things a little better in the short-term while we let some of the more impactful solutions cook a bit longer. It's important to us that we maintain the fun of these two champions while addressing their balance issues, and that's going to take more than changing a couple numbers here and there. 

Teemo, the point overachiever

Teemo has also proven to be a little bit more powerful than intended, but we think it'll be a less complicated problem to solve. While he is supposed to be annoying at range, his other tools are creating a bit too much advantage, so in 1.0.3 we're adjusting his Bandle Dash (), Yordle Hike (mid-air ), Noxious Sweeper Assist () and Bandle Sky Patrol ( Super) to see where we can create more opportunities for counterplay or reduce the payoff while retaining the gameplay identity of these moves. (Leave it to a Bandle Scout to be a bit too well-rounded.) We have additional changes we're considering making in Season 1, but want to see how these initial adjustments land first. 

Overall, our goal with the 1.0.3 changes will make it a little easier and less frustrating to play against Ekko, Yasuo, and Teemo, but we don't think that alone will bring balance into a healthy state. Blitzcrank will also be receiving some adjustments in 1.0.3 specifically to improve their access to steam and reliability on Rocket Punch () for nullifying projectiles, and we’re currently testing changes for some of the other underperforming champions that might land in Season 1, like universally speeding 8-frame standing lights up to 7 frames. A change like this should help get champion selection pick rates into a healthier place. We will also be keeping a close eye on Ahri's power levels as these changes settle; we prioritized the work on the other champions because Ahri is overall much closer to our intended strength than they are, but we do think she has some elements of her kit with less-interactive counterplay than is healthy.

2XKO neutral and disengagement patterns

Now let's talk a bit about neutral in 2XKO. If you're new here, "neutral" refers to the state where neither team is currently hitting the other team, and both point champions can move, attack, and call Assists freely while looking for an opportunity to hit the other champion. We've been listening to player conversations about the high value of disengaging via backdash or backwards jump while waiting for Assist cooldown timers to reset, and figured we could chime in with some clarification on how movement fits into our vision for the game, and where we want it to be.

Tag team fighting games and the reward for low-risk play

2XKO is a game where overall character power is high to hit each champion's combat fantasy, Assist and tag system power is high to encourage exciting tag team combat, and movement is powerful so players can attack and defend by smart and skillful positioning instead of emphasizing niche frame data details. Champions express strength and weakness through how they move and attack across the combat field, and so we need a fairly wide stage in order to fit up to four champions with enough room to move and attack without making things too crowded. 

Since stages are big, movement is strong, and Assist mechanics are mostly gated by a cooldown timer, many players are finding that disengaging with their point character and relying on Assist calls and Handshake Tag to win neutral and create attack opportunities is a low-risk strategy with potentially high reward if the opponent struggles to safely punish the Assist call without creating an opportunity for the point to strike. Low-risk neutral play is a common pattern in tag fighting games, but the speed of specific Point/Assist combinations and Handshake Tag make this particularly sharp in 2XKO, especially with Yasuo and Ekko in their current state.

Tuning down disengagement, not removing it

To be clear, we think that a healthy 2XKO meta includes teams with different play patterns and win conditions, and we don't want to make a game where every team looks the same when they're winning. Some teams should want to play for ranged space control in neutral, while others should want to rush down with fast mix or big Assists. Some teams should spend meter on damage, others on screen control. Strategizing around how champions and Fuses can combine to play for different goals, whether it's multi-layered high/low Freestyle mix or Super Tag screen pollution, is a big part of the fun of tag fighting games, and we've loved seeing all the different team strategies that players have put together during Closed Beta and Early Access so far. 

As with champion balance issues, the issue here isn't that this disengagement play pattern exists, but that it hits champions exceptionally unevenly and contributes to the game feeling same-y at the competitive level. However, since this issue is tied to many of the core combat foundations that give 2XKO's combat its unique appeal, the challenge in front of us is to make this play pattern a little less rewarding without breaking all the stuff that players like about the game. So we're investigating how we can tune this pattern to retain the kind of champion power expression and strategic team diversity that makes 2XKO cool.

We can't talk specifics here because we're still experimenting, but 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. We also want to be careful of adjusting too much all at once, since if we make a lot of changes to target both neutral stalling patterns and champion balance disparities at the same time, the total effects of both goals will be harder to predict and may end up swinging the meta too heavily in a less-fun direction.

How you can help us balance 2XKO

As you can tell by now, keeping this game healthy is going to be tricky work, and our team has been very lucky to have so many dedicated players to help us make it better. So let's wrap this up by talking about how you can help. 

Keep playing

The most helpful thing you can do is just play the game the way you want to play it. We get a lot of great data about how players are playing this game at scale, so if you want to farm Ranked with whatever top tier broken stuff you've got, know that we'll see those Ws logged and use that to help inform balance, and if you're playing what you want to play and losing, we'll see that too. If you're not having fun playing for love or ranking points, duo up with a buddy and carry them in casuals or take a break and play something else. We’ll be making adjustments and we'll be here waiting for you to come back, and there are a lot of great games out right now. Balance isn't just about fighting games.

Keep finding bugs

The second most helpful thing you can do is continue to document bugs when you see them, preferably with our bug reporting process or by using #2xko_bugs on Twitter. Video clips and game ID strings (the long string of numbers and letters that show up in the lower-right part of the screen, you can see it in your replays) make it easier for us to narrow down the issue and reproduce it ourselves. The more bugs we can find and fix, the easier it is to make sure that champion power is coming from where it's supposed to be.

Keep talking

Finally, continue to discuss with each other about what you think is strong or weak. We read the posts, watch the videos, and facepalm at the tier lists as part of our regular work routines, and we think it's generally more civil and more accurate to observe conversations between players than participate directly ourselves (though we will hop in from time to time). From what we've seen of the way you talk about balance so far, we've been reassured by the generally positive and supportive tone that players have shared their experiences with each other, and there seems to be a healthy balance between discussing possible changes, downplaying, and "git gud" in there.

So far, we've seen a lot of new players have fun with their first foray into tag team fighting games (and even their first fighting game ever!), and we've seen a lot of experienced fighting game players have fun figuring out a lot of extremely cool and extremely powerful strategies that live up to the legacy of tag fighting games. Many of us on the team came up playing games that allowed players to do great and terrible things to each other, and the countless hours we've spent blowing up and getting blown up by those things is a consistent source of inspiration for the work ahead. But we're making this game for you, and helping us find what you like and don't like is key for making this game better.

Thanks for reading!

-pm