Best Of

I don't think it is too early to give feedback or impressions. What I'm saying is the earlier in the release cycle it is, the higher the hurdle is for feedback to prompt some kind of change. If the champ has been out for six months and a wide range of players offers feedback on how the champ performs, across lots of different kinds of players in lots of kinds of content, and on top of that there's been plenty of time for those players to learn how to play the champ and figure out ways to make them work, that feedback is going to be much more effective at causing the developers to consider changes. If the champ has been out for a couple days and the only people who have really had a chance to play it is a few content creators, and they are giving their first look impressions, that's going to be considered in that context.

To put it another way, if I say a champ is below average, I might be right or I might be wrong. I might not represent the player base very well. One guy saying a champ is below average doesn't mean much. Even a dozen people saying a champ is below average doesn't mean much. It takes hundreds, thousands of players saying a champ is below average before you can start to assume that feedback accurately represents the perspective of a million players. But if I say a champ is broken and can demonstrate how and why, it doesn't take thousands of players to prove something is broken for it to be broken. Broken is broken - if we are talking about objective things.

The earlier the feedback is given, the more "fuzzy" it is presumed to be, since few players have had a chance to play the champ and no one has had the chance to really learn its ins and outs. But even fuzzy feedback can provide a clear picture if the thing you're trying to communicate is so obvious that even a fuzzy picture is clear enough.

Bugs are always bugs. Broken is almost always broken, but. sometimes players are occasionally wrong about that. Underperforming is a matter of opinion and historically the playerbase has been very hit and miss on calling that one.

It is never too early to give feedback. But depending on that feedback, it can be too early to expect that feedback to prompt the devs to make a change. Some feedback is immediately actionable. Some feedback takes time to combine with other feedback and data to eventually cause the devs to decide to act.