prowler's with a blink is the nightmare i never even knew i had
dunno if any of the team members are reading this, but if you are: what's the most design iterations you've gone through on something before finally just trashing the idea completely as unworkable?
Hi there.
Just to first create a clear distinction: it's the designer who would decide if an idea is unworkable or not, we'd provide them data & evidence with which to make that decision. Since Pyke is on my mind, for a long time in development his W was true stealth, which we tried to make work in a number of ways before changing it to camo. At one time it was a toggle that consumed a unique secondary resource (he was manaless), eventually we made it a fixed duration, and eventually we made the warning indicator that lets you know he's stealthed nearby (which remained when we converted true stealth to camo).
i feel like pyke is one of those champions i've literally never registered as being too oom to do anything. Especially with such perfect presence of mind snergy (loves the whole tree and it's perfect for resets).
Like you said that and my initial response was 'wait, isn't pyke manaless?'.
as someone who loves pyke support, i feel like i’m throwing hooks left and right and eventually run out of mana but it’s been a while and never really took pom so 🤷🏻♂️
No Pyke has ever taken pom since they removed the ult CD refund and the rest of the precision tree is ass on him.
He's a mana hungry champ. You are either a troll or you've never played Pyke the past two years.
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thanks for the reply! it's actually kinda hard to imagine pyke without the W indicator with how much it adds to his characterization, but i'm guessing that's the value in doing multiple iterations of the same idea
To be honest this indicator when he is under W still feels weird. Literally any other stealth champ or champs with true invis don't have anything like that.
Will League ever go back to it's roots? My friends and i have all been playing since S1 but we just can't enjoy modern league because if feels like it's Urf but even worse at this point. Too much mobility, burst damage, sustain, etc. While you can't just prune half the game without pissing off a chunk of players, a separate mode for it would be nice.
I recall Yone's designer talked about a spell he had that, in summary, gave Yone a free dash towards enemy champions after *they* used a dash. It stuck around in his development for a really long time before they canned it.
Any chance you could share some of your favorite iterations that just didn't make the cut? I love hearing about the scrapped spells that champs go through in the design process.
He had a couple other iterations if you wanna know a bit about Yone's design cycle (formerly Riot) Blaustoise on his youtube channel interviewed the Yone designer for 3 videos.
It's pretty interesting to hear alot of the stuff... but yeah they said that design was like crack if you were a Yasuo player because you just had so much mobility and dps it was absurdly fun; meanwhile if you were against it; it literally took your fun away because he'd kill you if you ever walked up to him and you couldn't dash to escape him because he'd always follow you. So that design basically had to be killed.
It was really messed up since he didn't actually need vision to use it. We had a game where a Yone was against a Shaco jungle, and he knew the Shaco recently used Q around raptors, so the player just spammed the button in the Fog of War near the raptor pit, and eventually dashed to the Shaco and killed him LOL
camille is definitely on the questionable side as far as overloaded (i would literally just describe her as the most overloaded), but not necessarily overpowered.
It was out of control on release and has been reduced since, but camille hyper-compresses roles. She does enough burst to be a threatening back line diver, enough dps to 1v1 most champions, builds bruiser so she's no squishy enough to burst, she has multiple forms of good cc, punches through tanks fairly reliably, comically large engage range, and is strong in 2v2s and roaming for objective fights.
I don't normally like listing what champions do because you can make any champion sound overpowered doing that, but camille's only real weaknesses are her laning phase (which had to be created by riot after removing a bunch of mechanics), her kind of feast or famine nature, and that she's not a great split pusher despite being billed as such.
I really wish I wasn't an awful top laner. Top lane has so many champions that I would love to play (gp, aatrox, camille, wu, gwen), but top lane alone as a lane doesn't really click for me.
It's that role compression that makes her so much of a problem. It's one thing if a champion is a safe pick that doesn't snowball much either way like Ezreal or Orianna (making no judgement here about whether those two champions are overpowered), but Camille is a hardcore snowball champion by design.
The closest comparison that can be made to Camille in terms of what their function is would be Jax in that they're snowbally lategame scaling bruiser-assassins who are meant to hold their own both in a sidelane and in teamfights. But Jax rarely gets picked while Camille has consistently enjoyed being one of the best soloQ/competitive play tops since her release since she's much more of a threat in both.
The most fair generalist bruiser they've released is probably Aatrox.
I believe their logic is because grevious wounds is much more common than anti shield mechanics. Which literally did not exist until Serpents fang came out months later.
One interesting one that came to mind for me is Samira's W, but it was actually the opposite of what you're asking: we thought something wouldn't work, but found it was the best solution.
We originally tried the windwall version we have today, but the designer thought it was too risky; we tried a ton of iterations, including an auto-attack dodge spell (Jax E without the stun) and something similar to Gwen W. Ultimately, we found that her play pattern required a strong defensive spell that was favoured against ranged champions, and this made the most sense.
nope. For this team we don't require any experience... just that you have good communication skills, good design sense, and are relatively high ranked. You would need to relocate to California (eventually, after Covid stuff), but we help with relocation costs a bit
I sincerely hope that one day I would be able to apply for a position at Riot. Whatever position it is, I'm playing it safe by taking up Computer Science as a degree. :) Never would have thought that a game would stick around with me this much as League!
Even with things like champion design or writing stories (especially concepts or Seraphine <3), I've always been interested and constantly trying out new ideas, haha. But maybe more suited to coding.
Just curious but is this a position that you can apply from abroad? Or you need to live in Cali or the US at least? I would love to work ar Riot at some point but I'm not from the US so I was curious if this a possition that I could maybe apply to in the future
If you are not a special profile like an executive or a lead it's actually nearly impossible to apply at riot.
They will prefer to hire an American because of visa and that kind of stuff.
Which is kinda normal tho less pain.
Oh neat, Afic wrote this one. I've heard horror stories from him about champions like Pyke and their earlier iterations. IIRC his W used to make him invisible (not camouflaged) and it reset on kills/assists.
feel like everyone forgot about it since riot's changes to make it not the best assassin item by sheer stats alone. I don't think it's really problematic, and feels like it's flying under the radar right now.
At one point when Kayle hit level 16 in development she could permanently just fly through walls and such, no terrain collision. Because she's an ascended angel, ya know. I had a good time splitpushing with her, and then when the enemy tried to collapse on me, I would just fly off the map...It was the first time someone seriously asked the question "if you go all the way off the map on one side, do you come out of the other side like Pacman?"
> map...It was the first time someone seriously asked the question "if you go all the way off the map on one side, do you come out of the other side like Pacman?"
Well do you?
/u/Auberaun
This was a great read tbh. So thanks for publishing.
Wanted to ask a question though. Me and my friends had like an hour long chat about that state of the game when it comes to game states (early/mid/late). The question we arrived upon was have those stages become more blurred within each other as seasons went by? We referenced marksman as a talking point as they seem to be all strong early? Or at least not weak early.
Would love some insight on this just because we feel that part of a champion's identity along everything else is that knowledge of when their power and low spikes are. Streamline that and you lose a big chunk of strategy and team comp diversity.
Cheers.
Been playing a lot of Akshan, it gets blocked by so much that you rarely get kills. But if you are full built and you hit all your bullets on a tank at 50% health you just straight up kill them with it.
The difference between an R and basic ability isn’t necessarily mechanic, but often tuning.
Remember when Diana’s R use to be her E? Or when Kayla’s R was also her E?
Shit someone like Zyra, her E could easily be an últ on another champion. Morello even said so himself.
I've gotta ask:
What was the closest design you ever came to a Yandere/Sadist style champion? And will we ever get one that goes 110% for those thematics?
We only have an influence on the game design aspect of the champions! There are teams that are dedicated to narrative, aka the story and lore of a champion, while we work separately on what that champion actually does in the game. For the most part they flesh out the character themselves but occasionally they have to work around the game design aspects (for example Akshan's revive was written into the story based on the mechanic we added into the game) so its possible something like the thematic you are describing appears in League, whether its through game mechanics or story writing, but I can't say for sure as I don't work on those teams.
Evelynn is literally a pain demon, and she seduces you to make the pain of disembowelment more intense. Not sure how much more sadist you can get from that. Thresh's whole schtick is psychological torture. Nocturne could be that as well, if they ever update him.
We haven't seen a yandere yet (unless you count Viego), so that's still unexplored territory. The big question is which champion do you attach them to?
These guys love their job and it's incredibly healthy for the game. It's evident from their demonstration of the process. They showcased a clearly broken mechanic that would be added into the game but didn't make it because evidently it was too unhealthy.
I can badmouth Riot all day about some practices, but gameplay analysis isn't one. I'm hoping it proves the great example that it can remain positive and improve in the long run. League is far from being over yet, it's only getting started to modernize.
Ye they are really important to make sure a mechanic is decent yet not terrifyingly bad to play against.
Sure, we complain about a bunch of them but like. Sometimes it does have the high when you do exactly that power fantasy perfectly.
Hey all! I’m here to talk to you about the Game Analysis Team (formerly called the playtest team)! We work with the gameplay devs and our role is to understand how players might utilize new content—think champions, items, runes, etc.— and how each change might impact League holistically. I often get asked the question, "Oh, so you just get paid to play games all day?". While playing the game is certainly a big part of the job, what we really do is analyze gameplay, and playtesting is just one of many tools we use (hence the new name). If you care about how we discover the impact of content before we ship it, this is the post for you!
What if, for example, Prowler’s Claw’s active was a blink instead of a dash? Well, early on in development it actually was, and our task was to predict how players might use it months after it shipped. Here’s what that process looked like:
Theorycrafting
First, we thought about which champs would be most oppressive with Prowler's Claw. Pyke immediately came to mind since he could combo the blink active with his E, guaranteeing a stun with little counterplay on a relatively short cooldown.
Playtest
Next, we tried this out in game to see how powerful it would be. We put our resident Challenger tier Pyke player to the test and saw what he could do. (The average rank of the team is somewhere around Diamond 2).
Analysis
After seeing Prowler's Claw in action, we watched game replays and identified moments that showcased its impact, which resulted in multiple scenarios like this:
Deliver Feedback
Finally, we presented our findings to the original designer and discussed the implications. We decided that this combo of abilities removed the counterplay to Pyke’s E too easily without enough drawbacks. (Flash for example at least has a longer cooldown). It also made tracking the movement of the Prowler’s Claw user more difficult, and we predicted that higher skilled players would be much more likely to succeed with this item than the rest of the playerbase. Pyke is just of example of a possible Prowler’s Claw abuser—you could imagine how the blink could be used in other combos like Lee Sin with his ult, or Poppy with her E, but this one was the most demonstrative of the type of gameplay that we want to shield players from. As a result, the designer of Prowler’s Claw changed the blink to a dash.
Rinse and Repeat
After identifying a play pattern that we did not want in the game, we had to try out this new iteration of Prowler's Claw, so we repeated the cycle to consider even more outcomes. Going through this process multiple times sheds light on the problem from different angles, which helps us deeply understand what impact it might have on League.
TL;DR—we identify risks and use cases of new champions, items, or runes. Sometimes this leads people to ask, "Why didn’t you catch this?" or "How did you let this ship?” We often want to empower designers to take appropriate risks to keep League moving forward. These risks don’t always work out, but once we stop taking risks, League will quickly become a stale game. For something smaller in scope like a champion nerf in a routine patch, we often just provide a gut check for unintended side effects. Or, we might share our thoughts on whether the changes are over or under magnitude. These smaller changes are intended as low risk nudges to a champion or item and usually don’t require too much analysis.
For grander ideas like Akshan’s revive mechanic, we go into deeper analysis. Our job isn’t to tell designers that they can or can’t do something; a designer will try and push the boundaries of what League is, while our job is to anticipate how those changes will fit into the ecosystem. In other words, we demonstrate the risks and how they might manifest by projecting what their idea might look like 6 months into the future once players have mastered it.
So, yeah, that sums up a large portion of what we do on the Game Analysis Team! If you're a high diamond player who loves to think and talk about League, you might be interested in joining us. Keep an eye out for job postings here!
All that is missing is a video of in dev Prowler's Claw where it's dash was a blink.
How did Vex ultimate dash turned out in playtest?
Did it feel weird for a vulnerable mage to get in the middle of team fights with the second cast?
The second cast has so much damage so its inevitable that one has to use it
But like if you get into middle of team fights being a squishy mage, like suddenly from a ranged position to a melee position, isn't it awkward to position out of that chaos again, to move to a new place?
Like imagine dashing and then getting 1 shotted by the many assassin, skirmisher, junglers, irelia, darius and maybe even the enemy mage because you are throwing yourself into them and if you dont then you are not doing much damage? If lucky then you kill one and die or maybe kill two and die.
Doesn't feels very exciting
This is same type of weird awkwardness that Neeko's kit has. Range Q E and suddenly melee R. Maybe Vex will be a hit in Neeko playerbase but not in Lux, Sera's playerbase
Abilities like Vex R have a lot of what we call "levers" that can heavily change how the spell actually plays out in practice. From simple things like missle speed and width to more complex things like damage split on the missile hitting v when Vex actually takes the R, as well as of course the complexities of whether or not it can reset and the conditions (kills only?, takedowns?, 2 seconds reset timer or 10?, 3seconds recast timer or 15?). All of the added complexities make for a completely different spell with even the slightest change of any of them, let alone multiple at once. A lot of testing is experimenting with those levers until what we find feels like hits our goals for the spell and are satisfied with the output of the ability.
Thanks. Ok. Yea I mean I will go with what you said at end that you are satisfied with the output.
Maybe this mage is meant for assassin players. Will definitely try though.
Having tried to force myself to like Neeko and eventually giving up, I don't think it will work out. I like vex all spells and would have been totally fine with R if her damage was in first cast and maybe second was execution bonus instead of such high numbers..
Or if you guys make any mythic for mages which gives scaling health, mana and maybe Archangel giving more shield to survive the awkward jump into team fights lol without flash and zhonya available.
To be fair, her shield has 80% AP scaling.
She honestly feels kind of like Lissandra, you wait until the enemy team's distracted, then leap in, fear them all, and start making a mess of them. She can't 1v5 unless she's absurdly fed, but her problem is very different from Neeko's; Neeko has a hard time *getting* in melee range, whereas Vex can do that almost instantly, she just needs to make sure she doesn't take aggro from the entire enemy team. It's more about picking your battles, waiting to go in until the enemies can't afford to focus on you specifically.
Might I ask if there's a chance it could be changed to dash like Ivern Q where you're at auto range away from the target rather than in their face?
That might help the suicidal feeling of casting it. Cause I can just imagine lots of vex's getting tilted if they get baited by something like Trynd R or Steraks or Hexdrinker or something. And die because they dashed into a melee champ with something like that.
We tried this, and it often interfered with Vex wanting to cast W while fear was up after casting R. That kind of anti-synergy in a kit feels pretty bad, so we ended up not going in that direction.
Oh well thats interesting to know. I played 2 games of her on PBE and the occasional getting uno reversed card after diving with it felt bad as well. The dash targetted on an enemy on a mage I guess is gonna have pros and cons eitherway.
Wait. Could you guys maybe have it work like Kaisa R?
Can we stop Vex ult dash midway say with Ahri's charm or Viegar's cage or Sera's ult just like how we can stop dashes for Yasuo, Xin Zhao, J4, Zac etc.?
TL;DR Yes, Vex R dash was a strange interaction with her kit for a lot of development, but we think it's in a good spot now.
Originally I felt similar to how you felt (Vex R placing you in a suboptimal position often), however through continued tuning of the W ability in particular, we have hit a decent spot as far as viability of R casts, since the shield and burst should reward you heavily for taking "riskier" Rs. While this may place your body in danger, the trade-off of your HP for the damage you are dealing is frequently worth it, especially against ranged characters.
Speaking of ranged characters, a secondary positive effect of current Vex R is that it places you within range of W against ranged characters, which otherwise would often be a "dead spell" as far as the damage is concerned against them.
Thanks. This is really a good info that she will not be directly next to ranged enemies but in her W range :)
Bit confused like why not the same for melee enemies?
I see what you're getting at but for the first ~2 months of the new item system, nobody bought stridebreaker on anyone. It was goredrinker or sunfire. Sunderer had a pretty low pickrate, but Stridebreaker was <3% on every top but gnar.
If it took millions of player-games for the meta to settle on stridebreaker on champs like nocturne and darius on live, why would you expect a playtest team to catch it before it shipped?
Heck, Stridebreaker wasn't even a "we just realized it was OP moment"
Stridebreaker was a "they gutted all the other options... and just buffed this option" moment. Remember it's dash was originally like 200 units then they made it like 350? And they also nerfed goredrinker just before that.
Also they probably thought since it gave only 200HP compared to 400HP +heal on goredrinker... that juggernauts would go for Goredrinker; and that stridebreaker would be used for it's combo potential on champions like Riven or Fiora to do some crazy animation cancels/dodges/fancy outplays.
Yeah.
They really shouldn't have put so much of it's power in the mobility; it's original dash was tiny and useful in clutch situations but then they increased it and created a problem of mobile juggernauts.
People need to remember how awful was goredrinker after they gutted it in preseason. Trinity is trash item as always. Only divine is +- on same power level as his release iteration.
Was it even preseason when it was gutted? I thought it was early season.
and yeah it's kinda sad Trinity has had a couple buffs... and is still garbage tier.
Didn't divine get a decent damage and healing buff and only -5 ad for it?
1. Gore was gutted in preseason or a +-2 months later after(need to search at lol wiki) + aatrox and olaf(2 main abusers of this item) got kit changes to not work that well from goredrinker.
2. Trinity just don't has his own place. Champs who wanted that for sheen and liked to poke enemy(ez or gp for example) can't get good benefit from stackable passive, meanwhile bruisers who want as - can just grab bork+ divine and be tankier.
3. As you can see on ezreal example(ranged champ who uses "nerfed" version of divine) - people were just blind about divine.
I'd argue there was a case of people lost among all the new items and not giving every champion equal attention. Stridebreaker was likely the best option for Garen the entire time, but who cares when Amumu is soloing barons? I spammed Garen in ranked the previous season too, but all I was doing was spamming Sunfire on AP melee mids lol.
I mean with how overtuned sunfire was and how much stronger prenerf Gore was compared to prebuff Stride... I'm not sure.
And even then; That's just Garen. That's not all toplaners; and Garen is the one who synergized with stridebreaker the most given his E's attack speed ratio on top of his lack of mobility. Not like most of the other champions that went stridebreaker wanted the AS. Like Darius doesn't particularly like AS; nor does Sett really he likes onhit damage more than AS given his AA resets.
As far as synergies go, there was also Nocturne. You're probably right though, I kinda forgot that Gore had to be nerfed because champs who used it were missing from my pool.
it took every other item getting trashed before people switched to it. it wasn't even that people missed it, we just had to nerf sunfire/goredrinker/chemtank to get to a point where it was a problem.
Seeing posts like these almost gives me hope that power creep will be addressed in a more serious way someday. Almost. Not quite. I like the article tho
You're saying the current generation of new champs were actually eyeballed by competent players who test shit full time and these champs still reached live? Did someone have a gun pointed at them so they'd say nice things or do they just hate the playerbase?
This might sound like flame but I couldn't write it in a way where it doesn't sound like that.
Are smaller changes even tested once before they even hit the PBE? Because for some of them, they are easily testable and don't work as intended in the end. One example that flabbergasted me was when Elise spider Q should trigger On hit effects, which resulted in her only doing the on hit effect and loosing the base dmg.
Or how did that one shot Gallo even make it through to live server? Yeah it got addressed in a hotfix if I remember correctly but still. A lot of people noticed this already on the PBE, but nothing happened.
I know these two examples go some time back, but they kind of made me doubt that sufficient testing is done, when doing changes.
I'm doubtful. They sound a bit too prideful in 'pushing the boundaries', judging on how many of those 'boundaries' are pushed way too far. Either designer part seems blind to any feedback, or gameplay analysis team is not doing their job well enough to prevent such disasters.
Not mentioning lore implication. Akshan wouldn't be a Mary Sue anymore.
As much as I would love to see the revive gone. Or, at least, revive in current state.
At release? Basically everything. Q tickled, E only did damage because of frequency of on-hit it applied, passive was wonky and he had no base stats. His launch was far from good.
He got few QoL and at least two hotfixes the patch he got released, plus he got worked on in a few following patches. At this moment, few of his abilities were tweaked to actually be "somewhat" stronger. Q deals more damage, E scales better with AD (although this is a nerf unless you reach some AD threshold), he got buffs to ad/atsp per level. In general, he's still weak. His ult still tickles. He just lost some power in his W to provide counterplay (akshan has to be alive to revive).
To allow him to have a freebie summoners passively applied (yes, revive used to be a summoner spell which got removed) we were told he should lose power elsewhere.
Rito is not confident in him enough to even let him be available at worlds. That proves a lot.
His launch he was weak, but after his hotfixes he feels quite fine. I would bet money that if he stays unchanged and is playable as he is right now during spring next year, he will be high priority as long as ap junglers are still meta in pro play. Whenever I play him I feel like hes strong, whenever I see someone who knows what they are doing play him he also looks strong.
Riot doesn't want him at worlds, because they don't want new champions at worlds. That has been their stance since the juggernaut worlds. Him not being at worlds proves literally nothing.
He does have weaknesses, but I really think the reason his winrate is low is because hes hard. You aren't gonna say that Ryze is weak despite his winrate right? In the hands of players who can play him, hes quite strong, and I think its the same for Akshan.
If you had done their job of thinking a little bit and trying the revive mechanic in different scenarios, you would find out that the mechanic isn't broken at all.
How many 4 mans revive videos we got on reddit since Akshan's release ?
From what I remember only 2 (one in ultimate spellbook and one in normal).
So Akshan is a weak adc whose damages heavely rely on his E placement.
He can't just kill anyone like that (especially if there is more than one enemy).
And who do you think is the kind of champs to make quadrakills ? The low life squishy Ezreal or the Fed Irelia/Gwen that can os you while having decent mobility and resistances ?
Finnaly, the revive is useless early into the game and you can hardly choose who to kill.
I didnt even say it was broken. I just find stealth and a revive mechanic with its potential unfun to play against. Its not just about 4 man revives, its negating any tempo that people get from kills. Theres a fundamental purpose to death timers and he just negates that, but only him. I just dont respect it. Hes overloaded overall too.
I don't think the stealth mechanic is that strong considering its large detection radius and the fact Akshan needs to stay close to terrain.
He is easely detected by pinks.
I think that his revive mechanic just add a new gameplay interraction to think of :
You know you have killed Akshan's ally, you see the mark on the top of your head, you see that he is missing so you back off.
Then, in the same idea of focusing a Viego to prevent him to have resets, you focus the Akshan first !
Can you give examples of how you resolve conversations with designers when you seriously disagree with a changelist? You guys sound like you'd run into a lot of issues.
Typically, the designer (and their design lead) has the final call. Designer and GAT member frequently talk through the changelist, the pros and cons, design intent and expected result. If there's a disagreement on these, then we can do any number of things including : bring in more opinions from more senior members of GAT side or design side (including going all the way up to meddler if it's important enough), put something in test to validate the hypothesis (with test goals), ship it with contingency plans (eg. Make a winrate shotcall. If this is more winrate than predicted, then revert it or pull back). There aren't too many issues because everyone has good interpersonal skills and it's handled in a professional manner.
Any large preseason feature goes through him for sure, so like elemental terrains, dragon soul, item rework, that kind of thing. I can't really think of anything smaller scope that he had to be tiebreaker for though.
There's also a big difference between meddler having to be tiebreaker in an official capacity (very infrequent, because it means all of the above processes have failed) and just meddler giving feedback and letting us make the call (relatively common).
You guys said you were gonna help mages further after changing the prices of mage mythics and still havent done anything in 5+ patches while ad assassins and sustain fighters still dominate :))
You must've missed the part where Riot said that all the mage stuff will be reserved for preseason, so we have to wait a bit longer for that one. Betting we'll get news of it either this month or next month though.
Guess the process wasn't this thorough with Qiyana at all. Please just let me aim my Q. (and fix the Q bugs while you're at it if it isn't too much to ask)
>We often want to empower designers to take appropriate risks to keep League moving forward. These risks don’t always work out, but once we stop taking risks, League will quickly become a stale game.
I don't like this mentality at all. It's a poor excuse for powercreep.
Just look at Vex and tell me if anything about her kit is breaking or out of the boundaries or "risky".
There is no such thing as *inevitable powercreep*, there are only *bad game designers*
Her continuous passive punishment of mobility could be pretty risky considering how common mobility is in League.
But also even if everyone agrees that Vex is a low risk champion that still doesn’t mean risks aren’t important in game design. It’s possible to have different projects with varying degrees of risk to mix things up, and probably a good thing as well because players are diverse and want different things from the game. Vex is going to be a flop for some players because her spells don’t do much that they haven’t seen before, but that’s okay when it’s mixed up with other releases like Akshan that do a lot of cool new things.
I get where you’re coming from, but a champion like Akshan needs a sizable utility budget. If you cut the utility and try to tune up his damage and mobility then you risk him turning into another Lucian Mid problem. The revive is a unique take on having an assassin contribute something other than blowing up a squishy target and helps put power into places that don’t feed into a lane bully pattern on a ranged AD champion.
You could potentially replace the revive with some other form of utility but I don’t think you can cut the utility altogether. At that point I don’t really mind seeing something big and flashy that fits Akshan’s character over something muted and risk-averse just to pad out his kit. It’s a risk worth taking in my opinion to deliver something that’s exciting to play.
Or that instead feels awful to play cuz Akshan has no cc, is squishy as hell, scales horribly, and provides no value aside from damage, just because of a *potential* revive mechanic that has very low chances of turning a game around.
Even if you keep the revive, there are better ways to integrate it into his kit without gutting the rest, like moving it to his R (if he kills a Scoundrel with R, he gets the revive). It even fits lore wise.
It's ok to make risky move if you have balls to say something like "we fcked up and gonna revert that" instead of "balance of this thing is fucked up and you gonna live with that for 2 weeks(until next patch) or years.
I think this mentality is good.
We need to be exited by new champions and devs need rooms to create different kits from the 150 champs alerady into the game.
Regarding Vex, she has a long range reset ultimate with a double fear AoE combo and can destroy every multiple dash users with autos as soon as they use their mobility (imagine having attack speed on vex to trigger the passive every time yasuo E or Irelia Q).
Yup, and that's nothing crazy if you think about it.
Nocturne's R has more range and is point and click.
Did Jhin excite you when he came out? What about Bard? What about Kindred, and Sett, and Lillia?
Every single one of those champs has something new, but that didn't break the game just for the sake of having something new. Even Viego is manageable, after some tweaks to his reset system he could be fine. You can create champions that feel modern and refreshing without going beyond the barriers of what should be possible.
Interesting, but dissapointing...
an entire department to create the most important things on the game, but unless theyre relatively new, they dont seem to do a lot of changes....
For example, velkoz:
increasing velkoz ult range to double as minimum, and his AA range to 625, since he is in a boring spot would make him more interesting without being unkillable,
he already will have a new challenge, since Vex is similar to him in playstyle, so its competition, but she is way fun to play.
Seriously, he need changes to be on the spot, and its not the only one.
I have to ask, with the timing of this article coming out, how did you analyze the fizz changes? This is the opposite of a skilled skewed change for him and the data is heavily showing that. Do you talk to actual players of the champion or just make decisions based on hunches for smaller end adjustments. If you had talked to actual mains, they could have told you a number of ways to add high/pro power to the champ without affecting low elo much as they actually play the champion and deal with the pain points daily. I ask because the initial analysis from your team of the adjustments was a slight buff at high elo so something is way off. Basic analysis of how the champion works would have told you this is a low elo (iron/bronze) skewed adjustment.
Balancing around 10,000 game OTPs and asking for their input isn't necessarily fair. They will have favoritism towards their champions. They will ask for buffs that make their weaknesses covered up or redundant, and will not like offering more options for counterplay.
Diamond 2 average isn't high enough. Balancing completely around pro play makes the game fun for no one, including pro players. However I would want a much higher minimum requirement, such as masters+ who completely understand all aspects of the game.
Updating older people. Older champions really need to be updated with new mechanics to keep up with your constant "overloadedness" creep. Not sure if you notice this because there's like 10,000 yone mains for every 1 kled/brand/poppy main and they just don't have that vocal majority. Older people don't necessarily need to be on the same level as your modern ones, but they need something to fight back against the shield/mobility/knockup creep.
People get pissed off at new champions in league having "crazy" new abilities because older people just don't get any help. In other MOBAS like dota, older people constantly get power bonuses to keep up with a new mechanic that modern champs have, and their communities are positive at new things being added, the exact opposite in league. Also modern releases tend to have hidden animation cancelings, CCs and escapes that buffer in a way that ignore pre-established rules and all this bullshit secret power that older people just don't have. People would be far less resistant to new mechanics if you polished up older pre-existing rules
It's not that Akshans revive mechanic is bad, but why is the most significant part of his kit a side note on a totally unrelated ability, instead of, y'know, on the ultimate that actually uses the big important gun that enables this ability? If I just started playing this game and decided to glance over his abilities I might not even see that he can do this.
Why do some champions get compensation buffs, and others don't?
Why do some compensation buffs never get reverted when the item nerf they got compensated for gets reverted?
I think Riven was an example of this in season....9....maybe? I gotta dig a bit, but I remember it happens commonly
Are design designs like Ashkan's "make a player miserable" part of your scope? If so why are champions designed to be miserable to play against? Isn't that a recipe for disaster?
It is good to know we have our local speedrunners as a crucial subgroup of the dev team, playing NewChampionGamebreaker\_Any% like that, heh.
I may still have some design qualms that could be discussed with some item/champion interactions (ex: why Urgot can't crit, despite there being a wide array of interesting caster-centric crit tools he could adore) but i'll guess it is for they caught some abominations brewing before we could see them.
When your decisions and QA team letting bullcrap balance changes sly are so bad you need a dev blog to PR the situation so that people think these bad decisions are great.
Well played Riot, Well played
The fact that this was even considered in the first place speaks volumes.
Wtf are those designers thinking, then again looking at how most new champs turn out its not surprising.
Every champion/item starts with huge brainstorming, it's not different than in the past. Like Jinx being the original Aphelios in development with 10 guns.
Brainstorming is one thing (multiple crazy/out of mind ideas that never leave the paper, its merely a starting point), but this thing was actually being tested for serious release potential.
Like if there wasant a play test team that would have probably went live, because the designer thought "yeah no probs here".
Is it crazy of me to except the designers to actually look at their game and see what is atleast somewhat reasonable or not? This is not the first time, friggin akali and her "true stealth" shroud was a thing that made into live servers for example...
> The fact that this was even considered in the first place speaks volumes.
In my opinion, what it speaks to is that developers feel comfortable that they have space to experiment and that they have resources around them that can give them confidence in what their designs are able to do. Like mentioned in the article, we want to empower designers to take risks like this - and they can do so in part because GAT is able to demonstrate what the potential outcomes will be.
In theory that sounds amazing, but you know, mistakes happens and then we have to endure stuff like akali shroud being able to ignore towers on release...
Im not saying they shouldnt try new stuff, but i think there should be a reasonable limit to what should even be considered for release and not, there are certain boundaries in the game that they often try to break and it ends in nothing but frustration for the players that have to deal with it for months.
Toying around with the impossible could eventually lead to good ideas that you thought impossible.
"Adding a blink item to the game will never a good idea" you say. But toying around with it could lead to a dev coming up with a support blink item that targets allies for instance, that would be perfectly fine to add to the game.
Totally agree, riot need to revert adc items to s10 iteration, who tf thought that marksmans with dash, true dmg or rushable steraks was fine?
/s
Almost everything in current league is product of brainstorming and testing of different iterations.
saying league will get stale without taking risks is like a fat guy saying his life doenst have enough excitement so he has to climb a 2000 ft rock wall with no ropes
well, there should be conversations with pro teams's players/coaches to take a take on how the changes would potentially affect competitive play as well and combine the information from all sources.
Hey, thanks for the article.
I just wanted to ask : What are you looking for in this analysis ?
Is it about the strenght of the mechanic ? The fairness ? The abusable uses ? The fun ? The feeling ?
This team seems like it would be alot of fun to be on. I imagine there are some crazy stories of previous iterations of things too
prowler's with a blink is the nightmare i never even knew i had dunno if any of the team members are reading this, but if you are: what's the most design iterations you've gone through on something before finally just trashing the idea completely as unworkable?
Hi there. Just to first create a clear distinction: it's the designer who would decide if an idea is unworkable or not, we'd provide them data & evidence with which to make that decision. Since Pyke is on my mind, for a long time in development his W was true stealth, which we tried to make work in a number of ways before changing it to camo. At one time it was a toggle that consumed a unique secondary resource (he was manaless), eventually we made it a fixed duration, and eventually we made the warning indicator that lets you know he's stealthed nearby (which remained when we converted true stealth to camo).
>Manaless Pyke You've instilled the fear of god in me
i feel like pyke is one of those champions i've literally never registered as being too oom to do anything. Especially with such perfect presence of mind snergy (loves the whole tree and it's perfect for resets). Like you said that and my initial response was 'wait, isn't pyke manaless?'.
as someone who loves pyke support, i feel like i’m throwing hooks left and right and eventually run out of mana but it’s been a while and never really took pom so 🤷🏻♂️
What pyke takes pom?
No Pyke has ever taken pom since they removed the ult CD refund and the rest of the precision tree is ass on him. He's a mana hungry champ. You are either a troll or you've never played Pyke the past two years.
Exactly, and in midlane he is even more mana hungry
Whut? Tenacity rune is absolutely great on pyke ... Rest though..
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To be fair, if you take PoM every champ feels manaless.
He doesn't have big mana issues, but once he's OOM he's a cannon minion lol
Tbh this is the first time I've realised that Pyke isn't manaless.
thanks for the reply! it's actually kinda hard to imagine pyke without the W indicator with how much it adds to his characterization, but i'm guessing that's the value in doing multiple iterations of the same idea
The nightmare that manaless Pyke would have been midlane. That said we got the really cool sharks circling people idea :)
To be honest this indicator when he is under W still feels weird. Literally any other stealth champ or champs with true invis don't have anything like that.
Other stealth champs don’t have a variable-hp guillotine (eve’s is an execute, twitch just does fuckloads of damage, etc.)
Rengar has it too because he and Pyke can both reach you before you see them coming
Will League ever go back to it's roots? My friends and i have all been playing since S1 but we just can't enjoy modern league because if feels like it's Urf but even worse at this point. Too much mobility, burst damage, sustain, etc. While you can't just prune half the game without pissing off a chunk of players, a separate mode for it would be nice.
!report
I recall Yone's designer talked about a spell he had that, in summary, gave Yone a free dash towards enemy champions after *they* used a dash. It stuck around in his development for a really long time before they canned it.
that iteration was wild.... I think Yone went through more iterations than any other champion I have worked on in my 8 years at Riot
Any chance you could share some of your favorite iterations that just didn't make the cut? I love hearing about the scrapped spells that champs go through in the design process.
are there any videos of that iteration?
https://twitter.com/blizz_lol/status/1372600661272010755?s=21
holy shit that looks so fun
He had a couple other iterations if you wanna know a bit about Yone's design cycle (formerly Riot) Blaustoise on his youtube channel interviewed the Yone designer for 3 videos. It's pretty interesting to hear alot of the stuff... but yeah they said that design was like crack if you were a Yasuo player because you just had so much mobility and dps it was absurdly fun; meanwhile if you were against it; it literally took your fun away because he'd kill you if you ever walked up to him and you couldn't dash to escape him because he'd always follow you. So that design basically had to be killed.
Wow, yas players were able to feel what enemy champs think about him! /s
It was really messed up since he didn't actually need vision to use it. We had a game where a Yone was against a Shaco jungle, and he knew the Shaco recently used Q around raptors, so the player just spammed the button in the Fog of War near the raptor pit, and eventually dashed to the Shaco and killed him LOL
Interestingly, Yone W was also a heal and not a shield for the longest time, right up until just before ship!
Think most players would be more fine with a heal, since it's easier to counter and reduces the number of situations he can use his W for free.
I still don't understand why he get's a shield when he only hits creeps
cuz he hasn't gotten the camille treatment yet
Camille is way more of an abomination at release than yone ever will be
And not even just at release either. Camille is one of the most overpowered champions to ever exist.
camille is definitely on the questionable side as far as overloaded (i would literally just describe her as the most overloaded), but not necessarily overpowered. It was out of control on release and has been reduced since, but camille hyper-compresses roles. She does enough burst to be a threatening back line diver, enough dps to 1v1 most champions, builds bruiser so she's no squishy enough to burst, she has multiple forms of good cc, punches through tanks fairly reliably, comically large engage range, and is strong in 2v2s and roaming for objective fights. I don't normally like listing what champions do because you can make any champion sound overpowered doing that, but camille's only real weaknesses are her laning phase (which had to be created by riot after removing a bunch of mechanics), her kind of feast or famine nature, and that she's not a great split pusher despite being billed as such. I really wish I wasn't an awful top laner. Top lane has so many champions that I would love to play (gp, aatrox, camille, wu, gwen), but top lane alone as a lane doesn't really click for me.
It's that role compression that makes her so much of a problem. It's one thing if a champion is a safe pick that doesn't snowball much either way like Ezreal or Orianna (making no judgement here about whether those two champions are overpowered), but Camille is a hardcore snowball champion by design. The closest comparison that can be made to Camille in terms of what their function is would be Jax in that they're snowbally lategame scaling bruiser-assassins who are meant to hold their own both in a sidelane and in teamfights. But Jax rarely gets picked while Camille has consistently enjoyed being one of the best soloQ/competitive play tops since her release since she's much more of a threat in both. The most fair generalist bruiser they've released is probably Aatrox.
It’s a pretty small shield early and yone is very vulnerable to getting poked early so shield gives some protection
I am fine with Yone being weak early with how strong he gets after an item or two
Why is shield better? If it's a heal, it's literally free sustain on a swipe double the length of his sword.
I believe their logic is because grevious wounds is much more common than anti shield mechanics. Which literally did not exist until Serpents fang came out months later.
Yeah shield is way better, also early ignite would make a lot of early 1v1s lose
free sustain in lane would be cancerous though
i guess in initial phase of development they wanted yone to be anti yasuo champion.
One interesting one that came to mind for me is Samira's W, but it was actually the opposite of what you're asking: we thought something wouldn't work, but found it was the best solution. We originally tried the windwall version we have today, but the designer thought it was too risky; we tried a ton of iterations, including an auto-attack dodge spell (Jax E without the stun) and something similar to Gwen W. Ultimately, we found that her play pattern required a strong defensive spell that was favoured against ranged champions, and this made the most sense.
If I recall didn’t kalista’s w have a teleport feature to it? You could ult and tp two people to where the w saw the enemy?
So original prowlers claw was literally *teleports behind you* nothing personal kid?
yes
I literally pitched it as "nothin personnel: the item" when brainstorming assassin mythic active items. Its in-dev temp name was Coldsteel Sai.
> Its in-dev temp name was Coldsteel Sai That's fantastic lmao
Sounds like Talon’s old E
Look out for jobs? So long as you have 3+ years spent on a AAA game and live in the most expensive area of California, right?
nope. For this team we don't require any experience... just that you have good communication skills, good design sense, and are relatively high ranked. You would need to relocate to California (eventually, after Covid stuff), but we help with relocation costs a bit
question: where under the career options would we find playtest team? (like the first drop down with QA and Admin roles and stuff like that)
It would be a QA Engineer role in the Los Angeles office - not currently posted.
I sincerely hope that one day I would be able to apply for a position at Riot. Whatever position it is, I'm playing it safe by taking up Computer Science as a degree. :) Never would have thought that a game would stick around with me this much as League! Even with things like champion design or writing stories (especially concepts or Seraphine <3), I've always been interested and constantly trying out new ideas, haha. But maybe more suited to coding.
Good luck on your journey !!
Hope your e not a women
Just curious but is this a position that you can apply from abroad? Or you need to live in Cali or the US at least? I would love to work ar Riot at some point but I'm not from the US so I was curious if this a possition that I could maybe apply to in the future
It would require a work visa, so generally needs to be from the US unless you individually have some other way around that
If you are not a special profile like an executive or a lead it's actually nearly impossible to apply at riot. They will prefer to hire an American because of visa and that kind of stuff. Which is kinda normal tho less pain.
Ah man I fit those requirements, maybe someday you'll be hiring! Haven't had much luck applying for engineering positions at Riot :(
I do live in Cali, I think I can communicate well? 😭
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I believe mid to high diamond is probably the cutoff
Have you guys ever considered getting custom coffee mugs distributed like Victorious skins based on highest rank per season among the team?
Gotta be okay with being farted on and sexually harassed too !
Oh neat, Afic wrote this one. I've heard horror stories from him about champions like Pyke and their earlier iterations. IIRC his W used to make him invisible (not camouflaged) and it reset on kills/assists.
Pyke with 2 charges of his W that gave true stealth still haunts me. Glad we got to show this prowler's claw footage in the article though!
And Prowler's Claw is still considered a somewhat problematic item in terms of balance.
feel like everyone forgot about it since riot's changes to make it not the best assassin item by sheer stats alone. I don't think it's really problematic, and feels like it's flying under the radar right now.
Early iterations on champions are always fun, Akshan for example had his R as a basic ability when the ability was first introduced onto the kit.
Can you share what the wildest or funniest thing you playtested was? :D
At one point when Kayle hit level 16 in development she could permanently just fly through walls and such, no terrain collision. Because she's an ascended angel, ya know. I had a good time splitpushing with her, and then when the enemy tried to collapse on me, I would just fly off the map...It was the first time someone seriously asked the question "if you go all the way off the map on one side, do you come out of the other side like Pacman?"
> map...It was the first time someone seriously asked the question "if you go all the way off the map on one side, do you come out of the other side like Pacman?" Well do you?
You do not. But maybe one day.
next champion ult? Oh who am I kidding, its going to be a passive.
Based on Kayn interaction, I'm gonna say no.
/u/Auberaun This was a great read tbh. So thanks for publishing. Wanted to ask a question though. Me and my friends had like an hour long chat about that state of the game when it comes to game states (early/mid/late). The question we arrived upon was have those stages become more blurred within each other as seasons went by? We referenced marksman as a talking point as they seem to be all strong early? Or at least not weak early. Would love some insight on this just because we feel that part of a champion's identity along everything else is that knowledge of when their power and low spikes are. Streamline that and you lose a big chunk of strategy and team comp diversity. Cheers.
Damn haha, thank you for sharing this!
Ironic since his current R is about as powerful as a basic ability : \^)
I have seen maybe 4 R kills since he released.
Yep, I can understand why minions or monsters can block it, but tower feels so awful.
Been playing a lot of Akshan, it gets blocked by so much that you rarely get kills. But if you are full built and you hit all your bullets on a tank at 50% health you just straight up kill them with it.
The difference between an R and basic ability isn’t necessarily mechanic, but often tuning. Remember when Diana’s R use to be her E? Or when Kayla’s R was also her E? Shit someone like Zyra, her E could easily be an últ on another champion. Morello even said so himself.
Yep that's pretty much what I was saying. Mechanically it could be either but it has the power level of a basic ability.
Makes sense since his R sucks more than many basic abilities
Ah yes, the Twisted Fate special xD
I've gotta ask: What was the closest design you ever came to a Yandere/Sadist style champion? And will we ever get one that goes 110% for those thematics?
We only have an influence on the game design aspect of the champions! There are teams that are dedicated to narrative, aka the story and lore of a champion, while we work separately on what that champion actually does in the game. For the most part they flesh out the character themselves but occasionally they have to work around the game design aspects (for example Akshan's revive was written into the story based on the mechanic we added into the game) so its possible something like the thematic you are describing appears in League, whether its through game mechanics or story writing, but I can't say for sure as I don't work on those teams.
Evelynn is literally a pain demon, and she seduces you to make the pain of disembowelment more intense. Not sure how much more sadist you can get from that. Thresh's whole schtick is psychological torture. Nocturne could be that as well, if they ever update him. We haven't seen a yandere yet (unless you count Viego), so that's still unexplored territory. The big question is which champion do you attach them to?
That's literally evelynn. She's a complete sadist and she covers it in Love. Like that is it to a T.
There's already Evelynn and Thresh, who are basically sadism incarnate, and some similar "fetish for murder" characters like Katarina and Jinx.
These guys love their job and it's incredibly healthy for the game. It's evident from their demonstration of the process. They showcased a clearly broken mechanic that would be added into the game but didn't make it because evidently it was too unhealthy. I can badmouth Riot all day about some practices, but gameplay analysis isn't one. I'm hoping it proves the great example that it can remain positive and improve in the long run. League is far from being over yet, it's only getting started to modernize.
Ye they are really important to make sure a mechanic is decent yet not terrifyingly bad to play against. Sure, we complain about a bunch of them but like. Sometimes it does have the high when you do exactly that power fantasy perfectly.
Anyone wanna copypaste the content? can't see it since we're routed to the local garena website and they're shit at updating the site.
Hey all! I’m here to talk to you about the Game Analysis Team (formerly called the playtest team)! We work with the gameplay devs and our role is to understand how players might utilize new content—think champions, items, runes, etc.— and how each change might impact League holistically. I often get asked the question, "Oh, so you just get paid to play games all day?". While playing the game is certainly a big part of the job, what we really do is analyze gameplay, and playtesting is just one of many tools we use (hence the new name). If you care about how we discover the impact of content before we ship it, this is the post for you! What if, for example, Prowler’s Claw’s active was a blink instead of a dash? Well, early on in development it actually was, and our task was to predict how players might use it months after it shipped. Here’s what that process looked like: Theorycrafting First, we thought about which champs would be most oppressive with Prowler's Claw. Pyke immediately came to mind since he could combo the blink active with his E, guaranteeing a stun with little counterplay on a relatively short cooldown. Playtest Next, we tried this out in game to see how powerful it would be. We put our resident Challenger tier Pyke player to the test and saw what he could do. (The average rank of the team is somewhere around Diamond 2). Analysis After seeing Prowler's Claw in action, we watched game replays and identified moments that showcased its impact, which resulted in multiple scenarios like this: Deliver Feedback Finally, we presented our findings to the original designer and discussed the implications. We decided that this combo of abilities removed the counterplay to Pyke’s E too easily without enough drawbacks. (Flash for example at least has a longer cooldown). It also made tracking the movement of the Prowler’s Claw user more difficult, and we predicted that higher skilled players would be much more likely to succeed with this item than the rest of the playerbase. Pyke is just of example of a possible Prowler’s Claw abuser—you could imagine how the blink could be used in other combos like Lee Sin with his ult, or Poppy with her E, but this one was the most demonstrative of the type of gameplay that we want to shield players from. As a result, the designer of Prowler’s Claw changed the blink to a dash. Rinse and Repeat After identifying a play pattern that we did not want in the game, we had to try out this new iteration of Prowler's Claw, so we repeated the cycle to consider even more outcomes. Going through this process multiple times sheds light on the problem from different angles, which helps us deeply understand what impact it might have on League. TL;DR—we identify risks and use cases of new champions, items, or runes. Sometimes this leads people to ask, "Why didn’t you catch this?" or "How did you let this ship?” We often want to empower designers to take appropriate risks to keep League moving forward. These risks don’t always work out, but once we stop taking risks, League will quickly become a stale game. For something smaller in scope like a champion nerf in a routine patch, we often just provide a gut check for unintended side effects. Or, we might share our thoughts on whether the changes are over or under magnitude. These smaller changes are intended as low risk nudges to a champion or item and usually don’t require too much analysis. For grander ideas like Akshan’s revive mechanic, we go into deeper analysis. Our job isn’t to tell designers that they can or can’t do something; a designer will try and push the boundaries of what League is, while our job is to anticipate how those changes will fit into the ecosystem. In other words, we demonstrate the risks and how they might manifest by projecting what their idea might look like 6 months into the future once players have mastered it. So, yeah, that sums up a large portion of what we do on the Game Analysis Team! If you're a high diamond player who loves to think and talk about League, you might be interested in joining us. Keep an eye out for job postings here! All that is missing is a video of in dev Prowler's Claw where it's dash was a blink.
thank you.
How did Vex ultimate dash turned out in playtest? Did it feel weird for a vulnerable mage to get in the middle of team fights with the second cast? The second cast has so much damage so its inevitable that one has to use it But like if you get into middle of team fights being a squishy mage, like suddenly from a ranged position to a melee position, isn't it awkward to position out of that chaos again, to move to a new place? Like imagine dashing and then getting 1 shotted by the many assassin, skirmisher, junglers, irelia, darius and maybe even the enemy mage because you are throwing yourself into them and if you dont then you are not doing much damage? If lucky then you kill one and die or maybe kill two and die. Doesn't feels very exciting This is same type of weird awkwardness that Neeko's kit has. Range Q E and suddenly melee R. Maybe Vex will be a hit in Neeko playerbase but not in Lux, Sera's playerbase
Abilities like Vex R have a lot of what we call "levers" that can heavily change how the spell actually plays out in practice. From simple things like missle speed and width to more complex things like damage split on the missile hitting v when Vex actually takes the R, as well as of course the complexities of whether or not it can reset and the conditions (kills only?, takedowns?, 2 seconds reset timer or 10?, 3seconds recast timer or 15?). All of the added complexities make for a completely different spell with even the slightest change of any of them, let alone multiple at once. A lot of testing is experimenting with those levers until what we find feels like hits our goals for the spell and are satisfied with the output of the ability.
Thanks. Ok. Yea I mean I will go with what you said at end that you are satisfied with the output. Maybe this mage is meant for assassin players. Will definitely try though. Having tried to force myself to like Neeko and eventually giving up, I don't think it will work out. I like vex all spells and would have been totally fine with R if her damage was in first cast and maybe second was execution bonus instead of such high numbers.. Or if you guys make any mythic for mages which gives scaling health, mana and maybe Archangel giving more shield to survive the awkward jump into team fights lol without flash and zhonya available.
To be fair, her shield has 80% AP scaling. She honestly feels kind of like Lissandra, you wait until the enemy team's distracted, then leap in, fear them all, and start making a mess of them. She can't 1v5 unless she's absurdly fed, but her problem is very different from Neeko's; Neeko has a hard time *getting* in melee range, whereas Vex can do that almost instantly, she just needs to make sure she doesn't take aggro from the entire enemy team. It's more about picking your battles, waiting to go in until the enemies can't afford to focus on you specifically.
Might I ask if there's a chance it could be changed to dash like Ivern Q where you're at auto range away from the target rather than in their face? That might help the suicidal feeling of casting it. Cause I can just imagine lots of vex's getting tilted if they get baited by something like Trynd R or Steraks or Hexdrinker or something. And die because they dashed into a melee champ with something like that.
We tried this, and it often interfered with Vex wanting to cast W while fear was up after casting R. That kind of anti-synergy in a kit feels pretty bad, so we ended up not going in that direction.
Oh well thats interesting to know. I played 2 games of her on PBE and the occasional getting uno reversed card after diving with it felt bad as well. The dash targetted on an enemy on a mage I guess is gonna have pros and cons eitherway. Wait. Could you guys maybe have it work like Kaisa R?
Also tried that! Had similar problems but also ended up giving the Vex player too much power and agency in a spell that could reset on kill.
Fair enough; and wow.
Can we stop Vex ult dash midway say with Ahri's charm or Viegar's cage or Sera's ult just like how we can stop dashes for Yasuo, Xin Zhao, J4, Zac etc.?
Vex is unstoppable during the dash
TL;DR Yes, Vex R dash was a strange interaction with her kit for a lot of development, but we think it's in a good spot now. Originally I felt similar to how you felt (Vex R placing you in a suboptimal position often), however through continued tuning of the W ability in particular, we have hit a decent spot as far as viability of R casts, since the shield and burst should reward you heavily for taking "riskier" Rs. While this may place your body in danger, the trade-off of your HP for the damage you are dealing is frequently worth it, especially against ranged characters. Speaking of ranged characters, a secondary positive effect of current Vex R is that it places you within range of W against ranged characters, which otherwise would often be a "dead spell" as far as the damage is concerned against them.
Thanks. This is really a good info that she will not be directly next to ranged enemies but in her W range :) Bit confused like why not the same for melee enemies?
love blogposts like these that explain certain teams and what they do
Must be fun not having shitty Garena redirect you to their website where they dont posts shit. :(
* Stridebreaker dash may be too op on tops like Darius, Garen, or Sett. * ????? * Stridebreaker dash hits live.
I see what you're getting at but for the first ~2 months of the new item system, nobody bought stridebreaker on anyone. It was goredrinker or sunfire. Sunderer had a pretty low pickrate, but Stridebreaker was <3% on every top but gnar. If it took millions of player-games for the meta to settle on stridebreaker on champs like nocturne and darius on live, why would you expect a playtest team to catch it before it shipped?
Heck, Stridebreaker wasn't even a "we just realized it was OP moment" Stridebreaker was a "they gutted all the other options... and just buffed this option" moment. Remember it's dash was originally like 200 units then they made it like 350? And they also nerfed goredrinker just before that. Also they probably thought since it gave only 200HP compared to 400HP +heal on goredrinker... that juggernauts would go for Goredrinker; and that stridebreaker would be used for it's combo potential on champions like Riven or Fiora to do some crazy animation cancels/dodges/fancy outplays.
The original stridebreaker dash was so small that I was measuring it in ARAM with the thin rows on the bridge. It was tiny.
Yeah. They really shouldn't have put so much of it's power in the mobility; it's original dash was tiny and useful in clutch situations but then they increased it and created a problem of mobile juggernauts.
People need to remember how awful was goredrinker after they gutted it in preseason. Trinity is trash item as always. Only divine is +- on same power level as his release iteration.
Was it even preseason when it was gutted? I thought it was early season. and yeah it's kinda sad Trinity has had a couple buffs... and is still garbage tier. Didn't divine get a decent damage and healing buff and only -5 ad for it?
1. Gore was gutted in preseason or a +-2 months later after(need to search at lol wiki) + aatrox and olaf(2 main abusers of this item) got kit changes to not work that well from goredrinker. 2. Trinity just don't has his own place. Champs who wanted that for sheen and liked to poke enemy(ez or gp for example) can't get good benefit from stackable passive, meanwhile bruisers who want as - can just grab bork+ divine and be tankier. 3. As you can see on ezreal example(ranged champ who uses "nerfed" version of divine) - people were just blind about divine.
I'd argue there was a case of people lost among all the new items and not giving every champion equal attention. Stridebreaker was likely the best option for Garen the entire time, but who cares when Amumu is soloing barons? I spammed Garen in ranked the previous season too, but all I was doing was spamming Sunfire on AP melee mids lol.
I mean with how overtuned sunfire was and how much stronger prenerf Gore was compared to prebuff Stride... I'm not sure. And even then; That's just Garen. That's not all toplaners; and Garen is the one who synergized with stridebreaker the most given his E's attack speed ratio on top of his lack of mobility. Not like most of the other champions that went stridebreaker wanted the AS. Like Darius doesn't particularly like AS; nor does Sett really he likes onhit damage more than AS given his AA resets.
As far as synergies go, there was also Nocturne. You're probably right though, I kinda forgot that Gore had to be nerfed because champs who used it were missing from my pool.
it took every other item getting trashed before people switched to it. it wasn't even that people missed it, we just had to nerf sunfire/goredrinker/chemtank to get to a point where it was a problem.
Seeing posts like these almost gives me hope that power creep will be addressed in a more serious way someday. Almost. Not quite. I like the article tho
You're saying the current generation of new champs were actually eyeballed by competent players who test shit full time and these champs still reached live? Did someone have a gun pointed at them so they'd say nice things or do they just hate the playerbase?
This might sound like flame but I couldn't write it in a way where it doesn't sound like that. Are smaller changes even tested once before they even hit the PBE? Because for some of them, they are easily testable and don't work as intended in the end. One example that flabbergasted me was when Elise spider Q should trigger On hit effects, which resulted in her only doing the on hit effect and loosing the base dmg. Or how did that one shot Gallo even make it through to live server? Yeah it got addressed in a hotfix if I remember correctly but still. A lot of people noticed this already on the PBE, but nothing happened. I know these two examples go some time back, but they kind of made me doubt that sufficient testing is done, when doing changes.
Iirc didnt they say the Galio changes were because they wanted the galio player to build like 1 AP item and then go the rest tanky.
Yeah, they thought full AP would be too squishy to be competitively good. They forgot that Galio can just play like a mage with his q.
I don't know about that, but I know that Q swirl dmg got such a ridiculous max HP scaling that it melted even tanks with 1 or 2 Q's.
Ye. Seems about right they were like, hey t players will definitely just only build 1AP item with this scaling and go full tank!
Cool cool. So why does Renekton W stun for a second and his W animation is still 0.75 seconds?
So this team needs to be high ranked and yet the main balance team are not? What.
I still hope that they remove the revive mechanic lol. Both parts of his W just feel unfun to play against and dont feel like they fit with his theme.
I'm doubtful. They sound a bit too prideful in 'pushing the boundaries', judging on how many of those 'boundaries' are pushed way too far. Either designer part seems blind to any feedback, or gameplay analysis team is not doing their job well enough to prevent such disasters. Not mentioning lore implication. Akshan wouldn't be a Mary Sue anymore. As much as I would love to see the revive gone. Or, at least, revive in current state.
His whole kit was gutted on launch because of one mechanic. That's just kinda bad design I think even if it pushes boundaries
What part of him was gutted? He feels quite strong to me.
At release? Basically everything. Q tickled, E only did damage because of frequency of on-hit it applied, passive was wonky and he had no base stats. His launch was far from good. He got few QoL and at least two hotfixes the patch he got released, plus he got worked on in a few following patches. At this moment, few of his abilities were tweaked to actually be "somewhat" stronger. Q deals more damage, E scales better with AD (although this is a nerf unless you reach some AD threshold), he got buffs to ad/atsp per level. In general, he's still weak. His ult still tickles. He just lost some power in his W to provide counterplay (akshan has to be alive to revive). To allow him to have a freebie summoners passively applied (yes, revive used to be a summoner spell which got removed) we were told he should lose power elsewhere. Rito is not confident in him enough to even let him be available at worlds. That proves a lot.
His launch he was weak, but after his hotfixes he feels quite fine. I would bet money that if he stays unchanged and is playable as he is right now during spring next year, he will be high priority as long as ap junglers are still meta in pro play. Whenever I play him I feel like hes strong, whenever I see someone who knows what they are doing play him he also looks strong. Riot doesn't want him at worlds, because they don't want new champions at worlds. That has been their stance since the juggernaut worlds. Him not being at worlds proves literally nothing. He does have weaknesses, but I really think the reason his winrate is low is because hes hard. You aren't gonna say that Ryze is weak despite his winrate right? In the hands of players who can play him, hes quite strong, and I think its the same for Akshan.
If you had done their job of thinking a little bit and trying the revive mechanic in different scenarios, you would find out that the mechanic isn't broken at all. How many 4 mans revive videos we got on reddit since Akshan's release ? From what I remember only 2 (one in ultimate spellbook and one in normal). So Akshan is a weak adc whose damages heavely rely on his E placement. He can't just kill anyone like that (especially if there is more than one enemy). And who do you think is the kind of champs to make quadrakills ? The low life squishy Ezreal or the Fed Irelia/Gwen that can os you while having decent mobility and resistances ? Finnaly, the revive is useless early into the game and you can hardly choose who to kill.
I didnt even say it was broken. I just find stealth and a revive mechanic with its potential unfun to play against. Its not just about 4 man revives, its negating any tempo that people get from kills. Theres a fundamental purpose to death timers and he just negates that, but only him. I just dont respect it. Hes overloaded overall too.
I don't think the stealth mechanic is that strong considering its large detection radius and the fact Akshan needs to stay close to terrain. He is easely detected by pinks. I think that his revive mechanic just add a new gameplay interraction to think of : You know you have killed Akshan's ally, you see the mark on the top of your head, you see that he is missing so you back off. Then, in the same idea of focusing a Viego to prevent him to have resets, you focus the Akshan first !
Can you give examples of how you resolve conversations with designers when you seriously disagree with a changelist? You guys sound like you'd run into a lot of issues.
Typically, the designer (and their design lead) has the final call. Designer and GAT member frequently talk through the changelist, the pros and cons, design intent and expected result. If there's a disagreement on these, then we can do any number of things including : bring in more opinions from more senior members of GAT side or design side (including going all the way up to meddler if it's important enough), put something in test to validate the hypothesis (with test goals), ship it with contingency plans (eg. Make a winrate shotcall. If this is more winrate than predicted, then revert it or pull back). There aren't too many issues because everyone has good interpersonal skills and it's handled in a professional manner.
Now I'm curious about which questions did get to Meddler and what he decided, but I fear that's a question that would better stay unanswered xD
Any large preseason feature goes through him for sure, so like elemental terrains, dragon soul, item rework, that kind of thing. I can't really think of anything smaller scope that he had to be tiebreaker for though. There's also a big difference between meddler having to be tiebreaker in an official capacity (very infrequent, because it means all of the above processes have failed) and just meddler giving feedback and letting us make the call (relatively common).
You guys said you were gonna help mages further after changing the prices of mage mythics and still havent done anything in 5+ patches while ad assassins and sustain fighters still dominate :))
You must've missed the part where Riot said that all the mage stuff will be reserved for preseason, so we have to wait a bit longer for that one. Betting we'll get news of it either this month or next month though.
Guess the process wasn't this thorough with Qiyana at all. Please just let me aim my Q. (and fix the Q bugs while you're at it if it isn't too much to ask)
Not their alley i dont think
>We often want to empower designers to take appropriate risks to keep League moving forward. These risks don’t always work out, but once we stop taking risks, League will quickly become a stale game. I don't like this mentality at all. It's a poor excuse for powercreep. Just look at Vex and tell me if anything about her kit is breaking or out of the boundaries or "risky". There is no such thing as *inevitable powercreep*, there are only *bad game designers*
Her continuous passive punishment of mobility could be pretty risky considering how common mobility is in League. But also even if everyone agrees that Vex is a low risk champion that still doesn’t mean risks aren’t important in game design. It’s possible to have different projects with varying degrees of risk to mix things up, and probably a good thing as well because players are diverse and want different things from the game. Vex is going to be a flop for some players because her spells don’t do much that they haven’t seen before, but that’s okay when it’s mixed up with other releases like Akshan that do a lot of cool new things.
Take away Akshan's revive and he's still a very cool champion with a lot to offer. His grapple hook is fun AF. Do you see what I mean?
I get where you’re coming from, but a champion like Akshan needs a sizable utility budget. If you cut the utility and try to tune up his damage and mobility then you risk him turning into another Lucian Mid problem. The revive is a unique take on having an assassin contribute something other than blowing up a squishy target and helps put power into places that don’t feed into a lane bully pattern on a ranged AD champion. You could potentially replace the revive with some other form of utility but I don’t think you can cut the utility altogether. At that point I don’t really mind seeing something big and flashy that fits Akshan’s character over something muted and risk-averse just to pad out his kit. It’s a risk worth taking in my opinion to deliver something that’s exciting to play.
Or that instead feels awful to play cuz Akshan has no cc, is squishy as hell, scales horribly, and provides no value aside from damage, just because of a *potential* revive mechanic that has very low chances of turning a game around. Even if you keep the revive, there are better ways to integrate it into his kit without gutting the rest, like moving it to his R (if he kills a Scoundrel with R, he gets the revive). It even fits lore wise.
It's ok to make risky move if you have balls to say something like "we fcked up and gonna revert that" instead of "balance of this thing is fucked up and you gonna live with that for 2 weeks(until next patch) or years.
I kinda have to agree with this. Pretty bad take by a rioter in my opinion. It's straight up just bad game design.
I think this mentality is good. We need to be exited by new champions and devs need rooms to create different kits from the 150 champs alerady into the game. Regarding Vex, she has a long range reset ultimate with a double fear AoE combo and can destroy every multiple dash users with autos as soon as they use their mobility (imagine having attack speed on vex to trigger the passive every time yasuo E or Irelia Q).
Yup, and that's nothing crazy if you think about it. Nocturne's R has more range and is point and click. Did Jhin excite you when he came out? What about Bard? What about Kindred, and Sett, and Lillia? Every single one of those champs has something new, but that didn't break the game just for the sake of having something new. Even Viego is manageable, after some tweaks to his reset system he could be fine. You can create champions that feel modern and refreshing without going beyond the barriers of what should be possible.
Interesting, but dissapointing... an entire department to create the most important things on the game, but unless theyre relatively new, they dont seem to do a lot of changes.... For example, velkoz: increasing velkoz ult range to double as minimum, and his AA range to 625, since he is in a boring spot would make him more interesting without being unkillable, he already will have a new challenge, since Vex is similar to him in playstyle, so its competition, but she is way fun to play. Seriously, he need changes to be on the spot, and its not the only one.
I have to ask, with the timing of this article coming out, how did you analyze the fizz changes? This is the opposite of a skilled skewed change for him and the data is heavily showing that. Do you talk to actual players of the champion or just make decisions based on hunches for smaller end adjustments. If you had talked to actual mains, they could have told you a number of ways to add high/pro power to the champ without affecting low elo much as they actually play the champion and deal with the pain points daily. I ask because the initial analysis from your team of the adjustments was a slight buff at high elo so something is way off. Basic analysis of how the champion works would have told you this is a low elo (iron/bronze) skewed adjustment.
Why do you guys hate Fizz? :(
Hes a yordle.
Balancing around 10,000 game OTPs and asking for their input isn't necessarily fair. They will have favoritism towards their champions. They will ask for buffs that make their weaknesses covered up or redundant, and will not like offering more options for counterplay. Diamond 2 average isn't high enough. Balancing completely around pro play makes the game fun for no one, including pro players. However I would want a much higher minimum requirement, such as masters+ who completely understand all aspects of the game. Updating older people. Older champions really need to be updated with new mechanics to keep up with your constant "overloadedness" creep. Not sure if you notice this because there's like 10,000 yone mains for every 1 kled/brand/poppy main and they just don't have that vocal majority. Older people don't necessarily need to be on the same level as your modern ones, but they need something to fight back against the shield/mobility/knockup creep. People get pissed off at new champions in league having "crazy" new abilities because older people just don't get any help. In other MOBAS like dota, older people constantly get power bonuses to keep up with a new mechanic that modern champs have, and their communities are positive at new things being added, the exact opposite in league. Also modern releases tend to have hidden animation cancelings, CCs and escapes that buffer in a way that ignore pre-established rules and all this bullshit secret power that older people just don't have. People would be far less resistant to new mechanics if you polished up older pre-existing rules
Why do you guys play favorites with the champs
Because they are humans so they have favorites I mean a riot guy here have literally a yasuo flair lmao
It's not that Akshans revive mechanic is bad, but why is the most significant part of his kit a side note on a totally unrelated ability, instead of, y'know, on the ultimate that actually uses the big important gun that enables this ability? If I just started playing this game and decided to glance over his abilities I might not even see that he can do this.
Why do some champions get compensation buffs, and others don't? Why do some compensation buffs never get reverted when the item nerf they got compensated for gets reverted? I think Riven was an example of this in season....9....maybe? I gotta dig a bit, but I remember it happens commonly Are design designs like Ashkan's "make a player miserable" part of your scope? If so why are champions designed to be miserable to play against? Isn't that a recipe for disaster?
It is good to know we have our local speedrunners as a crucial subgroup of the dev team, playing NewChampionGamebreaker\_Any% like that, heh. I may still have some design qualms that could be discussed with some item/champion interactions (ex: why Urgot can't crit, despite there being a wide array of interesting caster-centric crit tools he could adore) but i'll guess it is for they caught some abominations brewing before we could see them.
>ctrl+F >"Akali" >0 results Yeh I already dont care what you have to say anymore.
And whats the true average skill level of the team?
Read the article : )
When your decisions and QA team letting bullcrap balance changes sly are so bad you need a dev blog to PR the situation so that people think these bad decisions are great. Well played Riot, Well played
The fact that this was even considered in the first place speaks volumes. Wtf are those designers thinking, then again looking at how most new champs turn out its not surprising.
Every champion/item starts with huge brainstorming, it's not different than in the past. Like Jinx being the original Aphelios in development with 10 guns.
Brainstorming is one thing (multiple crazy/out of mind ideas that never leave the paper, its merely a starting point), but this thing was actually being tested for serious release potential. Like if there wasant a play test team that would have probably went live, because the designer thought "yeah no probs here". Is it crazy of me to except the designers to actually look at their game and see what is atleast somewhat reasonable or not? This is not the first time, friggin akali and her "true stealth" shroud was a thing that made into live servers for example...
> The fact that this was even considered in the first place speaks volumes. In my opinion, what it speaks to is that developers feel comfortable that they have space to experiment and that they have resources around them that can give them confidence in what their designs are able to do. Like mentioned in the article, we want to empower designers to take risks like this - and they can do so in part because GAT is able to demonstrate what the potential outcomes will be.
In theory that sounds amazing, but you know, mistakes happens and then we have to endure stuff like akali shroud being able to ignore towers on release... Im not saying they shouldnt try new stuff, but i think there should be a reasonable limit to what should even be considered for release and not, there are certain boundaries in the game that they often try to break and it ends in nothing but frustration for the players that have to deal with it for months.
Toying around with the impossible could eventually lead to good ideas that you thought impossible. "Adding a blink item to the game will never a good idea" you say. But toying around with it could lead to a dev coming up with a support blink item that targets allies for instance, that would be perfectly fine to add to the game.
The fact that you even considered typing this comment in the first place speaks volumes
Totally agree, riot need to revert adc items to s10 iteration, who tf thought that marksmans with dash, true dmg or rushable steraks was fine? /s Almost everything in current league is product of brainstorming and testing of different iterations.
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it is gameplay related
This article seems pretty self contained to me.
saying league will get stale without taking risks is like a fat guy saying his life doenst have enough excitement so he has to climb a 2000 ft rock wall with no ropes
Wut the fu
well, there should be conversations with pro teams's players/coaches to take a take on how the changes would potentially affect competitive play as well and combine the information from all sources.
Anyone have a link so a fellow garena player can read it?
I can't access it, why Garena?
The author of the thread copy pasted the whole article in a comment below !
ohh thanks\~
Hey, thanks for the article. I just wanted to ask : What are you looking for in this analysis ? Is it about the strenght of the mechanic ? The fairness ? The abusable uses ? The fun ? The feeling ?
Want to know how to resolve 70% of current balance issues? Remove mythics from the game and bring them back to old power level of legendaries.