What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy.
The Taric rework has finally been announced and is up on the PBE, and not too long ago
we saw both the Shen rework and Poppy reworks.
With all these reworks coming out, there are just about as many—if not more—than actual
new champions.
Reworks have become this huge phenomenon and with the ad carry rework, along with everything
Riot is planning, Season 6 looks like it’s going to be the season of champion reworks.
As always, if you enjoy the video hit that like button and if you don’t please hit
the dislike, Anyways let’s get started.
A while back, around season 3 or 4, when Riot began slowing down their new champion cycle,
and stopped making new champions consistently every two weeks, one of the many reasons that
they cited for doing this was because they wanted to dedicate more time to reworking
the already existing champions, and to make sure that they could really do every champion
justice.
But reworking champions is typically a controversial thing to do, as a lot of people may have mained
or at least enjoyed that champion already, and for some, a big part of why they play
league of legends may be for that one specific champion.
Reworking any champion in the game can have some seriously negative downsides that you
wouldn’t otherwise have with a completely new champion.
There’s a lot more risk involved, and the reward is certainly a lot less too, since
riot definitely sells more copies of a newer champion compared to a freshly reworked one.
So why do they bother?
Why rework champions at all?
Why remake an existing champion when you could just create a completely new one, make a lot
more money, without the risk of upsetting members of the player base who liked that
champion.
Well, there’s actually quite a lot of depth that goes into the decision.
The most common reason to rework a champion is that Riot views that champion to have some
kind of problem with their gameplay.
Perhaps their gameplay is poorly designed, and as such is impossible to balance.
Many champions have unhealthy kits or unfair design, which causes them to be a nightmare
to make balanced.
Either they are completely broken, or totally underpowered, and that’s not a good thing
at all, and a rework is often the step needed to just make that champion balanced, and is
often necessary to give a champion proper strengths or weaknesses.
As well, a lot of champions that are being reworked lack purpose in a sense that they
are not unique champions or they lack a specific role, and as a result they feel subpar to
play because they get outclassed by other champions.
Especially at the competitive level, there are so many champions that just don’t get
played because of the idea of why play X champion when you could play Y or Z, and riot doesn’t
like that.
They want every champion to have their own little niche, with strengths and weaknesses.
You can also rework a champion because the character just doesn’t feel that good.
Maybe the gameplay doesn’t fit in line with the story and personality, maybe that monstrous
tank just feels kind of lackluster, or that elegant healer feels a bit clunky and unintuitive,
you get the idea.
A champion should have a personality that comes to life in their gameplay.
Like how jinx makes you feel like this crazy insane girl running around and blowing everything
up when you play her, and that’s a big part of what makes jinx an awesome champion, and
that feel and personality should be captured in everyone, but it’s quite lacking, especially
in a lot of the older champions.
Different reworks occur for different reasons, and some reworks have very different goals
and results.
Most of the time, they try to keep the spirit of the champion intact, or keep some gameplay
aspect, for example, with the graves rework they really liked the idea of him being this
in your face, real close and personal brawler with burst damage, and that feel was kept
intact with his rework.
Or with Quinn, they really like how she was this scout that had the ability to pick off
a target for a kill, and that was kept in the game as well.
That element of reworking is the key difference between a rework and a completely new champion,
and for the majority of reworks Riot is successful in doing that.
Even though they might have new abilities, the personality and character and feel is
what really defines a champion, at least in the eyes of riot, and as long as that isn’t
completely ruined then it’s not hurting the champion that much.
However, a lot of reworks fall into what you could categorize as unsuccessful, in the sense
that maybe the new version of the champion was subjectively worse than the old version,
maybe it was less fun, or maybe a little bit of that gameplay feel was lost, and depending
on the player that may have been too much for them.
I like to look at the mordekaiser rework because it’s been probably the most unsuccessful
rework thus far in league of legends history.
They tried to do something unique and interesting with him by making him a melee replacement
for an ad carry, but he ended up being extremely overpowered, and then extremely underpowered,
and now he’s right back to where he started before the rework in the sense that his character
has no purpose and is clunky to play, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he received an
additional rework in the future.
But despite being unsuccessful, it did attempt the idea of being a refreshing new take on
the meta that was so unique and different from everyone else.
And that feel for a character is an awesome thing that Riot wants to try and bring to
every champion if possible, one at a time.
You also have to consider Riot’s motivations for reworks in general.
They want to rework champions because they feel that that champion deserves a rework
for some meaningful reason.
Usually it’s a balance problem, sometimes it’s that their character can be improved
so much, or sometime it’s that they want to make the champion unique and meaningful
compared to some reason.
But the biggest reason is really for the long term success of the game.
Reworking champions ideally makes the game a lot better, since it makes any gameplay
involving that champion better overall once the kinks are balanced out.
A lot of champions in league of legends are incredibly outdated or just flat out poorly
designed, and fixing that has an impact on the overall design of the game as a whole.
If you take a look at the champions riot releases today, they are all unique, interesting, and
for the most part vary in balance, they aren’t all overpowered or all underpowered, because
they try to make a fun champion over anything else, and the champion design today has improved
ridiculously far from the days of season 2 where we had a champion every two weeks, and
almost all of them were being released broken as heck.
By reworking champions, riot allows those older champions to be brought up to the standards
of the champions being made today.
Sure, sometimes the reworks aren’t actually that good, and sometimes they have problems,
but there’s no denying that older champions have a lot of problems too.
Reworks make the entire group of champions in league of legends better as a whole, or
at least that’s the idea behind it.
And that’s great for the long term success of having an awesome set of champions where
every single one is unique, interesting, and modern, while also having healthy gameplay
and interactive decisions.
And I for one, think it’s pretty cool that Riot is trying to hold the older champions
to the same standard of the newer champions, even if the execution behind it isn’t entirely
as good as we might want it to be.
Although reworks might not always come out in a positive way, they all have some sort
of design ideal or goal behind them that is headed in the right direction.
Riot needs to step up their execution if they want reworks to be consistently successful,
but it’s a solid direction to take with a lot of the existing champions in the game.
And that just about wraps it up, if you enjoyed the video subscribe If you want, thanks for
watching, and I’ll see you guys next time!