What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
Just before we start, we have a quick message from our sponsor GGEsports.com.
On their website you play as an analyst predicting the outcome of Esports matches, but it's not
a betting website, you don't use any real money, just their in game currency which you
can get for free, and use to win real prizes like laptops and phones.
So check them out, and make sure to hit the join now button on the tournament page to
get started.
And I'm also doing a challenge with Brofresco and Redmercy, which I will explain more at
the end of the video.
Xayah and Rakan started out as nothing more than a duo bot lane concept - the ADC/support
dynamic in the bot lane has been unwavering for the vast majority of League’s existence,
and that opened up the opportunity for Riot to create two champions together.
They would obviously have to be functional alone, but would work better together with
special interactions that would encourage players to pick both together.
Riot started their duo character development with a mini Thunderdome - and event Riot holds
that lets their employees go crazy by forming teams and coming up with their own projects.
This mini Thunderdome was intended to give Riot a chance to test a huge number of different
mechanics for the duo characters all at once, and then they could evaluate what worked and
what didn’t.
After seeing the results of the testing, it was time to get started with the traditional
DNA (design, narrative, art) of the champions, working from the ground up.
Since this time it was two champions released together rather than a single one, Riot tackled
it by having a DNA process for each champion, and one mega DNA for both champions.
This meant three people would work on each champion, but all six people would have a
say over the design process for the pair together, to make sure that they had the appropriate
level of synergy for a dual release.
Riot quickly decided to pursue what they call ‘chimeric humanoids’ as the basis for
their duo champions, essentially being humanlike but with animal traits.
This lead to the creation of The Vastaya, a worldbuilding effort created to tie new
and old champions under a single banner.
Although Chimeran was the initial descriptor for Xayah and Rakan, Riot knew fairly early
on that they wanted to produce some kind of bird people in the Bakemono style, with only
one wing each to represent that they are created to be together.
The next challenge for Riot would be settling on the actual bird species to draw inspiration
from, and this likely started with Rakan.
He’s described as being beautiful and always wanting to be the center of attention, making
him line up pretty well with a peacock.
Although we don’t know exactly how Xayah’s appearance was conceptualized, it’s likely
that Riot ended up with something Raven-esque to tie into her more serious and broody nature.
Since these particular Vastayan's would be from Ionia, Riot opted to use the Ionia colors,
but giving Xayah the cooler part of the color wheel and Rakan the warmer.
This meant their appearances made sense from a thematic perspective, whilst also giving
them the individual identity necessary for them to exist in-game alone.
It’s typical for Riot to explore a lot of different themes for new champions before
finding the perfect fit, but in the case of Xayah and Rakan, it seems like they had a
good idea of what they wanted before gameplay development even started.
For example, while discovering their appearances and personalities, it was decided that Rakan
would serve better as the support with Xayah is the ADC, simply because Rakan was always
trying to catch your eye, while Xayah wanted to focus on killing you with a thousand cuts.
Of course, it’s always cool to add some variety, and it had been a while since Riot
had made a female ADC so it ended up working out.
With everything being relatively clear cut from Riot, it’s hard to say what Xayah and
Rakan could have been in terms of art and narrative - but when it comes to gameplay,
there were a few big changes made in the design process.
For example, part of Xayah’s dependence on Rakan came at the sacrifice of her own
mobility.
She used to be much more mobile, similar to Lucian, but giving a champion that level of
mobility often reduces the need for a support.
Since Rakan was meant to have a very mobile identity, Riot decided to take Xayah’s mobility
away in favor of more kiting ability in the form of her Ultimate and roots.
This made her more dependant on Rakan to survive, whether he’s handing out shields, heals
or charming her enemies to peel and give her time to attack.
It also plays off Rakan’s ability to get to Xayah from really far away, since Xayah
is more effective when kiting backwards because it sets up her root.
One of the drawbacks to designing champions that are stronger together it making sure
they aren’t underpowered when played alone or overpowered when played together, and Riot
almost tipped that balance too far by giving Rakan the ability to drop feathers that Xayah
could recall with her E. Since he’s super mobile, it would give some awesome synergy
and allow for some really cool outplays, but Riot EndlessPillows confirmed it had to be
removed because Xayah had way too many feathers already.
Another one of the other very cool potential abilities for Xayah and Rakan was actually
a spell they shared that functioned by charging - likely by holding down the ability button.
Charging the ability would affect the spread of the missiles, so the particle effect would
look like a peacock opening its feathers.
It was probably removed because it wouldn’t fit on both of their kits - Rakan is a support
after all.
Big AoE nuke abilities take up a ton of design space, but on paper it sounds like a really
thematically awesome ability that would probably have functioned similarly to Heimerdinger’s
Rockets.
If the missiles left feathers at the end of their path, it could have functioned well
with Xayah’s Blade Caller too, but for maximum effect it would place her way too close to
an enemy for comfort, since she’d have to be close up to get every feather to hit her
enemy on the way back.
Thanks for
watching the video everybody!
I just wanted to take some time here at the end to talk about a fun little thing I've
been doing lately with our sponsor, GGEsports.com.
Currently I'm competing alongside Redmercy and Brofresco to see who can win the most
on GGEsports.com.
The winner is going to get a bunch of prizes to giveaway to the viewers, so I'm doing my
best for you guys!
I was able to get a big lead during Rift Rivals and have been coasting on my wins from that
ever since, and I'm currently in first place by about 40,000 gold overall.
So I'm doing pretty well, and so now I'm just taking it a bit easy to try and just keep
my lead and make minor earnings here and there.
You can check out the current standings on the GGEsports Facebook Page, which I will
link below in the description.
And if you go like and comment on their post, you can be entered to win $10 worth of gems
on their website which you can redeem for RP or anything you want really.
And big thanks to GGEsports for sponsoring our content!