What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
Fan-made concepts for League of Legends come in many different forms, but most commonly
you see them in the form of skins or champions.
Since we love showcasing the amazing designs that the
League community comes up with, we wanted to explore some content that we haven’t
really looked at before.
So today, instead of going over new fan skin or champion concepts, we’re going to be
looking at fan-made
maps and gamemodes!
The first concept today is called The Darkin Temple, designed by Daniel Duy and a group
of fellow students.
The map is located just outside a Darkin City, where a civil war has erupted after the emergence
of the Void.
The map features two sides, each with a base; one corrupted by the Void, and one untouched
and in it’s original form as a Hall of Champions.
There is a Nexus in each base, and the objective remains the same as Summoner’s Rift—work
with your team to destroy the enemy Nexus.
Moving forward through the base, you will encounter a pair of Nexus turrets and an Inhibitor,
then one sole turret outside the base.
To the side, there is a shield gate which only allies can pass through, which leads
to the jungle section.
The map has been expertly modelled and textured by Duy and his team, and it honestly looks
like it could have been made by Riot themselves.
The aesthetic is extremely similar to what we are used to from League, and the Darkin
twist looks awesome.
Moving down the lanes, you encounter a central arena, where the majority of the fighting
will likely occur, with a ‘golden army’ hidden below.
To the North of the central arena is the Warden area, where the team has designed their own
Darkin NPC that acts sort of like a Rift Herald or Dragon.
Defeating The Warden release the Golden Army, three super minions that will help you push
down the enemy lane.
South of the central arena is dedicated jungle area, where you’d be able to find a number
of jungle camps along with Baron Nashor’s counterpart, the Primal Yordle.
There are also three capture points dotted around this area.
If you control all three, you gain some extra vision over the jungle, release the Primal
Yordle so he can be fought and defeated, and it also disables the enemy shield gate, granting
you access to their base.
Killing the Primal Yordle would grant a buff that is comparable to Baron Nashor’s.
In addition to designing the map and boss NPCs, the team spent some time developing
their own creations for use as jungle camps or just ambient creatures to add to the atmosphere.
The Lava Bat and Owl Cat act like Poros—they simply occupy the uncorrupted base and cannot
be killed.
On the corrupted side of the map, you will instead find Void moths and Lava Crabs lurking
around.
As for killable creatures, in addition to the Primal Yordle and Warden, the team also
created their own version of Baron Nashor, called Jormun Nashor.
His design is pretty elongated, making him look a bit like Aurelion Sol, but his color
scheme and details definitely show that he’s a monster.
Viper Khan is the next creature concept, and he essentially looks like a dinosaur after
being corrupted by the void.
The last two creatures are Blade Wings and Dragon Fruit, seemingly uncorrupted beings
but definitely unusual, as you’d expect from a land inhabited by Darkin.
From a gameplay perspective, the Darkin Temple map would operate on the same ruleset as Summoner’s
Rift, so 5 players on each team.
However, the single lane and dedicated jungle area would put an interesting twist on the
gameplay, since the teams would likely be forced into constant teamfights.
There are minions too, so we’d imagine a meta would feature 2 to 3 laners heading down
lane to the arena, with the rest of the players fighting for control of the jungle.
It seems like a pretty snowbally map too, thanks to the short distance you’d need
to travel to start smashing down the enemy base after acquiring the Primal Yordle buff
or gaining the assisting of the Golden Army.
That means the gameplay would be pretty fast paced, and depending on the map balance you’d
probably expect to see more 15-20 minute games rather than the slower pace of Summoner’s
Rift.
That makes it a pretty cool concept as a new map and gamemode for League, since it’s
not looking to replicate the same experience—they are trying to do something different.
Overall it’s a beautiful looking piece of design, and you can tell a lot of work went
into making sure it looked like something Riot themselves would create, which is seriously
impressive.
Ionia Falls is our next gamemode and map today, designed by Willie The Whale.
Unlike the previous map, this one is made as an upgrade to the old 1v1 and 2v2 experience
on the Howling Abyss map.
Unlike Howling Abyss, Willie’s map features a curved design.
There is still only one lane, and Willie envisions it as a platform built into the side of a
mountain top, with epic waterfalls and streams running parallel to the lane.
Starting with the spawn, you’ll find a Nexus to be destroyed in each corner of the map.
Moving down the lane you’ll encounter three turrets.
The first acts as an inhibitor, so destruction of it will allow the Nexus to be damaged.
However, it will also respawn in 4 minutes, preventing the risk of just being backdoored
all game.
Willie also designed this turret to take 30% less damage from ranged attacks, as playing
melee vs ranged in a 1v1 would give the ranged player the ability to push down your lane
before you have the items to do anything about it.
However, once destroyed, the enemy minions gain a slight movement speed buff, so you
do gain some kind of benefit if you manage to take it down.
After moving further down the lane, you’ll encounter a split path—one leads to the
second turret, the other leads to a small jungle section and a jungle altar.
The jungle camps are there to add some strategic variety, for example if you need 100g you
could go kill a camp, but you’d risk taking damage on a tower in the meantime.
The jungle camps also give players in a disadvantageous matchup a way to claim some gold without the
threat of being poked out of lane.
The jungle altar serves as a way to counter wave-clear strategies, taking one altar grants
you a movespeed buff, and taking the enemy altar grants you bonus damage to the monster
camps located next to that altar.
Essentially this does two things—firstly it gives you a non-combat benefit to acquiring
your own altar, but also gives you a way to push in and pressure the enemy by capturing
his altar and taking the camps.
This gives players a choice; they can either play it obvious and capture the altar then
the camps, or they can try steal the camps first.
If they use the latter, they’ll kill the camps a lot slower, but won’t give away
their position in the process.
In addition to the bonus camp damage, controlling both altars also grants an empowered minion
buff.
Essentially this acts as the late game push-assist, giving players struggling against waveclear
a way to close out the game.
Moving forward from the second turret or jungle camps, you’ll find the first turret of each
lane.
This turret is similar to the other two, but with a small twist; being near it grants a
health regen buff.
This is a balance mechanism, aiming to give melee champions a way to survive the early
game in an unfair matchup, hopefully allowing them to actually defend that first tower.
The last key feature of Ionia Falls is the temple complex, where you can find a central
altar to control.
It’s situated in the middle of the map, and is controlled similarly to the altars
on the Dominion map.
Controlling the altar will steer the water stream towards whichever side has control,
where it will turn a water mill that will passively generate gold over time for that
player.
As a replacement for the Snowdown Showdown 1v1 map, Ionia Falls would probably create
some really interesting gameplay.
The addition of the jungle altars and camps in particular would open up some new strategies,
and the fine-tuning to the towers would hopefully keep things a little more balanced and make
it harder for the 1v1 metagame to become ‘solved.’
Unfortunately there’s no art assets aside from the map to get a good idea of how the
terrain would actually look, but the Ionian theme would probably be absolutely beautiful,
and it’d give Riot a good opportunity to do some more world-building if they designed
it.
Overall it’s another really cool concept, and it’s cool to see Willie putting so much
thought into ways to balance the 1v1 experience by tweaking map features.
It’s very reminiscent of Riot’s own approach to game balance, particularly when they are
tuning the jungle to help specific jungle classes while also hindering the more dominant
ones.