What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy.
Ekko was released May 28th last year, taking 8 months total from start to finish to create,
including both his concept art and finished assets.
Ekko’s kit was designed by Riot GypsyLord, but back in the early phases of ideation he
was known by two names, ‘Time Slugger’ and ‘Time Assassin.’
Actual production started happening just after Kalista was released, and Riot were looking
for a new take on an assassin that they could bring to the game.
Ekko is pretty interesting in his playstyle and kinda outside the norm for an assassin,
so we went back to the start to follow his creation and bring you today’s What Ekko
Could Have Been.
As always if you enjoy this video hit that like button and if you don’t hit that dislike,
because if this video gets 8000 likes im going to buy myself some Chinese food!
When Riot look to create a new champion, there are two big deciding factors for the ideation
process, the part where they dream up their future champions.
Firstly they consider if a certain role or position needs some attention in the form
of a new champion, and secondly they try think about what design space they have yet to explore
from a thematic perspective.
The design team had decided to try create an interesting new assassin, and for the theme
they figured that they could go with a new take on time magic.
GypsyLord’s first thought on creating a new time-based assassin was Weaver’s Ultimate
from Dota 2, and he was really interested in trying to find a way to make it work.
So with the core idea locked in for their new champion, it was time for Riot to start
thinking about it’s character and appearance.
This was actually solved pretty early on, as it had already been discussed that they
wanted to make a champion who was a teenager that put Zaun in a new perspective.
Edmundo and Chris of the art team came up with the first concepts of what would become
Ekko, a punk kid from Zaun with a smirk carrying an hourglass on his back.
Ekko’s concept timeline was shared by Riot and it does an awesome job showing him moving
through each step of the process.
It starts out with really just trying to get a feel for how the new Zaunite champion should
look.
It’s clear that from pretty early on, Riot settled on a man of colour with some kind
of iconic white hairstyle, but it took a few tries to nail down the right body type.
Although the ‘Time Assassin’ idea was locked down, they were experimenting with
what they called ‘Time Slugger,’ using a weapon almost like a baseball bat rather
than any kind of blade.
They didn’t make a choice between a Slugger or an Assassin straight away, and Ekko could
have ended up using any one of these tools instead, from swords to scythes and even a
kind of lance, similar to Jarvan’s weapon of choice.
Both body type and weapon choice would have quite a big effect on his kit, so the gameplay
portion of design can’t really start until the concept ideation has come to an end.
Moving up the timeline we see Time Assassin’s character posed and equipped in different
ways as Riot searched for an attitude that really fit the champion concept best.
Although a lot of different looks were tested out for his wardrobe and gear, it’s around
this point in the timeline where they settled on the ‘Time Slugger’ idea, leading to
him using hard hitting blunt tools rather than any kind of bladed weapon for slashing
with.
Time Slugger was tested with a younger appearance which was quickly adopted as the ideal look,
being both a good fit for his gear and attitude while also adding some more diversity to the
champion pool.
The next job was settling on his weapon design, and a ton of prototypes were thrown around.
There were two main groups of blunt weapons tested for Time Slugger, the first being tools
like pipe wrenches or tire irons.
The next group was made up of more makeshift weaponry, designed to work like clubs or batons,
some of them being charged with electricity or some other kind of energy.
For Time Slugger, a bat type weapon ended up giving the right vibe for his character,
so it was settled on and further testing was done to narrow down exactly how the weapon
should look.
Both one handed and two handed weapons were tested, and once Ekko’s name and backstory
were in place Riot eventually settling on giving him the hour hand of the Piltover Clocktower
rather than going with a makeshift weapon.
Being a character from Zaun with a dislike if not hatred for the ‘Pilties’ of Piltover,
it’s a pretty cool nudge to his lore that he beats his enemies to death with something
stolen from them.
With his design pretty much locked in, it was time for GypsyLord to get to work figuring
out how to make a kit work for this new take on an assassin.
Ekko’s lore was that of a smart kid that used his wits to survive, and Gypsylord’s
kit needed to reflect that intelligent nature.
He did this by rewarding ‘predictive’ gameplay, where Ekko players will need to
try predict what will happen and be rewarded if they are correct.
Riot didn’t want to just produce another assassin that’s just about 100-0ing something,
so the next goal was to figure out how to make an assassin feel good when they aren’t
one shotting enemies.
The solution was to create a kind of utility assassin, and combining this with the predictive
gameplay led GypsyLord to the Ekko design that we’re all familiar with today.
Still, he didn’t get it right straight away, mentioning that Ekko had a billion different
kits, with the only thing staying constant being the various versions of his ‘go back
in time’ ability.
Out of the few different Ultimate versions, Ekko had two really notable ones.
The first worked like a save state when he casted it.
This recorded the health, mana, cooldowns and positions of everyone in the game.
After 8 seconds were up, anyone that was still alive was returned to the saved state.
This was an incredibly interesting ability but it kinda caused people to just blow every
cooldown and ultimate desperately trying to get kills because all that really mattered
was staying alive for 8 seconds.
It was also super hard to tell after a fight if it worked out in your favor or not because
it was really confusing.
The second Ultimate version was actually quite similar to what was displayed in his cinematic,
and it returned Ekko and a targeted enemy to where they were 4 seconds ago.
It was disgustingly powerful though because it basically guaranteed a kill on anyone trying
to escape, and to balance it the design team would have to take away all of his mobility
which would have left the rest of his gameplay feeling too slow.
His Ultimate was tested in a ton of different ways, though it was always about turning back
time it proved pretty hard to find a place that felt good for Ekko to use without being
totally unfair to enemies.
The key to finding that balance was to understand the variance an ability will have, giving
enough that is healthy but not making it to binary, as in it’ll do one of two things
with nothing in between.
This was actually one of the issues with Riot’s first attempt at a time-based assassin called
Tempus, who had an ability that would nuke a target for a ton of damage, but if they
didn’t die then it would be cancelled out after however many seconds.
This is a great example of a binary ability - either the damage will stick or it won’t,
and it’s a good example of bad design overall.
It’s important that there is some level of variance for healthy, fair gameplay.
Ekko’s release Ultimate might feel a little bit less epic thematically than rewinding
time for the whole map for 8 seconds, but it has the right balance of variance: a well
timed Ultimate can mean a good escape or some solid damage, and there’s still ways to
counterplay it for the enemy team - by tracking the ghost or baiting out the rewind.
Ekko’s Q went through a few different concepts too, one of them being similar to a Riven
Q with 2 casts.
Each cast would teleport him a short distance and give him a ranged attack for his next
attack.
This gave him an awesome kiting pattern, able to jump back and attack despite not being
in melee range any longer.
This version didn’t end up working for Ekko, but GypsyLord mentioned he was interested
in trying it on a different champion one day.
Although in the end he opted for the ranged harass tool in the form of Timewinder, there
was also a version of that where Ekko could Q a second time to call it back manually at
any time.
It did give more of a feel of mechanical complexity, but it had the same drawback as some of the
Ultimate versions - it was too binary.
It stopped being about intelligent positioning or aim, and became a question of ‘if it
hits, pull it back, if not, wait and reposition.’
By getting rid of the decision making from the mechanical side of things, it puts the
decision making back into Ekko’s strategy and how he plans to use Timewinder.
It made Ekko feel a lot smarter to play and it’s definitely a closer match for his theme.
Rather than his current W, it used to be what is now his Ultimate, Chronobreak, with the
exception that it had a way lower cooldown because it was a basic ability.
This not only meant Ekko could rewind time for himself every maybe 20 seconds or so,
but he could get access to that power way earlier in the game.
GypsyLord mentioned it was the most broken thing he had ever seen in a champion design.
Once it was moved to his Ultimate, a new replacement needed to be found for his W.
The old versions of the current W weren’t very well received by testers because they
were either totally OP or totally useless.
For example, it used to give no shield or slow zone, but it also wouldn't’t show the
enemy where it was.
It required Ekko to be inside the zone the second it detonated though, but this meant
that all of a sudden enemies could be suddenly stunned for a huge amount of time with no
warning.
If Ekko managed to get inside the zone along with an enemy, it would be crazy unfair for
them, and if he didn’t get inside the zone in time it’d just be a totally wasted ability.
This actually nearly ended in the ability being scrapped altogether, but fortunately
GypsyLord managed to find a way to make it work in a way that felt good for Ekko to use
but still offering some healthy counterplay for the enemy team.
There’s not a whole lot of information on the different versions of Ekko’s E, but
what we do know is that Riot felt like Ekko needed some kind of cool time distortion ability,
and having it as a blink tied in pretty well with that, as Ekko slips through time for
a mini teleport.
It worked quite well for him mechanically too, giving him a way to dodge projectiles
and giving him a really impactful feel when it blinks to an enemy.
As a utility assassin, it was more important for him to fight in short skirmishes rather
than just commit to a kill then escape, so a two-part dash was a cool way to give Ekko
control over how to fight over a prolonged period of time.
Ekko was Riot’s first attempt at an assassin that offered more than just raw damage, and
although he was meant to be a pretty squishy mid laner, he did end up being pretty broken
as straight tank Ekko.
A lot of this comes down to his mobility and crowd control, and although it ended up being
nerfed kinda hard by Riot to put him back into assassin territory, it really did help
show how flexible his design was.
He could have ended up completely controlling the map for 8 seconds or being just another
standard assassin, but it’s been really cool for us to look into Ekko’s design history
and find out how he ended up how he is today.
We hope you enjoyed the ride, please leave us a comment with your thoughts on Ekko’s
design or let us know who we should cover next.
And it looks like that’s gonna be it from me, thanks for watching, subscribe if you
want, and I’ll see you guys next time!