What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
As you guys probably know one of my favorite things to do when a new champion releases
is search for information about their design process to try figure out what happened on
the timeline and what changes they went through.
Camille is no exception and we’ve been wanting to make this video for forever, but we had
to wait until enough cool information was released.
Well that time is finally here, and so here’s what we found out about Camille and how different
she could have actually ended up!
Unlike some of Riot’s other champion developments who were more about a concept than a specific
role - like Thresh for example, who was never even intended to be a support - early on they
actually settled on a ‘diver’ as a really broad role that they wanted to explore.
This all happens in the ideation phase of dreaming up a new champion - any kind of direction
is up for consideration.
That means that sometimes Rioters might look at unexplored artistic opportunities or archetypes
that aren’t currently in the game, and other times they might look directly at design and
try think about a role in the game they aren’t currently filling with another champion.
When the ‘diver’ direction was decided on, Riot started to throw out as many unique
ideas as possible to make a diver with a more unique play style - things like swinging with
a grappling hook, bouncing off terrain, doing parkour or even destroying terrain were all
considered.
The idea here was to make a champion capable of diving that didn’t just do a boring conventional
gap closer - it was being tied to terrain to introduce something that League hadn’t
seen before.
She had two prototype names from this point up till about 6 months through development
- Diver and Hookshot.
The ‘Hookshot’ champion had actually been pitched a few times before, and Riot actually
drew inspiration from the anime show Attack on Titan as a really cool way to make it happen.
In fact, Riot originally had a playable hookshot champion back in 2013, and although it obviously
didn’t pan out, awesome ideas like that don’t really go to waste to it was just
iceboxed until the concept was later needed.
Since Riot were in the process of trying to develop an interesting new diver, the pieces
just lined up perfectly and they went about trying to find a theme to make it work.
Riot ShadowStorm shared some of her potential themes, and they all make a lot of sense when
you’re talking about some using a grappling hook - a gadget belt, anti-hero, vigilante
or super scientist were all kind of like foundations to build the concept off.
Those themes tied in best with three different factions in Runeterra - Noxus, Zaun or Piltover.
While they are all different enough from each other to be distinct, having a few choices
for the direction like that really helps Riot nail down exactly what kind of design and
personality they should use for a new champion.
Originally, Camille’s concept was closer to some kind of Cyborg Mary Poppins.
Rather than being the really sleek and sinister Camille that we encountered on release, she
was meant to fall somewhere between a kind of James Bond spy figure, and an elegant lady
- although she was always going to be robotic.
Since the hookshot was the first part of her kit to be locked down, Riot started by iterating
different ways of making that happen.
For example, at one point she was essentially just an English spiderwoman, and would loop
around walls and hook like five times in a row.
Other goofy concepts like this were tested out, until Riot eventually stumbled on the
sword leg concept during her development.
All of the hookshot concepts worked well, so there’s a chance Camille could have been
released without her most iconic feature, but since Riot knew they wanted to go with
a cyborg rather than a gadget belt character - and it just turned out that robot sword
legs was a really awesome way to do that and still get that flashy, elegant aristocratic
feel.
They didn’t actually settle on the name Camille until 6 months into development, which
was around June 2016.
Apparently Riot Thermal Kitten had come up with around 100 names for the hookshot champion,
that was then narrowed down to five or six.
The aim was to find a name that would give off the impression of an aristocrat, while
also being very feminine and give off the feeling of a proper Piltovan Lady.
In terms of art direction, it’s hard to go wrong with a sword-legged cyborg aristocraft,
and unfortunately there isn’t a ton of art to go off.
Some of the hookshot concept art shows Camille with a pretty different appearance, wearing
a dress with short dark hair, so Riot probably explored a bunch of different ‘clothing’
ideas before they found the right balance of sophistication and deadliness.
The hardest part of her appearance to capture was the idea that the hextech core that powers
her legs was slowing, not stopping her aging process.
Since she’s not immortal, she wouldn’t appear as a young woman, but they need to
show the aging process so they went for a more refined, middle-aged look.
The other part of champion design is of course gameplay, and Riot’s design team has been
hard at work finding ways to make melee champions a bit more interesting to play.
There’s two main design philosophies that come into play here, positioning and windows
of effectiveness, and Riot released a dev blog detailing how they were used to help
shape Camille’s gameplay.
Starting off with positioning, Camille has a few abilities that kinda force her to use
positioning that is more complicated than just ‘sit in auto attack range.’
For example, her Tactical Sweep on W actually makes her leave melee range if she wants to
get the absolute most power out of the ability.
This plays is nicely with her Q, which requires her to be in melee once, and then in melee
range against within a couple of seconds - but it doesn’t actually require her to stay
in melee between those hits.
So she can for example use Q, move back for W, then move back into melee range for the
second Q and the bonus damage it gives.
It’s not a huge amount of movement, but it creates an opportunity for enemy players
to play around her.
For example, if she moves back to W, you can move outside the cone and make her miss, or
you could close the distance and damage her while she can’t auto attack for her passive
shield.
Her Hookshot is also a solid ability for making both players keep positioning in mind - it
was designed with the fact that it would be easier for Camille to land her E on someone
if they were near a wall in mind, so that makes the lane a bit more interesting because
it stops being just about whether the two fighters are in melee range or not - there’s
other things to consider.
Windowing effectiveness is the next design philosophy, and Camille is a great example
of this because she has very strong abilities that are gated behind different cooldowns.
For example, you can use Q pretty often, but the best trading tool she has is her Adaptive
Defenses passive, and that’s on a way longer cooldown.
Camille was developed with this in mind, because she can wait for her passive to have an amazing
window of power, or she can just focus on trading with Q although the risk will be way
bigger.
It’s all about making the matchup feel really dynamic and not one-sided, both playing Camille
or playing against her should introduce a lot of thought processes that make gameplay
more exciting.
Camille has been pretty well received for having quite an interesting take on a diver’s
kit, but it took a lot of fine tuning to make them work.
Riot Scruffy mentioned that gameplay is developed in phases that they build up from, and if
things fall apart or aren’t right at any phase, they will either be rebooted or iceboxed.
To start off, Riot bases the gameplay on a core hook - a feature of that champion that
makes them unique and gives players a reason to want to play them.
For Camille, this was her Hookshot.
Next comes the play pattern, which is usually 3 of the 5 abilities and will kinda lay the
foundations for the kit and make sure that the gameplay goals for the champion will be
the main focus.
Finally, Riot finishes the rest of the kit, aiming for something interesting, synergistic
and hopefully with enough balance levers that it can be tuned down or up in power without
having to totally dismantle or scrap an ability in the future.
As with all other champions, Camille was tested with other prototype abilities and mechanics
to her gameplay that could have made her way different from how she is on release, so let’s
look at those next.
For Camille, the core of her design was Hookshot, so it was also the first ability locked in.
That doesn’t mean Riot just stumbled on the perfect design for it straight away, like
everything else it had a ton of different versions until Riot figured out the best way
to make it function.
For example, back when Camille was being designed as an English Spiderwoman, she had a hookshot
that would swing her in an arc, and it could be recast multiple times.
That meant that she would just swing around the map like Spiderman, swapping between walls
to essentially Tarzan her way around the map.
Riot Jag noted that unfortunately it was kind of a mess to use and didn’t offer much except
give her godlike escape capabilities - it definitely didn’t turn her into the diver
they wanted.
Riot also wanted to try make it so that a champion couldn’t escape from her, even
if they had mobility.
The idea that spawned was that she’d be able to impale an enemy and hook them to the
ground, essentially locking them down completely.
A few versions later, and they had a Hookshot that functioned as a dive tool, an escape
and a way to prevent the escape of mobile enemies, and it’s pretty similar to what
we have now.
Riot Jag mentioned that the goal was always to create a unique style of movement that
would be this champion’s signature, and since her legs were the source point for the
hookshot, that’s actually where the idea for having knife legs came from, leading Riot
to her Q and W.
The next skill to be locked in for Camille was her Q, Precision Protocol.
It was built to give a cool way for Camille to approach fights with her knife legs, and
act as her main damage source.
It actually took a lot of refinement for Riot to make sure both Camille and her enemy understood
the gameplay, so that they were aware how long to wait for the bonus damage.
It was originally designed as a spell with a cast time kinda like Kha’Zix’s Q, but
it made more sense and was easier to get a feel for as an autoattack reset.
After that came her passive Adaptive Defenses, was a lot less intense to develop than her
other abilities and just really needed a careful design to make sure that it wouldn’t make
her impossible to trade with.
Next up came her Ultimate, the Hextech Ultimatum - the reference for it’s design were some
of Fiora’s old Ultimate concepts - not really in terms of comparing the mechanics, but more
like the what feeling the design was aiming to achieve.
The difference here is that although Fiora was meant to be taking on a fair fight, something
she deems a worthy challenge for her skills - Camille is actually more like a predator,
hunting down her prey, trapping them without much concern that the fight will be fair.
Riot actually had a really hard time getting the Hextech Ultimatum to actually function
properly once they had settled on the cage concept.
Riot Scruffy actually mentioned one of the funny bugs was that when Sion was caught in
the cage, instead of stopping against one of the walls, he’d go ping pong bouncing
off the walls of the Ultimate.
Since it’s designed to prevent all escapes, it’s probably unlike anything Riot has made
before so the code took a bit of refining to get it working as intended!
The last ability to be designed for Camille was her W, Tactical Sweep - with the goal
of giving her a midrange ability alongside something to reduce the ‘binary’ elements
often found in melee champions, like positioning as we mentioned earlier.
Putting a ranged ability onto Camille’s kit makes things a bit more interesting than
just ‘get in melee range and attack someone’ and it introduced some more skill based mechanics
and decision making for both Camille and the person laning against her.
Anyway that just about wraps up everything we know about Camille’s development, it
really sounds like her gameplay all flowed down from the iteration of hookshot that Riot
ended up choosing.
It would have been pretty crazy if they decided to go with the spiderwoman concept, since
that way Riot would probably have never even thought of giving her those iconic knife legs!
Hopefully you guys enjoyed this journey through Camille’s development, make sure you leave
us a comment of what you thought of her design and whether or not you think Riot did a good
job with her overall.
And it looks like that’s gonna be it from me, if you enjoyed the video drop a like,
subscribe if you want, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you guys next time!