What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
You guys probably know how this kind of video works by now, and thanks to Riot being really
transparent with development info in recent years, we’ve got a lot of information about
what was going on with Ivern during his design and refinement.
Ivern is a champion that seems like he would have been just as nutty from the start, but
actually he was a lot different when he was first proposed so there’s quite a lot of
things that could have happened that would have made him turn out pretty differently
in the end.
If you enjoy the video definitely hit that like button because if this video hits, let’s
say ratings, then I’m gonna , and let’s get started.
Ivern first started out as Riot’s desire to make a druid character.
If you think about it, quite a lot of fantasy archetypes have already been covered in League
so far - from mythological creatures to more traditional heroes like rangers and paladins.
From a fantasy perspective, there’s only a handful of classes that haven’t really
been covered fully, and one of those was a Druid.
Riot have apparently had a lot of interest in creating a druidic character for a while,
and druids are pretty much always aligned with nature or nature magic, so Ivern definitely
fits the bill.
When he was first conceived though, he didn’t have the crazy ent-like shape to him, he was
actually way more normal like an ordinary guy - it was only as his character was developed
that he started to grow into a more unique silhouette.
Something that would have been a massive twist on what Ivern is today was that one of the
original pitches for this Druid was that instead of being your typical lovable nature mage,
he’d be a really evil and toxic Druid - the type of guy that would use his powers to buff
up his team and then take all of their power for himself.
It was a cool twist on the normal druid archetype, but the initial concept was super toxic so
it was scrapped pretty quickly.
That alone is pretty crazy to think about, and it would have made for an extremely different
character than the non-violent druid that Riot ended up going with in the end.
They stuck with the traditional, nature-loving Druid values for him in the end, but they
decided instead of crafting a generic druid champion that was just a cliche ripped out
of a tabletop game, they would apply those traditional values to a more complicated character
with a bit of a dark background, and it seemed to make the Druid way more interesting.
The ‘Greenfather’ concept was created as a way to give that more interesting background
to the champion, and it was the narrative writer Riot FauxSchizzle that decided to go
with a pretty carefree personality for the Druid.
One way to make it easy to understand a character is to give them a lot of ambition and talk
about something they would have to face in the future, like a challenge or goal they
want to achieve.
For the Greenfather, this was reversed - the idea was that he would have already fought
those battles, so it’s more like learning about the person at the end of the story,
rather than knowing who someone was before they went through all those ordeals.
The downside to this is that you don’t really get to grow with a character, like you would
if you were reading about them in something like a book, so it was way more important
for Riot to make sure all of his habits and quirks came across the right way in his design.
One step for this was to give him a relationship with the creatures in the jungle, which are
reflected a lot in his animations and voice lines.
It’s all about giving subtle clues as to the person he was before he became the Ivern
we know today, so if you take a close look at his design you can still see traces of
the human he was before - like the little ring hanging on his antler that might have
been on his ear before it was transformed into wood.
Ivern’s concept art shows that addition of detail really well - some of the early
concept art when he first started being known as the Greenfather showed him as being a humanlike
tree, like the ents from Lord of the Rings.
Although that was a good starting point for Riot since it combines the idea of humanity
with something way more natural, it would be really generic and not really help people
understand why Ivern became the way he was.
The later concept arts started to capture more personality rather than just showing
off his body shape, and you start to see small hints that he was originally human, like having
a more defined human looking face, or squatting over tending to plants like he was a gardener.
This next step did give more of the necessary clues to Ivern’s past since it ties in with
his former humanity, but it still didn’t really tell much of a story about who he was.
The later, fleshed out concept arts do a way better job here - he might look even more
inhuman, but there are still storytelling aspects to his design, for example him wearing
a gauntlet on one arm from his days as an adventurer, hidden by a mushroom but still
not fully transformed.
The final conceptualizations started to paint a clearer picture of his personality too,
since he’s in way more animated poses that definitely make you see him as being energetic
and playful, and not really intimidating even though he’s pretty big.
Since Riot do like to be super clear with appearances giving you a good idea of what
to expect from a champion in game, this does the job well since he is meant to be non-violent
after all.
The next step was to give him gameplay that fit his personality and appearance, which
turns out is pretty complicated when having him attack people pretty much immediately
goes against that concept.
A big part of fixing that issue while keeping the druid theme was to make Ivern a ‘support
jungler’ - someone that would help his team rather than focusing on being offensive himself.
Making a pacifist character work in a PvP game is a pretty massive undertaking, and
Riot actually started off being really true to the idea that he didn’t want to fight.
The original version of Ivern actually dealt no damage at all - like literally, in the
entire game he couldn’t deal any damage.
He had a form of CC that was kinda like an Elise Cocoon, and the rest of his abilities
would all just give amazing buffs to allies, enough so that it still felt like a 5v5 rather
than a 4v5.
It was quickly replaced just because even though he wasn’t fighting, he didn’t really
feel like a pacifist, he actually felt kinda passive-aggressive and a really unsatisfying
to play.
Riot still wanted to find a way to put a zero-damage aspect on to his kit though, which is how
he developed his unique jungle clear.
When Riot develops a jungler, they aim to tick three main boxes - giving them mobility,
utility for ganks and the power to clear jungle camps.
That last point is what really stops most champions being able to jungle, since although
most champions have a lot of abilities that are really good for teamplay, but they either
can’t clear camps reliably or won’t have the health to survive against invades or pull
off a gank using those teamplay abilities anyway.
Ivern’s ‘free the animals’ passive was made to be a loophole that let him be both
a jungling support and tick the ‘pacifist’ box on his concept.
Being able to clear minions without needing to deal damage means he can still clear even
without having stats that make him good in a 1v1, and he can still level up and scale
normally.
By dedicating his entire passive to a jungle clear ability that also shows him as a pacifist,
Riot nailed all of the necessary parts of his design that needed to be covered, giving
them a ton of room to focus on abilities that he can use to help out his team.
The biggest flaw of the passive was that a magical camp-clearing button meant that Ivern
would automatically grab buffs and not be able to share them with allies with a leash.
Since his key concept was ‘The Green Father’ who wants to share the gifts of nature with
other people, it eventually clicked that Ivern should create copies of buffs so that he could
both take it quickly while also sharing them with his team - all without needing to harm
the animals that he loves!
In the early days of Ivern’s design, Riot actually experimented with letting him buff
or protect jungle creeps alongside his allies, essentially give him a way to turn a jungle
fight into his favor or give him an advantage when being invaded.
Since his strengths were made to be based around teamplay though, Riot opted to keep
him relatively weak to invades as a way to give enemies a plan of attack when they are
facing Ivern, rather than not being able to do anything against him in the early game
and then just falling behind when he starts supporting his team.
Since he wasn’t going to interact with jungle camps outside of freeing them, this did open
up more space on Ivern’s kit to show off his affinity for nature and non-violent tendencies.
The missing piece of the puzzle he was giving him the ability to grow his own patches of
brush.
Riot mentioned that in the past, they had tried adding brush to a kit to make up for
it lacking things in other areas, but most champions didn’t have a theme that really
meshed with it.
You can’t really get closer than essentially a nature spirit though, so Riot decided that
giving Ivern the brush-creation was a good way to demonstrate his pacifism while also
tieing more of his kit into his relationship with nature.
Growing brush does add a ton of complexity to the game though, so it was important that
the rest of Ivern’s kit worked well around it and that Ivern actually cared about being
in the brush, so that they could justify how complicated it was.
That’s what resulted in Ivern gaining bonus affects when he attacks from the brush - it’s
not perfect since he’s not meant to be directly violent, but he’d be pretty useless if he
couldn’t defend himself at all in a PvP game.
The pacifist angle was only one part of how Riot wanted Ivern to actually feel in game
though, the next step was to give him a bit of a trickster vibe, which they compared to
something like a faerie from Dungeons and Dragons.
That came together as making him a support jungler, getting the trickery elements through
his summoning and transforming powers.
For example, one of his Ultimates would transform him into a tree called the God Willow, and
he just kinda rooted himself down and couldn’t move.
It’s definitely a demonstration of his affinity for nature and transforming powers, but in
terms of gameplay that’s kinda dull.
Riot headed in the direction of giving him new ways to support, and along with that came
new Ultimate versions where he would support bruisers since they are usually stranded in
the top lane by themselves.
He had one version that would buff up an ally to make them super strong, and it was a good
Ultimate overall but again it just didn’t feel exciting to
use because once you used it, you’d have nothing more to do.
Riot eventually came to the conclusion that if they want Ivern to support a bruiser, then
they should make it so that he could create his own bruiser to go in and fight for him
- leading to the development of Daisy!
Daisy was made to be like a defensive counterpart to Tibbers, so essentially just another friendly
ai-controlled unit that would shore up Ivern’s weaknesses as being a bad fighter while also
having someone to aid with his support-focused kit when he didn’t have other allies around.
Unlike Ivern, Daisy is definitely a bit more violent, and it kinda works since it means
it’s not really Ivern who is being aggressive, it’s just a friend of his.
Turns out figuring out the gameplay for a pacifist champion is all about discovering
loopholes!
Anyway that just about wraps up everything we know about Ivern and his development - as
far as What he could have been goes, the craziest change would have probably been trying to
imagine Ivern as a twisted evil druid that wants to buff people and then steal their
power for himself, that’s a pretty serious 180 from a kind-hearted pacifist that can
only really deal damage through other people, although we’ve gotta admit that would make
for a seriously cool champion.
We’d love to hear what you guys think about Ivern and Riot’s design for the Druid champion
of League of legends, personally I think his design really hit the mark but it seems like
people aren’t really enjoying his gameplay all that much so far so make sure you leave
us a comment and tell us what you would change if you were designing Ivern yourself!
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!