Hey guys! Greg Street here from the League of Legends Design Team.
The topic I want to talk about today is champions
and, specifically, what do we think a good champion looks like?
You might be surpised, it's not just play rate or win rate.
There's a lot more stuff that goes into it.
There are a whole lot of factors that we use to evaluate whether
a champion is "successful" or not.
There are five pillars that we treat as the most important.
These are: Satisfying to Play, a Resonant Theme,
being able to express your skill in a champion, fair to play against,
and then the champion also has to be unique.
I'll go into a little bit more detail on what these five mean.
Satisfying to Play is one of the more nuanced factors here.
To players it just "feels good" when you hit the button. And, as designers,
we think about things like "What's the cooldown on this ability?"
"How much wind-up does the animation need before the ability goes off?"
That just feels good when you hit the button and see the reaction in game.
But it also has to do with "do the visuals and the audio match your expectations?"
If the ability is supposed to be a machine gun, does it fire
rapidly? And maybe a little erratically?
An example we use a lot is Jinx's Zap. It's a pretty simple ability,
but the visuals match your expectations; when you pull it off right
you see damage. It's pretty fast and responsive.
When we talk about the resonant theme for a champion, this is like
"What is their story?" "Who are they as a person or non-person?"
as the case may be. "What is their character?" "How does their
gameplay match that?" We've recently started thinking about champions
in terms of broad play versus deep play.
A broad champion is one that lots of players play. Ashe is a great example.
Lots and lots of players play these champions with some frequency.
A different axis from broad is depth and we're okay with having champions
that are not super high play rate and maybe a lot of players
haven't played them. But those players that do play them
really, really love that champion.
Another good example here is Ivern. We knew Ivern was gonna be
a weird champion. He plays very differently, his personality
is kind of goofy. He doesn't jungle in a conventional way. And that's fine.
We suspected that there would be players out there that love Ivern
and really enjoy playing the jungle in a totally different way.
Skill expression in terms of gameplay may be the most important pillar.
It's not the only one, but League of Legends is a game about skill.
A lot of what we're going for is that we know that getting better
at something is very satisfying and kind of keeps you coming back for more.
There are a lot of different ways to express skill.
The classic is the skill shot. Instead of just targeting a champion
and hitting a button and doing damage, you have to line up and aim.
Which means you need to predict your enemy's movement
or anticipate or lead them into a trap where you can hit them
with a skill shot. Ideally we like champions that have some mix of
of both good decision making and game knowledge with
the actual "how dexterous am I at clicking
around on the map with my mouse?"
When you consider someone like Zed, there's a lot of lining up
shots, dealing with the angles of yourself and the shadow
A lot of the timing around when you wanna use the different abilities.
Counter example is someone like Xin Zhao who has these abilities
you generally use in a combo together, the W and Q.
But you pretty much always use them together. There's not a lot of
decision making of "should I use these abilities together?"
So we can do all this work on making a good champion and still kind of
mess them up if they're not fair.
And really, here's where we're talking the game balance.
Usually in relation to "Is it fair for the other player of the other
team to deal with your champion?" We accomplish this the best
when champions have really clear strengths and weaknesses.
Ranged champions like Ziggs are very effective at range
but kind of squishy if you can get up close to them.
Whereas a juggernaut like Darius is the opposite. He's very, very
kitable but if he catches you, if he corners you somewhere,
there's going to be a lot of hurt coming your way.
The promise of League of Legends is a lot of champions. We have
over 130 now, so we really think it's incumbent that each
new champion we add and even every old champion that we update
is somehow unique. We have a lot of ninjas in League of Legends.
We have a lot of dudes with swords. That's not to say we won't add more
but they have to bring something new. We put a lot of effort to
make sure that new champions and updated champions really belong
to League. They need to fit within Runeterra. They need to make sense
inside the game world. Some of the older champions we've made
I'll give an example- Pantheon, I pick on a lot because he's kind of
a generic Spartan guy. That's not to say there's not room for that
in League of Legends and, more recently, we've tried to integrate
him a little bit more with the Targon lore. When we do update him,
I'm sure he'll keep his basis as a shield and spear fighter. We'd just like
to plant him a little more within League of Legends, something that makes
sense when he's fighting alongside Diana, Leona, Aurelion Sol
and other Targon champions.
Some might feel like uniqueness is all about the backstory of the champion
but the art plays a big role in here as well. When you think about
all these champions, you need to identify them very quickly on sight
just by often their silhouette. This could be a challenge with a number
of champions and the number of skins we produce.
I gave a few examples as we talked about these five pillars, but now I want to
go into a little- drill a little more detail on certain champions and look
at how do they stack up in terms of satisfying gameplay,
fairness, uniqueness, and so on.
First one I want to talk about is Nunu. Nunu is a kid with a yeti.
In terms of satisfying gameplay I don't think Nunu scores very well here.
The abilities themselves feel old, but when I was talking about
pushing the button and seeing a cool animation or seeing unique visual
There's not a ton of that. He probably gets the closest with his ult
which is a pretty big effect and could really turn the course of the game.
So, again, I'm not announcing a Nunu update here but if I was working
on it personally, I'd probably try to find a way to preserve the ult while
maybe trying to add satisfaction to his other abilites.
I think Kled is an example where we delivered a little more on
what it means to be mounted. With Nunu, you sometimes aren't sure are
you playing the yeti or playing the kid. And I'm sure there's a lot of League
players out there who think "oh yeah, the yeti is Nunu."
In the example of Kled, though, he does dismount. Kled and Skaarl, his mount,
have very different personalities and little different gameplay. When they
voltron together, they're more powerful than they are seperate.
Which is not to say that's the specific take we need to do on Nunu
but I think it'd be cool to deliver a little bit more on "no this is really
two characters together playing as one."
A second case study I wanna walk through is Aatrox.
This is a champion players are always asking us "when are you gonna update
Aatrox?" and for good reason! Thematically, he really resonates
with players. He's a dark, interesting character. He does crazy things.
The darkin story is really fascinating. When we first created Aatrox
he was acquired at really, really high rates. Since then, it has fallen off
dramatically because he just doesn't deliver on that initial promise.
Most of his abilities are not that interesting. I'd say he gets low marks
in terms of satisfaction and uniqueness. Again, fairness is probably something
we could tune either way. Certainly, if he has higher highs and lower lows
that will give us more knobs and feel like he has more counterplay
for the other team. We have made a couple of attempts at Aatrox
light updates to try to add a little more skill expression to his abilities.
But I'd say overall, missed the mark a little bit. We're nowhere near there
and he really needs a full update. At least in terms of his mechanics.
His visuals aren't that bad, he's not that old as a champion
I just don't think he delivers on evil, blade-wielding demonic creature
that terrorizes the Rift. Thresh is one of our most popular champions
and when you look in terms of support, he's always way up at the top.
I think that has a lot to do with him delivering really well on a lot of these
different pillars. Let's talk about satisfying gameplay.
I mean, he has a hook, he as a flay which is a huge skill curve
getting that ability to work correctly. He has the box. A lot of these
are- he is fairly hard to learn and very hard to master. Thematic resonance
he does really well. In my opinion, he is kind of Runeterra's version of
the Grim Reaper. He sucks souls into his lantern, we've done some
neat things with him in terms of the Dark Star
version of Thresh more recently.
In terms of fairness for Thresh, if I had to throw stones at him, this is
probably where I'd do it; he does a lot. He has a lot of strengths and
he kind of has an answer for every situation, so it's hard- counterplay
is sometimes a challenge with him. You don't always know as an enemy
"What am I supposed to do to stop him? He can do anything"
Not to say that his win rates are radically out of control or anything
like that, but, just to be fair, I think while he delivers well on
satisfying gameplay and skill expression and thematic,
fairness is where I'd probably ding him a bit.
For the final case study, we're going to talk about Morgana a little bit.
She's an older champion but still delivers on some of these pillars
really well. In terms of skill expression, Morgana still has some
big decisions about how she wants to use her abilities. Spells like
Dark Binding really make or break a team fight but you could also
deploy them wrong and not get anything out of it. I think she's
a good example of how you can deliver on a champion where you're
making interesting decisions as a player without it getting in to
super complicated mechanical execution. Thematically, she's kind of
a mixed bag. I think she has a cool personality, the "fallen angel" thing
but I think there's also a little bit of a missed opportunity to make her
our own. She feels like the type of character you see in a lot of
video games and I don't know that you'd necessarily look at her
and be like "oh yeah, she's from League of Legends."
So in closing, I talked a little bit about our philosophy today with these
five pillars but our philosophy changes over time; it's certainly not static.
The needs of League of Legends today are very different than what
they were even a couple of years ago. We always try, as we're looking
"What are the champions coming down the pipe that we're working on
for the future? What problems are we trying to solve? What experiences
are we trying to offer players?" that hopefully you guys haven't seen before.
In 2016 we did several more niche champions with unusual gameplay
or maybe the character themself felt a little out on the frontiers
of our world. So far, in 2017, we've done some pretty broad champions like
Xayah and Rakan, who've showed up in a whole lot of games, and
I think Kayn is kinda- will be there as well.
But towards the end of the year, we see a mix of some broad appeal
and some very unique champions with gameplay you've never seen before
that we know aren't necessarily going to be appealing to everyone.
But we want some players out there to be like "Yes! This is my new main."
Hopefully this is the beginning of a conversation. We'd love to get your
thoughts on what of this resonates with you, do you think there are pillars
that we aren't taking seriously enough or pillars that we claim are important
but we aren't actually delivering on. Please let us know what your
thoughts are on some of the champions I talked about where opportunities
are to add uniqueness that you haven't seen in League of Legends before.
Overall, I just really appreciate you taking the time to watch.
Thanks a lot!