I’m Ryan “Reav3” Mireles, the Lead Producer on the Champions Team at Riot
and I wanted to talk a little about our plans for 2020.
We will be kicking off the year with Sett, The Boss.
Sett is a new Juggernaut releasing today.
He is a bad boy from the Ionian underground, but don’t tell his momma what he really does for a living
it would break her poor little heart.
What his Momma doesn’t know is that Sett actually spends his time
breaking the faces of his enemies, with a defining new mechanic
that builds up any damage he has recently taken as grit.
Sett can then unleash this pent up Vastayan energy, dealing extra damage based on how pumped up he is.
He can also pick up an enemy champion and body slam them into their whole team,
doing extra damage based on the health of the target he grabs.
I mean, who doesn’t want to grab a 5,000 health Cho’Gath and smash it
into a squishy marksmen like a damn boss.
But enough about Sett, let’s talk about what else we have planned for 2020.
Up next after Sett, will be the two champion updates you voted on for last year:
Fiddlesticks and Volibear.
With Fiddlesticks our goal is to really deliver on its horror thematic as well
as revamping his kit to be more centered around fear
both mechanically and psychologically.
You can read more about the progress on Fiddlesticks in a new Dev Blog coming out today.
Now let’s talk a bit about Volibear.
After the last Roadmap, many players thought the latest Volibear concept was cool
but not as exciting as Fiddlesticks.
So we took that feedback and we worked on him more, beefing him up a bit and
making him even more savage.
We also saw that some players were disappointed that we didn’t take Volibear in a more...
“Eldritch Horror” direction he has been portrayed as in some of our recent lore.
While we thought that direction was interesting and it definitely excited some of us on the team as well
we ultimately felt it didn’t stay true enough to live Volibear.
So here’s what we are going to do.
We're going to take the demonic concept of Volibear across the finish line
and make a kind of “Eldritch Horror themed Volibear” skin.
And when Volibear's VGU launches we are going to give it to anyone who owns Volibear already
or picks him up during his launch patch for free.
After that it will join his collection as a regular, purchasable skin.
This isn’t something we plan on doing for future VGUs but in this case we felt like it was the right decision.
We’ll have more to share in a Dev Blog later this year that will really deep dive into Volibear’s production.
One last thing on the topic of VGUs, we are planning to do another champion update poll
where we let players decide on the champion we will update in 2021.
Keep an eye out for the vote later this year.
After the Voli & Fiddle updates, we will primarily be focused on New Champions for the rest of 2020.
We’ve tried a few new tactics with Champions over the last couple years.
One thing we tested with Kai’Sa was taking a character players knew from the lore
and fully realizing them in game as a playable Champion.
Bringing the legends to life that we’ve only heard tales about
has led to Champions with impactful stories, but also made the whole world of Runeterra
feel more alive.
Since we felt it went well with Kai’Sa, we started working on bringing Senna out of the Lantern
for League’s 10 year anniversary.
We have heard loud and clear that you all want more of this
accompanied by exciting new stories that drive the world of Runeterra forward
so expect to see another familiar face hit the Rift later this year.
Another tactic we tried in 2019 was tying all New Champions to big events
like Lunar Revel, Battle Academia, Arcade, True Damage
and lastly Aphelios in Night and Dawn.
A big part of events is having something new for players to experience.
Outside of game modes Champions are one of the biggest gameplay experiences we release
so adding them to events made a ton of sense.
This is something we are going to continue to do in 2020
as we feel that grouping a lot of content together creates bigger and more memorable moments
throughout the year.
On the topic of events, Champions team has been hard at work on two Champions
that will be part of a big event this summer.
The event will blossom with a new Jungler to fawn over
followed by a masked Champion who refuses to die.
We know it’s been a while since we dreamed up a new Jungler
but we were split on what we wanted to make.
Early on we didn’t know if we wanted the Champion to be a team fight focused bruiser
or an agile, prancing Assassin.
It felt like every 5 minutes we went back and forth.
So did we shy away from the decision or meet it head on?
You will have to wait until the summer festival to find out.
And as for the masked stranger, well….
some demons should remain in our past.
Apart from those 2 Summer releases and Sett, we still have a few more Champs
up our sleeves for 2020, but you will have to wait until later in the year for details on them.
One last thing before I go.
Some of you might have shown Sett that you're worthy to fight in his Arena.
Over the last month, players who consistently got first blood in their games
received a unique but mysterious invitation.
If you did impress Sett and got one of these unique calling cards
make sure you go into your inventory and open it now
to unlock Sett for free!
So get out there, and smash some heads with Sett on the Rift today.