devtrackers.gg
Was his R called the Shadow Realm internally? Or did the community surprise you with that nickname?
We called it the shadow realm, spirit realm, death realm, etc. The name was pretty nebulous internally during development.
Was his R called the Shadow Realm internally? Or did the community surprise you with that nickname?
We called it the shadow realm, spirit realm, death realm, etc. The name was pretty nebulous internally during development.
What would Mordekaiser think of Urgot?
He would make a great addition to Morde's army of the dead
Morde went through a rework before. When you rework a reworked champion, is there an iteration you look upon as inspiration? Does the original morde take preference, juggernaut more, or do you focus on completely reworking the champ while simple holding onto to their theme?
Also, why does Riot rework champions in general? Why are older champions not left alone and new "reworked" kits not attached to a new champion so both can exist in the game?
For your first question: the high-level goal in VGU is to make the champion fulfill their promised fantasy and to better-serve the players that we believe should like the champion. So to also go into your second question, with Mordekaiser, you had this armored, mace-wielding character that was somewhat like a death knight, so you would expect players who want to play a character like that to enjoy him, but his kit's mechanics were such that he felt like this short to mid range mage, and not like what the fantasy should've been delviering.
So our goal was to keep aspects that were core and/or unique to him (examples: remain an AP juggernaut, find a way to retain "offense turns into defense," find a way to express death magic) but then craft a kit and experience that will delight players who want to play an armored, mace-wielding death knight type character.
Edit: And to tack on a bit more for your 2nd question, in this particular case, we don't want to make anot...
Read moreWhat made you decide to add cleansable effects (besides Cleanse) to Morde's ult? It doesn't seem like a CC ability, and QSS no longer removes Debuffs. Just curious!
Also another thing, new Morde has very little sustain compared to old Morde. Was this one of his old issues, since mixing together lots of sustain and shielding might become problematic?
We were primarily looking to make sure that the ult wasn't a guaranteed long-duration banish. Without the ability to cleanse it, it makes the Morde player's choice around who to ult a lot less interesting. You basically would just build tanky and R the highest threat target and put them into a long time-out while your teams teamfight.
With the ability to get out of it, it motivates the Morde player to build offense so they are more than just a tanky CC bot, and to think more about who to ult, and why, and when.
More of a personal question than anything buuuut:
How did it feel working on this particular VGU?
Any concerns and fears you had going into it?
Anything you really tried pushing in the rework?
Did he deliver on what you guys set out to achieve?
What was your absolute favorite thing about Mordekaiser's VGU?
Anything that differed originally from what we ended up with?
Other than that, thanks for your amazing work on Mordekaiser!
You did my absolute favorite champion justice and I'm looking forward to what you guys have brewin' for the future!
I've been a League player since early alpha, and there was a decent stretch many years ago where I mostly played Morde. So, my biggest fear in doing this VGU (and I have this fear every VGU) was utterly ruining the champion for people who liked the old one. When I did Nunu, as an example, he had a couple of really iconic, good abilities (even by today's standards) so in a way, it made the rework a bit less stressful because from the beginning, I already knew what his Q and R were going to be. With Morde, he lacked anything that stood out as an iconic, great ability by today's standards, so we felt compelled to start from scratch on his kit - yet while trying to stay true to his essence/fantasy.
That's pretty stressful for me. You have to make a lot of assumptions, and even though we talked to Morde players, put in a lot of reps on live Morde to make sure we were feeling fresh on his current kit, there's always that risk of getting it totally wrong.
Hey, new Morde is amazing and I love the rework! I have a one question: Do you think that Morde may be hard to balance in lower MMR and higher MMR at the same time, because of his simple kit? In case of problems, do you consider adding more skill expression/depth to his skills?
It's intentional that he's relatively straightforward to play, so at least in the short term, it's unlikely we would add complexity to his kit to address balance concerns.
That straightforwardness might mean he's not particularly viable in high level play, but that's alright. Not every champ needs to be. I personally would argue not every champ should be. What pros need out of a champion is often very different than what a typical player wants out of a champion, and with how big our champion roster is, we should try to have options for everybody.
Edit: That said, he might get picked in pro-play - and that would be awesome! I'd be incredibly thrilled. Just stating that "pro viable" wasn't one of our high level goals.
Why was he made to be so fast?
His Q cast time, his autos, passive movement speed, and the speed of his ult. I get that fast/low cd is more fun, but he's a juggernaut. There's something to be said for the power fantasy and overall fairness of being a terminator. Big, hard to kill, going to walk through hell to kill you. But instead he's more like an anime character, swinging his enormous weapon like it's weightless - which is still pretty cool.
He's actually quite slow compared to the rest of the cast. No mobility spells, Q and R are 0.5 second cast times (Standard is instant to 0.25 seconds), E takes 0.75 seconds to resolve (DariusE, a very similar spell, takes significantly less time). His auto attacks also take 0.5 seconds baseline, which is pushing the boundary as some of the longest in the game.
Why did you decide to allow his Ultimate to be cleansed by QSS and certain abilities but not summoner spell Cleanse?
We wanted the options to be as close to suppression as possible.
Why the Stats ?
We wanted the ultimate to still be a moment of power for Morde. He has to 1v1 someone who DOES have a combat ultimate, so we need to even the odds a little bit. It's also a great thematic win for when he takes your soul.
What about deleting turret's in Morde's Shadow Realm?
The initial version of the death realm featured that. Turrets stayed in the "real" world and couldn't target you. It was way too powerful, though, and it meant that a Mordekaiser that was ahead was virtually guaranteed to stay ahead because their lane opponent couldn't even use their turret as defense
Yuumi, as a cat, has very specific ideas of what is and isn't a cat. I wouldn't let that color your understanding of Mordekaiser too much.
(...Mordekaiser is just a suit of armor filled with cats you didn't hear it from me)
I did hear it from you.
What gave you guys the idea for his ult given that there is nothing literally like it in the game?
Justin always talked about how he wanted to tell a story in-game about the world Mordekaiser is building. So the Death Realm ult was there right from the beginning, but we refined the specifics a lot over time.
With a name like EndlessPillows I would have expected the opposite. I hope you can get some rest someday.
<3
I think they might've meant the underlying code behind the champion being partially re-used, which I highly doubt anything was kept. You guys did a great job keeping his theme intact, as well as elements of his old kit. Even really small details like recasting his W to get a heal, like with the old W.
Oh yes, you are correct. We removed all of Morde's old scripts :)
I f**king love that Quickshot went hard on Vitality and i completely agree. As Quickshot said that level 1 death from Attila was completely unacceptable and should absolutely not happen in proplay and that dive on Profit was atrocious too. Yes Profit played that perfectly though and the Taric ult tping in with Sona was genius, but still, Vitality played it so badly.
I will not be surprised if Vitality ends the split in bottom 2 if they keep playing like this.
Thank you for the kind words, it's always tough being that blunt, but sometimes you have to. At this level of play sometimes you're just surprised to see some mistakes that are simply unforgiveabele. Vitality and their players are better than what we have seen the last two weeks. I LOVED VIT in Summer 2018 and I'm a fan of their proactiveness and willingness to go forward, I just wish they could find their gears and their groove again. This 0-3 VIT is #NotMyVitality.
I believe in many of the players, but they need to find their confidence and make correct calls to get back into the swing of things.
Traditional question: what were some scrapped abilities that morde had in his rework?
A few I can still remember (it's been a while!):
Passives:
-Every kill/assist enslaves the enemy's ghost, forcing them to serve Mordekaiser for a duration and assist him in attacking his target. He could have up to all 5
-His basic attack speed was exceptionally slow, but auto-attacking enemies would grant a stack that significantly increased his attack speed. The metaphor here was his mace was a living weapon, and that attacking enemies allowed it to create an ethereal chain and become more of a flail than just a mace, thereby giving him that attack speed and additional range
Q:
-Early testing was done around what it might be like to have contextual changes to his Q shape. We messed around with things like: when you press Q, he starts marching forward in a straight line, then when you re-press Q, the location of your mouse relative to his facing would give a different swing. Something like:
Forward - if the mouse is in front of him, he ...
Read moreWhy does qss and champion cleanses remove champs from the realm but not the summoner spell cleanse
We treated MordeR as closely as we could to a suppression effect.
Would you rather have Morde be the champion that wins the final game for NA or EU at worlds or get the highest selling skin of all time?
First one for sure.
morde is my highest mastery champion, and this rework is honestly amazing. he plays and can do what he used to do before rework, but also has his own niche now with the new ult instead of just more damage.
in the 2015 rework, AD ratios were added to some of his abilties. did you guys ever think about making morde also scale with AD with the rework?
We actually had some AD ratios in testing for awhile (Thanks to /u/MaliciousMetal 's suggestion). This actually ended up limiting his item options significantly. Gunblade was 100% required and you couldn't really customize your build outside of standard juggernaut stuff. It removed a lot of what was cool about being AP.
How do you sleep at night?
I don't often.