Legends of Runeterra Dev Tracker

Originally posted by Zancibar

Kay, I'll try. It got longer than I wanted.

One thing I've noticed in recent releases is the lack of feeling I earned the win or my opponent did, newer cards like Bard and Kai'Sa being by far the biggest offender, but also Annie and Gwen to a lesser extent, are cards that encourage you to play normally like a midrange deck but then come with what feels like a free advantage.

I compare Bard Kai'Sa to my favorite decks (Dragons and Warmothers) and they have a feeling of actually fighting, I have a warmothers deck that struggles not to be overrun by turn 7, but then with the ramp I can get a Warmothers off and start turning the tide though it's still not a free win because if my opponent played well I'll be 3-4 Nexus Hp, Kai'Sa plays already good cards early and drops herself turn 5 or Abomination turn 8 without even the slightest setup other than "playing already good units with already good keywords". The saddest part about Kai'Sa is that outside of her demacia pairi...

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Originally posted by W1zard80y

I feel the same way. I stopped playing Hearthstone years ago and I play LoR daily but the feeling cards like Deathreaper Anduin gave me when playing cannot be replicated in LoR. For the people who don't play HS, it pretty much is a 'Destroy all minions with more than 5 attack', but also 'for the rest of the game, get a fleetic mystic shot after you play a card'. This single card completely transformed the game plan of both players, but for me especially as the Deathreaper player, I went from a control player Suddenly to a burn player. The game wasn't over 2 turns after, it just changed completely. And in 8 turns, I might have won or lost afterwards.

The closest thing to Deathreaper Anduin might be Lux, which funnily enough I play a lot combined with Aphelios. There have been games against Ramp Freljord which felt amazing, I kept creating weapons and Light bolts (I forgot Lux' spell name, but it's the 0 mana deal 4) and I kept blasting them for 8 turns to whatever the other ...

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Originally posted by tothelmac

You've inspired me here and given that it's a vaguely new thread I suppose I'll throw my thought right here:

I've always really liked the back and forth of LoR and I think it swamps Hearthstone in it's interactively which is great.

One thing I've always felt was missing though was exciting, rule bending cards that really push the envelope. Like feeling wise: there aren't very many cards in the game that give me the same excitement as dropping a Malygos or Incarnation of Selemene (Artifact). I think generally there also there isn't very much of that awesome feeling of a combo coming together. It feels like there aren't a lot of cards that "break the rules", and the most powerful cards are always "this card hits the board and is really strong" as opposed to a card like "Open the Way Gate" which made me feel the thrill of kind of bringing a plan together and constructing a strategy, both in game and in deck building. There aren't a lot of cards in LoR that give that fa...

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Originally posted by plassaur

No, you just said "we are all complaining about it so it has to be right", and I presented an example of when thats not right.

Also, it wasn't pro play feedback going against community, lol.

Originally posted by Dr_Chekhov

Thanks for doing this, it's very helpful. I'd like to try.

There are things I like about Bard. The thing I love about the fantasy of Bard is drawing a bunch of chimes in the late game, especially with leveled Bard on the field. I recently built a decent version of Bard/Leblanc. In that deck Trifarian Assessor feels so good to play. I have to set up my board to have 5-attack units (and carefully tailor my hand so that assessor herself got chimed up to 5 attack), but that means when I draw chimes I feel like I got rewarded for my good play, which is an amazing feeling.

But one really bad feeling, one that makes me so unexcited for the game to come, is Bard randomly hitting a bunch of chimes early, say on turn 1 or 2. Although it can be exciting, when I hit chimes early I immediately feel like I'm getting an advantage I haven't earned. And playing against Bard it's even worse -- if your opponent hits 3 chimes turn 2 suddenly none of your decisions in the game matter v...

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Originally posted by SameAsGrybe

First off, I love this post and taking this direction, I’d like to voice myself. Seeing new champions, particularly Kai’sa, but to an extent Gwen and even Bard, is a great feeling. Putting together a deck that feels strong to play and creates these strong moments is why I love to deck build. But the feelings of what I’d call overwhelming power from a champion like Kai’sa feels almost polar opposite to a champion like Viktor. Building Kai’sa to be this giant keyword threat that gives this overwhelming feeling of doom is the exact motivation I have to playing Viktor and putting my time into making his decks.

And the difference doesn’t feel day and night but almost like Christmas Day vs The First Day of School. Viktor feels almost embarrassing to play at times, I have to either hope and pray for the right keywords and feel bad because I got Fearsome/Fated or I just run away with the game because I got Elusive/Spellshield. In a nutshell, Viktor feels too fair. Like my opponen...

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Originally posted by Particular_Nebula462

Thank you for your work.

Originally posted by M-Architect

Just wanted to say that Remaking Magic was the podcast that really got me into ccgs and it's really cool to see you still taking time to give out information like this to aspiring devs and players alike.

Originally posted by GA_Deathstalker

Do you have any avenues, sites, communities where one can learn more about gamedesign? I so far used mostly boardgame related ressources and the Game Maker's Tool Kit on YT

Originally posted by TCuestaMan

MMO ALREADY HAD BETA TESTING? YO.

Originally posted by EdumBot

Sorry, I won't do it again. Now that I look at it again, I feel like I could've given some more thorough explanations...

But hey, let me praise you on something now to apologize, I guess? In general, voice actors are absolute epic. They breath a lot of life into their characters and make them feel, well, alive. Music is really f**king awesome! I actually bought a handful of boards just for the music alone. For example, Pulsefire, Worldbreaker and the underwater one. Equally great is the attention to vfx for characters. But the one thing I think you improved the most on is level-up animations. When you started with Aphelios and Shurima, I thought most of those were good but their transition from the card/board to scene and back was jarring and rough. Cards just coming out of swirly portals with little pazzaz was...meh. But you improved a lot on that. One example being Annie. Her card burning up, going to her cinematic with times and coming out of fire is re...

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Originally posted by VeteranVirtuoso

I love that you used the classic Mark Rosewater analogy

Originally posted by Solunare

Hey Dan,

Really insightful post, thank you for sharing! I appreciate it's a bit off topic, but do you have any tips to someone looking to get into a game design position? Thanks!

Originally posted by asurabutt

I'll have a go:

I'm having trouble dealing with recently released spellshield cards, namely Kai'Sa, Overcharge and Second Skin. I have interaction tools, but I just don't have enough of them, or enough mana to use them all, or enough turns to get them all out, compared to how easily she becomes immune to anything I can do.

A Kai'Sa player can give spellshield (and overwhelm, but that's a different complaint) to a unit, and then also give it to their Kai'Sa, and I don't have a window to respond to this because it happens at burst/focus speed. This only costs them 3 mana and one card, since Second Skin is generated for free and costs 0 mana. The result is that I need to use multiple cards and significantly more mana if I want to interact with my opponent's units, since I have to deal with the spellshields first, and if they immediately attack I also become restricted by what speeds I can respond at.

This is frustrating because my opponent will still have most ...

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Originally posted by Garretz

That was a great read, thanks for this! I always enjoy reading your posts, I'm happy we have a dev that is more active on reddit (Rubin, Walrus, plinq etc are more present on twitter).

Wanted to give a try with 1 specific card, which always bothered me: Tail-Cloak Matriarch.

I've always wanted to make decks with her because I love her effect of getting extra value from recalling units with summon effects; her art and voicelines are great too!

But she is too hard to cast and get value of. 5 mana is a lot for a card with no immediate board impact or immediate value generation.

Her winrate reflects that, her stats have always been super low, among the worst cards in Ionia (which is a region with a large amount of weak cards).

I believe what's holding her back from being buffed is how she can summon ephemeral copies of enemy followers. This means that Will of Ionia/Windsinger with a Tail-Cloak Matriarch is a nasty tempo swing: you are g...

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Originally posted by Hitman3256

This is exactly the type of community involvement I like to see in devs.

Thank you

Originally posted by nokknokkcanicomein

i like howling abyss so here’s my thoughts.

Howling Abyss is exciting. I want to play Howling Abyss, to drop it and get a bunch of flipped champions that normally would never be together, but playing Howling Abyss feels like garbage. It sucks a lot to have to either be already winning, and so Abyss is just a win more card and not your actual wincon, or have to take a massive hit to tempo just to play it. It feels even worse when you’ve worked super hard to get yourself to a place you can even play it, only for your opponent to piltovan tellstones it and you just wasted 6 mana to their 4. It’s a similar feeling to playing Feel The Rush or Warmother’s Call into Ionia, where playing your wincon, the point of your deck, feels like garbage because your opponent benefits from you playing it. There’s no feeling worse than getting your 12 cost spell denied and your opponent just gets 8 free mana. The only time Abyss feels like it’s awesome, the best card ever is when both you and ...

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Originally posted by Snoo14937

Dear Dev, I might develop Bard syndrome, I might go crazy if I play or play against one more bard