NeoLexical

Oh gosh! This is a big one. Instead of going through every single one, because there were lots of hands and each had a profound impact to his development, I just want to say the Hwei pod and partners really came together to make this possible. It was really ambitious and the team really KILLED IT! Hwei to go.

Maybe u/orkidian can chime in here. With names we go through a very rigorous process to make sure that they don't mean something bad in one of the languages we operate in (there is so many of them). We generally start out with a pretty large list that gets filtered down very quickly. With Hwei, we wanted a name to have as many layers as Hwei himself. u/orkidian did so much work on the hidden meanings and cool name interactions with Jhin. So yes ....alot of it was very intentional. Some of my personal fav meanings to Hwei (Hui) were: To draw, grey, ashes, to destroy, brilliant/dazzling or even combined with Jhin's name to mean: To burn brightl...

Champion’s team is pretty cross-disciplinary, meaning we have people in Art (Animation, Concept, 3D, VFX etc), Design, Engineering, Tech Art, Narrative etc. all working together. They usually work with their disciplines for support but also we have one person representing their discipline in the Core Pod (in this case, Hwei Pod). We tend to change up the pod folks champion to champion to get fresh ideas going and to give more opportunities for individuals to learn from each other.

We work pretty closely with partner teams, like GAT (Game Analysis Team), Insights (Research and Analytics) and SRT (Summoner’s Rift Team) to ensure balance and game health. As well as with teams like Localization, Voices (VO), Publishing, Marketing etc. There are tons of folks involved for a champion to take shape that are across countries, time zones and languages!

We will have an update on VGUs in the next update in the new year!
In terms of VGUs, lot of times when a player like a champion, they actually do not want any changes to the champion. We did a deeper dive into this through thousands of surveys. Most of the time, players want a champion that they "potentially" want to play changed more towards their taste.
Thus, with every rework, we do end up losing some of the mains of that champion which, in some cases like Skarner, we will it is okay to do so for the bigger potential.
Some of the oldest and crustiest champions are also some of the toughest to find a way to fit into modern roster in a way that has considerations for who they were (sometimes good and sometimes really big baggage). We do need to adhere to some basic rules (we cannot change Skarner to a humanoid). The skins count for update is also a considerable amount of work for Champion's team. We are a team that is traditionally very very good at creating new thi...

What happens when you have fire and corn? :D

Did you see his emote ;D

Honestly, in the first couple of iterations on Hwei I asked art: “Doesn’t he look a bit too…hungry?”

Art: “When you are an artist, you dive into your work and forget to eat.”

What can I say to that besides okay XD?

More seriously, we do usually decide on an age range we are targeting for the champion’s SR rift appearance. Early 30s is what we were aiming for.

We go through a pretty rigorous vetting process in all languages we operate in, which sometimes means the space we have to work with is very narrow. We got back all kinds of ....er interesting meanings for some of the ideas we had TT^TT

(>^^)>(::)

Roadmap incoming in the dev update coming at the beginning of the new year.

Hehehehe
>w>

My fav was the one where he becomes bald every time he walks into a bush.

I cannot speak for the skins team on who gets skins etc. But very early on we wanted to make sure we are not putting the Skins team in a rough spot. We reviewed with them on what is difficult to do versus not. I’m hoping this is a practice that we will continue with all champs because I want my champ babies to get all of the cool skins they can :D

he champion like Lillia and Ivern or looking at a broader audience?

In terms of the player base I was targeting:

1. Traditional Mid Mage Players - I think the last true mage was Syndra
2. A broader audience in terms of appeal - Originally what we had in mind was the average second male lead in anime. Usually, the trope has him be better in every way compared to the protagonist aside from the fact something in his tragic past holds him back (there were soooo many of these)With us releasing a limited number of champions per year, we are less likely to release true niche champions like Ivern. Mostly because I want every player to have a champion that they are excited about just around the corner. While not every champion will be for everyone, the more niche we go, the less likely we can cover all the players around the world in a given 2-3 year period.

Hwei's name is a variation to Hui. We wanted to have some parallels to Jhin (Jin). Unfortunately, brain does funny things sometimes. Fortunately, it's an English thing and we operate in many many different languages.

Unfortunately...or fortunately yes... it was a coincidence.

Design and Research can maybe talk about the actual iterations...I for one am glad that his ult was not the earlier iteration hahahaha.... That grounding effect on an earlier one was really scary.
I think we toyed with the idea of 3 pretty early on.

I answered some of this in other posts, but can add some more color (haha) and if others want to jump in feel free! I think this version of Hwei did mostly take inspirations from the pitch session where three pitches stood out:

1. A Paint Mage by Truexy
2. A narrative pitch for a champion that is a bit more somber/not your average happy male lead
3. A goal pitch for a humanoid midlane male champion that isn’t blue/purple. I’m serious: Asol, Veigar, Ryze, Vel’Koz, Malzahar..what is going on?

We toyed with an idea that is a variation of this for Milio in the really early stages where he was a chef and collected ingredients to mix in his pot for spells. However, during Milio’s development, we wanted a more back to basics enchanter. Since our roadmap in 2020 and 2021 were on the high complexity side.

We did try other approaches, ...

We were excited about the potential of a paint mage because we can let Hwei paint abilities that can telegraph what he is about to do. Learning from Aphelios, we want to make sure the complexity burden is mostly on the person that decides to pick up Hwei. Thus, having the ability to make art of "something" really helps! While an opponent might not know exactly what a giant lightning bolt does, they can very quickly tell to get out of the way. The palette is another hint to what spellbook he has queued up.

Not too long compared to other champions! We started on Hwei around a year and half ago. Though having an art mage is a pitch that has been around a while. Every denewb (new employee training) we would get Rioters to pitch a champion. This is one that I hear the most. We also hosted a team pitch session in 2022 that had several pitches that eventually influenced Hwei. While I'm not opposed to Hwei supporting, he should be Mage carry as primary. We already have a higher complexity enchanter with Renata, so it is unlikely we will make another so soon.