Reav3

;)

Inspiration can come from a variety of places, and I personally think that having it come from multiple places leads to a more diverse and exciting release schedule. Every Champion starts with a opportunity space that I create as the Product Lead for Champions Team.

For example the opportunity space for Zoe was to create a high mechanics mid lane with a cute/adorable thematic. As I felt this was something missing from League, with all our high mechanics mid laners champions being edge lords/dark themes. This opportunity space then goes to a "Core Pod" consisting of a Kit designer, concept artist, and narrative writer. They all then brainstorm ideas that fit the opportunity space. They all kind of inspire each other and that's how the Champion eventually forms

So far we are optimistic about them but it hasn't been long enough to fully evaluate.

Overall we feel it's important to keep the game feeling modern and fresh since we believe that LoL has the ability to last a very long time. This means that we feel it's good for the long term to update things that are old and dated in our game like old Morde and breath fresh life into them. We feel this is important enough to do, even it it does cause change aversion among some of the mains of a Champion. It's also something that the community asks for and wants as player demand for VGUs is always very high when we survey players.

Aatrox though is a case where we felt we strayed too far from his previous game play identity. While he was pretty successful from a engagement perspective, we decided not to push Champions that far from there identity in future reworks.

I think Skarner needs a full VGU at some point, as I dont think a small rework is enough to get his kit to where it needs to be. He also needs a lot of work on the visual/theme side as well

I usually come up with the Goals for the Champions. Anyone on the team can pitch ideas, but I am the one that puts them together into opportunity spaces and then into a larger Champion Roadmap. I share this with my entire leadership team though as well as our Stakeholders, get feedback, then refine it. After it has been refined I share it with the whole team.

The ones we ended up reverting, like Rengar, Zac, LeBlanc. Sure there are lessons we learned on almost every VGU or Rework we did, or places we think we could have improved, but for the most part we think all of the big VGU's put the Champions into better places then they were before the VGU, even if there was room for improvement

It does include the Non-traditonal Marksmen. It wasn't a typo, though 2 are really just mentions, kind of like how I mentioned we were working on a Assassin (Which later was Qiyana), but didnt go into detail on it. Just kind on mentioning the classes on the 2 Champions after Voli/Fiddle

Not anytime soon, no

Fingers crosses she is in a good place right now. She is still seeing some competitive play, while also having a healthy playrate in SoloQ. I know SoloQ winrate is low, but she is a hard champ to master, so that's to be expected

Gameplay hooks can come from a variety of spaces. Like RiotScruffy mentioned one way is from designer brainstorm meetings they hold pretty often. Sometimes they can come from product strategy, like Pyke's hook came from the opportunity space I created to make a support Assassin. Others can be derived from a thematic/visual pitch. Kai'Sas hook, for example, came from the idea that BravoRay came up with when he was doing concept exploration for the champion. He came into one DNA meeting with this awesome drawing of this "Void Diver" her called it and said that it was Kassadins daughter. The concept looks so bad ass, that the whole pod got excited about it which led to RiotJag coming up with the Ultimate which was basically her "diving into the void"

It really depends on the designer. August, for example, prefers to start with cool concept art, then derive a gameplay hook that he feels matches the character art. He's always like "Draw me a awesome character and I'll make you ...

Can't speak for music as I can't remember the composers red name but the concept art was done by LoneWingy. She's now the Concept Art Lead on Champions Team right now. I love a lot of her work which include, ASol, Nami, EvelynnVGU, Qiyana, Kayle/MorganaVGU, GalioVGU and many more

Zoe, Akali & Pyke were some of my favorite Champions of all time to work on.

The origin of Pyke was really interesting, in that, at that time there was a high level goal for the entire gameplay initiative at Riot to make support a more appealing position. This was because when we introduced position select to the game it caused queue time to go up since so few people were selecting support. That's what led me to create the opportunity space for Pyke, which was to create a support Assassin. Assassins tend to be our most popular role, and Champions that tend to get a lot of kills tend to be extremely popular as well, so I thought, if we make a support that can kill people it would cause more people to play support. This actually worked out and Pyke has caused the support role to have a slightly higher queue rate then before he existed. So good guy Pyke has made queue times better for everyone.

Zoe was fun because I think we were really pushing the boundaries of our a...

I will be talking about Voli/Fiddle and 3 New Champs in details, but also a small little tidbit of 2 new champs we have in development for after Voli/Fiddle

It’s kind of a never ending cycle since as time goes on new champions look and feel better and better which causes older Champions to feel more and more dated

I will have a new Champion roadmap out tomorrow that will go into detail on upcoming VGUs and New Champions

Also. because Champion Popularity is usually a hot topic which may result in me posting images showing Champion Popularity, here’s a link to a blog Novaasterix and Nancymon did on Champ Popularity, and how to read out internal Breadth and Depth Charts.

https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/2017/11/champ-popularity-mixing-math-art/

Hey all, it's been a while since we've had an AMA about a champion or VGU, and now's the time to ask any questions you have about League's roster. /u/RiotScruffy and I have been working on champions for a collective billion years and we've got a lot of stories we can share!

Feel free to ask about your main, the champion that tilts you most, the champion development process, high level Champion strategy or anything else on your mind! Big caveat: We aren't giving spoilers for unreleased or unannounced champs and updates, so don't bother trying ;)

We'll both be around starting at 9 AM PT and will be monitoring the thread throughout the day. Send us your questions!

I’m ready

So you are saying that since I said it's a big assumption that there will only be 1 more Champion this year it must mean there will be 3 more Champions this year?