The Lux Champion Spotlight is now live and I am pumped for her release. She doesn’t just look cool, as was the case with Swain, she looks strong. I’m actually pleasantly surprised by the changes they made to her Prismatic Barrier, the skill that used to grant invisibility. It seems highly functional, though hopefully it’s not a crazy out-of-hand shield. I also loved the moment in the spotlight when Phreak caged Kennen way behind a minion. I just figured it caged an adjacent target, not that the binding kept moving. That will definitely make for some interesting gameplay.
Author: Jeff Morgan (Page 121 of 260)
Over the weekend Zileas gave us a rare gift – a list of development patterns that guide the design process for League of Legends. I can’t tell you how much this kind of thing interests me, though I’m sure you can guess from my own detailed critiques of several champions. This also gives us a chance to consider some of the recent champion releases against this list to help understand just how complicated the design process can be, especially when the company has committed to a bi-weekly deadline for champion development.
Consider Swain: a big part of his problem was that he was originally designed under a burden of knowledge, that is, the player had to be aware of a complex mechanic in order to understand its use against opponents and against himself. It was undesirable enough that Riot decided to make it more understandable, but there wasn’t enough time to rebalance the character before release. Even the champion spotlight was released with the original skill in place.
Personally, I don’t think burden of knowledge is a good enough reason to change a hero like this. After a point, there will be too many heroes with too many different mechanics in play for new players to truly understand the game. In that case, the game has to adapt, to be better suited for a player to pick up. Make the knowledge more available, don’t dumb down the game. I still see people who don’t know the basic mechanics of some heroes. It’s not that they are incapable of understanding, just that they haven’t yet discovered the mechanic. Make the discovery process easier and burden of knowledge only becomes an issue in extreme cases.
As Zileas notes, we could find examples of each design pattern he mentions within League of Legends. I’ll be referring back to it often to help me better understand what’s behind a champion. We’re getting Lux tomorrow, so you can bet she’ll have my full attention during the week ahead.
This post is about as long overdue as they come, but I just got my first chance to test Swain and all I can say is, I understand all of the complaints. Despite having one of the cooler character models, a great looking ult, an interesting design concept, and a nice AOE cc, Swain has a tough time farming and, thanks to his low AP ratios, a tough time turning a kill.
I think the biggest problem Swain faces is that his design was changed last minute so that he no longer had a Maledict type spell. The fact that Torment now only increases the damage you deal at a flat rate means you have to stay right on top of your target to give respectable damage. The obvious problem there is that Swain is a caster, not someone you want in the mix. Plain and simple, Swain was rushed out, released too quickly when Riot decided that the Maledict mechanic wasn’t readily identifiable to young players.
Swain also suffers from his low cooldown ult. I’d much rather see it deal respectable damage, be capable of keeping him alive in a fight than the current mediocre damage/negligible heal combo he has. His ult is his only real farming tool as well, which is a big problem if you don’t have much AP. A full ult is incapable, in many cases, of even killing off caster minions. That’s a big problem.
If you’re an experienced Googler, you know a lot of this stuff is set to change, but for now, Swain remains near the very bottom of my ranked-game-viable toon list. We’ll see how he looks tomorrow.
After a much longer than expected hiatus, I’m back in full force. I definitely didn’t plan to attend a wedding reception, a birthday celebration and a funeral in the past two weeks, but I’m sure with that list you can understand my sudden disappearance.
At any rate, I’m back, and with me I’m bringing a backlog of posts, most of which are long overdue. Stay tuned over the next couple days as I catch up.
Also back is some FG LoL Monday goodness. Tonight. 9:30 EST. I’ll be there.
Since I’ve been away from my home gaming machine for nearly two weeks now, I wasn’t able to pull up the mid-cycle, unreleased skins as I have for the last several patches. They are there, though, I promise you. The real question is, why haven’t we seen them?
From what I’ve been able to find, Ezreal, Gangplank, and Twitch are all slated for some new duds this patch, and Shen and Heimer could be getting new skins next patch. I’m not sure what the delay is, though if I had to venture a guess I’d say it’s that Twitch is getting his legendary skin: Gangster Twitch. I only guess it’s his legendary because he has a tommy gun, which I’m assuming makes a different sound than his little bow. From the splash screen it also looks like he might be bipedal, which would be a really cool change.
The Ezreal skin shows up in game as Explorer Ezreal but what I’ll call Navy Gangplank doesn’t seem to be there. Could he be a prize skin, maybe for the Halloween contest?
UPDATE: The skins are now live. Navy Gangplank remains as yet unannounced.
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