Category: Development (Page 8 of 51)

      Yorick will be late to the party

      June 9, 2011 /

      Yorick, the Gravedigger.

      In the wake of E3 and leading up to Dreamhack next week, Riot is going to be very busy. As such, the company has announced that Yorick won’t be adhering to the normal schedule of release. Here’s the official word from Tamat:

      The end of Season One is approaching fast, and between the Season One Championship at DreamHack and E3, there’s an awful lot to do here at the Riot Office. Additionally, Orianna was an extremely exciting and edgy new champion, and we want to take the extra time to ensure that the next champion will be just as groundbreaking before we turn them loose on the Field of Justice. For these reasons, we’ve decided to take a bit of break from champion releases and balance changes until after we return from Sweden following the Season One Championship.

      As we draw closer to these events we will be releasing more previews of the exciting content that will be coming sometime after our end of season break. This will include Yorick, the Gravedigger and several more champions along with some exciting new features for PvP.net. Stay tuned for more information as our coverage of E3 continues.

      I’m glad to see Riot communicating these timing adjustments to the player base. It makes perfect sense that they would delay the release, but the forums still tend to explode with “OMGWTF WHERE IS DAT NEW CHAMPIONZ?!?!” if nothing is said.

      Champions, Development, league of legends, News

      Yorick, the Gravedigger sneak peek

      June 8, 2011 /

      The latest champion sneak peek popped up last night, bringing us news of Yorick, the Gravedigger. It remains unclear what type of champion Yorick will be, but I like the direction his art is headed. I’m curious how much of his playstyle relies on minions. If too much of his damage comes from minions, I’m worried that we’ll be looking at another tanky DPS champ.

      Here’s the blurb from the sneak peek:

      The true sign of a master is when you’re able to impress everyone with your execution of a skill that might otherwise be considered mundane. So it’s probably quite safe to say that in order to dazzle anyone with your skillful shoveling, you’re going to have to be rather good at it.

      With this in mind, allow me to introduce Yorick, the Gravedigger. In addition to being more adept in the art of entombment than any who have come before him, he makes a point of keeping good company… or at least ravenous undead company. One of those two.

      As I mentioned, I like Yorick’s art direction. I’m looking forward to learning more about him this weekend.

      Champions, Development, league of legends, News

      Reducing global ult range doesn’t solve the design problem

      June 5, 2011 /

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      Among the big changes slated for upcoming League of Legends patches is a rework to the global ults in the game, most notably the ones that that teleport the player to a new location. Riot has said in several places (none of which I can seem to find, though this quote from Phreak serves as an indicator of the design decision) that they want to limit the range of what are now global ults so that they work more like Nocturne’s Paranoia. The problem, of course, is that this doesn’t solve the problem with global ults.

      Globals suck because they allow players to effectively be in two places at once. As Phreak mentions in the quote linked above, TF and Shen can go push bot during a mid stalemate, all the while planning to port mid when needed. They present all the defense necessary for mid lane while still being able to push bottom. This scenario isn’t completely fixed by limiting the range of those ultimates, but teamfights aren’t the only thing affected by semi-global ults.

      When players can gank in a 3500 unit radius around them, they don’t have to play with any kind of foresight or worry about positioning. They can linger longer in the jungle. They can finish that dragon before defending a tower. They can spring out of the jungle from beyond ward range for the gank. In short, it encourages lazy play from less skilled players and offers masters of the game an easily exploited advantage. It’s also just not a lot of fun to play against.

      Personally, I’d love to see the global ults removed. They’re too strong for skilled players and don’t provide the learning hurdle for map positioning that new players need.

      Current Affairs, Development, league of legends

      Orianna skill list announced

      May 27, 2011 /
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      Orianna’s “Champion Approaches” thread is up, which presumably means we’ll have another patch on Tuesday to bring her live. The thread also included the skill list, which looks significantly less like a pet class than may have been suggested in earlier threads. I’m actually glad for that. The other pet characters currently in League of Legends feel clumsy and unresponsive. Let’s put that aside for a moment and dig into the skills.

      Passive – Clockwork Windup: Orianna’s autoattacks deal additional magic damage every hit, subsequent attacks on the same target within a few seconds will add more damage per hit. This bonus stacks up to three times.

      Command – Attack: Orianna commands her ball to fly towards target location, dealing damage to targets hit but doing reduced damage for each additional target hit. Her ball remains behind at that location afterwards.

      Command – Dissonance: Orianna commands her ball to emit a magnetic pulse, dealing damage to units around it. Afterwards, the ball leaves a field behind for a few seconds that speeds up allies and slows enemies.

      Command – Protect
      (Passive): The allied champion the ball is attached to gains bonus Armor and Magic Resistance.
      (Active): Orianna commands her ball to fly to and attach onto an allied champion, dealing damage to enemies it passes through and shielding the allied champion when it arrives.

      Command – Shockwave: Orianna commands her ball to emit a shockwave after a short delay, flinging affected enemies in the vicinity into the air a set distance towards, and possibly over, her ball.

      I’ll start by saying I’m going to need a video to understand how her skills work. The Q is clear enough, and the W sounds like a version of Lux’s AoE slow, but in reverse – it slows after dealing damage. I’m not sure why her E is split into an active and passive component unless the ball just stays on the target indefinitely, which seems odd. Her ultimate sounds interesting, though I think its effectiveness will depend entirely on the size of the AoE and how easy it is to get the ball into position.

      While I understand the idea behind her passive, I have to wonder how its going to work out. Few damage dealing passives really incentivize players to do things that are counterintuitive to the champion. Jarvan, for instance, has a damage modifier, but he also has a skillset designed around getting close to and staying close to the enemy. This passive sounds less like an imposed skill ceiling and more like a source of frustration. If it is too easy to use, she’ll have absolutely wild burst, but if it’s too tough there will be endless complaints that she is underpowered. Here’s hoping Riot struck a balance.

      Champions, Development, league of legends, News

      Multiple mastery pages arrive with today’s patch

      May 24, 2011 /

      Late last night, Guinsoo tweeted that a “sneaky new feature” might make the patch. I thought it might be something small and simple but instead we got a long-awaited feature. Today’s patch included multiple mastery pages.

      The system is simple enough – you save your masteries by creating a custom title for your page and then adding as many pages as you like, up to 10. In case anyone is wondering, the feature is free. Nope, doesn’t even cost IP.

      Ten pages is a crazy amount of diversity for the current mastery system. I’m hoping that means we’ll get to see some improvements to what’s currently there. I actually think I’m only using eight, and that includes some redundancy for minor changes, like four percent attack speed instead of six armor penetration.

      It’s kind of hilarious, but not knowing that this was on the way made me really happy when it was actually implemented. I really hope Riot keeps that up in the future. Granted, we’re waiting on a lot of improvements, to both the game and the PvP.net client, but little surprises here and there are much more enjoyable than the long wait for “incoming” features.

      Development, league of legends, News, Patches

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