The League of Legends /dev diary is back with a new installment from the game’s lead designer, Greg Street, also known as Ghostcrawler. This time around, Street took to the diary to discuss with the five pillars the design team uses when building, designing, and implementing champions in the popular MOBA.
League of Legends Champions
There’s no denying that one of the major features contributing to the success of League of Legends is the breadth and quality of its champions. In the latest video, posted to the game’s official site, Ghostcrawler outlines the five aspects the team looks to in terms of champion quality. Those aspects are that the champion must be satisfying to play, have a developed and resonant theme, and allow players to show off their skill, as well as being both fair and balanced, and unique apart from all the other champions in the game.
Ghostcrawler makes sure to buck the idea that the design team’s only metric for measuring a champion’s success or failure is based on pick/ban rates. Just as there will always be popular champions in every meta, there will also always be those unorthodox players with obscure pocket picks, because they like that champions kit or theme regardless of meta.
The idea of thematic resonance also becomes an interesting aspect when looked at over the whole history of League of Legends. Ghostcrawler points out that older champions sometimes don’t really fit the game lore that has been built up over time. He singles out Pantheon, who almost seems more like he should be in a different, mythology-based MOBA rather than a warrior of Targon. This is why the team likes to do the occasional thematic rework on a champion to fit them into the game’s extensive lore.
Be sure to check out the full video for all the insight and information into what goes on behind the scenes at Riot, and how the team looks to create the best champions possible for all players.
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