author: Miriam Moszczynska
LoL's Champion Roster is Not Endless; Rioter on Releasing New Characters
Riot Games will one day stop creating new champions for LoL. As one Riot Games employee explained, it won't come soon, although the topic is close to the developers.
Source: leagueoflegends.com
I have already written more than once about League of Legends champions, although as you can guess, it is a broad topic. What is new in this matter is the statement of one of the employees of Riot Games, who said that one day the developers will simply stop releasing new characters.
There is still room for new characters
The topic appeared in the Broken By Concept podcast, where it was commented on by Matt "Phroxzon" Leung-Harrison (you may know him from patch announcements, among other things). As he admitted, there are discussions at Riot Games about when it will not make sense to release new champions. At the same time, he believes that the developers still have a lot of room for improvement.
"Every hero released is unique in some aspect. We try to make what is unique as intuitive as possible [...] At the moment we have 160 [champions - ed. note], so every player needs to know and understand 160 heroes to play at a high level."
An example of this is the pulling moves of Bliztcrank and Thresh, for example. Although they look different, their idea is very similar, when they hit an opponent, he is brought to the player.
Gwen, I choose you!
The intuitiveness of heroes in LoL can, however, vary, as exemplified by Curtis' cited Gwen. Although the host personally simply does not like the heroine, according to him, the problem goes deeper. The W skill of the heroine was discussed.
"Gwen surrounds herself in a Sanctified Mist that lasts for 5 seconds. While in the mist, Gwen has enhanced armor and magic resistance. Enemies outside the perimeter of the fog cannot target Gwen or hit her with any skill. On the first attempt to leave the fog area, it will move with Gwen, but on the next attempt, the fog will dissipate," reads the skill description.
The issue here is the appearance of the Sanctified Mist, which is usually associated by LoL players with a cloud of damage - better not to approach it. In fact, it is quite different because the mist does not deal damage, and only entering its area enables you to deal damage to Gwen.
"So the mechanic makes sense. Gwen was built around it, although it was difficult to visualize. Xin Zhao does it better because she can put an invulnerability tag on herself, but it's a little different with Gwen because she's not invulnerable. This poses a challenge related to how to visualize it. Sometimes the mechanics are just so unique that it's too difficult to depict," replied Phroxzon.
The moral is...
... that Riot will not stop releasing champions until they run out of ideas. This year we already got 4 new characters: Zeri, Renata Glasc, Bel'Veth and Nilah. As we know, there are also plans for a Shurimian top laner, not much about which is known for now.
Let's hope, however, that the developers don't rush too far, because new players already have a lot on their plate anyway when wanting to master LoL to a decent degree. Because the mechanics also go beyond heroes.
