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[WIP] Runes and Masteries overhaul suggestion [WIP]

Illâoi Evê Siôn·11/2/2014, 1:28:47 PM·3 votes·1,170 views

#Hey Boards

Jack here with the raw concept of a larger thread I'm working on at the moment.
I just wanted to propose this idea to Riot so they could take a look at it, but also to get some early feedback on one of the foundations of my future other thread.
So here it is:

http://i.imgur.com/LReGTPl.png

... you're probably thinking WTF?? now, but worry not! I'll happily explain ^^
I present to you....

THE SOUL FOUNTAIN :D

The basic idea is that Rito deletes the Runes and Masteries (all of them) and replaces their purpose with this.

The Soul Fountain works similar to the Mastery Trees. It's divided into three major paths to take. Obviously the visuals would be much better, but more on that later. You have X points (I've already got a number, but this is supposed to be the raw concept for Riot to see) of Soul Essence or Soul Water or Chi or Chakra or Aura which you need to put into the Fountain. It flows down (it's not an actual structure, but more like spiritual object inside of all of us) the Fountain into the direction you choose: Offense, Defense or Utility.

Assuming you want to create the tree for an Assassin, like Zed. To get to the Assassin role you must first choose between Offense, Defense and Utility. The factors you need to consider are:

  • the path to the role you want.
    • E.g. You start with Defense. Now you can't get the Masteries in Offense-Utility.
  • and whether or not you want the Devotion Slot.
    • The Devotion slot can be filled with a Soul Shard (quintessence-strong Rune) that enforces the path you've taken, unlike the Counter-Weight slot.
    • Only one Soul Shard may be placed at all.

I'd start with Offense. I want to deal tons of damage after all (that pun better bring me bonus points in this presentation >.>).
Now, depending on who my enemy is I'd can either go to Defense-Offense or Offense-Utility. Against a champion that counters me, and can deal a lot of damage to me with ranged poke like Kayle, I'd better take the Defense-Offense route, because I'm melee.

Now I can pick my Assassin role.

There'd be a special mastery that -for example- increases damage against isolated targets and is called Class: Assassin (only 1 point).
To pick a Class Mastery you need to have spent X Essence Points prior to that Role per Class Mastery That way (in my count) you can either go all the way, or actually choose two roles, like Assassin and Fighter.

And because I have picked a role, I may put a counter-weight in either Utility or Defense.
With the Assassin, Tactician and Hunter classes, this depends on which first hybrid-path you've taken. With all other classes it is the Counter-weight slot opposite of the class. So Marksmen->Defense and so on.

Then, I have to choose between Defense-Offense or Offense-Utility again. I'd choose Offense-Utility, because the second hybrid paths are supposed to be play style rewarding. That means playing offense grants you Utility and Utility grants you bonus Damage.

Once I've chosen that, I have to choose between Utility and Offense one more time, and I'd choose Offense, because I want the Offensive Devotion slot that grants me bonus early game damage.

And voilá, I have my Soul Fountain for Zed.

Picking a Devotion slot would cause the crystal-like Soul Shard to suck out all the Essence in the Fountain and wrap it around itself, while tainting it either Golden, Red or Blue. It'd be an awesome, riot-worthy animation that could also be turned off.
There could be Soul Fountain Skins.

#Roles

Most of these Roles should be fairly obvious, but I'm going to explain the ones I think you won't understand and any other particularities.

Assassin The Assassin one of three roles that intersects with two second-level hybrid paths.
I chose for the Assassins to get this intersection because there are a multitude of Assassins, some with CC, some without, some with Resets, some without and these Assassins all have too different play styles for them to be grouped so easily. I mean, you can play Assassin Garen and Rengar and you'll still need to be tanky, because after killing the Carry you'll probably have wasted everything and become useless.

Tactician
The Tactician (Support) also gets an intersection for the same reason. There are various different Supports. Some are quasi-Tanks and some are quasi-Mages.

Hunter
The Hunter (Jungler) gets the intersection because its Masteries are largely focused on killing Monsters and surviving in the jungle, creating a great disadvantage in the late game. This is supposed to be a buff of sorts, but also: there are a lot of different Junglers.

Dragoon Is basically a really close-ranged Marskman. The Dragoon Masteries are supposed to reward fighting really close to the enemies. The perfect example of a Dragoon is Quinn. This could help her out a bit.

#Soul Shards

The Soul Shards can be bought with IP and are just like Runes, actually. You can only have one of each, as you can only put one into a Soul Fountain, and there is one for almost every stat out there. They are categorized into Offense, Defense and Utility, too. You can only put an Offense one into the Offense Counter-weight slot/Devotion slot and so on. Their strength should be about as much as two Quintessences. So like +4% Lifesteal and +9 Attack Damage, etc. etc.

Obviously, the missing strength of the Runes would be put into the Soul Fountain masteries. There could be more than 30 points. Any more points would be given after the tutorial at level 1. There'd be an pop-up with arrows and stuff that explains what the Soul Fountain is and how to use it (so 40 points-> You get 11 points at level 1 and then 1 per level).

#Influence Points

Without the Runes there'd be great lack of Influence Points. The Soul Shards would be mighty expensive, sure, but that wouldn't be enough. So I've devised some ways to get rid of IP:

Essence purchasing: If you aren't level 30 yet, you could buy Essence Points for IP for a limited time or games, just like boosts. Sizes could be +3/7/15 points for 2/5/7 days or 3/7/15 games. The IP cost would have to be earnable in the games playable.
So 3 games would cost 150-ish IP or less, 7 300-ish IP or less, 15 700-ish IP or less. 2 days would cost 220-ish IP or less, 5 450-ish IP or less and 7 650-ish IP or less.

Soul Fountain Skins: There could be different art-styles for the Soul Fountains. Like Spiritual (custom), Garden, Void, Corrupted, Flames, Underwater, Ionian, Demacian, Noxian, etc. These could cost around 14k IP or Riot Points.

Profile Banners: Additionally to the Summoner Icons there could be Profile Banners. They could cost around 1500 IP, since you wouldn't have to put all too much work into making them. You'd just have to offer a banner of every champion. If you have the banner and purchase a skin you would unlock the skin banner, too. Then you could offer Banners of the different places in Runeterra. You'd just have to pick out those pictures again from the Dev Blog and offer them.
And then you could offer more expensive banners that you created yourself for different themes: like Christmas, or Chinese New Year, Halloween and so on.

Thought that's all I could think of so far ...

So, that's it. I hope you liked my ideas. Please leave feedback in the comments and upvote if you liked it. If you didn't you can just role your eyes and close the tab. No need to downvote. Wait...

http://i.imgur.com/SuWtZrm.jpg

Here's a photo of a potato shaped like a heart. Now you can't downvote, ha!

Thanks for reading,

Jack :D

4 Comments

Zielmann11/2/2014, 3:17:38 PM1 votes

My first comment, to the presentation as a whole, is please stick with League jargon. Especially for the roles and such. Creating a bunch of new and unrelated vocab makes it feel like it's something for another game, not League.

As for the actual idea, it seems fairly rigid to me. Pick your role and go. Perhaps this is because you've given very little detail into what each point is actually getting you. I'm basically left to assume that the first point toward assassin just gives you a damage increase. Then if you go defensive secondary, a little more HP or resistance. If you go utility, perhaps a little more movespeed, or possibly mana regen.

The current rune/mastery setup is actually pretty neat, and quite flexible. Having the two-part customization lets you effectively get more stuff. Runes are generally set up to allow you that initial boost to push you toward the general role you have. Then you have the masteries which give you some more nuanced stats. Sure, some of these are raw stat increases (flat AD/AP/Armor/MR/HP). But then you have things you can't get anywhere else. Look at Frenzy and Executioner/Dangerous Game in the offense tree. Reinforced armor and Evasive in the defense tree. And then just the vast majority of the utility tree. There are tons of attractive things in there to invest your mastery points into. I see a good amount of variation among players when it comes to their rune/mastery set-ups they run.

With that in mind, it feels like this fountain concept is really only replacing runes. I don't really see anywhere that you're getting the more intangible pieces you currently get from masteries. And from there, all you've done is forced people into building their rune pages to fit inside a specific formula. Currently, if that Zed player wants to just go ham and run full flat AD runes (+22 flat AD), and 30/0/0 masteries, they can do that. With your formula-based setup, he's now forced to sacrifice some of that raw damage for either utility or defense somewhere, when he may not really care to do that.

But what scares me the most about this, is the essence purchasing for non-30's, or players who are 30 but may not have been able to afford the full on runes yet, as they sound fairly cost-prohibitive. This sounds to me like you're basically creating a per-game IP tax on these players if they want their best shot at winning. They would have to choose between playing quite a few games at a disadvantage in order to save up to buy permanent stats, or else sacrifice a large amount of their IP gain per game to get rid of this disadvantage.

I know a lot of people complain about the current rune system, and the prohibitive cost of putting together even a single rune page. Depending on runes chosen, it could cost all the way up to 28,290 in one page worth of runes alone. I'd say a realistic setup would be more in the 15-20k range, though. But the nice thing about this is that as you gain IP, you can slowly purchase your runes and actually have them to keep.

kitcat30011/4/2014, 2:05:25 AM1 votes

The glaring issue is that same reason why the rune rework hasn't come out yet. You don't want to change too much that you end up having to re-balance the champions around it though.

The concept is interesting though, unfortunately without numbers or statistics, its hard to form an opinion. (Which I understand you may not be able to do)

Ironclad Dragon11/4/2014, 2:10:40 AM1 votes

I like that circle.