In memory of Cloak of Agility & some thoughts on "build aesthetic" for @Riot
Heads up: This post has nothing to do with balance, it's minor game design rambling, connected to some League memories.
Just saw on the PBE that Cloak of Agility is soon to be removed and wanted to share some thoughts that came to my mind.
As someone who liked being the character with bow and arrow in DnD and fantasy games, I remember when I first started playing League and bought Ashe. The moment when you open up the shop for that first time, you'll most likely start associating it to your previous "gear equipping" experiences, -like in Diablo, WoW, any J-RPG, etc.- where you usually have a slot for several parts of your body, and then weapons.
Undoubtedly of the most satisfying experiences is equipping this set of items, usually both from a "stats" point of view, but also from a visual one. Not just in Diablo or WoW, even in D&D, where it's all imagination, if I'm a wood elf I'd much rather picture myself with a hood than viking helmet.
Now, we all know the visual part of this experience is SWIFTLY disregarded in League of Legends. Understandably to allow for much more freedom when making your own item build, of course. It'd be much more limited if there was only one slot per "body part", not to even mention it'd be ridiculously hard that these armor-weapon items where reflected visually in game when you purchased them.
Having said that, and going back to the beginning, I still remember that brief experience of being a noob, opening the shop, seeing the name "Cloak of Agility" thinking to myself, "Oh yeah! I probably want that".
And it makes me wonder, is it really necessary that a dmg champion will always end up with 5 massive weapons in the inventory? I understand at this point, seeing an icon of a chestpiece in game that doesn't give either Armor or MR might feel weird. But would it be that strange to have a legendary cloak, or gloves that gave ATK speed, crit chance? Maybe not.
I don't know how much more ambitious it'd be to have more visual variety of "full builds", but if anything Riot has taught me with the Universe page, awesome comics, or epic music themes, is that League pays a lot of attention to detail, which is one of the reasons why I/we play it over other Moba's.
Have a good week everyone,
