Game Designing 1: On Ways, Results and Marksmen

League of Legends is one of my favourite game and has been for a long time. I become soon enough really interested by the thought process behind the creation and developpement of this game. And here I am, with the results of some thoughts of mine that I wanted to share with the boards.

If we are only talking about classes of champion, they can all be divided according to their Ways and their Results. Ways are the tools used by a champion to obtain their Results, how they perform their tasks. Results are said tasks that champion can and must complete. There are three Ways, and and three Results

The three Ways are : Tankiness, Range, Mobility. It is impossible for any champions to function properly without any kind of combination of these tools. For the purpose of this post, stealth is counted as Mobility, as is untargetibility. The three Results are : Damage, Buff, Debuff. Every champions of the game will, for their actions, be rewarded with one of the following. For the purpose of this post, heals, shields and vision count as Buffs, anc CC count as Debuffs.

If we link Ways and Results, we can define approximatively each classes based only on these two concepts. I won't write the full details here, it is not important. The important part that comes now is how champion should technically designed when you have this in mind. Ideally, each champion should be unique, even with the constraints of a class. Which means, every champion should have both particular Ways and particular Results.

Let's take marksmen for example. They are a very simple class based on the criteria explained before. Their Way is Range, their Results is Damage. For a marksman, a good design of its Way would be a particular application of damage, and a good design of Results would a more effective damage against particulars targets, or an additionnal function outside of damage (Note that the special Way of the marksmen can perfectly serve this additionnal function.). This Result is what Riot refers as the Identity of a champion.

Let's take Xayah, for example, the most recent markswoman. She is indeed, according to the last paragraph a well-designed champion. She has her Feathers mechanic, a variation of the standard Range, unique to her, and this mechanic, with her E and her R allows to function as a markswoman very good in a disengage team composition. She has a clear particular Way, and a clear particular Result.

Xayah is a recent champion, every marksmen is not up to this standard. Ashe, for example, one of the first markswomen, has very clear Results, but non existent Way. She brings CC and vision, but, at the end of the day, there are no mechanics, no gimmicks, no real personnality in her Way. At the other end of the spectrum, there is Lucian, whose particularly high mobility for his class doesn't translate into any particular Results other than the standard damage of a marksmen.

The little trouble is that, behind the very basic design of the class is hidden two classes Results, Objective Securing and Tank Busting. The omnipresence of Marksmen in League of Legends is notably due to these two class Results. When you think about it, it is logical : the goal of a fight in the Summoner's Rift is to destroy immobile, tanky and threatening towers (putting balance aside), and Range is the better Way to do so. In the same idea, Tankiness find its natural predator in Range.

There is also another reason : in the same way the first incentive that a politician has is to get reelected, the only incentive a player has is to win. To win, the best way is not to make mistakes. For that, you need find a reliable solution. That is the other reason why Marksmen are since immemorial times always in a team composition in League of Legends. They use auto-attacks, the pinnacle of reliability in League.

Reliability is not necessarly a bad thing. However, it doesn't mean that Marksmen should be loaded with both these particular Results, there are enough classes in this game to redistribuate these function. If you want to make marksmen unneccessary, reliability and classes Results are the first things you should hit/

Now, do you have any thoughts ?