What Sona can teach us about Teamplay as a Design Value
I've written an article over at Cloth5.com about Teamplay and applied the design value to Sona and her rework. I can't post the whole thing here because it's too long, but I included the link at the end of this post. Hope you like it! Feedback and remarks are most welcome!
Here ye have the TL;DR: In a PvP multiplayer game, satisfaction can be achieved through promoting Teamplay. Achieving victory together rather than on your own is generally more satisfying. Hence Riot wants to encourage teamplay through abilities as well as making sure team-oriented strategies have more success overall.
Three aspects concerning teamplay are essential for abilities. Is a response from your team…
- … possible?
- … clearly communicated?
- … interesting?
Given this set of rules, we’ve seen a clear trend from Riot to move away from global abilities and passive stats auras. In fact, recent champion releases see an increasingly interactive approach to what a team-oriented ability should be, and not only on support champions!
Sona has always been one of the most iconic support champions through her aura gameplay. But passive auras providing free offensive or defensive stats to an entire team in a wide radius does not promote teamplay. Such auras typically contain a lot of underappreciated power leading to a rather dull gameplay pattern.
Hence the Sona rework. Her aura gameplay stuck, but with an interesting twist. Short-range, one-time interactive effects make her the aura juggler in the thick of battle that she was originally meant to be. Sona’s new gameplay encourages highly mobile and team-oriented patterns. She’s a great example of what Teamplay as a design value can bring to the table.
Do you think Sona’s rework was successful? Will it take a while for players to get the hang of her new kit? Which champions do you think offer amazing potential for teamplay? Drop a comment below!
Read more at http://cloth5.com/6-design-values-part-4-teamplay-sona/ !
could fallow her team around anyways and force them to use those auras.
is largely better in every way than Sona for actually supporting. Her on-hit buff can reach allies further away, her speed buff can hit the right targets from a little further as well. Main (tactical) reason to go Sona over Nami was auras and lower cooldowns, both of which have essentially been removed when you consider Nami's buffs are arguably easier to apply than Sona's auras.
Only reason to play Sona now is basically not being up to snuff with landing Nami's stuff, which is a little harder to use properly - but she automatically gets Celerity on her Valor/Perseverance stuff, and gets an AoE stun bubble instead of a sheen proc.