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TOD talks: How many champs should riot be releasing every year?

Linna Excel·7/13/2014, 6:18:54 PM·1 votes·196 views

Thoughtful Objective Discussions

Why new champs are good

One of the most important things riot can do for the game is in releasing champions. So why are new champions important? I can give a few reasons.

The first is they keep the game new and fresh. I mean unless you play only one champ, adding new champs helps keep things mixed up for the people who've been here awhile. One of the most important things about gaming is the discovery process and new champions are a way to give vets that discovery process.

The second reason is they are a tool for changing the meta. Champions are a way of doing task X. However as you can tell, there are a lot of tasks in the game and no one way of going about them. A new champ means there's a new way to do things. Doing things a new way is what changes the meta. A constantly evolving meta is what keeps players in the game.

The third reason is that new champs have the potential to be someone's main champ. You know how you have that one champ you just love to play? Well new champs could be that one champ I love to play for someone else. If you kind of like the game but don't really have any champs you love, a new one has the potential to change that.

The fourth reason is a new champ means more variety in what you'll play against. If you focus on one lane, you've probably seen all the match ups already. In fact there are probably some matchups you see all the time. When a new champ comes into the lane you get a break from the usual as new people try him out. Not always does it add to the discovery process of learning the champ and how to lane against him, it gives you a healthy break from the usual routine.

The fifth reason is new champs have the potential to get new people interested in the game, if they weren't interested before, or might let older people who lost interest have their passion reignited. Sure LOL has a ton of champs, but that doesn't mean they've covered every archetype or they delivered every archetype in a manner that everyone would love. Take Katarina. She's the only real sword dual-wielder in the game. But she isn't an auto-attacker and nothing in her kit plays off of the I've got 2 swords/machetes/whatever fantasy. So she's a clear example of riot botching a fantasy archetype. New champs would allow them to fix that.

Why number of releases are important

So we've established that new champs are beneficial to the game. How many should be added?

Some people say zero. They either disagree that new champs are good; some of them feel that the added complexity to the game is only going to make things worse. Others argue that there are enough "broken" champs that new ones should be put on hold.

Some people argue for a few champs each year. Quality over quantity. Fewer champs means you are spending more time to get that champ right. So hopefully you'll have better champs when you do release them.

Unfortunately this method isn't perfect. Just because they are spending more time on a champ doesn't mean riot will get the new champs riot every time. Most people think Braum was kind of OP on release and he was done under the take more time system. Then there are champs that just don't resonate with the fans. Vekkers is a good instance of this. He was a non-meta hentai reject with a laser in its head. Sure hentai with lasers sounds cool and all, but he still didn't really strike many cords with the fans.

So with slower releases, if you main one lane and the new champ for your lane is a failure, in real terms it's like you didn't have a new champ released for your lane this year. Or if the new champ is a counter to your main, you know you'll have a 2-3 week period, or more, of agony as everyone is trying him out.

There's a second problem with slower releases. I'm calling this the Ao Shin Error. Riot slowed down their release for reasons they felt were important. The were working on a new champ named Ao Shin... and dropped the ball completely. Whatever happened, he was such a problem riot had to pull him off of the release schedule. That means they were left with a gaping hole in their releases that they weren't set up to fix. All those old people designing champs were put onto other teams teams and couldn't be freed up on the drop of a hat. Basically by releasing fewer champs, you are kind of put in a hole were your champs have to be right the first time and released on time... you don't have another champ in the pipeline ready to go.

So adding too few champs can be an issue.

Other people argue for more releases. Just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. If you want a success you need to take more chances instead of going all in.

This has its own problems. The first of which is a champ probably isn't going to be that balanced on release. It'll take riot a patch cycle or three to get it right. Compounding this is a faster release schedule is probably more stressful and stressed out designers make more mistakes. So you'd have to come to expect new champs to be broken in some regards.

The other problem with faster releases is you don't give them enough time to settle down and the game to adjust to them. You don't really have time to digest things and learn the ins and outs, the next champ is being shoved down your throat... hopefully the new one is for a different lane. Having some down time between new champs is nice.

Not having enough time to adapt sucks, particularly when one lane gets new champs back to back. If both new champs are soft-counters to your main, that's like a double kick in the nuts. But if they both are countered by your main that's like a double jackpot.

So adding too many champs has problems as well.

Objectively speaking both sides to the argument have their merits and their flaws. The answer is pretty individual as we have to figure out which ratio of upsides to downsides fit us the best for ourselves.

3 Comments

Linna Excel7/13/2014, 6:32:56 PM1 votes

Now I'm going to give my answer to this for the purposes of disclosure. There are 5 main lane roles in the game. Riot has 6 roles by what a champ does and not where the players put it.

That means you need at least 5-6 new champs per year so every lane and role has someone new in it. I'd call this my minimum requirement.

However the AO Shin error reminds us that riot may not be able to release all of their new champs on time. So riot needs the ability to make more than that in a year so they have some slack in case something bad happens. Like Ao Shin being horribly broken before release. You need to be able to account for that in how long it takes to produce a new champ.

Angry Monster7/14/2014, 1:04:03 PM1 votes

You mention that Braum was not balanced, but you do not address why champs are usually OP on release. Riot has stated that champs over tuned so people can learn the champ and then peel back the numbers as the community learns. This learning curve has had some people say that Riot releases OP to buff sales(the ignorant say this).

Part of the problem is that Riot had a stated goal of how many champs they were going to do. In preseason Riot stated that the goal was like 12 to 15 or something like that. This set a expectation of high production to at least once a month releases(no one actually expects Riot to do what they say to the letter). But with the cancellation of AouShin champ releases have dwindled.

So are reworks like Nid, Rengar and Skanar worthy of the title a released champ? What does this work count as? I think their is merit to either side taken here. I personally feel that redone champs are a cop out on riots side. They could not make their internal kits work(thematically) so they keep scraping stuff.

I think that riot has run into a number issue. You can only create so many different champs without reusing some ideas. If this is the real issue I wish riot would just come out and say so.