New Game Mode: Factions

Kikirino·May 7, 2014·17 votes·3,191 views

I made a thread about this a couple of years ago but with Riot now making game modes like URF, One for All and the like maybe they can give this a look.

Let me explain why I want this. I love Lore. Lore is amazing. It makes a game more than a game... but the lore in league stands no purpose. Whether champions are friends or enemies in their lore means nothing in matches. Nothing like seeing Thresh supporting Lucian or Garen killing Lux or Warwick ganking for Soraka. Stuff like this drives me insane.

Maybe Riot could create a game mode in which each team votes for a faction and can only pick champions from that faction. They could even give it a cool twist so that each faction gets a special passive. Champions from Noxus get % extra damage, Demacia gets % extra armor and mr, Bilgewater (not sure if a 'faction' but whatever) gets 1+ gold per kill/per 5, Piltover gets extra experience and so on.

I would just like to see lore actually have an impact on the game in some way. They already removed the big lore stories from the Journal. Give lore a place in the game. Pretty please.

32 Comments

RiotLtRandolphMay 7, 201417 votes

Interesting idea. I'm going to write this idea down...

Sir ArmaMalumMay 7, 20146 votes

While you do that, if I may suggest to also reference (or at least give a nod to) the dedicated community mind(s) behind League Factions as they've been doing it for a while now with varying degrees of success. I know the summoner CupcakeTrap is either affiliated or even heading the site.

CupcakeTrapMay 7, 20145 votes

Thanks for the shout-out! Factions is quite active, and anyone reading this who wants to join in can sign up here.

I started Factions about a year ago. I think we're at around 1000 matches fought so far. We've organized it into chapters/storylines/arcs, and rotate through which factions are featured in each installment. We're currently on our fifth arc, Hextech Revolution, which features Piltover, Bandle City, Zaun, and Demacia.

Factions operates on a somewhat decentralized model. Anyone can start or join a match anytime. Results are submitted to us online for scoring. We also hold shoutcasted Featured Matches every Saturday and Sunday, which are worth bonus points and have advance registration to help ensure evenly matched teams.

It really has succeeded far beyond my expectations, thanks to an awesome staff and a very energetic community. One of our biggest challenges is getting the word out; even though Factions has been running for over a year, when I conduct "ever heard of Factions?" polls I generally find that more than 75% of respondents have not, and I frequently see comments on the sign-up sheet to the effect of "I had absolutely no idea this existed; you guys need to advertise more!" That made me feel better about constantly making Factions promotion posts like this one.

kayakninjaMay 8, 20143 votes

Really want to get into that. Looks sweet.

Though, how many champs would you suggest from a particular faction before you join it? I don't want to be stuck chanpionless.

CupcakeTrapMay 8, 20141 votes

Good question. I feel like two or three should suffice. You just might want to let your teammates know ahead of time, so they don't end up picking those champs themselves.

ShadowNinetailsMay 8, 20141 votes

Interesting. All of the links circle back to this page. :-/ Lucky my good friend Google had idea of where to find you.

Oh as for the OP, this is an awesome idea. I know a couple of communities that have weekly matches like the NexusDown podcast that have taken a week or two to do themed, Faction vs. Faction, Risk-style tournaments. Always a good time especially when people argue over whether a champion was given to the right faction (Why is Janna fighting for Piltover when she's clearly Zaunite? Yeah there was the race from the JoJ, but that doesn't change anything!).

CupcakeTrapMay 8, 20141 votes

On the links: this is a known oddity of Community Beta. If you open links in new tabs, it redirects. You have to click "straight through". I've brought it up, and a Rioter confirmed that it's "supposed" to work like that, at least at the moment.

A lot of Champions have flexible loyalties. (Bear in mind that, most of the time, a Champion fights for anyone who summons them.) So for example, Janna is from Zaun, but is not exactly happy with the way Zaun is being run, and also has ties to Piltover. I think she could be plausibly placed on either roster; it would depend on, e.g., the story arc.

We look at three factors when deciding Champion allegiances in Factions:

Story. The Champion's written lore is sometimes dispositive. For example, Darius is obviously Noxian.
Theme. How does the Champion come across in game? What's their aesthetic? Which factions do they "match" with? For example, Leona has a strong thematic fit with Demacia, because she's a heroic plate-armor-wearing knight-type character.
Gameplay. The centerpiece of Factions is faction vs. faction matches, so we obviously want to take this into account. The goal here isn't so much to give each faction a full "meta" roster as to reinforce each faction's core gameplay characteristics. So, for instance, Leona works great on Demacia's roster, because Demacia is already a hard-engage all-in teamfight faction. Likewise, Janna brings a lot of disengage, which synergizes with Piltover's poke-heavy lineup.

We also try to tie in match outcomes and player decisions. So, for instance, we had a recent interactive lore event as part of which each faction got to select a new Champion. Both Piltover and Zaun had access to Janna in this vote. Piltover voted Janna, while Zaun ended up going for Zac. If they had both selected Janna, we would have held a tournament to determine who got her.

ShadowNinetailsMay 8, 20143 votes

That is actually an awesome way to decide things. I've always wanted some type of lore event where Riven returns to Noxus and has to choose between rejoining the Crimson Elite or standing up and leading a rebellion against Swain to restore the "pure Noxian ideal" for which she had made so many sacrifices.

CupcakeTrapMay 8, 20141 votes

Have you seen this yet?

Mirrorwater Update 5: The True Noxus

Also, I don't want to spoil anything, but, uh … stay tuned.

RiotcautomatonMay 8, 20149 votes

For what it's worth, I've forwarded links to Factions to some other Rioters in the past. I, for one, love the idea and think it's super awesome what you're doing.

CupcakeTrapMay 8, 20141 votes

Thank you! We've been lucky enough to have some Rioters participating from time to time — TacoStorm, Baconhawk, BuboBubo, NurseFlan, Careless Whisper, Des, Scarizard, and Ve1vet (hope I'm not forgetting anyone).

I really appreciate the referrals. I've been sidelined by RL recently, but I have a meeting with our lore staff tonight and I think we're about to add some more cool stuff to Factions. I think we've seen a lot of improvement since Factions launched a year ago, and I hope we can continue that trend.

ChaosThiefMay 9, 20142 votes

What factions do you plan on adding? I'm reall hoping for a Void faction, and a noxus faction seems easy to make.

CupcakeTrapMay 9, 20141 votes

Both of those factions have appeared in previous storylines. (Well, it was actually "Discord", a hybrid SI/Void faction, since at the time there literally were not 5 Void Champions, unless we wanted to write a major character shift in for Kassadin.)

Generally, we decide which factions will be featured in the next arc by holding a public poll. (We then give members of the winning faction from last arc a private vote to add another faction, and sometimes staff will add another after that.)

It needs some updating, but you might also want to take a look at the World of Factions for a list of possible factions with tentative Champion lists.

kTGg8TYecZMay 8, 20142 votes

Referencing the community-run Factions would definitely be helpful. I've been participating in it some recently and it is quite enjoyable. Having an official Factions mode with matchmaking and a more convenient interface geared to the mode would be amazing.

CupcakeTrapMay 8, 20141 votes

I think it might be fun if they did some kind of Team Builder event where you could queue up for a particular faction. Then maybe decide a winner based on how the matches go and write some lore in which that faction gains some power and does something with it.

AbiwonKenabiMay 8, 20141 votes

I've been suggesting this idea FOREVER...think about it: it could coincide with one of those nifty events, like a Noxus vs. Demacia event were the players decide who wins by how many times they win on that respective side.

CupcakeTrapMay 8, 20141 votes

Your name is familiar, but I don't see you signed up for this storyline. You should come join in!

AbiwonKenabiMay 9, 20142 votes

Oh Cuppycake. The shameless promotion! :P

I've considered joining several times. Maybe this time I'll do it >.<

CupcakeTrapMay 9, 20141 votes

OblongOtterMay 7, 20141 votes

I'll be the richest Gangplank this side of Runeterra, Arharhar. This would be really cool, maybe just a little hard to balance. Plus you have some factions with tons of champs and others with barely any (looking and you Demacia and the Void.) Then you also have champs who just sorta... exist. People like Shaco and Rammus. But if they can get everything to work I'd love this. Or maybe just boil it down to good, evil, neutral.

JingerbeardmanMay 7, 20141 votes

there really is no way to define good and evil in league, the terms are far to relative to the individual.

Sir ArmaMalumMay 8, 20143 votes

You can establish a mercenary system, neutral parties available to both sides

CupcakeTrapMay 8, 20141 votes

We've done this for specific tournaments: for example, in the Shon-Xan storyline, one of the tournaments was about control of the port of Shon-Xan, and for that tournament each side was allowed to bring in up to one Bilgewater Champion. (Yar har har)

However, so far we haven't adopted a general "mercenary" system, for a few reasons.

Which Champions would be mercenaries? It actually seems kind of difficult to come up with a list of "mercenary" Champions. Are they just unaffiliated?
This sounds like a balancing/gameplay problem: you'd have to consider balance for all factions with all mercenary champs factored in as wildcards. What if it turns out that a given faction is completely OP with the addition of a mercenary champ? It seems like then the optimal play for the other side would be to snatch up that merc first. Blue Side vs. Purple Side would become a huge factor.
It would add another rule to Champ select, which would increase confusion.
A big part of Factions is the unique gameplay we get from having factions with distinctive strengths and weaknesses due to their rosters. Even if you only have, say, 5 mercenary Champions available, that could be enough to fill in all the gaps and make the various factions more "generic".
You wouldn't believe how many times Factions staff has to deal with "wait why is ____ on _____" questions each day. Imagine if we were streaming a Featured Match in which Demacia had (say) Shaco. I personally do not like the idea of having to answer questions along the lines of "wtf shaco's not demacian" over and over and over again.

ShadowNinetailsMay 8, 20141 votes

What ArmaMalum said. In addition, you can have faction assignments be more skin-specific (Ex. Base Rumble fights for Bandle City with Tristana and Teemo, Rumble in the Jungle fights for Kumungu with Nidalee and Zyra and you could even make the stretch to combine it with the Plague Jungles to include Wukong and Rammus).

hartarMay 7, 20141 votes

I liked the ideia,but,alot of champion would out,like Ahri,and rammus,and shaco,and Aatrox and you get the point.So,it would need to be improved.

HexIXIMay 8, 20142 votes

Ahri is Ionian look at the champion section under game info

ArtoriusIVMay 8, 20142 votes

Aatrox by his lore would help a side currently losing in the factions battles overall.

CarbonWyreMay 8, 20141 votes

What about Ionia? They are going to get screwed with the small pool of champions. I mean, for a long time they didn't even have an assassin until Zed was released as an "Not Ionian, Ionian" assassin.

AbiwonKenabiMay 8, 20141 votes

Ahri Irelia Karma LeeSin MasterYi Soraka Syndra Udyr Varus Yasuo Akali Kennen Shen MonkeyKing

This is a small champion pool? Lee Sin, Karma, Soraka are all super strong right now, not even mentioning the other decent picks like Udyr, Ahri, Syndra, Yasuo.

Compare to Zaun:

Warwick Zac DrMundo Twitch Viktor MAYBE Jinx

Then to Bilgewater:

Gangplank MissFortune Fizz MAYBE Nami

I think there are other city states with more champion pool problems. We haven't even addressed if neutral parties like Blitzcrank, Syndra, Jinx(technically neutral) etc, would fight for their city state.

CarbonWyreMay 8, 20141 votes

Champions FROM Ionia include: Ahri Irelia Karma LeeSin MasterYi Soraka Varus

http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Ionia check towards the bottom

CupcakeTrapMay 8, 20141 votes

The previous Factions arc, Shon-Xan, was Noxus vs. Ionia. Ionia won, actually.

By the way, here's a big list of factions with some tentative Champion rosters: The World of Factions