Ask Riot the Ghostcrawler edition

Welcome to Ask Riot, where we focus on your questions and give you answers.

This time we are doing something a little different. Last week, League design director Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street took to Reddit for an AMA about, well, anything League-related. Redditors asked and Ghostcrawler answered with his thoughts about the future of League, problems he sees with the game, and his past as a designer on games like World of Warcraft and Age of Empires. We've collected ten of the best questions and answers for you here, in case you missed it. Some questions have been edited for style and brevity.

Have a question (or two...hundred) yourself? Head over to Ask Riot and sign into your League account. Check out the Do’s, the Don'ts, and then ask us something. We’ll archive the answers once we’ve accumulated a few of them. One thing to note: Asking the same question over and over again won’t help your cause.

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“Okay, why not?”

Some questions may already be answered elsewhere or won’t be right for Ask Riot. This isn’t the best place to announce new products or features here and we might skip conversations on issues which we’ve already gone into more depth elsewhere (but we can clarify individual points!). Even if your question isn’t the one being answered, we’re listening, and we’ll be sharing your questions with the Rioters who are working directly on the things you’re curious about.

Top 10 Qs and As from the Ghostcrawler AMA

1. Do you ever think Summoner's Rift will get another huge Visual Update? Will themed maps (a Halloween-themed map, a winter themed map, etc) ever come?

Ghostcrawler: I'm sure it will get another update when it needs it, but probably not for several more years. We've discussed the idea of skinning SR for limited windows. If you recall Butcher's Bridge for ARAM that we did during the Bilgewater event, that's kind of the idea. We haven't yet figured out an efficient way to do it—SR was basically hand-painted by a bunch of artists. It's not an easy map to skin.

2. Where do you see League of legends in five years? Where do you see Riot Games in five years?

Ghostcrawler: I don't think League will look that fundamentally different in five years. We'd really like to come up with a game that stands the test of time, like Dungeons & Dragons or Magic the Gathering or even soccer. We will keep updating the old, janky shit (like the map, or even the client, and certainly old champions), but I think League will always be recognizable as League. For Riot, my biggest hope is that in five years, we have multiple games and you guys are struggling to decide which Riot game to log into that night. :)

3. What is the hardest balance issues you've had to deal with in your years at Riot?

Ghostcrawler: At the highest level, it's coming up with one set of numbers that work for both pro and Bronze. A lot of our balance issues arise because we try to keep winrates within a narrow band for all tiers of skill.

4. What do you think of the current item system overall and how it can lead to homogenization among champions? Specifically, how do you feel about the fact that tank items make all characters equally tanky, leading to balance problems like tank Ekko, tank Fizz and recently, tank Yasuo? Thanks for all the hard work and, unrelated, did you do any work on Age of Mythology? Loved that game as a kid!

Ghostcrawler: The fundamental problem with the item system, and this is mostly my opinion so the team might disagree, is that it is trying to do two competing things. First, it wants to reward you for gold earned. Buying items is the main way your champ gets more powerful as a result of your playing well (champ leveling is the other significant way). So if we had an item system where it was easy to make mistakes and purchase items that didn't really make you stronger, then the item system fails on that axis. The other axis is that the item system wants to let you customize your character, and that includes trying out weird builds.

If I could just snap my fingers and make it all work, then the best result would be that each champion has multiple build paths with interesting decisions along the way, but without a real risk of making such bad choices that earning gold doesn't help you win. That is hard to deliver on in practice.

I worked a lot on Age of Mythology. I designed several of the units, did almost all of the random maps, wrote a big chunk of the script, and named most of the characters. It will always have a place in my heart.

5. What's your take on Crit chance? Is it healthy for the game?

Ghostcrawler: I think having some level of unpredictability above and beyond not knowing what the other team is doing is healthy for the game. I don't think crit chance has played out well as that thing though. We have had a ton of meetings on what we could do instead, or even what we would do if we were launching League today, but unfortunately we don't have an awesome solution yet.

6. What's your favorite pokemon?

Ghostcrawler: Magikarp.

7. Is Riot Games already working on creating another game?

Ghostcrawler: We have multiple R&D projects in various stages. From experience, I know that not all of those games will make it into full production, but hopefully a few will.

8. Hi Greg! What's your take on how the League community has received you so far, compared to the community that you interacted with over at Blizzard?

Ghostcrawler: To be honest, I have found the League community to be pretty great overall. I know you may not accept that at face value, but it's true. I've found a lot of League players to be willing to accept a logical argument but also to call you on bullshit as appropriate. I think part of it may be that while some League players have mains, they don't have the same investment in their character that a WoW player has. If you nerf someone's warlock, you may be pushing them out of raiding that week or out of their Arena team, and while many WoW players have alts, they may not be as geared or skilled on those alts.

Honestly, most of the static I get from League players comes from misperceptions about my WoW days. For example, I am sometimes associated with efforts to casualize or "dumb the game down." If you look at the things I championed on WoW, like very difficult five-player dungeons, my personal attitude was usually way on the hardcore side of things.

9. How does being a designer at Riot compare to designing at other companies? Is it largely the same, or does Riot operate in a way that makes them unique to work for compared to places you previously worked?

Ghostcrawler: At many companies, the designer is often in the position of telling other people what to do. You might craft a design document, fire it off to the engineer, answer any questions she has, and then move on. Riot works much more as a team, where everyone contributes to a design throughout the process. If you are a power-hungry individual who doesn't want to see their vision compromised (and to be fair, there are totally designers like that), then it's not a great situation to be in, because you are going to be challenged all the time. But I vastly prefer it. It is such a great experience when an effects artist or an insights researcher says "Hey, I've been thinking about that problem, and I have a potential solution I'd like to discuss." The end product just ends up being more cohesive and you have more people who really want to see the idea succeed. Morale tends to be higher too.

10. Hey Greg! As an aspiring game designer, I was wondering if you could give some tips to people that want to work in game design. I'm about to start working at a game studio in QA, and I wanted to get your thoughts on how to really stand out/get your foot past the front door and into the design space. Thanks.

Ghostcrawler: First, you need to absolutely crush your current role. Opportunities are given to people who excel and are extremely valuable, not to folks who are struggling. Once you have impressed the studio, and hopefully the designers, you can share that your ultimate career goal is to lane swap into design. What I do in those situations is to try and set aside some time to talk to the QA person from time to time, maybe invite them to a design meeting, or give them some design projects to work on on the side for practice. There is no guarantee this will happen because it is asking a lot of of the designer who is essentially mentoring you.

It's also possible to have a lot of influence on a product, and even its design, no matter what discipline you are in, at least at some studios. Finally, most studios are more desperate for leaders than they are for designers. Becoming a QA lead or manager might make you more valuable, and therefore give you more options and influence, at the end of the day. Good luck!