I think this concept suffer from many problems, and I hope I can help highlight them. The problems go far beyond the kit, which is why I will NOT be reviewing the actual kit.
-
No lore and/or weak theme. A good amount of concepts on this board suffer from this problem and this one is no exception. Is lore necessary? Technically, no. Does it help a massive amount in making a design more fun, and does it provide an enormous source of inspiration to work with? That it does, on both counts. You don't "need" lore, but trust me, it'll make things a ton easier with it around.
-
No lore means, well, no good name. When you name a mage Magnifico you might as well name it Houdini, or an Egyptian themed character Cleopatra. The truth is, when naming a champion, you want something that indirectly hints to a player what that champion does, or something of their back story (for example, Zaun means “fence” in German). If you're making an Egyptian-themed character, an Egyptian-themed name can work quite well, so long as you stay away from the really blatantly obvious ones like the names of the most obvious gods (Ra, Hathor, Bast), and don't rely on a grade 2 education for famous figures. If you call your Egyptian character "Cleopatra", I will personally hunt you down, drive to your house, and slap your face.
-
Mainly, there are two ways to start designing a champion: From a theme and lore, or more rarely, from a gameplay mechanic idea (like a support which leaps before its allies to block shots), taking an existing gameplay mechanic and taking it to the next level. This concept, well, does neither. If you want to make a puppeteer themed champion (taking the theme/lore approach) it’s crucial that you establish a CHARACTER more so than establishing a puppeteer. What I mean by this is that it isn’t enough for somebody to be a puppeteer, or a fencer, or a ninja, they need to be a character: somebody with a background, personality, flaws, and desires. Once you established that, as I mentioned in point 2, the rest comes naturally.
-
Yes, I ramble on for hours about pesky THEME and LORE and all of the NONSENSE. But really what we all care about is the KIT (not). Jokes aside, the kit makes up half the champion (where the other half is lore and theme), so clearly, it’s a crucial part of making a champion. Really, making interactive and balanced kits come purely from experience so you will have to experiment, but here are a few points about making a good kit:
4a. No mock-twisted-fate-pick-a-card abilities. This deserves its own category.
4b. Build some flaws into your design, and make sure those flaws have a valid set of options to be overcome. I cannot stress this enough. Lacking for sustain is a great way. Lacking for survival is another, as there are tons of ways to sustain oneself, or to survive combat. Lacking mobility also works quite well. Either way, you're opening the player up to choices, and that is nearly always something that brings fun to the game!
4c. Make sure you’re making your champion to be a specific role and class, and equip it to handle it well. That also means understanding exactly what it is supposed to do and why.
4d. Remember, resource systems exist for a reason. Primarily, they exist as a way to restrict players from casting their abilities non-stop. Sometimes this is done through mana, sometimes through energy, sometimes through simple ability cool downs.
4e. Never give players two choices if one of them is wrong. Ex. Zarya's shield from Overwatch and Abbadon's ult/shield from Dota, you can either hit them or not hit them, but hitting them is the wrong choice.
4f. Finally, the ULTIMATE ABILITY. YES, FIREWORKS, EXPLOSIONS!! Actually, no. An ultimate ability is more than just a big explosion cough Graves. It must have a strong connection to the theme and feel like you finally have all the tools you need once you get it.
Closing: I would LOVE to see you make a good puppeteer champion concept come to life! It’s a popular theme, and I have not seen one person yet get it right. I know you have good ideas in your mind, and I know you can make really good concepts with those ideas. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I like to think that I make pretty decent concepts that could be used for reference. If you want to take a look at the concepts I made, including old, crappy, scrapped concepts, here is a link to all of them:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lG6h4iPOTYZzZ-2GP3vAELRpi937bgyVWGinsly-Rlg/edit?usp=sharing. Remember, in every bad concept there is at least one good element.
Hope I helped, cheers!
