So, I decided to write up a thing for how I'll probably be judging champion concepts... Please comment if I've missed anything obvious.
Now, since champion concepts are complicated, hard to parse things, turning them into score sheets is a messy business. It’s very easy to just give out numbers based on gut feelings, which can then result in inconsistent ratings if one champion does something you really like, or rubs you the wrong way. As a result, I’ve decided to straight out list all the things I will be judging based on, so that I can be a little more even handed, and so that, if you disagree with my scoring, either I can explain my reasoning directly, or you can dispute it on more concrete grounds than ‘My champion was better than this other champion you rated higher!’. The sub-categories attached to each major category don’t have a hard score by themselves, but I have a rough idea of how I would weight them when judging a champion. Of course, ‘failing’ certain sub-categories (such as Writing Quality) are liable to result in a complete fail for the category as a whole.
Here are the things I look for in a champion
Lore
Lore is the area that I’m least comfortable judging, since it is A. far more subjective than judging a champion’s kit by itself and B. hard to criticise a person’s writing when Riot has been known to throw out some less than stellar examples themselves. That said, considering how Riot’s messed up with kits in the past, I’ll be trying to judge lore on its own merits, rather than as a direct comparison.
Here’s what makes up a Lore Score for me;
Writing Quality
“Is this lore worth reading?”
Pretty self-explanatory. I don’t expect Pratchett levels of literary skill, but I do expect amount of effort and competency to avoid ‘1/20, at least you wrote something’. If your writing would be unacceptable in a high school English creative writing piece, you may want to spruce it up a bit.
Character Depth
“Is the champion in this lore worth reading about?”
Even if your writing is excellent, there still needs to be a champion worth writing about to make it work. If your character doesn’t have adequate distinguishing qualities as a character or, alternatively, if your character has too many to be believable as an entity, your lore score will suffer. I find this is probably the section that is most often messed up; lots of champions end up as either bland ciphers, one-note stereotypes or overblown Mary Sues (the latter of which often also cause problems with canon).
Information
“Does this lore cover everything we need to know about this champion?”
For a character to be fully actualised, we need to know their physical attributes/abilities, their history, their personality, their motivations/mid-long term goals and their status as part of Runeterra. Some of this can be covered with in-game quotes or through the nature of their abilities (which I will include if they’re necessary to understanding the character), but most of it needs to be carried by the character’s Lore. I don’t mind if the answer to some of those questions are ‘It’s a mystery’ if there’s good reason for it (e.g. I don’t mind not knowing much about Bard, since he’s established as being an ineffable alien being), but these points need to at least be addressed in a way that the reader (AKA Villainous) can parse.
Canon Compliance
“Does this lore gel with what we already know about Runeterra?”
Riot’s lore as it stands is a bit of a mess, but it’s a fairly coherent mess if you’re willing to do your research. Though I won’t penalise a piece for contradicting some very minor details, I object to a piece of lore deliberately going out of its way to contradict what’s already known, whether that be through retconning inarguable events or mischaracterising other champions/notable entities in the lore.
Flow/Fun
Everyone will have their own ideas of what fun is (for example, I used to find great joy drinking the tears of frustration produced by my enemies as top lane tankwick). As a result, I decided to try and break this down into . Unlike the following categories, I will be trying to ignore the exact numbers of abilities.
Design Appeal
“How interesting is this champion on paper, both through its individual abilities and how the abilities work together?”
Ignoring all thoughts of how this champion would actually play if it made it into the game, how interesting does this champion look as a mental exercise? Are there any abilities that just sound cool when you read them? What kind of interesting synergies does this champion have with itself? What’s the ‘wow’ factor, just looking at this champion?
Design Fantasy
“How large is the niche this champion appeals to, and how well does it address that niche?"
A champion can't be all things to all people, so instead, it needs to appeal to a specific type of player. Most competently designed champions will appeal greatly to at least some portion of the league player base, but the best champions either appeal to a wide variety of players, or are the perfect champion for the subset who want them. Thinking about the champion's greatest strengths and how they would actually play, I try to assess how appealing this champion would actually be (especially in comparison to champions who already exist).
Design Health
“How interesting/fun is this champion when you’re not the one playing them?”
There’s many facets to what one might consider ‘healthy design’, but for the sake of simplicity, I’ll boil them down to ‘Balance of Skill’ (AKA the skill you need to play your champion vs the skill your opponent needs to play against your champion) and ‘
Design Implementation
This is where numerical values become important. My scoring in this category is based on the active functionality I foresee in a champion; if this champion were dropped into the game, as they currently stand, how would they fair? That’s not just in a strict ‘good v bad’ scenario, but also ‘does this champion have an acceptable skill curve?’ and ‘is this champion acceptably balanced for low v high level play?’
Lane Functionality
“What’s the champion’s first ~15 minutes like?”
How balanced is your champion for the laning phase? Do they have a viable role (Top/Mid/Bot/Sup/Jng)? What does a ‘good’ laning phase look like and what does a ‘bad’ laning phase look like? Similarly, what does a skilled player look like in lane, versus what does an unskilled player look like. A champion with a high score in this category has both an obvious win state and lose state coming out of the laning phase, though this is inevitably linked to the next category (which is why both are core). If I can’t identify the difference between someone who’s played 5 games and someone who’s played 500, you’re going to lose marks. If I can’t imagine a viable scenario where you’ve ‘won’ lane or where you’ve ‘lost’ lane, you’re going to lose marks.
Post-Lane Functionality
“What does the champion do after the first 15 minutes?”
How balanced is your champion in the teamfight/splitpush phase? Do they have an end goal coming out of the laning phase (‘extend the laning phase’ doesn’t count)? If your champion can’t teamfight, can’t split push and can’t set up picks, you lose out in this category. If they auto-win every team fight post 30 minutes, that’s also a fail.
Novelty
Novelty is probably the most empirical of the judging categories; “Has this been done before? If no, more points! If yes, less points!” Still, there’s also different ways a champion can be novel.
Ability Novelty
“Have these abilities been done before?”
Well, have they? This doesn’t just refer to ‘has this exact effect been seen’, but also, ‘Is this the same as another ability, but with the crowd control type swapped/numbers adjusted/etc?’ Of course, not every ability has to be a special snowflake, but there has to be some new stuff.
Playstyle Novelty
“What makes this champion different from other champions of the same role?”
Your abilities might have twenty gimmicks, but if the base abilities are similar to an existing champion, it’s likely your champion will play in a similar way. When you cut through the fluff, just how different is the champion in question?
Thematic/Fantasy Novelty
“How different is your champion as a character?”
League’s been known to double up on certain themes in the past (we currently have seven Ice champions: Ashe, Nunu, Anivia, Sejuani, Trundle, Lissandra, Braum, and that’s not even getting into all the skins), but your champion still needs to have something that separates them from the other characters. Even ignoring the ‘don’t copy an existing champion’s theme’ rule that should be pretty obvious, what’s far more important is not copying their fantasies (e.g. Veigar’s ‘I WILL BECOME ALL POWERFUL’ shtick, Draven’s ‘Look at how impressive I am; it’s all about me!’ shtick, etc).
Cohesion
There’s three main elements to ‘Cohesion’; Kit, Lore and Playstyle. Thus, cohesion is judged based on how well each pair of elements works together.
Explaining these is generally pretty simple.
Kit v Lore
“Does this champion’s lore justify their abilities?”
Not just in the direct ‘don’t give your champion abilities they have no source for’, but also ‘don’t give your champion abilities that let them do stuff that doesn’t match their theme’. E.g. A thin, agile waif based around guile/sneakiness shouldn’t have a massive armour/mr boost as an ability.
Kit v Playstyle
“Does this champion’s abilities work together to achieve the intended playstyle?”
Having an ability/abilities that run counter to a champion’s overall playstyle are frowned upon.
Lore v Playstyle
“Does this champion’s playstyle make sense with their character?”
AKA Does this avoid the Garen paradox (the unyielding, noble soldier fights by hiding and ambushing his opponents)?
We was having a good time, then he showed up...UNINVITED!
