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Extra Credits has a good idea about challenges in games... a new way to design champs

Linna Excel·11/14/2018, 12:18:05 PM·4 votes·3,280 views

Riot is always on the lookout for new ideas about champs to build them around. Extra Credits just released a video about how games challenge us. You are either forced to use reflexes, logic, or a combination of both. That sums up a lot of champs in the game: what is the thing they have to do logically speaking to win a game and then there's the part about actually pulling it off.

What EC proposes is perhaps there's things everyone is missing in game design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEDVDhOYJ2I

As I was watching that, I immediately thought of riot. They constantly say that they need new ideas to build champs and kits around. So, what if they tried to explore some of these other types of challenges out there.

Take empathy and intuition. Maybe there's a champ governed by mood and both the player and the other side have to recognize his mood and play the champ accordingly. Think gnar but cranked up to 11 and much more subtle in the shift. Perhaps the champion has 3 or 4 moods and his skills will alter based on what mood he is in, but the game doesn't explicitly tell you how he's feeling. It'll hint at it, but you have to be paying attention to some little clues it gives you.

Maybe there could be a champion that revolves around moral choices, for example every few levels he could have a "moral choice quest" of some kind that will shift him around what choices he took. You know how WoW pallys can be either DPS, tank, or healer? Well what if we made a league paladin where every time he levels up his ult, he has to choose between damage, protection, and healing or something like that. Or base the results off of what he's being doing. So maybe he gets during the game he gets a few quests that ends when he does X damage, tanks Y damage, or heals Z health and he gets the bonus based off of which aspect triggered. Or the quest would be decided if the champion finishes a support item, a damage item, or a defensive item next. Or three spots appear on the map and the pally can only go to one of them. IDK how to do a moral challenge in league, these are the best things I can come up with.

Part of me wonders if riot could create a champ that imposes some kind of broader game theory on the game and both his teammates and the enemy's team would be forced to participate in that game. It would be something that slows the game down a little and forces people around him on both teams to think and make rational choices. In a solo queue environment. I mean yes a champ like this would be a little game warping, but it be a completely different minigame to base a champion off of.

Here's a great challenge to build a champion around in league terms: minion management. Something I constantly hear higher elo people talk about is how low elo people don't know how to use minions to your proper advantage. So what riot could do is create a champ that forces people to learn the macro elements of the game and forces new players to learn minion management and rewards the higher elo people who do it naturally, or help them get to the next level. Yes, it's more of a logical puzzle, but it's a league flavored challenge they could build a champion around.

While league is an existing game with constraints, I think asking questions like "how are different ways we can challenge players" might lead riot to find the new champions they are looking for.

5 Comments

nobotninja11/14/2018, 1:18:48 PM2 votes

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DerMangoJoghurt11/14/2018, 12:58:28 PM1 votes

I don't think League is the right game for empathetic challenges. Conveying emotions of fictional characters requires clues players can read and analyze. However, League is quite limiting in what kind of clues can be used. The only practical way to present those clues I can think of is animation. However, at some point players will just learn to tell the animations apart, at which point it becomes a skill challenge. Additionally, a player is controlling the character and having to analyze your own behavior and potentially not understanding it can lead to a feeling of disconnect between player and champion, which is something you generally want to avoid.

I'm not saying League has no way to improve on this. For example, Gnar's rage doesn't feel like rage to me, just a timer until I transform. Removing the "rage bar" and having your current mood be displayed another way could be interesting, but it would be almost impossible to do so without sacrificing gameplay clarity.

Ifneth11/14/2018, 10:16:58 PM1 votes

It would be really cool to see if champions could have overall ‘emotions’ in a game. For example, if they were ‘ahead,’ then they could say lines about being eager to press the advantage; ‘behind,’ determination to come back.

We have reactions like these already. Destroying a turret, respawning, getting minions, etc. The next step would be making the champion’s emotional reactions somehow persistent.