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How do you come up with your concepts?

Stephenizgod·8/10/2014, 11:35:21 PM·3 votes·892 views

Whenever i get a chance i go through the forums and look at all the Champ and Skin concepts, commenting here and there if im in the mood. For some reason i became curious as to how other people come up with these ideas. Reading all these concepts it makes very interested in how they started and what sparked it in the first place.

I know for me and my champion concepts it usually starts with a single ability or simple idea, like my newest concept Kaito, The Raining Swordsmen started because i was thinking of Yasuo's ult and Fiora's ult, for no real reason. I thought "What would happen if their ults were sort of combined", once i had what i figured would be a nice mixed i needed to think up a way to use it, it would be too powerful the way it is so i needed something to activate it, and so i came up with his passive, and so i came up with the ability Calming Rain. Now i needed a champ to go with it, i decided since i started with Yasuo i would make him related to Yasuo in some way, using Yasuo as a template i took small ideas modified them and changed them over and over again until i came up with the final product, Kaito! Sure he is OP but idc he seems fun to me.

The idea can even start entirely with wanting to balance another champion, such as Kujin, the Raging Sun where i wanted to make a champion similar to Lee Sin but easier to balance, to show you can have a combo mobile high damage fighter with very prominent weaknesses.

Sibara started with her ult because i thought "A complex support who scales with skill level and requires you to be near allies". Grimjoy started with lore and his kit being built around that and Genesis started with the idea of a morphing weapon.

So this is how i come up with champ concepts, a single idea that slowly builds as i think on it, most of the time as im writing it! How do you guys come up with ideas? is it the on the spot? a nagging idea that wont go away? talking to friends and BAM hits you? im very interested ^_^...

18 Comments

Sir ArmaMalum8/10/2014, 11:45:36 PM2 votes

I'm always focused on game mechanics and design, so I have 2 ways usually. Either

a) I think of a cool ability or mechanic that isn't in the game yet and build around that.

or

b) I try to find theme's or stereotypes that haven't been characterized yes in league, a.k.a. an empty creative space and try to come up with a unique kit evolving within that space.

MrBuffington8/11/2014, 3:05:28 AM2 votes

I only have two (real) concepts so far, both of them were sort of designed to fill a certain niche that I saw as sort of unfilled (or at least underfilled).

For The Azazel, I was trying to create a powerful jungler that could hold her own against Lee Sin in terms of power. She was similarly meant to be a martial artist, and was highly mobile and had a high skill ceiling. Whether I succeeded in my goals is debatable, though I do like the general theme of a less confrontational martial artist.

For Elle and Otto, I was trying to create a yordle, since it seemed like one was overdue (Riot seems to agree, as Gnar is now coming out). Moreover Riot has mentioned wanting to make a more significant "pet" for a character (ie. Tibbers, Malzahar's voidlings, etc.), so I figured what if there was a pair of champions? Lastly, I wanted to create a heavy utility focused jungler.

For these two, once I settled on the original theme, the kit sort of fell into place. A lot of times, the kit also comes when I decide on a certain aspect of their kit or skills, for example, the Azazel has a greater attack range as part of her high skill cap, where high level players will be able to orb-walk other melee champions because the Azazel has higher attack range than most melee champions. This creates a more non-confrontational style, which influenced a lot of the mechanics of her kit, like how she wants to avoid dashing directly into an enemy to gain a second dash, etc. Elle and Otto were much more difficult to establish skills, though Otto's Tether was an early ability that helped establish their utility.

ploki1228/11/2014, 3:25:46 AM2 votes

In a lot of cases, I'm simply having an idea that I then transform into a kit/character. More often than not it's a mechanic/skill that I try to work a character around it, and then from the character form a kit, but in other cases I've tried to create the character first, mimicking someone else's idea, or tagging along for related champs and then morphing that into a full fledged champion.

Recently, I've taken more of the second approach in my "Design a Rioter" series (1st post was ManWolfAxeBoss, nexti s probably Gypsylord which will be coming Soon™). I start with the presentation part, where I describe who that Rioter is, where his name come from, what his job title means, and what he worked on recently... things like that. Then, from there I try to highlight a few leu aspect of that Rioter, and create their alter ego, enhancing those parts to the extreme. Finally, from the alter ego, I design a rough kit, define a role, and rework the kit to follow that role.

Varkarrus8/11/2014, 3:21:21 AM1 votes

I created one in the form of Undassa. My original concept was her Writhe!, an ability that in its original incarnation dealt on-hit effects on every hit, but was probably OP considering then Wit's End would add 168 magic damage to it. Instead, I turned her into a magic-damage heavy autoattacker, reliant on Nashor's Tooth and various AP items.

EMOFRATPARTY8/11/2014, 5:57:43 AM1 votes

I think about the story and what the character would look like and build everything else around that. Once you start to build personality, everything else falls into a kind of "creative snowball," making it really easy to fill out the details.

I'll reference my concept thread here as an example, but I thought about everything as I wrote it, e.g. sequentially.