Character Design in League or Which came first: The Kit of the Champion?

Hey everyone. It's me again.

Today (or at least in this post) I wanted to talk about designing champions. "But marvelous, why are you posting in story and art then?" you might ask. Actually, my conversation is more about designing characters/champions from the point of view of characterization and about which should come first: The character or the kit. Now I want to prelude this by saying (as I don't work for Riot) I have NO idea what system or ideas come first. Rather, I wanted to discuss with the community and see which you guys approve of. Perhaps get some Riot insight if they want to chime in.

#The Kit Approach.

First, we have the kit approach. This approach focuses on designing a kit before the champion. As an example, let's say "I wanna make a champion with a teleporting ult" and then designing the rest of the kit. Following that, we have a fleshed out kit. What comes next is making a champion that tailors itself to this kit. Maybe a teleporting void monster? Perhaps a zaunite technomancer who has discovered reality hopping? etc. Some pros of this are...

• "Iconic" kits. What's teemo without his shrooms or darius without his giga chop?
• Champion personality types will natural be created and lead to more "diverse" fanbase (Garen players always hide in the bush, Riven players mash their keyboards, etc.)
• The above two points feed back into the character's story or characterization and lead to a more unique character, even if it ends up being something comical.
• Gameplay is what a character will be often remembered for, even with a strong personality.

And then you have the downsides...

• Having to rework a champion like this will make the champion lose a chunk of it's identity. If Ahri couldn't charm anymore, would she -really- feel like the same character?
• Characters are so tightly bound to their kits you can't tell stories without mentioning them. If there's a Lux story and she doesn't fire a laser at least once, will it really feel like Lux? What about Swain turning into a bird demon?
• It's possible that characters emphasize their kits and don't have sensible stories or personalities. (LOOKIN AT YOU NUNU!)

#The Character Approach.

Secondly comes the character approach. As opposed to the first one, we have a character story that is turned into a champion. What if we had a cyborg who broke free from Viktor and he turned out to fight against him? What kind of powers would he have, what sort of skills would he possess? What could he do? (COUGH COUGH SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT COUGH). With this approach, we got positives like:

• Strong characterization leads to a well-developed personality.
• Character stories become strongly tied to the champion even in-game. Jinx is a good example, as is Lissandra.
• Focusing on character first will remove the fear of having the cliche character repeated. (IE: Varus wants vengence! Kalista too! Oh and Lucian! Don't forget- etc)
• A strong character can lead to a TON of kit ideas even if some ideas are scrapped in production.

Of course, there are downsides too.

• Character-first can lead to some hodgepodge kits trying to encompass all of a character's personality. (Galio)
• A kit that doesn't fit a character sticks out IMMENSELY compared to a character that doesn't fit a kit (Aatrox)
• Players will be quite upset if the character has any changes to it's lore that removes/alters key facts. For example, imagine if J4 didn't hate Swain anymore? You'd need a LOT of backstory to justify it.

#"But what about doing it at the same time?"

In a perfect world, kit and character are perfected at the same time...but we don't live in one, sadly. One will almost always be completed before the other. Likewise, I'm certain a designer would think of a very basic character with amazing kits. I'd imagine Tahm Kench was thought up like that: A demon who can do this and this and that and this. Conversely, a writer/artist will make a beautiful sketch or a ten-page character bible about this character, hopes and dreams...and maybe about two paragraphs about possible kits?

As I said, I don't work for Riot or know their inner workings. What I do know is stuff like kits, conceptualization and even trying my hand at some champ design in my spare time. The one post I recall was when they were talking about Taric's VU. This is the quote from Repertoir that I'll be linking:

{quoted}

Taric's design work was actually finished early this year, but he's getting the full deal as far as updates go: model, animations, effects, sounds, lore, icons, gameplay.

He'll be a Sion-level rework, and he should probably come late this year or early next year.

I did his game design work, so if you hate it when it hits PBE, feel free to let me know then.

This means that Taric as a playable character was finished WAY in advance. That's not to say it hasn't happened the other way either: Vi and Azir, for examples, were concepts people wanted to hit for ages but it took several attempts to nail them. Sometimes one part of a character will mesh and be done in a day. Other times it'll take years of trial and error to hit them.

So what do you all think? Does Kit > Character? Does Character > Kit? Are they equal? Should one try to be nailed before the other or do you think that there should be a balance between both? By all means, discuss to your heart's content and try to add/subtract to what I said if you wish!