Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

The Music Of League of Legends Needs a Rework!

Cosmic Star·1/14/2018, 9:45:44 PM·3 votes·1,291 views

We need a music, just like DJ Sona that goes frenetic when we are winning, and slower when loosing, that would detect big fights and turn into an epic theme, I see Riot composing beyond awesome musics either for animations (like the ''Climb'' , brand new awesome animation that has this ridiculous beautiful music) or to log in screens that keep me 2-3 minutes listening before log in. Just like I turn on the Star Guardian Music when playing with an SG skin and then, unfortunately turn it off, cause none of the music (classic or updated) are enjoyable enough to listen every game, either I turn off the music and put it on my own or just don't listen cause lags me a bit.

So this has been like this for quite a lot of time now, and I pray you already have projects on this cause music turns me on so much to make the plays in those epic team fights but listening to that calm music when a giant brawl is happening kinda sucks.

So please think about updating the music to be as awesome as the game! [slayer-jinx-catface]

4 Comments

Ed the Conqueror1/16/2018, 5:29:12 AM6 votes

Hey BornToBeAhriGod (I'm an Ahri main myself, but clearly not a god, more like... bronze-clad Arhi),

Thanks for your awesome question (and your kind words on the music for "The Climb" which I wrote and produced)!

The following are my views on the subject and do not necessarily reflect those of the rest of the music team or those of the developers of League of Legends.

League is a highly competitive game... which is a blessing for players but creates strong limitations for music. One of these limitations is that we are trying NOT to interfere with gameplay with information that may clutter perception/interfere with it. The music I wrote for Star Guardian that you hear at the beginning of the game only plays there for that very reason (not much happens before the music ends).

Another limitation has to do with how quickly game states (which is a technical term that generally refers to the stage the game is in) change in League. Whereas you can define a set of rules on how the music could change overtime (gold, objectives, dragons, etc.), a lot of fights have very quick onsets, and have very unpredictable outcomes. How music would react to these game states would be pretty haphazard - we could have music that doesn't react fast enough (getting in or out of fights), or do it in a clumsy way, or do it in a way that fits rapid changes but sounds bad. In any case, these sudden changes with music would probably interfere with having clean, readable audio gameplay information.

More linear games with NPCs have more predictable outcomes that really help defining solid rules for interactive audio, which allows for a wider range of implementation of interactive music.

SR is particularly complicated in this regard (and is also our only competitive map). I wrote the music for Dark Star Singularity, Star Guardian Invasion and Project Overcharge maps/modes, which allowed for a lot more variety in the approaches we chose.

Of course, the stuff I mentioned above doesn't mean there's no room for improvement or that we won't find a good way to have very interactive music for League.

Cheers!

Ed the Conqueror

Ifneth1/15/2018, 3:02:10 AM1 votes

That would be really cool. I would love to have music in the game, especially in response to in-game events.

DBS Ronovon1/16/2018, 5:30:59 AM1 votes

There is music in the game??

Draven