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I think Evelynn should have lost her stealth mechanic

Linna Excel·10/13/2017, 6:11:16 PM·1 votes·634 views

Okay, it might be too soon for this thread but here goes, I think Evelynn's stealth mechanic is bad for her rework from 3 angles: gameplay, thematic, and skins. I'm putting this in art and story because 2 out of the 3 of those things are art and story related.

Gameplay issues of her stealth Evelynn's new stealth has a big problem in terms of gameplay. Specifically it has a very narrow window where it has a lot of potential. It has no potential pre-6 because players don't want to play like b - tches and stay near the turret or buy a control ward. Freezing the minion wave just outside of your turret's range is a foreign concept to 90% of the player base. Now she does get stealth at six, but I'm thinking that it's necessary so she can pull off any sort of "evelynn-style" surprise ganks. A jungler who can't even gank at 6 is crap and riot apparently never considered her for any other role. I mean they moved Mordekaiser to a new lane without a second thought, but for Evelynn it looks like jungling was the only thing on the table for her.

Now while this wouldn't be a problem on some other champs with devastating post-6 ganks, Evelynn is on a timer for 3 reasons. The first is the longer the game goes, the less likely you'll be able to find someone split off from the team in a gankable situation. Particularly in the higher elos riot balances around. The second reason is that as an assassin, Evelynn is naturally on a timer. Assassins are really powerful in the early game but fall off later. So she's going to have issues where she's less likely to find someone out of position, particularly in higher elo but also issues where the later things go, the harder it'll be to do her job. This is further compounded by the delay on her cooldown which telegraphs her position to the enemy team and completely negates the fact she's invisible. The third issue is related in that she's kind of snowball reliant as an assassin. If she can't burst down a carry she's useless. So if the enemy ADC gets fed, she's screwed and feeding.

So evelynn has given up a lot just to keep this feature and I'm not even sure its the best idea for her anymore. She lost her early pressure. She lost power elsewhere in her kit to keep this window. I have to ask if it was worth it in the long run considering this was a delete and remake sort of rework.

There's also a bigger sin riot committed here. They bleeped over evelynn's core gameplay. I'm not talking about her AD builds or the occasional build around liandry's and rylai's. I'm talking about her methodical hunting patterns, her stalking patterns, and ambush predator playstyle. All of those things combined into a unique playstyle no other champ in the game had. She wasn't a flashy assassin, she was more of a DPS skirmisher. For the people who mained her, that was awesome.

From a game design perspective, when you have 140 champs deleting the thing that made a specific champ's playstyle unique is generally a bad move. She wasn't perfect before, but I think the approach to playing her before was much better. If you really wanted to jump in and out of a fight people could have mained Zed, Leblanc, Fizz, Ahri, Kassadin, Irelia, Yasuo, Lucian before his dash's CD was nerfed, Elise, and maybe a few other champs. Her new gameplay has been done to death already while her old one was one of a kind. Now it's zero of a kind.

At this point I have to ask why did you even keep stealth in the kit at all?

Thematic issues of her Stealth _Dear Rito,

There's something called ludonarrative dissonance. You might want to learn about that and why it is a bad thing before you make or rework anything else.

Signed me._

Thematically Evelynn wants to be seen. She lures people in and then kills them. She's a baiter. She might even been a master baiter.* Gameplayically Evelynn doesn't want to be seen. She wants to hide and pounce when the moment is right.

Does anyone see the issue here? Anyone? Hello? Her theme and her gameplay are complete opposites. I mean you can't really do a theme for a champion that wants one thing but then give them a gameplay that wants them to do completely the opposite. It just doesn't make any sense. Is she supposed to be a champ that wants to hide or is she a champ that wants to be seen?

I mean yes there's the charm, but that's both a heavy-handed fix and as I said above, it works against her stealth theme. Then to make it fair and give it counterplay, riot had to add the indicator and the terrible delay which makes things even worse for both aspects. Her charm feels bad because she has stealth (and too large a range on it) and her stealth feels bad because the charm needs counterplay.

So by trying to satisfy divergent themes, riot successfully made each individual component worse.

*that is totally fair given her theme and some of her void lines

Skin issues of her stealth One of the reasons people wanted her to get a vgu (aside from hating on the stealth) was so she'd get more skins again. She did have a committed fan base that loved her, kinky BDSM outfit and all. So what did you guys do for her rework?

You gave her 2 forms. This means she's probably going to be a little lower on the rework priority but also a little worse on people's budgets. Not only does she have 2 forms but they are somewhat opposing forms. The other day I asked what existing skins lines would work on her and while I got a number of good answers, one thing I noticed is that some answers worked well on her bait form but not the demon form, and other answers worked on the demon form but not the bait form. Now don't get me wrong, I think the skins team does a great job 90% of the time. They've got this covered. But now they've got more work to do because of this. I'm not sure this was necessary.

Now while I've not gotten a sold answer from riot, I suspect that the whole reason she got the demon form was for a visual indicator for the person playing her. In the past she was see-though. A lot of the time. So for people who bought a skin, they spent a lot of the time in a see through skin. That was an issue. Unfortunately, Evelynn's demon form is also see-through so not only is the issue still there, there's also going to be people who subjectively don't like it. Or people who were hoping she'd turn into a bat while stealthed.

I get that riot was trying to piggyback the idea of a shape-shifting monster that looks nice at first glance and then things go horribly wrong, however that decision is working against the idea of a steathy assassin.

So basically the issue still exists, but we as fans now have to pay more because of it. Did riot hire Corporate Commander to work on the rework teams or something? That's the vibe I'm getting here.

While this was a clunky work around, it will cause issues down the road for a mechanic I'm not sure is as easily justified anymore. I'm not sold that keeping stealth in her kit was the right call because riot completely got rid of her old gameplay to the point keeping stealth in the kit I'm not sure was automatically justifiable.

Final thoughts After thinking about this rework as a complete rebuild, I'm not sure evelynn core design in terms of theme and gameplay works. While there might be "improved health" and "newer visuals", just by looking at evelynn, playing with her a little, and analyzing her design I think there were some major failures that happened in the rework if you start digging around and looking at the deeper meanings in consequence.

Is anyone familiar with a silent heart attack? Basically 1/3 of all heart attacks are undetected. You might feel a little weak or have symptoms of a cold at worst. That's what I'm thinking is happening to evelynn. She had symptoms, but riot got some over-the-counter medicines for a cold and they went away. However the patient is actually in bad shape but is unaware of it.

That's what I think of this rework, it looks good on the outside and everyone is happy, but once it's been around for awhile, I think we are going to slowly realize there are newer fundamental problems on the inside.

I think riot really should have picked 1 of the 2 aspects of the rework, charming bait or stealthy assassin, and all-ined on that particular aspect. I think that the two aren't going to work together in the long run and this isn't a case of getting the numbers right. This rework feels like riot couldn't make the tough decision they needed to and it's going to have consequences for a long time.

When it comes time for her to get another rework, I'm of the opinion riot is going to have to pick seduction or stealth and all in on that decision.

3 Comments

yeulx10/13/2017, 6:21:03 PM3 votes

Linna your severely wrong... even tho its your opinion... its healthy compared to her older one her kit also has counter play to her stelth especially with Lust Dust

Wrathof30010/13/2017, 6:37:00 PM3 votes

Thematically, Evelynn doesn't want to be 'seen' rather she needs her human form to appear approachable able her victims, Riot covered the seducing part of her lore with her new W. In the lore Evelynn remains 'invisible' until she singles out her prey, then revealing her sexy human form to lure them in, her demon shade form is her spiritual form which humans would not see, this is why she takes this form when invisible in game.

Umbral Regent10/14/2017, 3:53:25 AM1 votes

I don't see her Level 6 Demon Shade form as an issue in terms of skins. She may still be see-through, sure, but I'm not sure if you noticed, but she's less see-through than before. With her body being black and her special effects (Empowered Whiplash glow, horn glow, eye glow, hair glow, claw glow, etc.) being bright colors, and all being ever-so-transparent, you still get plenty of eyecandy with skins.

And on top of that...Why should she shapeshift? Like, her changing forms from a humanoid figure into a bat (or anything else) would be HORRIBLE for both gameplay clarity, and more work for skin design. Sure, there may be a lot more one could do with shapeshifting, but I personally don't think it'd feel right for a Champion to be one thing for a few minutes, then spend most of her time being something else entirely for the rest of the match.

And I say "most of her time" - because, again, you will be changing back because your stealth breaks when you go in for the kill. Having that massive schism between stealthed and unstealthed forms would just be utterly horrible.

And, to reinforce it, let's look at examples of Champions who do visually transform; Gnar, Nidalee, and Kayn.

Nidalee's design, at its core, is "shapeshifting huntress" - and, even better, her design is basically locked for any future skins; Human Form, and Cougar Form. There's no huge variation between skins (as transforming into a bat might have for Evelynn), and most any skin for Nidalee will be thematically and visually coherent.

As for Gnar, his design is a little weirder. I don't have any keywords to use for it, but "primal rage" and "rapid growth" work, to a small degree. Again, we see a simple design that can be easily repeated across skins - small, fluffy, wild Yordle, and super-massive hulking ragebeast. There are of course some variations in visual design (Snow Day Gnar being a wolf, Dino Gnar being reptillian, etc.), but you'll always be able to see the same thing; small yordle, burly beast.

And both of them give visual clarity, too; with their different forms, Gnar and Nidalee have different kits, too. When Gnar's in mini form, you'll know he'll be attacking from a range with a marksman kit (skillshot, mobility, and three-hit burst damage), while when he's in mega form, you know he'll have a Tankier fighting style, with hard crowd control and less mobility. (also; Mega-Gnar gets GNAR!!!, which it serves as an indicator for.)

And Nidalee's kit is much the same; Human form for ranged trap-laying, druidic healing, and long-distance javelin throws, and Cougar form for melee takedowns and skirmishing. Both forms have a visual indicator for the differences in abilities.

And with Kayn/Rhaast, all three of his forms have the same kit, but small differences. Standard Kayn has the basic kit with none of the trim, and no special passive bonus. Rhaast has more crowd control, healing for skirmishes, and is built to slay tanks and be a tank, while Shadow Kayn is highly mobile, capable of slaying on the move, and breaking squishies regardless of his build with increased range and Magic Damage.

Now, do you see what these all have in common?

Each unique form has differences between the others, which the forms serve as indicators for.

If Evelynn's stealth had her with a different form than her base, but with no changes to her kit, then it'd be not only visually jarring, but horribly inconsistent and ultimately useless visual changes.

So, yeah - Evelynn's stealth, from a visual and skin perspective, is perfectly fine.