Originally Posted by Fomorian27

I definitely think there's more depth and counterplay in lol than in dota. karthus ult vs is zeus is the perfect example. There are so many ways to counter karthus ult: stun or silence him during channel, buy zonyas or any mr item, pick a champ that has an untargetable spell (fizz, shaco, vlad, elise), sorakas wish, any heal or lifesteal, and even chugging a red pot. Of these, basically the only one that would work against zeus is healing or lifestealing up once you get low. zeus has no channel time, so stunning or silencing him isn't a counter. It's instantaneous, so a clutch invuln or magic immunity isn't a counter.

Originally Posted by YamiBelgarath

Its a familiar problem with the Runeterra framework, one we've seen before. The squality of your characters consistently depends on how good the story is of the character- the better you shape your character, the more clearly a theme emerges, and the better the mechanics are. Draaaaaaven is a perfect example of this- great story, built into great mechanics, created a fun character. Syndra had a pretty dismal story, her mechanics are even fairly interesting but have no real substance. You don't play Syndra and feel like...Syndra, you feel like just another mage. Your design process has a clear role playing aspect, which is good- it differentiates it, makes it interesting.

A lot of champions I think have this problem of insufficient clarity of character- Void champions are a great place to look. For example, Cho'gath and Kog'maw, where I half feel like you had the vague idea "let's make a void monster that eats things" and didn't feel like you got it right the first time, so you tried again. But since Void monsters are all mysterious with little clear purpose and such, the abilities are similarly unclear- why is Cho'gath randomly manipulating physics to knock people into the air, and why does Kog not actually eat people, given that his lore specifically talks about him consuming whole villages. Instead he just spits at everything.

In general, I think that the design process would go more smoothly if theme was more clearly discussed- create a set of characteristics and behaviorism for the creature without worrying about the actual QWER abilities, and then once you have created a functional and interesting being, then translate the most significant of those traits into the abilities.

Originally Posted by BestBilbo

Thank you, this is entirely what we have been trying to say, especially in our third thread concerning the topic of 'champions over-all' (the OP here is just a summary of all of our threads/points)

In our opinion, Riot should've come up with thematic elements of a theme converting them into abilities, whereas right now a lot of champions's behaviour/abilities have little relevance to their theme/appearance, Anivia would be a good example of that.

Her abilities aren't really bird or phoenix like, except for her passive, the rest of her abilities: you wouldn't expect a bird to be doing this, if anything these abilities would fit better on a random wizard specialized in the arts of ice/frost magic. (Random ice plopping out of the blue).

That's not a themetic unified champion, in our opinion (and pretty much approved of riot now by morello as he says he'll be really focusing on that this year) something that waters down the expierence of the ultimate 'ice bird' champion, as she's nothing really like that, except her appearance as an ice bird.

Originally Posted by Kchaosrei

read through the OP. alot of his what stated is personal opinion and cherry picked comments over months/years of the forums.

The prefect example is the darus section. I don't agree with anything said there and CertainT is not going to say his champion is broken. I know for a fact that several Pro teams think/said he is broken used the CORRECT way.

While "NEW" champion creation will eventually die out. But who is to say what the champ limit is with creative people. It could be 500 champs its up to riot to find the creative people and the programmers to make this a possibility

Again this OP is personal opinion and while it may be shared or or convinced others, this doesn't mean he is right.

Originally Posted by YamiBelgarath

As I've worked on my own independent characters, that's really the most fun part of it (at least for me). The number crunching, the perfect balancing- that's all exhausting and doesn't reliably end up well no matter how much effort you put in. But creating an interesting character, with mechanics that honest feel like the character, that is truly fun.

One of the interesting things about Riot is how inconsistent they are in incorporating lore into mechanics. I mean, look at Jarvan's judgement, the Swain turning into a flock crows thing was quite cool. And then the kind of spin-to-win pair, Garen and Kat, having their own little relationship. But when they try to incorporate that into the game, they tend to mess up. I mean, why on earth would Graves have that interaction when he gets Nocturne in the smoke cloud...I don't see any reason why a demi-god nightmare thing would interact with the Runeterran equivalent of John Wayne. Instead, why not make some TF-Graves interactions. They could really enhance the feeling of roleplay, which I think gets lost in all the chaos of the game, by creating more interesting interactions. It would be so much more fun if Graves even just said something like "Here he goes again..." when TF ults...or Teemo had a "Psychopath Yordle" thing like the ninja's have a "I'm a flippin ninja" thing that went away when he got near Tristana. Easy things like that would make the characters so much more personable.

Originally Posted by BestBilbo

I realize I will be stepping on peoples toes when saying this, but I feel entitled to do so: Kha'Zix evolutions - yeah. Is it any relevant to his appearance ? Not at all, it's needlessly added. People looking at his splash art or recoqnizing the 'alien' inspiration will not he'll be having these evolution mechanics.

Sure it's all stated in his lore that he's pretty much all about adapting and evolution yet that would require people to read the lore of these champions first before they understand the reasoning behind the mechanics, wich would be Burden of Knowledge as you are giving people homework before they can enjoy themselves.

Originally Posted by Labcown

I certainly believe that a certain level of complexity is needed to keep a champion interesting, this is where Fiddlesticks, Annie (Even though I love the heck out of her), and several of the older champions fall short.

Certainly you can have too much complexity, but Riot has done a great job of avoiding adding arbitrary mechanics to their champions, and thus there is no real example of the opposite extreme as it is. The closet example I can think of would be champions like Lee Sin, Cassiopeia, and Thresh. In all of those examples, their added complexity/depth brings out greater potential and thus actually makes that champion more rewarding for the added difficulty.

Originally Posted by Savagry

Morello just wondering do you ever give feedback on concept designs in the player concept forums?