Not being ItemsGuy, I'm not quite sure, but I'd like to leave my input on this matter. I think it's all about Twisted Fate's kit being about cheating at cards. Q: Plays his hand, or deals the cards. Very Gambit-like. W: Just like in cheating at cards, you really need to have an Ace up your sleeve, or several. You gotta pick what's right for the situation, which is usually an Ace (Gold Card), but if you want to get something like a Three-of-a-Kind or Four-of-a-Kind and have mostly Queens or Jacks, you'd want to pull those (Blue Card and Red Card). E: Again, pulling an Ace. It's almost like the whole "PICK A CARD ANY CARD IS THIS YOUR CARD?" spiel where they place the card the person chose at the front of the deck with sleight of hand. R: Looking at your opponent's hands (revealing them throughout the map), and letting you set up against them with your sick cheats yo (combo ganks) or let them fold (back off because paranoia). Innate: You can tell he's going to get more money than he should, so that's his passive. It's pretty readable, you know this guy's not going to play fair at all and is going to cheat his way to victory, with the use of strategy. W's roulette of three cards is a bit of a gamble, since sometimes you may have to wait a sec for Gold to come up, Gold may come up right away, or misclick.

I think this is an interesting topic overall, because we have the best of intentions with this, but it turns out game development is hard!

In 2009-2010, we had a giant canvas to paint with - most skills would be unique, so you could throw things like Amumu ult and Morgana Q at kits to make them distinct. Basically, the more pressing problems is "how will League of Legends, as a game, work out?" There's some cool champions in the original 40-60, but it was pretty inconsistent and balance tended to be pretty scattered (Launch TF and Xin come to mind). It was good at the time because of the craziness and discovery, and some of those designs are still core characters today.

2011, in my mind, had a number of problems and was our toughest year in champion design. This is where you actually have really rushed characters - Yorick, Volibear, Sejuani, Karma, etc. The big issue here, I think, is we got so worried about balance we dialed back interesting hooks, gimmicks or patterns to be flat. Graves is a great example of a bold opportunity that we flattened too much. I think the players were really feeling the squeeze here.

2012 is a year I was much happier with - even though there's lots of room to grow still. We started looking for more uniqueness and being bolder - interesting mechanics and patterns (Ziggs, Varus, Draven, Zyra, Syndra's orbs, Kha'Zix's evolves, etc) were again the order of the day - and have primed us to explore further in 2013.

So, I don't think champion numbers is the problem, there were fundamental issues of patching frequently overall and us not agreeing on "what next"? for champions at several points. I'm really proud of the champion team's ability to level up and make more interesting kits, and with characters like Vi, Tresh and other ones I can't mention yet, I think we can keep cranking distinctiveness this year.

Well, if the idea well runs dry, why not crowdsource? I'm sure people would love to throw their ideas around in a forum specifically designed for dream champs.

Thresh isn't exactly oozing originality. It's like hecarim, draven and blitz copulated.

Why not make another champion similar to nidalee that has ranged attacks in both forms? I find nidalee to be quite the epitome of utility in a champion. :|

Sejuani was released in 2012 though, Morello.

I'd compare his "stacked deck" more to, well, stacking a deck--TF is all about lining up all of that good stuff (Sheen/LB proc, Pick a Card, Stacked Deck) for startling burst damage, and at the worst times for your enemies too. With his ult, like you said--it's like looking at your opponent's hand, and from there, you can choose your move. It's the LoL equivalent of having a mirror behind your opponent in some sort of card game (I don't know card games) and seeing what they have, and then playing based off of that.

He's all about playing dirty--building up his advantages while knocking down those of his enemies (and possibly rooting out their weaknesses). It's also readable in that you can look at his abilities and understand what they do. Q is pretty straightforward--throws cards (as a card-thrower would) and they deal damage. W, he has a card for every situation (which plays into his versatility big-time), and then throws that card like a basic autoattack (so nothing new here). That also applies with Stacked Deck, as his next autoattack does that bonus damage and you see all those "stacked" cards fly all over the place. His ult's a bit more on the "fantasy/willing suspension of disbelief" end of things (it's a video game--and in LoL, it's fine as long as it's readable and works with the rest of his kit to reach a common goal), but explaining it with the thematically appropriate "you look at your opponent's hand" is really all you need to say for someone to just get it right away.

I hope that was satisfactory, but I really have to sleep now! I hope I have plenty of constructive conversation to wake up to--feel free to engage each other, not just me and Morello! Make me proud, guys, and I'll see you in the AM~

unless you mean development but Sejuani was last year

As it has been said many times by morello and a few other reds there are a few reasons why they won't be doing this ATM. Morello just actually gave his view for showing favoritism over some ideas over others, and creating discord over an unregulated source.

But that being besides the point, alot of people will make splendidly fun sounding champs, but how "sound" are they actually for the game? Did you god mod them too much? Do they have a message? coherency? And what happens if Riot only adapted a small segment of an idea. You may argue you need most if not the whole, without th ability to recognize when something may be unfit.

This does not mean riot is not for fault either sometimes, but at the moment they are taking a much safer "partially" guaranteed route in which they have slowly built up a menagerie of experiences and rules that allows them to dictate champion design that at least won't fall on the very outskirts of bad game play.

Who knows the future however, and maybe when we magically hit 200-300 champions they may do this.

It was me, I just wasn't really planning on bringing it up again, well, at least not a full post dedicated to it, I probably would have mentioned it again, after all, that is my mission on the forums, to get Riot to make more maps (not giving up until it happens).

Summarizing that entire thread would be a nightmare. While I've made a few posts with tl;dr reactions, I'm not really sure I could muster the strength to condense that many points into a single post, and even if I could, it would take more time than I have at the moment.

It's a good example because I think brand is good, but suffers from a philosophy of being too "safe" gameplay wise. In your example, you take the concept further, which is more our philosophy today.

That might be the underlying conversation we're having. Not following through on our swing to deliver a more full experience is the critique I see as the tone of each point, and on that we'd agree. I also feel that's why you're pitching the exercise as "LoL 2" because the fresh start avoids the muddiness of current expectations.

The odd thing is, I was a designer for awhile before working at Riot, and I've learned more about mechanics each year here than I had in my entire career previously. Not only would I like that to continue (and with the relaunch team/live team, let us retroactively apply that knowledge), I'd like to apply that to all our future endeavors.

To, me, the examples I use are "the bar," and as a company I think we understand the issues that prevent us from reaching that as consistently as I'd like. Fixing things like this isn't easy, but it's far from impossible - and our game reaps the benefits when we do.

Sorry - to me, I always place her in the 2011 bucket since we did all the work in 2011.