New champions are released regularly in League of Legends (LoL). But that won’t go on forever. Riot has determined when to stop with new releases and talks about it in a podcast.
What is it about? Riot Games offers a huge selection of champions in their MOBA League of Legends. You can play 161 different characters. That’s a lot and not the end yet. If you look at the competition in Dota 2, you can currently play 123 different characters.
New champions appear regularly for the 13-year-old LoL. But that will end at some point, explains Riot Games.
Riot is already talking about the end of new champions
Who’s speaking? LoL’s Balance team boss Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison was a guest on the Broken by Concent podcast. He is asked if Riot Games has thought about having a limit on champions in the game.
Leung-Harrison explains that this is already being discussed, but that there is still a lot to offer [bevor das Limit erreicht wird]. An end to new champions would come into effect when Riot could no longer develop intuitive characters.
“There are a few things that make a lot of champions unbearable. One is that champions aren’t intuitive. Let’s say I run into Thresh, he throws what looks like a hook but he just walks over someone. You’d be like, ‘What the hell is that?’” explains the Balance lead.
“When we’re making unintuitive champs, making more of them is a problem because it massively multiplies the number of things you need to understand to play the game.”
As long as the mechanics that make a champion work are intuitive, you can create new champions.
The newest champion Nilah is featured in the following video:
LoL: Trailer shows new champion Nilah – Is so mobile that you can not escape
Champion Gwen as an example of “unintuitive”
This is the example: The lead developer is specifically addressed in the podcast about Gwen’s W ability. As Coach Curtis explains, “It didn’t feel intuitive at all.” Gwen’s W ability spreads a fog on the ground around her, and you can only attack Gwen by standing in the fog with her.
Leung-Harrison explains that Gwen was developed around this ability. She wants to be able to take on the frontline without getting beaten by range champions. It was difficult for Riot to visualize that.
97% of all female players in LoL only use female champions: “If we bring a man, we let them down”
That’s what it’s all about: Riot Games doesn’t want to scare off new players with champions that are too difficult to understand. You want to create unique champs, but not at any cost. If playability has to give way for a champion to be unique, that doesn’t help anyone.
From what the podcast sounds like, however, Riot Games still has plenty of ideas up its sleeve to expand the roster of playable characters. So it should still be a while before the limit of the new champions is reached.
The latest champion Nilah was so strong at release that Riot had to nerf him after 24 hours