Reign of Gaming

LATEST POSTS:
2/15/13 - Pages 641 - 650 http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...1#post34704010
1/26/13 - Pages 631 - 640 http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...1#post33945447
1/26/13 - Pages 626 - 630 http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...1#post33944520
1/26/13 - Pages 621 - 625 part 2 http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...1#post33943766
12/30/12 - Pages 621 - 625 http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...78127#32978127
12/30/12 - Pages 616 - 620 http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...77837#32977837
12/30/12 - Pages 611 - 615 http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...77519#32977519

Avoid List / Can't Really Answer:
1) New Skins
2) Cat Girl Ezreal
4) Give us more info about x upcoming champ. I do occasionally answer this, usually when coupled with an interesting question.
5) Please no hyperlinks
6) Questions that I have answered a number of times in the past.
7) Walls of Text
8) Full champion kits, try posting 1-2 ability ideas instead.

Just started a Twitter account: @RiotEzreal...though I have no idea what I'm doing.

Replies to pages 446-450.

Hey Guys, time for another round of @Ezreal Updates. Here comes another 5 pages worth of responses. Keep asking questions and I'll be more than happy to answer as many as I can! The shorter the question the more likely I will be able to answer it (I have 30 pages just to catch up...)

Also, I always tweet whenever I finish a post in @Ezreal (Twitter: @RiotEzreal) (should be easier than sifting through this thread, oh, and does anyone know how I can look at the 'last' rioter post on a thread?). http://twitter.com/#!/RiotEzreal

Well, I've mentioned it a couple of times, the Ezreal buffs that I talked about previously have been put on hold. Basically the champion is doing well, especially in our eastern markets (I've even heard him called the Terror of the East...which is such a cool nickname!). I still hope to see them come down the line some day, but he just isn't a high priority change right now for the live team.

Maybe, but it would be more frustrating / weird looking than anything else. The champion would stutter far too much, and it would be pretty crazy go nuts in team fights. Not to mention it would completely shut down champions like Evelyn.

More of our champions are moving towards skill shots, even if their entire kit is not composed of solely skill shots. In fact, I think my next champion should have at least 3 skill shots =-D.

They have moved towards higher priority updates that will hit more players. We want to make sure we give the community the highest quality work, even if it takes a bit of extra time. For example, we really want to create a solid IP for LoL, so we want to go back and fill in the gaps.

Hmmm, I don't remember saying that his ult was anti fun, just that it wasn't fun.

Unfortunately we put Heimer on the back burner for now since we wanted the illustrious Feral Pony to work on a brand new champion!!! Once he is done I'm sure he'll go back to Heimer, or potentially pass it on to another live designer.

We considered that for awhile, but opted not to. Basically, if we were to create a new game mode, we would want to make sure that it is 100% quality. Simply retrofitting an old map to just work wouldn't hit our standards. I hope we go down this path and make new maps for awesome mods like this some day, but currently we have no plans for this.

PS. ARAB is amazing!!!

Hmmm, you would be surprised at how close that concept comes to something we want to create in the pipeline. Suffice to say, dual wielding = cool, claw users = cool, awesome capes / scarfs = pretty cool. Hope that brightens your day.

It's a basic spell with a lengthened cast time. Other spells work in the same way, but you don't notice since they have a relatively short cast time. I can understand your pain as that sounds pretty buggy feeling. But I would counter that it would feel twice as bad for the Ezreal and Caitlyn.

Interesting that you bring that up, we were just talking about her the other day =-P.

No updates on Tempus, he is still in the icebox (icebox = concepts that have no work going into them and are effectively frozen).

We've considered that in the past for champions like Nunu and Katarina. Unfortunately, while that would give her a fighting chance to get her ult off in a team fight, it would make it incredibly harder to counter in a 1v1 scenario. So while it helps in one way, we feel that it hurts far more in others. Additionally, it doesn't really fit the theme of the character.

1) This ability scales similarly to other late game carry spells. Ones that have higher ratios often have longer cast times, and thus more auto attack down time.
2) That is an option, but it isn't one I would suggest. We already have a spell that crits (Parrrrley), and imo, it feels terrible to be crit at all phases of the game. It sounds like your greater problem is his base attack range, since it sounds like you expect his mystic shot to be an auto attack replacer.
3) Lots of AD Carries have spells which deal physical damage and don't scale with crit, Ezreal is no different.
4) Well, why does he not hit as much? He has a pretty standard auto attack range, and has a great closer. Perhaps he is too squishy?
5) ETA canceled, not on the docket for the foreseeable future.

I think it would be pretty awesome, but we would have to solve a number of problems:
1) Make the spider champion cool
2) Make it not creepy
3) If it is a 'queen', then make it not hot / creepy
And many more!

Honestly I find the secret shop to be a fairly outdated concept. It is an additional barrier to entry. You couldn't imagine how long it takes for players to know that it exists, then you need to explain that different items are in it. This also means that you can't access all items in the primary shop. It simply adds too many problems for what it adds.

Replies to pages 451-456.

Hey Guys, time for another round of @Ezreal Updates. Here comes another 5 pages worth of responses. Keep asking questions and I'll be more than happy to answer as many as I can! The shorter the question the more likely I will be able to answer it (I have 25 pages just to catch up...)

Also, I always tweet whenever I finish a post in @Ezreal (Twitter: @RiotEzreal) (should be easier than sifting through this thread, oh, and does anyone know how I can look at the 'last' rioter post on a thread?). http://twitter.com/#!/RiotEzreal

1) Viktor's hexcore upgrades have an amazing premium, I also believe you get an item that grants an impressive amount of AP per level. Enough to make it fairly equivalent to other passives in terms of gold value. Yes it takes up an item slot, but you can further upgrade it for great results!
2) Hmmm, well, we fixed the bug. The champion is still plenty powerful, so I don't believe we need to add additional power in other areas.
3) Garrison has too much overlap with Fortify. Though conceivably we could add it if we removed Fortify. That being said, it would take a ton of testing, as I can think of a number of abuse cases with this spell being introduced (pushing teams would become a force to be reckoned with).

We've had abilities which do this in the past. For example, Teemo's original ultimate was a sleep which also drained Mana. Hmm, even Malzahar's ultimate used to leech mana as well. We ultimately found that mana drain is an anti fun gameplay experience. It robs your opponent from being able to enact fun events, i.e. casting spells. It is far more painful than short silences since being oom can last long periods of time, and with abilities you can potentially keep them oom'ed. So while I feel it could work, it just isn't worth it due to the pain it causes.

I just asked around about it. While it isn't something we are working on right now, it is something on the eventual backlog.

Unfortunately I don't believe that would be as fun as you expect. Since both Essence Flux and Mystic Shot are line nukes, you would simply cast one after another at the same location in order to get your proc effect. There simply wouldn't be much gameplay. A better variant on this would be a lobbed grenade + skill shot ability. Perhaps we'll do something like that in the future.

As for the mana problems, it would be far simpler to just reduce his costs or increase he base mana / regen.

As stated by a few other posters, this would be too problematic for a number of spells. Take for example Karthus ult, it would just lead to too much damage coming out on a per minute basis. But that isn't even the worst case scenario. I would be more afraid of core abilities being reduced. Imagine if Alistar could cast two aoe stuns and two knockbacks over the course of 4 seconds.

Oh man, I've been waiting for this one for such a long time!

If and when we work on LeBlanc I can assure you that balancing out her play experience over the course of the game will be a primary goal.

We have considered it, but think about who bots are for. Ultimately, bots are there to help new players learn how to play the game. As such, we wanted to teach players what champions look like and do. Adding on different skins might confuse players, and add an extra layer of disambiguation to new champions. That being said, perhaps advanced bots should have skins.

This has been something that I have wanted for quite some time. So yep, I think it's a great idea!

Hop into the mod community and be part of something great. If that would take too much time, then pick up your nearest map editor (I prefer Starcraft II's staredit), and go make your own custom game. Prove out how great your skills are by crafting something that you would consider to be well designed. Best of luck!

1) Haha, we recently tried out our hand at making a Griffin champion. While it didn't work out for us, it did lead to a number of ideas for an even cooler future champion!
2) This one will not be based on an Egyptian God, and unfortunately I can't say too much about him. Other than he is going to make the world very very dry...
3) Much appreciated!

Aw shucks, this is why I do it!

Replies to pages 457-460.

Hey Guys, time for another round of @Ezreal Updates. Here comes another 5 pages worth of responses. Keep asking questions and I'll be more than happy to answer as many as I can! The shorter the question the more likely I will be able to answer it (I have 13 pages just to catch up...)

Also, I always tweet whenever I finish a post in @Ezreal (Twitter: @RiotEzreal) (should be easier than sifting through this thread, oh, and does anyone know how I can look at the 'last' rioter post on a thread?). http://twitter.com/#!/RiotEzreal

I think it's pretty cool, albeit has a few confusion points. Unfotunately our 'chain' abilities are all set out around telling enemy players to run away from them in order to break them. This new ability would go counter to this, and thus tell the player to make the wrong choice. We would probably have to take a different approach to make a similar effect, ideas?

She's still super viable and my favorite AP champion despite the nerfs. So I am pretty pleased with how she turned out!

Honestly I think that would make the game feel too stale. Without the ability to last hit, too much of the game would be focused around simply pushing (which on it's own is not a super interesting event). We would have to add new events to the early game just to keep it as entertaining as it is now. I would rather solve the 0 cs meta in a different less painful way.

Well, we constantly make changes to the older champions. We now have 94 champions, how many of them aren't viable? Additionally, we are constantly working on champions with major problems internally. I can think of four off the top of my head who are looking at major reworks.

Well, if they are underpowered then we will look at them. I believe we are working on Warwick now.

1) I'm sure we will continue making comedic skins. We are just making them at a slightly slower rate. We found that comedic skins are less used by players, and as such, have been moving our development to give the players more of what they want.
2) I'm afraid we do all champion creation internal to the company. But we do allow for Rioters from every part of the company to suggest new champions.
3) Sigh, I'm afraid I am not at fault for that dance. I believe that was Shurelia's doing...
4) Well, Shurelia was the main proponent of these sorts of names. Though Xyph was coming in second, be sure to let him know that you appreciate them.
5) I'm afraid I don't know what Komachi is...

1) OK
2) I think he is still very viable, and less frustrating to fight against.
3) It would be a folly to rate myself compared to the other designers. I am just happy, not to mention lucky, to be surrounded by such awesome intelligent individuals!

1) Hi
2) So do I...
3) Well, I honestly think that was a mistake on our part. We should have made him much cooler...for example, I wish his base skin was his new mecha skin. That is an awesome version of Urgot!

Hopefully pretty soon, and hopefully pretty soon.

Grats to the penta.

I'm afraid Zelos has no core concept surrounding him.

Well, when we built the map we did so without the ability to interact with the environment. So we simply don't have a way to make use of the trees. Perhaps some day we will have to add them...perhaps in a new map?

Replies to pages 461-465.

Hey Guys, time for another round of @Ezreal Updates. Here comes another 5 pages worth of responses. Keep asking questions and I'll be more than happy to answer as many as I can! The shorter the question the more likely I will be able to answer it.

Also, I always tweet whenever I finish a post in @Ezreal (Twitter: @RiotEzreal) (should be easier than sifting through this thread, oh, and does anyone know how I can look at the 'last' rioter post on a thread?). http://twitter.com/#!/RiotEzreal

Well, our first goal is always to ensure each champion has a solid and distinct role in the game. Take for example Caitlyn, she does the Ranged DPS role very well, and only the Ranged DPS Role. While a champion like Kog'Maw can fulfill either the Ranged DPS or the Caster role for the team. We rarely go out of our way to ensure that this happens (Kog'Maw and Ezreal were intended to have role variety), and in fact, quite often it is a lucky coincidence (AD Kennen).

We agree!

1) Yes, and these characters are often labeled as offensive supports internally. Good examples of this are champions such as Zilean and Morgana. Both have solid disables and support moves, but their support moves are more situational, while their disables are more fundamental to their kit. Additionally, they tend to do much more damage than traditional supports.

As a side note, we've actually tried the group teleport on Lulu (our upcoming champion). Unfortunately, it simply wasn't cool enough most of the time. It occasionally led to some awesome experiences, but that happened only 1-2 times a game...if they were pro players (lower level players rarely figured out how to use this ability).

2) There are a number of factors that go into skin selection. It is mostly in line with player use (make the skins that players want), though it is also tied in with ease of creation (it is hard not to come up with an awesome Teemo skin =-D), as well as difficulty of skin creation (champions like Udyr require multiple model and texture updates).

Agreed, we were just talking about a pretty neat idea for one earlier this week.

Oh...he is coming...and he will be epic!

Well, there are a number of problems with the 0 cs support meta:
1) Supports don't get gold, and thus don't get to purchase awesome items.
2) Lanes are stale and unfun.
3) Players don't want to get no CS.

We looked into these and found that #3 isn't always necessarily true, we also identified that #2 was by far the largest problem. So we started going into supports and identifying ways to reduce their sustain, while increasing their harass potential. This would increase the net amount of danger in lanes, making them more vibrant and interesting to play and watch. As time goes on we will also delve deeper into support item variation and other potential ways for them to get an income. But that is much farther down the line.

We've tried HoTs in the game, and they simply don't feel as good or impactful as straight heals. Now this does not mean that we will never do one. I personally am a big fan of a DoT/HoT (based on who you target). So I'm sure they will come some day.

As for AoE healing zones, that is a much more contentious issue. That would dramatically boost the sustain meta, ultimately leading to more stale poke related gameplay.

Finally, skill shot heals are much less fun than you'd expect. In the case that the ability always heals, players simply would want to stand still next to you to ensure that the healing occurred. For dual use heals (see old Ezreal Essence Flux), it led to confusion over how to use the spell --> do I target my enemies or my allies. We still haven't found a good way to do skill shot heals.

Glad to have you back, and yes, I'll always take a high five.

Nope, that is a Xyph original spell. In fact, if memory serves that was the first ability he made for the kit, and he actually based the entire kit around it. Xyph wanted Fizz to be a highly mobile playful champion. So locking down this ability was clutch.

Urchin Strike was actually taken from an old Jarvan ability (his Q used to dash through before he had his hook shot combo). It fits farrrrr better on Fizz.

1) Haha, she wasn't continually nerfed due to locket, she simply was still too powerful. The ability to bring an AoE ultimate to a teamfight as a support is simply an amazingly powerful advantage. Not to mention the sheer amount of hidden power she brought via her auras.
2) Agreed in both account =-P.
3) That does sound like a lackluster level-up mechanic... I'm sure someone will look at Kayle eventually, she needs some love.
4) Hmm, I'm afraid I have to disagree with the Q comment, that ability hits like a pile of bricks if she is farmed. As for giving W a passive, we generally avoid granting new passive elements like that unless they either add new gameplay or cannot be improved via stat modification. In this case, we could simply reduce the cost of her spells or increase her mana regen.
5) We've tried it...extensively, and honestly, it feels terrible. Don't get me wrong, it does achieve the goal of making it less overpowered. But it does so via adding confusing mechanics which feel bad. If we are going to change such a staple spell then we need to do so in such a way that we don't reduce it's level of fun or understandability.

Replies to pages 466-470.

Hey Guys, time for another round of @Ezreal Updates. Here comes another 5 pages worth of responses. Keep asking questions and I'll be more than happy to answer as many as I can! The shorter the question the more likely I will be able to answer it.

Also, I always tweet whenever I finish a post in @Ezreal (Twitter: @RiotEzreal) (should be easier than sifting through this thread, oh, and does anyone know how I can look at the 'last' rioter post on a thread?). http://twitter.com/#!/RiotEzreal

I would disagree that his only gap closer is his ultimate, what if we reduced the threshold of his blood thirst triggering, or increased it's movement speed? We have ways of increasing his power without fiddling with his kit. I'm sure we can find it out if Warwick is truly underpowered.

Oh there are plenty, and I'm sure you can fill in the gaps from reading Zileas's Anti-fun thread. For example, we generally avoid mana burn effects (as it removes the enemy players ability to cast spells, which is generally a fun thing to do). A more nitch aspect that we avoid is the 'sleep' or 'remove from game' effect as a targeted event. While you might often think that this is an awesome ability, it actually leads to a lot of counter team situations. For example, we tried this with Nocturne at one point (he made the target disappear, and summoned two clones of the target when he reappeared to attack him). But whenever he cast it, players like Ashe would waste their skill shots firing at the target which was no longer there. So while it sounded amazing at first, it didn't end up working out...

I just talked it over with the Live team and they have apparently considered it multiple times. Unfortunately this ability allows the worst aspect of shaco (AP Shaco) to be even burstier. So ultimately we avoided making this change as we believed it would hurt more players than it would help.

You'd be surprised at how some minor, almost inconsequential changes can dramatically improve both the feel and gameplay of a champion!

Yes, many times! In fact, I believe we are going to look into doing this on future champions!

Well, tier 1 runes are actually immensely powerful and definitely worth their cost. It would be foolish to ignore them in your early summoner levels. Tier 2 runes have a bit more problems (since they cost dramatically more and you are much closer to tier 3 runes). That being said, they do speed up your progression to tier 3 as they help you win more games. As for why we added them, we wanted to give players a way to progress in the game at every level.

1) Balefire: Amazing idea from an amazing book series (Wheel of time...rather, the first three books of the series). To elaborate, Balefire is a spell which deletes the last x amount of time the enemy had if you deal the killing blow. So if your enemy dealt 1000 damage to you in the last 5 seconds, and you kill them with Balefire, then that 1000 damage would be undone. I find it a pretty interesting ability, which has a lot of flavor. But you are correct, it has a number of problems. If we really wanted to keep it's flavor, then we would want it to reverse allied champion deaths...which has even more problems with it. Great idea though!

2) I think a targeted short duration spell shield can work, but it requires the correct support kit. I have one in mind (a certain offensive support kit that has a spell shield which also reflects a set damage nuke...ie. reverse damage). Another good idea, great work!

There is definitely the chance to have a Native American based champion. Unfortunately I do not know enough about the cultural icons to properly give them an amazing champion (the closest I can come up with is a totemic shaman). Any idea on how Riot can make a champion that do Native American's justice?

1) Bulbasaur, I wanted more of a challenge than Charmander would give me, and found Squirtle a bit too lame =-P.
2) You might see that ability some day, as we'll be testing it out soon.
3) He is on indefinite hold, we weren't able to solve core issues with him. We still might come back to him some day!

All over the place. The mark of a good designer is a broad amount of knowledge. I constantly play games, read books, watch movies and animes; just to garner more knowlege about how to make new and awesome champions. So even while something might seem like it is out of thin air, it is often from experiences that we have encountered such as obscure reference that we have forgeten about.

Replies to pages 471-475.

Hey Guys, time for another round of @Ezreal Updates. Here comes another 5 pages worth of responses. Keep asking questions and I'll be more than happy to answer as many as I can! The shorter the question the more likely I will be able to answer it.

Also, I always tweet whenever I finish a post in @Ezreal (Twitter: @RiotEzreal) (should be easier than sifting through this thread, oh, and does anyone know how I can look at the 'last' rioter post on a thread?). http://twitter.com/#!/RiotEzreal

We held on them for a few reasons. The main one was the tournament, however, that was not the singular reason we held off on the buffs / feel improvements. The live team was getting numerous reports that Ezreal was 'overpowered' in other nations. He also had a fairly high win ratio, which was not in line with what most players were preaching. So we opted to not make the changes. I'm sure a few of the changes, especially the feel ones, will make it in eventually.

1) I'm afraid that item would either be unusable or overpowered. You would only purchase the negative attribute if you didn't care that much about it (i.e. dealing damage as a support). So the bonuses garnered from the negative aspect would be worth more than the negative aspect. Making it overpowered, or, if we balanced the power with the trade off in mind, not fun.
2) I'm generally a fan of removing most RNG from games, but even competitive FPS's have some soft 'RNG'. Think about those times where your weapons kickback accidentally knocked your sights up to get you a headshot. I think having a small amount of RNG adds flavor, we just need to keep it manageable.

Haha, that has absolutely zero impact on our nerfing supports. That was a for fun game between ridiculously great players, and whatever rioters were around to play the game. They were super nice and gave us a fighting chance by running a really sub optimal group.

We have been nerfing / nerf remaking a number of supports because we believe it will make the game more fun to play and watch (check out some of my earlier posts if you want more in depth reasoning).

Haha, oh yes it is. Think of it this way, if the character would literally make you shudder at the thought of kissing it, then you've probably gone too far. For the extra mile, if you would want to kiss it, and shudder at the concept of that, then that might be even worse =-P.

1) Haha, wow, can you guess how often I used Fortify =-P.
2) I always suggest StarEdit and WarEdit. I personally started off with Starcraft I's map editor, and moved on to Warcraft's editor. I've heard that Starcraft II's map editor is top notch, albeit more difficult to use due to it's impressive capabilities. I would suggest starting there. Maybe figure out which warcraft III custom game never made it over and port it into Starcraft II.

1) Not at all actually. Ezreal came from a number of sources, though he primarily came out of the concept of an all skill shot champion. We wanted to make a unique archer who could materialize his bow whenever he fired it. So we looked into other games, comics, and shows which have done this in the past.
2) Dominion was really supposed to focus on the small scale skirmishes. If you want larger skirmishes I HIGHLY recommend ARAB (all random all botom). It's a custom game where the entire team goes bottom lane in dominion. It's a ton of fun...I think I'll go play one after I post here =-D.

Haha, I've gotten more than my fair share of trash talking because of that dance. Though however much I have disliked it, I have found that it makes him more memorable. What other champion has gotten half as much publicity for their dance?

Honestly, I am starting to become more and more alright with that proposition. If the live team can be convinced, I won't block it (where I previously have).

We want to get that Stealth update out ASAP, so probably not because worrying about more champions utilizing it would only delay the release.

Replies to pages 476-480.

GAH, this set of 5 pages had a ton of great questions!

Also, I always tweet whenever I finish a post in @Ezreal (Twitter: @RiotEzreal) (should be easier than sifting through this thread, oh, and does anyone know how I can look at the 'last' rioter post on a thread?). http://twitter.com/#!/RiotEzreal

1) Beginner Bot Games: This is a phenomenal idea, my hat is personally off to you!!! That being said, there are two problems with it, but I think it should still work. The first problem is simply getting the tech to do it. Though I think this would ultimately be worth it just for Draft Mode. The second is that it trains players to have a crutch that they won't have when playing normal games. This might throw some players off and make them not want to make the jump. I'll have to think on that one more. But again, great idea!
2) Med Bots: Maybe, same arguments as above.
3) I'm actually the least in favor of this change. I would rather just add a new vs Bots queue, Draft Mode vs Bots.

We will continue making improvements to our champions each and every patch. You can even see how the Live Team has been doing a better and better job by looking at the champion viability in tournaments (4 months ago roughly 50 champions were picked or banned, now over 70 are picked or banned).

I'm afraid individual abilities can have differing power levels based on what champion they are placed on. A 2 second stun on a champion like Sion is acceptable in our opinion, though you wouldn't be able to place that on an AD carry. Take for example Brand, he has a ton more range, damage, and harass. So it doesn't matter if he has to take extra steps to achieve the same stun duration.

BECAUSE HE IS AWESOME!

Honestly if his range is only 500, then we should probably increase it to 525. I'll look into that.

We really should work on a Dark Mage champion, give it time.

1) I honestly don't have a great answer for you. I think Evelynn might be the weakest champion right now...and...perhaps Blind Monk is the most powerful... I'm really not sure, this is all personal preference.
2) What part of the meta requires a Kassadin and Shaco in every game?
3) No updates for now.
4) Honestly, I really dislike Urgot, so I'm not a big fan of seeing him in tournament games. Though the recent tournament game where he 2v1'd the other team was pretty amazing to watch!
5) Common misconception =-P.
6) I haven't heard of this, though I have wanted heavy sustain champions like Cho'Gath to fall out of the meta. Why do you think this is occurring?

I have been pushing for that for months. I would love to see morello's evil tomb become a caster's anti healing, and go back to old executioners calling (passive rather than active). Here's crossing my fingers!

Some problems are answered easier than others. Katarina, for example, is not an easy problem to solve. If she becomes too powerful then she becomes a pub stomper, if we change her too much then she doesn't retain her feel. I'm afraid I don't have a better answer for you.

Fill me in, what short range dash are you talking about?

I don't understand what you're going for here. I think we have said straight out that we dislike 0 CS gameplay, and are looking for solutions to the problem. Saying that we aren't is just wrong. We aren't stating solutions because there is simply no perfect solution short of changing core game systems (which we aren't prepared to do). We have however found ways to lessen the pains that the 0 CS meta has given to us. More item selection makes supports more fun, less sustain and more harass makes those lanes more fun to play and watch, and adding more active/fun (Lulu) supports will improve their health. On top of this, there is a rather large subset of players who actually enjoy the non stressful playstyle of not having to last hit constantly.

Maybe =-D, I hear she's a pretty neat concept. But who knows, only time will tell ;-).

I think it's pretty awesome whenever we add it. True, it does give a slight amount of information to the enemy player, and knowledge is power. But we feel that this slight amount of knowledge is worth the coolness factor that it adds.

We have considered it in the past, albeit it was pre release. It is cool in concept, but has a number of flaws. Global abilities tend to require a certain, size, in order to make them understandable. Having an entire kit which requires you to explain what is happening on a global scale would be loud. Then there is the problem of power. Being able to have your abilities affect anywhere on the map is a large amount of power, one that we would have to balance for. This means we would have to trim power from the overall kit, making the champion less fun in that respect.

1) There are a number of critical skills. Core intellect, problem solving, communication, and ideation are just a few of the skills we look for.
2) I was one of those lucky designers who stepped out of school and hopped right into game design (I double majored in psych and economics).
3) While going to a great college helps, it doesn't actually affect your capability of getting a position that greatly. You can be a great designer without having a college education. The interview is what we look at the most.
4) We hop into a room with a designer, creative designer, and two artists to go over what our collective vision of a champion is. It isn't just the designer, it's a collaborative matter.

Replies to pages 481-490.

Finally, with these 10 pages of comments I will finally be caught up again!!!!!!!

Also, I always tweet whenever I finish a post in @Ezreal (Twitter: @RiotEzreal) (should be easier than sifting through this thread, oh, and does anyone know how I can look at the 'last' rioter post on a thread?). http://twitter.com/#!/RiotEzreal

That is a great point, and honestly one that I should have pushed for more. While movement abilities are not as painful as straight up banishes (you might headbutt someone into ashe's arrow, or keep them in line with it, a banish will never accomplish this), they also cause problems. On that note, I would like to see a different form of banish, one which makes the target untargetable by physical attacks, but still susceptible to magic attacks. Perhaps we will test that out in the near future. Great comment!

Having Lux, the Lady of Luminosity, gain additional vision is very thematic with the character's core design, making it easy for players to both understand and embrace it. That being said, we are not necessarily opposed to adding this to Gragas as well. If he needs a buff, this might be a good place to put it. However, every buff requires the time to enact the change, and the time to test the change. We cannot make changes to all champions with similar abilities all the time, it is just not sustainable.

Well, if you are talking about a champion who has ammo on each of his abilities, that would require too much micro management of their individual ammo numbers. If we are talking about a shared source, then this would likely work similar to the Energy system, just with a smaller number. In that case, why not just use the Energy system that players understand?

Hate to say it, but I've been able to get through 20 pages of responses because I have today off as well =-P. Do what you love, and I love giving back to the community!!!

Haha, my close personal friend Johnny Romita Jr actually did the art for that series. It is wonderful and I highly recommend it. This is an area which we will consider and look into. Good recommendation.

Great site, I'll check it out later this week when I'm back at work. Posts like these really help out, thanks again!!!

Absolutely, in fact, the champion I have been excited about for the past year is potentially going to be a stance swapper. These characters have the potential for a tremendous amount of play and optimizing. Hope you look forward to it.

Well, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who wants Pulsefire Ezreal to release as much as I do. He'll be out, as soon as we can get him. I'll keep waiting with the rest of the community, because he's going to be legend...ary!

The portal ultimate was mostly confusing for most players. Namely, when to use it, why to use it, how to get allies to go into it, and how to use it in combat. There were a few good uses (blue pilling back with your carry and using the ult to get him back to the lane quickly), using it to defend dragon and nashor, and a few other quirks. The awesome uses were when teams were about to engare and Lulu changes the location of the battlefield (sometimes pulling her team behind the enemies, where they never expected them). Unfortunately, these cases were difficult to figure out, and often led to the negative cases (not wanting to teleport, telporting and dying, etc). The best version of it was a single cast that created two zones, where allies could stand in them for x seconds to swap between areas.

Stealth pets are neat, but need incredible micro management. Unfortunately our pet controls aren't up to snuff to be able to grant the player a smooth enough experience to allow for this type of champion. Perhaps we will reconsider it when our pet controls are improved.

I'm generally not a fan. Immovable lanes are stagnant and boring, and for the most part simply PvE farm lanes where you ignore your opponent. I hope we move away from this sort of play in the near future. We have started down this path by nerfing lifesteal items life Wriggle's Lantern.

That's a solid passive for a skillshot champion, or simply a solid passive for a skill shot.

Well, that objective exists in two forms currently. The dragon is the neutral objective, albeit it does call on the team's support. The sigils are another objective, albeit you've talked about counter play via counter jungling. Adding an additional objective would require new space in the map to place it, as well as a mechanic to make the laners not simply just come out and take it. For example, would could place a 'mini dragon' in Nashor's area until he spawned. And have it be solo / duo'able. However, monsters like this are weak enough to be killed quickly without any form of counter play.

We constantly attempt to nerf these banned champions while also not over nerfing them. Rammus is a good example of this. We could just hit one of his abilities to oblivion, but then he wouldn't be played at all. As it is, most of our champions are balanced within a +/- 5% win/loss ratio. Making overly large changes aren't required to champions like this.

Additonally, some of these champions are primarily banned because of the state of the meta. Take Kassadin for example. We don't believe that Kassadin is overpowered, we believe that he will be seen as balanced as the state of the meta evolves over time.

Well, Nidalee does this now, and we might do it again in the future!

1) Evelynn will gain a lot of power when the stealth changes are implemented.
2) We want to give all champions new skins over time. Just give it a bit more time, even Urgot got a skin recently!
3) Soooooon.

Well, I was in college and creating a name for the guild I was in for the game Shadowbane. And to be honest, I really liked the name Tyrael from Diablo, but I wanted to be sufficiently different. So I came up with Ezreal, and just held on to it since then.

Good games give players simple yet difficult choices to make, this is simply one of them.

We will increase the draft slots as they are needed. Right now I don't believe we 'need' any more.

It's a solid idea that I can see Riot doing at some point in the future. However, any time you add the ability for players to choose minutia in the game, you actually split up the player base. This increases the time players spend in queues, so we have to be sure that players get enough out of features like this before we implement them.

Most designers aren't programmers. Designers who have heavy programming skills are Technical Designers (like Brackhar). That being said, you should strive to get at least the basics. Learning how to script as a bare minimum for most jobs in the industry. I suggest StarEdit and WarEdit from the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises.

That was originally one of the launch skins planned out for Skarner. Perhaps a skin like this will come out some day!

1) We have plenty of champions like this, we call them offensive supports. A few examples of this are Morgana, Fiddlesticks, Lux, and Zilean. We want to push more in this direction for supports in the future!
2) As you said, the audience capable of using Blind Dagger was reduced dramatically (to pros only). That is not something we want to do with our base summoner spells, abilities that any player can pick up. As for the % idea, unfortunately that just makes players have to use it defensive earlier.
3) I'm afraid I don't know too much about Taric right now.
4) We're going to look into improving 'created' terrain at some point in the future. I'm sure Jarvan will like the changes.

Replies to pages 491-495.

Finally keeping up. And just in time for page 500. Just throwing this out there, I'm pretty excited for it!!!

Also, I always tweet whenever I finish a post in @Ezreal (Twitter: @RiotEzreal) (should be easier than sifting through this thread, oh, and does anyone know how I can look at the 'last' rioter post on a thread?). http://twitter.com/#!/RiotEzreal

To answer your questions on Bolas, yes, I think they would be a pretty cool ranged weapon. Perhaps a jungler could use a trap to identify where enemies are and then throw a bola at them to slow them down...=-D.

It was a 'oh that's neat', sort of ability. In fact, I believe we need to go back and consistify these sorts of abilities (Heimer's Rockets, Soraka's Starcall, etc). To elaborate, abilities that are only active when enemies are around should all work in the same fashion, while I don't believe they do currently.

We opted to not do the Yordle in a Tank concept since it pushes the boundaries of the tech we want to see in our game world. We want to keep the number of high technology champions low for a few reasons (Rumble's Mech and Corki's Hellicopter). First off, the more we do them, the less they become uniquely cool. Next up, we want to ensure that the tech levels of our world don't exceed what players think would be natural in a pseudo fantasy game.

As for the dog champion, can you refresh my memory on who that is?

We have considered this a number of times, but please understand that it is an incredible undertaking. One so large that we would have to hold out on a number of new features for a year or two. Basically, we made the value judgement that we can deliver more updates to the community by utilizing the engineer/designer time which would have gone into this tool into other awesome projects.

We do, but they are very rare, and only for incredible candidates which are unable to join us full time. I highly encourage you to submit your resume and hope that you are one of those amazing individuals.

Nocturne was one of those unfortunate champions which undertook a class change mid way through his development. He started off as a true assassin character, one who would dash into the fight, kill his target, and escape into the night. However, a few things went wrong that made us have to change his kit around a bit. The first problem was that he was being created in a time of melee failure, back when melee champions were rarely used due to the proliferation of ranged slows (Red Buff used to be twice as strong for ranged ADs). So we had to give him more survival tools (see: Spell Shield). Then later on we found the best way to make him an assassin was to place him into the jungle. However, his stats and damage were too low to sustain him. So he gained lifesteal on his passive and +damage while on his trail. At the end of the day he became more of a tanky dps than an assassin.

As for Morello's comments, he most likely meant that we should either remove his disable (fear) or his spell shield, as they give him too many tools to be granted the burst dps required to be an assassin.

1) I personally love that mastery and think that we should try it out in internal environments. That being said, I don't think it solves the problem entirely, and actually leads to other problems. All this would allow is a small amount of additional itemization (which is good, but doesn't solve the core issue). It also has problems with stacking, imagine if 4 players on the team have this mastery...though that is mostly solvable if it is low enough on the utility tree.
2) That would just making playing support feel more annoying. To play optimally they would simply have to go back to base to pick up new wards more often.
3) That is a solid idea on the surface, but more champions purchase gp/10 items than supports. I actually see a number of jungle tanks or fighters purchase these items. This would increase the power of gp/10 items without holding the power back to just the support champions.
4) That is a bit too hidden for my tastes. Most players don't even know that gp/10 items sell back at a reduced rate, and it rarely comes into play...especially for support champions. I also don't see what this would really grant the support champions, since they rarely purchase a set of items and swap out their builds.

Yes, and he is awesome!

To give you a bit more insight into Pulsefire Ezreal, we are constantly updating all of the awesome stuff he will have at the end of the day. As such, we hope to finish him off as soon as possible and release him to the community.

Sure, we will make a champion with a true pet at some point. I know no one likes hearing that we will wait until we get improved pet controls, but it is just the reality. Using annie's pet controls all day long would get tiresome pretty quickly (and too difficult if you aren't a great player). We really want to do this, but we want to make sure that we do it right!

We are...reconsidering Tempus. However, we need to come up with a baseline kit theme before we move on. That being said, even if we decide to do him, it will be months at the earliest before he would be released.

Well, I have a number of problems with Urgot. The simplest one is his art style, he is just unappealing to look at. His animations are great, they really make you think of an undead spider guy =-D. On that note, I highly recommend all urgot players get his new battlecast skin!!!

I'm also not a big fan of his design, we attempted to make a carry offtank...and succeeded. However, we did so in such a way that he has more power than we would like to put on a carry, but all of the power is in the wrong areas. He also has one of the most annoying abilities in the game (I loath getting locked on and getting nuked from 1500 range). He also blocks us from using that awesome ultimate on a kit that fits it better.

I have no problem with champions having unique play styles (such as jungle fiddle). They just take more time and effort in order to make truly awesome.

We have considered that a few times, but ultimately it is either going to be unnoticeable, crippling, or stymie interesting designs in the future. To elaborate, many passives aren't active (global auras, stat conversions, etc) which means that players will often not notice that they are missing. Other passives would remove gameplay (why play annie if she can't use her stun passive). And finally, it prevents us from doing crazy things in the future. Imagine a passive that says you passively deal damage to the lowest health unit in your area, but lack an auto attack. We wouldn't be able to do something like this if the passive blocker ability existed.

They have been re-prioritized on making new and existing awesome things that will let us to expand LoL in cool ways. For example, we want to build out our core IP, but doing so requires a lot of time and effort. But at the end of the day, it will all be worth it!

Neat idea, I like it!

Well, when he was originally created he had the most powerful movement/positioning ability. As such, he could sacrifice a bit of health for this amazing mobility. Since then, other champions have come out with good mobility as well, at higher health values. Perhaps we should reassess his survivability values.