In League of Legends (LoL), new champions are regularly released. But this will not go on forever. Riot has specified when they will stop with new releases and discusses this 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. Looking at the competition in Dota 2, you can currently play 123 different characters there.
New champions are regularly released for the 13-year-old LoL. But at some point, this will stop, explains Riot Games.
Riot is already talking about the end of new champions
Who is talking? The head of LoL’s balance team, Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison, was a guest on the “Broken by Concent” podcast (via YouTube). He is asked whether Riot Games has already considered having a limit on champions in the game.
Leung-Harrison explains that they are already talking about it, but still have a lot to offer [before the limit is reached]. The end of new champions would take effect when Riot can no longer develop intuitive characters.
“There are a few things that make many champions unplayable. One of them is that champions are not intuitive. Let’s say I encounter Thresh, he throws a hook that looks like a hook, but it just goes past someone. You would wonder: ‘What the hell is that?'”, explains the balance lead.
“If we make unintuitive champs, it becomes a problem to make more of them because it massively increases the number of things you need to understand to play the game.”
As long as the mechanics that a champion works with are intuitive, new champions can be developed.
The newest champion Nilah is introduced in the following video:
Champion Gwen as an example of “not intuitive”
This is the example: The lead developer specifically addresses Gwen’s W ability in the podcast. Coach Curtis explains, “it didn’t feel intuitive at all.” With Gwen’s W ability, a fog is spread on the ground around her, and you can only attack Gwen if you are standing in the fog with her.
Leung-Harrison explains that Gwen was developed around this ability. She is supposed to have the ability to engage with the frontline without being bullied by range champions. For Riot, it was difficult to visualize that.
At the core of it: Riot Games does not want to scare off new players with champions that are too hard to understand. They want to create unique champs, but not at any cost. If gameplay has to suffer for a champion to be unique, then that doesn’t help anyone.
As it sounds in the podcast, Riot Games still has many ideas in store to expand the list of playable characters. So it should still take a while before the limit of new champions is reached.
The latest champion Nilah was so strong at release that Riot had to nerf him after just 24 hours
