Season 12 will go down in history by League of Legends as being the year Riot Games changed its policy regarding former champions. In recent months, the developers have invested more resources than ever into updating characters left behind. Ahri , Olaf , Swain , Taliyah Where Sivir have benefited from this new working philosophy and there will be more additions to the list very soon. The company is very serious about this plan and wanted to clarify the most common doubts of the community in this regard.
The Miniature Reworks That Shake League of Legends
Riot Games’ goal when performing what are called ” mid-range updates is to start a work process that, although costly, requires less investment of time and resources than carrying out a complete redesign. Although they don’t mention it explicitly, we also see more often how developers tend to pivot on existing abilities (like with Tahm Kench) instead of creating new spells. However, the introduction of a new ability (like Olaf’s shield) is not ruled out.
Going back to the developers’ explanation, the goal of these updates is to “tweak the gameplay, better define the champion’s role in strategic terms, and most importantly, satisfy fans of this character.” In this way, the heroes become more attractive without necessarily increasing their power and a new balancing frame can be created that can address issues specific to certain warriors. For example, one of the clear goals for Olaf was to bridge the balance gap between pro balance and soloQ.
A process that Riot Games is still experimenting with
League of Legends developers say they have learned how to make these kinds of updates. This does not prevent some course errors. For example, when developing Taliyah, they have experimented a capability that had been very well received by the test team. However, players who were already using this champion were quick to point out that she had lost some of her identity, a situation which led to the immediate rollback of this change. While increasing popularity may be one of the goals, it cannot come at the cost of disappointing a character’s fans.
Riot Games wants establish a relationship of trust with the community where we all rejoice if our character is going to receive such an update. It’s something similar to what they’ve achieved with other champion revamps. Since the Aatrox bug, the company has put a lot of effort into creating updates that respect players, ensuring that League of Legends characters belong in some way to the community. . This, of course, can only be achieved by stringing together one good job after another.
In the future, Riot Games hopes to be able to get a handle on these kinds of large updates, creating a more defined process that allows more adjustments to be made to champions who need them. In the words of the developers: “As we become more comfortable with these updates, we would like to get to a point where we can release them more frequently, because there are a lot of champions we want to help find new life in League of Legends “.
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Paul “sOAZ” Boyer is a League of Legends legend. The Frenchman was already there during the Worlds season 1 and at 28 he is still more or less active. In the Spring he played in the German ERL and for the rest of the summer he was signed to the LFL in a chameleon role. Nice to see you again Paul!