Many Legends of Runeterra players have found they've been asked to participate in feedback surveys regarding alternative universes. Recall that in RiotUmbrage's interview on Runeterrable Radio, he mentioned that such surveys were the major feedback mechanism for the dev team since they allowed controlled sampling of different regions and levels of engagement rather than just the dominate voices on English-based social media. If you were one of the few randomly selected players asked to participate in such a survey: congratulations! Please fill it out and help the dev team make LoR even better. For the rest of us, however, here's a overview of what the surveys look like so you don't feel like you're missing out.
Each survey begins with a quick summary of what alternative universes are and what they survey will be asking.
Quote From Riot Survey Alternate universes refer to depiction of the Runeterra world in a different fictional setting (alternate reality) than the current one.
In the following section we are going to show some examples of alternate universes that already exist in League of Legends.
Imagine that these universes will have gameplay elements such as new cards, mechanics, and card animations, not just cosmetics.Now, please tell us how you would feel about each in Legends of Runeterra.
Next, the survey seems to randomly select a few existing LoL alternative universes from the following options:
- Blood Moon: "In this universe each champion is depicted as demons or dark cultists"
- Star Guardians: "In this universe each champion is depicted as cosmic protectors or villains of the universe in an anime style."
- Pulsefire: "In this universe each champion is depicted in a future universe with technological weapons."
- High Noon: "In this universe each champion is depicted in a dark American old-west style setting as gunslingers."
- Battle Academia: "In this universe each champion is depicted as a battle academy high school student in an anime style"
- PROJECT: "This universe is set in a futuristic dystopian setting, where cybernetic enhancements is a source of conflict."
For each alt universe selected, the survey taker will get a brief description formatted like the following:
Quote From Riot Survey (Blood Moon) In this universe each champion is depicted as demons or dark cultists.
Please examine the splash art for Diana, Twisted Fate, and Yasuo below.
Please imagine that this universe will be used for both cosmetics and gameplay related (new cards, mechanics, animations etc.) elements.
- How would you feel about this universe in Legends of Runeterra?
- Alternative champion cards with new mechanics
- Spell cards from this universe
- Full card sets from this universe
- Cards with alternative champion art (cosmetic only)
- Cosmetics from this universe (boards, cardbacks, guardians)
- Events
Finally after completion of the universe-specific questions, survey takers are asked about their overall feelings regarding alternative universes in LoR and alt-universe-based cards such as "should they be playable outside event periods?", "should they be useable in competitive modes?", and "do card animations that use alternative universes feel out of place?" be useable outside of the event or in competitive modes.
What are your personal feelings about alternative universe cards in LoR? Are there any in particular you're looking forward to? Let us know in the comments below!
Comments
They will eventually need to go into that territory for expansions and such.. But not now.. There are many under represented lore/regions/characters.
Hope most people share this way of thinking and will answer like that, sadly didn't get the survey.. Myself.
Kda event was nice but too soon in the game cycle to introduce skins when the main lore wasn't even done being explored.
On your first point, I'm pretty sure that Riot said that they won't introduce AU Champions or non-LoL champions until all LoL champions are in the game, so it definitely won't happen anytime soon. As for AU events such as K/DA, I remember some developers mention that AU Event cards have their own development pipeline outside of the normal expansion designing, so it's essentially a given that we will continue to get AU cards in between card sets. However, their development won't change the cadence of normal cards being released, so I don't think that there is any issue of the main lore not being explored quickly enough.
Alternate universes are cool, but you dont NEED to make copies of the heroes for those universes, you really just can make a whole bunch of new named champions with different abilities.
Of course if the ability is VERY close to the original champion then sure having an "alternate" universe version of the same champion would be fine.
I'm likely in the minority here, but... no? I'd prefer keeping all of LoR in the original universe. Some of my reasons being:
If AUs were cosmetic only, it would be fine for me. There's still a ton of champions and lore left to be explored before turning to crosspromoting the latest skin line in LoL.
Yeah, I definitely think that the Aesthetic clash is the biggest problem for AU champions and cards. Hopefully they'll mitigate this somewhat by changing up the color scheme of some of the characters so that they fit the region better but are still recognizable. I think that a lot of this could honestly be accomplished by the lighting and environment, for example if they release Blood Moon cards they could put a Demacian one in bright daylight by a white stone building and put the SI one in a darker and more ruined-looking environment. The AU lore is pretty shallow so I'm sure that they could come up with something that ties them aesthetically to whatever region they're added to.
I think some of those sound awesome. Bring it on!
Personally, I really like the idea of alternate universes, so long as they keep a somewhat consistent art style across them so that they don’t visually clash as much. The way I think that they’ll ultimately do it is that players will get something like a Star Guardians expansion in which each region gets a SG version of one of their champions. Hopefully, they’ll also change up the design and color palette a little so that they aesthetically fit their region better. I think most skins have chromas so that should be too hard to justify.
Yes to alternate universe. They can add a lot more charm and life into the game, and it's a neat way to take advantage of what they already have.
If it weren't for the gameplay stuff, I'd say to add an option to toggle off the AUs players aren't interested in. After all, most players use those skins for themselves.
I personally LOVE alternate universes. It lets you see how a certain character would be like in a different setting (if done right). Too bad most media only focuses on gender-bent and alignment-swap (good guys are bad and vice-versa) story, and not much else. Spider-Man and some what-if comics being pretty much the only notable exceptions.
Oh man I wish I got one .. But its OK , the game is great the Dev team is the best and it will even be better my fear was league of legends only have ~140 champion and that is a small number for a card game only 1 year in and we already have 45 champions with 3 coming very soon but after this it mean they will reprint the same champions infinite times and they will be different cards only sharing the names nice .
I could be wrong, but I think they've stated they'll be creating some new characters after all the LoL champions have been added.
Yeah it seems like they’re going to do a mix of new characters and AU skins.