Steve "RubinZoo" Rubin, Runeterra's Live Design Lead as well as the Aphelios Champion Expansion lead, hopped on to the official LoR Discord server to answer a few player questions about the new cards, region philosophy, revamping older content, and new features for the game. Below is our summary of his comments.
New Cards
On the logistics of Jarvan IV's "auto-summon" ability:
Jarvan IV does get automatically cast assuming you have the mana. Implementing this as an optional wasn't something we worked on. It doesn't quite work out since it's a bit costly for us to create entirely new feature/UI set to support this. That said, J4 design-wise is generally streamlined to have that huge immediate impact you'd expect from a champion of this nature, and he is only summoned when you have 6 Unit Mana. So there are common play patterns like playing a different unit or precasting a spell that might allow you do craft the perfect scenario for yourself if you really don't want to summon him.
Does Buried Sun Disc's Countdown trigger while in hand?
Nope, Countdown only works while it's in play
Won't Buried Sun Disc be very polarizing given how vulnerable it is to landmark removal?
There are plenty of cards yet to be spoiled - so this is might not the most immediately productive conversation. But I'll say that the Sun Disk is a bit different as it’s added to your hand for free at the start of the game and only costs 1 mana - which does mitigate the effect of cards like Aftershock.
What are the "Combat Keywords" from Quicksand?
Great Question... We're always looking to increase consistency and understand-ability of our cards. Combat Keywords is our new term for "Sharable Keywords". This is a new list of Keywords to help players understand what for can be generated by cards like Plunder Poro, or Sharable with cards like Mechanized Mimic. I'm not exactly sure if I have a list handy, but something like Plunder is not a combat keyword, Overwhelm is.
Note that this question references the card text from the version of Quicksand displayed in the Renekton video, which differs slightly from the version Riot has shared with Out of Cards and other community sites. It is unclear which version will be released on Wednesday.
Expansion
On the Event Pass:
Stay tuned for more information about the Shurima event pass. We're not revealing yet exactly what's cooking in the release - but expect there to be both free rewards and bonus rewards for buying the pass like you've seen in other event passes.
Note: since RubinZoo wrote this comment, Riot tweeted its "Champion Mastery" video which included a few reveals about the Event Pass:
- It will be very comparable to the Spirit Blossom and K/DA All Out events,
- The currency will be "Sun Discs", which will be gained by completing special quests
- Like the previous events, there will be both "free" and "premium" awards
- Free awards include 3x copies of Ascended's Rise at 40 and a 1x copy of Buried Sun Disc
- Premium awards include a Renekton cardback at 30 and Rare wildcards at 50
Regions
On the differences between P&Z and Bilgewater:
Piltover and Zaun is an innovative and adaptive region. They use mad science that can be unpredictable, but also innovate to make stable improvements or augments on units and spells. Generally, their major effects are Random Card Generation and Card Draw (Flash of Brilliance, Rummage) Flexibility (Jury-Rig, Shady Character), Modification both for units and spells(Mechanized Mimic, Funsmith, Assembly Bot, Vi), Nukes/Explosions (Mystic Shot, Get Excited!). They also generally have weak base stats for units, and Piltovans and Zaunites rely more on synergy to unlock their true potential (Flame Chompers!, Astute Academic, Midenstokke Henchmen).
Bilgewater is a diverse haven where dishonest individuals thrive or perish. You have to be careful using your resources in bilgewater, they take risks for potentially big rewards. Opportunists may try and cheat to win, and reap the rewards. They have Large Quantities of Damage, but it's not precise (Make it Rain, Riptide Rex, Double Up), they have card draw, but it's generally through Fleeting and Nab (Pilfered Goods, Pick a Card, Pool Shark), they have lots of incidental damage that plays well with a major mechanic Plunder (Warning Shot, Jagged Butcher), they have Random Generation, but in the form of 1 Cost Units to create a diverse crew of pirates and other unscrupulous individuals (Petty Officer, Double Trouble, Jailbreak) and utilize Vulnerable as their main combat mechanic (Hired Gun, Razorscale Hunter). In general, much of their cards are about taking risk across the board (Rex, Double Trouble, Brash Gambler, Pick a Card, Slotbot, Stacking Barrels etc).
I agree they do have some similar themes, but they are quite tactically different. Hope that helps (that took a while for me to write up, lmao whoops)
On which regions should have which keywords and mechanics:
We have do create what we call a "Region Pie" for each Region. If that's interesting to you, check out one of my comments above around the differences between Bilgewater and PZ.
In terms of keywords and mechanics, we often decide based on both the themes of the regions and what potentially will play well with the initial set of champions and the intended mechanics for those champs within that region:
For instance, Vulnerable was a brand new mechanic that was designed for Bilgewater, to represent the cutthroat lifestyle of the region and to play well with Miss Fortune and scouts. Now when designing Shurima for instance, that same keyword (Vulnerable) felt like it was both a thematic fit given the desert landscape, but also when exploring styles of play in early development it could potentially work really well with Renekton’s aggressive/dive in style. So in this case, Vulnerable is added to Shurima.
There is of course a lot more here, but hopefully that gives you a window into some of how these decisions are made.
On what happens when a region “runs out of champions”
We do aspire to potentially have all League characters within Runeterra. However, this is more of a goal for us to flesh out the world of Runeterra, and is not necessarily us always crossing champions off of lists. We generally want to provide both champions that players would like to see, but also champions that help us make fulfilling sets. We take great care with our selection of Champions in each set. Diversity or a whole sets champion lineup, how they fit into the set theme, fitting in with potential intended mechanics, popularity in other Riot Games are all things that are considered.
So to answer the question, any given Champion not released within specific existing regions has the potential to be made. And that said, we do think that we'll have much more freedom with Champion releases/choices once all of our planned regions are in the game.
We're not revealing our future region/champion plans, but we are interested in providing more champions and regions players love.
Revamping Older Content
On adding more voice interactions between new champs and old champs:
For the time being we don't retroactively add voice interactions for old champions to new ones, but we do add voice lines for newer champs with excising ones. I'm not exactly in the narrative/voice over department so I'm 100% sure if we're looking to change this. For the most part the ballooning amount of champions and no guarantee the ability to get the same voice actors make this a bit difficult for us to pull off.
What I can say is something we might want to focus on, is we do have opportunities potentially in the future to explore more character personality for old champions and new ones with champion skins or other cosmetics.
On improving level-up animations for existing champions:
Unfortunately, I don't believe we are actively changing old champions level ups, outside potential small polish work we've done in the past. We do think that adjusting level ups could be a potential way to provide awesome things to players who love "old" champions when exploring new spaces/personalities through cosmetics that could potentially have alternate animations. We'd love to hear your feedback on this!
On Buffing Katarina
There we go!
Though, memes aside I'm not sure. Katarina is a very rigid design and we've done some explorations in the past to adjust her kit and never came to something we'd consider shippable.
Personally I feel like she does have her niche uses, but of course fundamentally she has the problem actively making you fall behind to play her which has been tough to balance.
New Features
On Lab of Legends and single-player mode:
Glad you like [the Lab of Legends]! Considering the success of Lab of Legends, (and even beforehand) we are exploring potential additional single player game modes above and beyond lab of legends -- in addition to potentially having Lab of Legends rotate into Labs with potentially updates. Your feedback is really helpful!
On being able to see analytics like personal deck win rates and friending players you compete with:
Great feedback, sorry we don't have these and I agree these could be sick. This is certainly something we're potentially interested in in the future, but focusing on one feature wil always loose another. For social, we are actively working on having more social play opportunities this year.
On allowing quests to be viewed mid-game:
Great feedback. I'm not sure if we will get this soon, but it could be a good improvement.
On using the Singleton format for something besides gauntlets:
I've seen a few comments here. I'm not exactly in the department to know the answer, but I can see if I can find out about it.
On adding alternative art for Champions like skins:
Yeah, we're exploring this space. No promises on when we can deliver this type of content yet though!
Note: the Season 2021 Roadmap designated "Champion Skins" as a feature that would be arriving in May; click here for everything we know so far!
Aphelios
On releasing such a meta-changing card release right before the Season Tournament:
Given the adjusted patch cycle to the Riot break, you're right that the Aphelios drop/balance patch did come 1 week closer to the Seasonal than we otherwise would've had liked.
In terms of Aphelios Power Level, it's fair to critique his power level being too high on release. Considering Champion Expansions are new, we did have active interest in him being quite strong and exciting for players to use - and are exploring for the right formula for a stand alone champion.
That said, I want to separate Balance feedback from release timing feedback here.
In terms of the final competitive event, Aphelios' Champion Expansion is a planned part of the Cosmic Creations season. We've gotten numerous feedback from players about stale metagames and how they contribute to peoples interest in playing the game and we want to serve players with new exciting content in addition to our Normal expansion releases.. Our next champion expansion is likely to also land before a seasonal tournament - I don't want to speak for our competitive team, but personally I consider a champion expansion (given 3.5 weeks instead of 2.5 weeks) to be a welcome addition of content for the seasonal tournament.
Hopefully we can get releases slightly more removed from the seasonal.
Why do you only show the Moon Weapon’s name instead of the entire card when choosing the next phase?
Great Feedback. I was personally the lead designer on Aphelios, so I can say that we actually totally agree - we just didn't quite get there with enough time given the fast-paced nature of developing a Champion. The work hasn't quite started yet, but we do have work in our backlog to make adjustments to how this works, so it will work more like Invoking. Where you will see the new options that you are phasing into, and can click on the appropriate one - We also want to then make it so that the weapons (outside the first one) are revealed to the opponent which should be a huge QOL update.
That's it for now; you can join the official LoR Discord server to see the original conversations and to ask questions of your own. And stay tuned to Out of Cards for some upcoming theorycraft articles for the new expansion!
Comments
The article was pretty underwhelming in it's indirect statements Steve made:
1. Level up animations, voice interactions and any visual improvents for older content won't be free and sold as a part of skins)
2. They are pushed when it comes to champion releases so they release champions rather op to tune them down later> borderline active powercreep
3. they prefer releasing new content over adjusting existant content-> against customers who don't want to constantly play the newest expansion.
4. Katarina is old content so stop asking for buffs already!
5. they want to make Interface improvents. Since the interface is already very good and this won't improve the game by a lot
Very good article!
So Jarvan does auto-summon himself after all, that's one awkward design.
Overall the economical aspects of the development got stressed a lot. Is LoR doing bad right now? Does the development get pushed to become more profitable? It kinda sounds like it and if that means that LoR is not profitable enough right now we have a concerning future for LoR to come... like the only way to make more money is build in more paywalls (cosmetics on their own apparently won't make it) which might mean a less generous card reward System paired with more pushed Releases to price the current flavour of the month.
I know this is really negative and that rubin did not say anything of that directly but if economical aspects get stressed it rarely is because a game goes too well...
Fair assessment of these comments, but in the boarder context would you say this is because LoR is being stingy with its development or just because RubinZoo is just being a lot more open & direct than other digital CCG developers?
It's not like HS or MtGA spend much effort reanimating year-old content or buffing old cards so they can compete with new ones.
It is a bit awkward, but I think logistically it all works out. Consider if you were playing Mistwraiths and had 4 mana, the attack token, and a hand with Wraithcaller and Risen Mists. You're either A.) casting Risen Mists at burst speed into an open attack, or B.) developing with Wraithcaller. There are almost no scenarios where you'd want to open attack but not summon that extra Mistwraith -- e.g., maybe if you were worried about keg + Withering Wail?
At 6 unit mana, J4 is a bit more of a commitment than Risen Mists, but he's also an even better payoff: you preoccupy the strongest blocker plus get 5 free damage on him plus getting 1/4 progression towards J4's level up. Sure there will be still be scenarios where you still don't want to summon him -- e.g., maybe you're worried about over-developing into Ruination? -- but I think they'll be few enough that it justifies the decision to leave it automatic rather than diverting development resources for giving players the option.