Legends of Runeterra
Does each region have enough of an identity?
In light of the recent Demon Hunter and Priest revamp news in Hearthstone, and the fact that MTG has never introduced a sixth color to its wheel, I've been thinking about whether or not LoR's regions have clear enough identities. Ultimately, I think the answer is no, they don't have enough identity.
The stated Riot philosophy is that every card should be playable in at least one deck, and I think you see a lot of that reflected in the ways that certain region pairs combine to form themes. Some examples:
- The Shadow Isles and Noxus pair has access to a Spiders deck
- The Freljord and P&Z pair has access to a Poro and/or Elnuk Cloning deck
- The Demacia and P&Z pair has access to a Big Spells deck
- The Freljord and Noxus pair has access to a Crimson Self-harm deck
The result is that a lot of the theming seems to have been done primarily at the "region pair" level, and it makes less obvious combinations of those same regions clumsier. Yes, regions have their some of their own dedicated mechanics (e.g. Demacia has Tough Elites, Freljord has Frostbite, Ionia has hand buffs etc.), but those mechanics don't generally pair in interesting ways across regions. Because so much of the work of theming has been done at the "region pair" level, many of the decisions on how to pair a region feel forced and ultimately deck-building is less interesting and more paint-by-numbers.
By contrast, when you look at a game like MTG (which is probably the best comparison, because you can mix/match colors there like you can regions), you see primary and secondary themes for colors, and players are left to mix and match those colors to get to useful synergies. I can very easily build a Black/White deck that emphasizes token creatures for a more go-wide aggressive strategy, and I can create a Black/White deck that uses hard removal and AoE to control the game. Yes, there are multi-color cards that tend to emphasize shared themes, but even in those you see variety. Taking Blue/White as an example, you see cards that emphasize the shared enchantments and artifact subtheme of those colors, but you also see cards that emphasize the smaller fliers theme that they share. This leaves players with a lot of freedom to decide which colors to run, and how much of any primary or shared themes they want to emphasize in their deck.
Ultimately, I think this problem will only get more muddled in LoR as they introduce more regions. The reason other major CCGs have been so reticent to add new classes, colors, etc., is because you have to divide up the game mechanics pie into smaller pieces, which ultimately makes the archetypes more prescriptive and hinders creative deck-building. LoR seems to have started at a place of fairly prescriptive deck-building already, so cutting that pie up could do a lot of damage.
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In light of the recent Demon Hunter and Priest revamp news in Hearthstone, and the fact that MTG has never introduced a sixth color to its wheel, I've been thinking about whether or not LoR's regions have clear enough identities. Ultimately, I think the answer is no, they don't have enough identity.
The stated Riot philosophy is that every card should be playable in at least one deck, and I think you see a lot of that reflected in the ways that certain region pairs combine to form themes. Some examples:
The result is that a lot of the theming seems to have been done primarily at the "region pair" level, and it makes less obvious combinations of those same regions clumsier. Yes, regions have their some of their own dedicated mechanics (e.g. Demacia has Tough Elites, Freljord has Frostbite, Ionia has hand buffs etc.), but those mechanics don't generally pair in interesting ways across regions. Because so much of the work of theming has been done at the "region pair" level, many of the decisions on how to pair a region feel forced and ultimately deck-building is less interesting and more paint-by-numbers.
By contrast, when you look at a game like MTG (which is probably the best comparison, because you can mix/match colors there like you can regions), you see primary and secondary themes for colors, and players are left to mix and match those colors to get to useful synergies. I can very easily build a Black/White deck that emphasizes token creatures for a more go-wide aggressive strategy, and I can create a Black/White deck that uses hard removal and AoE to control the game. Yes, there are multi-color cards that tend to emphasize shared themes, but even in those you see variety. Taking Blue/White as an example, you see cards that emphasize the shared enchantments and artifact subtheme of those colors, but you also see cards that emphasize the smaller fliers theme that they share. This leaves players with a lot of freedom to decide which colors to run, and how much of any primary or shared themes they want to emphasize in their deck.
Ultimately, I think this problem will only get more muddled in LoR as they introduce more regions. The reason other major CCGs have been so reticent to add new classes, colors, etc., is because you have to divide up the game mechanics pie into smaller pieces, which ultimately makes the archetypes more prescriptive and hinders creative deck-building. LoR seems to have started at a place of fairly prescriptive deck-building already, so cutting that pie up could do a lot of damage.
That's a pretty interesting question. I agree that for a lot of deck archetypes, two regions immediately spring to mind. But I'm not sure if that puts the game in such a bad spot. Plus there are a lot of inventive players out there who come up with new spins on tried ideas.
Like how Spiders are included in Shadow Isles and Noxus, but one of the most favorite Spider decks uses Demacia with Dawnspeakers. Or how Fiora decks seem to combo naturally with Ionia, but I'm currently running a Fiora & Ashe deck with Frostbite effects quite successfully (unranked, though). And I'm fairly confident that you can construct big-spell decks around Lux and Karma instead of Heimerdinger, too.
I guess if too much of each region's identity ends up being tied up in specific two-region-combo decks, then that would hurt the creative deckbuilding potential. But I don't see any reason to panic yet. In my opinion, we should hold off at least until the 1st expansion releases.
Untrue. A lot of regions combo in ways u would never think of. Ezrael now combos fantastically with Noxus. Its also a great deck to combo with karma. Frostbite decks with ashe and katarina are seriously underrated and not even sen in meta lists despite its great matchup vs elusive decks.
Identity wise theres a lot of ot for each region so ifk wtf ur talking about not to mention theres practically a way to play aggro or midrange controllish for every region.
Remember to keep up with the game cause the meta switches heavily each week and takes a serious overhaul with each nerf buff.
Respectfully, I do think I do a pretty good job keeping up with the game. I'm an active player and member of these forums, I regularly check on meta lists, and I tune in to twitch semi-regularly to see what the "pros" are playing.
I'm not saying you can't pair less obvious region combinations, I'm saying that because themes are so built into these region pairs, and because your choice of champion dictates a lot of how you'll use the region themes, once you've picked your champions/regions, deck-building feel prescriptive. The "Noxus Ezrael" deck has replaced the "Freljord Ezrael" deck because there slower Shadow Isles control decks are gone, but that doesn't mean the deck feels all that different. You're still seeing it run a lot of single target control tools to build up to big Ezrael turns with cheap burst spells yielding direct Nexus damage.
My point isn't that the decks don't change, my point is that the regions seem to share a lot of common themes because the guiding direction for the themes is champion/region pairs, so even when the decks change the operate in much they same way they used to. The Noxus Ezrael has a different set of control tools to slow the game down now, but that was pretty trivially interchanged and the deck operates in much the same way.
Meanwhile, the single region themes that actually play toward the individual identity of the region are relegated in their importance. It's as though pairs come in two varieties:
Well, Discussion isn't about combo. I am also playing a Heimerdinger/Draven deck and also a Jinx/Elise Von Yipp Spider deck.
He was talking about region identity and yes i believe there is some.
For example, Noxus doesn't have access to simple card draws, There is only Trifarrian AsessorBADCARDNAME. So one of its weakness is simple card draws and you would say that healing is one of the weaknesses of Noxus aswell.
There are some weaknesses and strengths of regions in Runeterra but you might abuse those by simply using 2 regions in a deck like in MTG. In MTG, You are also able to pass over these weaknesses. For example, While Green has no access to Flying units, you can use some with it by pairing the deck with another color. It is just like how Freljord/Ionia Elusive deck do in Runeterra.
I don't think it will be a problem with newer regions because there are too much mechanics that could be added to the game right now. First one comes to my mind; none of the existing regions don't have access to gaining excess health. They might always add it with newer regions - I would say Targon | Shurima - and I honestly think that this is 2 of new regions' mechanic because all of mechanics find its place in at least 2 regions. So other regions surpass this when it is once added to the game.
So Yes, There are some identitites for regions. You can't simply play an Elusive deck with Freljord/Shadow isles deck for example or you can't play a board clear centric full control deck with Demacia/Ionia. You might say Judgment or Shadow Flare here but they are conditional boardclears that you can't use always or You don't have access to enough draws with Ionia/Noxus splash which is the problem of full control Yasuo decks right now.
I am happy with how they shaped identities in LoR. I hope they won't break those and for instance won't give so much simple card draws to Noxus etc.
Unpopular Opinion Incarnate
Not necessarily I don't see the pair themes of regions being restrictive..
For example, Spiders, it's true Noxus has spider cards but you don't HAVE to play spider decks with Noxus, nor you have to play the Noxus spiders with SI, House Spider is seeing play in decks that don't even use spiders as a tribe.
As more cards and regions get introduced those pairing might be less of an issue as you could even run mono decks of some regions or essentially mono + 3/6/9 cards (known as splash) of another region decks.
So although some cards look to "force synergize" some combos they actually don't..
You need some common sense for deck building too I mean currently there are 15 region combos you add one region and you then get 21 combos, they plan to add at least 3, or maybe even more (they might start adding regions into regions for example P&Z, so shadow isles might be shadow isles + void or shadow isles + demons).
So there will be much more variety in the game and more open ended deck building..
Just from mixing 2 regions you could try to mix and match 2 champions from each region sure a lot of combos don't make sense.. you might also want 2 champions of the same region in a deck.. rarely 3, or even 1..
There are tonnes of options even with just the 15 available combination of regions
you and others here are confused about the difference between "synergy" and "identity".
They are different facts.
Synergy refers to interactions between cards that are powerful when they are combined and used together.
Identity refers to engines that a region/class may have such as drawing cards, boardclears, single target removals etc. Even though they have some little access to some of them, it is always stronger in other classes like how Warlock can draw tons of cards while Hunter can't etc. .
Look at hearthstone, Mage has access to beasts as well but don't have synergistic cards. You can use beasts in mage decks too but you can't synergize it well how Hunter does for example. It is the synergy. Not an engine. But for class Identity, Mage doesn't have access to weapons, (legendary weapon was an exceptation) that means you can't use weapons in Mage decks.
Unpopular Opinion Incarnate
@Almaniarra:
Oh I see themes is it? and wekanesses?
I think the regions has some of them but they are not entirely defined yet..
Yeah, it is like;
Identity;
Freljord Strenghts - Drawing engine, Boardclears, Combat Disruptions, Sturdy Units, Deck Buffs, Buff spells, Ramp, Healing.
Freljord Weaknesses - Aggressive early game, Single Target Removal, Token Generating, Direct damage.
Demacia Strenghts - Disabling effects, Single Target Removals, Unit Protection, Attack token abuse, Temporary and Permanent buffs, Mana cheating (RememberanceBADCARDNAME/MobilityBADCARDNAME, extra win condition.
Demacia Weaknesses - Drawing engine, Direct damage spells, Boardclears.
Noxus Strenghts - Aggressive early game, Single Target Removals, Direct Nexus Damage, Temporary buffs, Token/card generation.
Noxus Weaknesses - Drawing Engine, Boardclears, Unit Protection, Healing, Permanent buffs.
Ionia Strenghts - Card Generation, Combat Disruptions, Handbuff, Unit Protection, Healing, Aggressive early game, Temporary Buffs/Units.
Ionia Weaknesses - Boardclears, Sturdy Units, Direct damage spells/units, Single Target Removal.
Piltover&Zaun Strenghts - Card Generation, Direct damage spells, Drawing Engine, Token Generation, Deck Disruption, Aggressive early game, Deck fattening.
Piltover&Zaun Weaknesses - Boardclears, Temporary/Permanent Buffs, Sturdy Units, Unit Protection, Combat Disruption.
Shadow Isles Strenghts - Token/Card Generation, Aggressive Early Game, Boardclears, Single Target Removals, Healing, Graveyard Interactions.
Shadow Isles Weaknesses - Combat Disruption, Permanent Buffs, Unit Protection.
"PS: I might have skipped some, I'm not a master of this topic, just sharing what I have observed."
So as you can see here, i didn't mentioned self damage synergies for Noxus/Freljord for example or tribe synergies with Elnuk/Elites or something like that. Synergies are different topic while identity is a different one.
If you for example give Piltover&Zaun Sturdy units + Unit protection with new cards, it will not suit its region identity and looks absurd when you saw them and may bring some other issues. So this kind of weaknesses should be surpassed with partnershipping with other regions, If you want to use Sturdy units with P&Z, You can always use Freljord splash for example. That's related with synergies at some sorts for Game-Designing philosophy but not completely same.
Btw, I honestly think that it is more defined than Hearthstone because there are no neutral cards which means in Hearthstone, You can abuse the Identities by using neutral cards, Just put some [Hearthstone Card (Loot Hoarders) Not Found], etc. to your Hunter deck and you have been surpassed the Drawing Engine weakness of it. It is a fair mechanic for Hearthstone because you can't pair your deck with another class.
So for Players;
In LoR and MTG - You should surpass region identities and weaknesses by using region partnership mechanic and combine your deck with 2 regions which shares some synergies but have different strong aspects
In HS - You should surpass class identities and weaknesses by using neutral cards.
For Designers;
In LoR and MTG - You shouldn't add identity breakers to the game if you want to create a strong game-base and if you want to make all regions feel unique.
In HS - You shouldn't add identity breakers to the classes if you want to create a strong game-base and also you shouldn't add too powerful neutral version of some identical cards if you want to make all classes feel unique.
If you won't do those, There is no meaning of different classes'/regions' existence.
Unpopular Opinion Incarnate
Commenting nearly 2 years after you posted this: I think you're a prophet. If you look at what has happened with the expansions, the new regions basically have 9 parts of their identity, one for every other region.
Bandle City, the newest region, is the most egrigious example of it. It's identity is so incoherent because it's trying to appeal to every region in drastically different ways. You have the Bandle+Shadow Isles pairing which is "do a lot of damage to enemy units" and there's no shared identity between that and the Bandle+Ionia pairing which is recalling stuff.
I don't know where the source of this quote is from, but I remember that a rioter has said that champions are allowed to break the color pie. I think it's gotten to the point where they're taking this to the extreme, where a champion will break outside the identity of their region, and as a result all their followers will as well. Good examples of this are Zilean, Nasus, Veigar, Kennen, and Ziggs.
I disagree with Zilean since predict was released first in shurima and also has the largest support there. However Ekko is proably the champion you meant since predict never really was a P&Z theme and doesn't seem to become a p&z theme anytime soon.
I know the devs want to release a champion for every region to keep the balance between regions but if that means that a theme meant for 1 region is split upon 2 regions to support 2 different champions with the same theme it has to lead to forced pairs.
My solution for that they should make more use of the multiregion concept on support cards. Ziggs in Shurima bandle? Why not make many of his followers dual region aswell making only winconditions like The Arsenal mono region.
An other approach would be to release champion pairs for the same region giving up the approach to release a champion for 1 region at a time and although this pushes certain regions a lot, it doesn't come with the issue of forced regions pairs since the entire theme is in the same region.
I mean I'm pretty certain the issue with the Bandle City's identity crisis is simply because Riot is using the multi-region tag very sparingly and arbitrarily, and also because Bandle City's not fully released. At the very least, I think Bandle City had more identity than Shurima when it came out. Bandle City's main gimmick over other region has always and probably always will be card generation. The similarity between Bandle + SI and Bandle + Ionia? Idk how you didn't see it but it's literally creating cards in hand. Kennen creates Mark of the Storm, Veigar creates Darkness. There's also dealing chip damage with Impact as their main keyword and swarming the board with "small" units. If you look at all the Bandle champions, almost all of them fits in these two categories outside of maybe Fizz (If you don't consider Elusives as a part of their identity at least) which is somewhat fine because they probably weren't intended to be in Bandle or for Bandle to be so different to them when they released.
Take my words with a grain of salt. I'm unranked and only play casuals lmao.
Predict is a Shurima identity technically, but because of the champion pairing system, it is only 1/8 of Shurima's identity. The problem is that "identity" becomes so wide and muddled and there's so much crossover between region identity that regions don't really feel different anymore. Like OP said, region pairings have more identity than the regions themselves. The Shurima+PnZ pairing has more identity than Shurima on its own. Zilean feels more like a PnZ champion than a Shurima champion, and Nasus feels more like a Shadow Isles champion than a Shurima champion.
And yes, Bandle's main identity is card generation, but so is that of Targon and PnZ. The extreme overlap is pretty clear.
While Targon's invoke and Bandle's Manifest indeed are very similar they however differ quite clearly.
Targon's invoke is limited to a small set of cards and since many invoke cards also fetch from a subset of this small set it's quite predictable for both players.
Bandle City's manifest however gives access to a set of cards dependant on the player's region choices.
The manifest cardpool tends to be way larger than the invoke pool.
The consequence is that the outcomes of an manifest trigger is very hard to predict for both players resulting in a huge highroll/lowroll potential for the mechanic and a lower counterplay potential for the opponent.
I therefore think that invoke has the better design out of these 2 mechanics.
P&Z's card generation is different however since those eighter create a specific card like Poro Cannon and Iterative Improvement or a completely random one.
Creating cards in your deck (which is a p&z thing aswell) isn't something i consider as card creation since you don't get access to those cards without other carddraw.
Region identity is not based around a single mechanic but rather strength and weakness :
P&Z for example has access to lots of removal, burn damage and is good at maintaining card advantage ( either with draw effect or card generation ), on flip side the region has no healing and struggle in combat because it's unit's tend to have underwhelming stat line.
Some regions can overlap with another and still tweak the mechanic enough for it to be different for example Ionia, Noxus and Freljord all have spell removal as part of their identity but they are different from one another :
- Ionia cannot completely get rid of an enemy unit they can only temporarily recall it with cards like Will of Ionia or Homecoming.
- With cards like Ravenous Flock or Scorched Earth Noxus is good at removing single high health unit's but don't have ways to deal with swarm.
- Freljord is good at dealing with swarm of low health unit with cards like Avalanche or Blighted Ravine but struggle at dealing with big ones.
Finally it's not a realistic expectation to think that every champion is going to fit withing the confine of region identity, Demacia for example is supposed to be a anti magical, combat oriented region but many of their remaining champions are mages ( Sona, Sylas, Morgana )
This is exactly what I thought Riot believed, and is fundamentally the problem I tried to highlight in my original post. Regional identity takes a backseat to champion identity, which in turn leads to regional pair identities to ensure each Champion has enough support for their gameplan. It dilutes the unique feeling of any given region and weakens deck-building.
I'd also like to challenge you a bit on this idea that these remaining champions can't fit their regions simply because there's some surface-level clashing of themes. Demacia is all about nullifying magic, the righteous pursuit and striking down of their enemies, and winning on board with challenge and smart trades. With that in mind, consider this design that I just threw together for Morgana:
To be very clear, I didn't make much of an effort to think about balance here, I just wanted to flesh out how you might translate her LoL abilities to a Demacia card that's still honest to the region's identity.
Her Black Shield power becomes a Support SpellShield. There's not much SpellShielding in Demacia, but it's thematically relevant and clearly splashes in a bit (Captain Arrika, and sort of Towering Stonehorn). It fits the anit-magic themes and pushes the player to enter combat. Her Soul Shackles ability becomes a Grant Vulnerable for champions at Level 2. Vulnerable is another keyword that doesn't show up in Demacia, but since it's the inverse of Challenge and focused exclusively on champions it's still suitable to fit what Demacia does (i.e. targeted trades), and it fits better with the behavior of the LoL ability. Finally, her Dark Binding causes an enemy to strike itself, fitting with the fantasy of the ability and Demacia's common keywords (on the LoL website, it's described as "forcing them to feel the pain they've caused").
So, this is a mage/support card in Demacia that still highlights an anti-magic theme and pushes the player to engage in board-based combat, but is different enough to feel special/different from the more hardcore combat champions of Demacia without being so rooted in its own arbitrary abilities that it can't function without tons of specific card packages. It's not a perfect 1-to-1 translation of Morgana from LoL to LoR, but it does a good job without muddying Demacia's strengths and weaknesses, and it's a card that has broad enough application (by virtue of being a Champ killer) that it could see play in a variety of decks/archetypes.
You are not wrong on that, you can translate a champions ability in way that stay true to region identity, it's exactly what they did with LeBlanc.
In league Leblanc is a squishy burst mage who either one shot you or die so her LOR equivalent has high power with quick attack and low health, they also made her a combat oriented to fit within Noxus play style. The thing is most of the player base hated that design even dubbing her Lebland, because the majority of the player base care more about the champion fulfilling a certain power fantasy than how honest they are to a region identity.
That's why region identity for me at very least is tied more to the generic tool that a region have rather than the champions themselves. So if they release a champion like Urgot for example and made him a very good combat centric unit which is something that P&Z isn't supposed to be good at, that wouldn't bother me but if they start releasing a bunch a good generic combat centric cards that any P&Z deck could use then that would a problem.
Anyway that my personal view on the subject.
For what it's worth, I think you're right about how the Riot design philosophy works here - Champions are about fulfilling a particular fantasy regardless of their region. I guess it's a big part of why I got frustrated with the game, but for folks that have no issue with that, the game is probably totally reasonable.
As far as I'm concerned, if it were just Champions in isolation that broke the regional identites, it might be fine. But Champions often need Followers that directly support their unique game plan in order to work (e.g. the Diana and Nocturne need a lot of Nightfall units to work, and Rek'Sai's payoff is worthless if your deck isn't full of Lurkers). The result is that huge chunks of expansions are dedicated not to the core regional identities of regions, but to the Champions' identities.
That's a very valid criticism, the ratio of region support vs archetype support is not something they always get right, but nightfall is not a good example of that.
Let's take a look a some nightfall cards for Shadow Isles we have Doombeast, Unspeakable Horror who are centered around the drain mechanic and we also have Stygian Onlooker which is a fearsome unit both of these mechanic are core to shadow Isles. As for Targon we have cards like Pale Cascade which a buff again that is core to Targon. These cards do see play in non-nightfall decks.
Nightfall is actually a good example about how you can introduce a new mechanic that can also help the region as a whole without breaking it's identity.
I think a more accurate example would be Tahm Kench and his followers the champion does introduce a new mechanic to Bilgwater which is self damage even though Bilgwater doesn't have access to any form of healing or any unit that benefit from being damaged, their design only make sense when paired with Targon since the region offer plenty of healing and a win con based on healing so you want your unit to be damaged.
With nightfall I think that the theme is quite independant from it's champions which is why you see several stables like Pale Cascade being used outside of nightfall decks.
Nocturne and Diana more have the purpose to enable a deck based on the nightfall mechanic.
Lurkers however... don't let me get started with this parasitic mechanic that basically takes away deckbuilding and allows to autopilot the deck.
Nothing about lurkers exite me from the lack of interaction over reliance on lurk triggers (often rng) to it's play patterns of just fullswing overstatted units until eighter the opponent is dead or you run out of units... if any mechanic feels like it should not be a part of the game (because it oversimplyfies the game)I think lurk as a whole takes the cake
Yeah, bringing up Diana and Nocturne seems to have obfuscated my point - I meant to point to them as Champions whose design is anchored in one-off mechanics (outside of their original support packages there is exactly one other Nightfall card, so playing them means very limited deck building options if you want to level your champ).
It's true that Nightfall is used in ways which are thematically relevant to the regions in question, so it's far less egregious than other examples like the Tahm Kench self-harm package, but I think it still qualifies as an example of putting Champion mechanics and identity above regional identity in a way that hinders deck-building.
I agree with you here, I think they care more about champion identity than region identity, which is a philosophy that, while not inherently bad, I disagree with. I made a video all about it, the research for that video being what led me to this thread. The Shurima and Bandle City sets prove your post from 2 years ago 100% correct.
Shup up clown