According to Reav3 he can choose to return???

It was for Senna, but I am unsure about Kai'Sa (I wasn't at Riot then). EndlessPillows mentioned that he loves designing champions that are already someone, and using their story as a huge influence. The Yone team is incredible. They put so much passion into him. It was so clearly palpable from the way they talked about him.

ya'all are designing a competitive game, not a singleplayer game. Ya'all are designing shit champions for a game that's based on ranked games. fucking toxic champions that are cancer and super unfun to play against. great idea

You know you want to give us a skin line of your favourite champs in cashmere sweaters. You can disguise it as a Esports line and pretend they are in sneaky cosplay

They put so much passion into him.

kinda sad cause Lillia will end up like taliyah for such a reason as well. Regardless of how good she is she will be overshadowed.

im pretty sure he's talking about how Lillia feels like she was a throwaway champion release.

She's been out for, what, 2-3 days? And literally all anyone can talk about is Yone. There's no threads talking about Lillia, no discussion on what she should build, what comps use her, how she'll be in pro-play. Even this entire event, which is her release skin, is all about Yone now.

i got you, call it sweater squad and make it at Christmas time for like a ugly sweater party. boom entire skinline idea

Did Riot Zimberfly do the VO for Yone?

VO team always on point imo.

its perfect it will be bigger then K/DA and True Damage combined

What stands out to me here is that it seems like Yone was designed in a very "top-down" way. Rather than starting with an idea for a kit and creating a concept, they began with the idea of Yone and designed a kit for him. Both his fleshed-out backstory and his kit evolved from a desire to make Yone a champion.

I don't remember whether that was the case for Senna and Kai'Sa as well, but either way, it's cool to see. Most League champions seem to be designed "bottom-up", so seeing some top-down design like this is really interesting to me. I think it paid off, because his kit seems really effective at reflecting his story and lore.

This whole article is actually a really fascinating look into how narrative and gameplay design intersect in League, with a lot of moments of one influencing the other and vice versa. It's a great read for that reason.

Yeah, the more I read about Yone, the more obvious it is that a ridiculous amount of effort and passion was put into this. I'm super impressed by him from a narrative perspective; everything from his reveal to his backstory to his kit feels like it was done with a lot of purpose. His team did a great job.

Great article, exactly the sort of insights I like to see from this series. I really like the gameplay-story integration (ludonarrative resonance if you're feeling pretentious) they went for with his kit. He also looks like a blast to play, though like every skirmisher and assassin he's gonna cause some ragequits.

Just as with Yasuo, it's interesting what role his double-crit passive will play in shaping his itemization (and play pattern from that). On Yasuo, it means he has to spend two item slots on crit, which keeps him from just building straight-up bruiser and going for utility, and meshes with his Q's focus on attack speed. Since Yone appears to be a lot more focused on abilities (and possibly also a mana champion) then maybe IE-ER is the way to go? His passive suggests he wants some AS, but he certainly wants CDR unlike Yasuo. His scalings and numbers will determine if he wants AS or Lethality on top of AD and crit. Either way, it's an interesting design choice.

Another thing that stands out to me is his mobility, in a "well, yes, but actually no" sort of way. Yasuo has insane mobility but gated around minions (and with a fixed distance, cast time and direction). Yone instead telegraphs his Q dash in the same way Yasuo telegraphs his tornado. His E appears to have a small dash component to it, but probably one that doesn't go through walls -- meanwhile, his R is absolutely insane initiation. I expect that's one ability that might lead him to build tanky if it weren't for his passive. Again, depends on his numbers.

More than anything, I'm curious if he's gonna be more about extended trades, in-and-out assassinations or maybe hit-and-run kind of like Akali. SOme of his kit (mst notably his E) suggests assassin, but his W is pure skirmisher. It's gonna be very interesting seeing what people do with him, to be sure.

Thanks for the shoutout!

legends! love reading insights like these. grateful that Riot does these comms stuff for the players <3

also really digging the vibe of this event. and the skins are just so detailed. well done to all involved! when is Yone's theme releasing :D?

I'm so hyped for Yone, yall did a great job. He feels like yasuo but has his own uniqueness

Cashmiir is a hardstuck ksing support main?

Wonderfully written. Love getting to hear the care that gets put into these amazing works of art. When working on a champion for the most popular game on the web, it's probably hard to strike the perfect balance between making everything "lore appropriate" as well as "balanced". I always think about that when champions die in-game, like, what a bummer- the Aspect of War just died to a mushroom-loving yordle! So of course, while there may be many adjustments to Yone's kit in the future through patches and tweaks, it's fascinating to know the actual thought process that went behind designing our next favorite champ-to-ban (well, not before I get to try out a game or 10 with him ;).

Excellent work, Yone team! Give my congratulations to them when they wake up!

I love game design talk, and one thing that Riot does uncommonly well is transparent and detailed thoughts on how they go about designing their game. It's honestly one of the bigger things that draws me to League.

TFT Gold Powerspike