The Riot devs have just replied to some more player-submitted questions in their official Discord server covering off-meta builds, the new Focus spell speed, the card development process, and more!


New Features

  • Could we get a filter option in our collection that shows only cards we are missing? As the card base becomes larger and larger it would be helpful to get a quick overview of which cards you are missing from said collection.
  • Are we expecting to have a replay mechanism in the game? Reviewing our past games would be certainly helpful.

Quote From Riot DanCast, Product Lead for Player Expression and Metagame

We want these features as well, but we’re looking for the right place to prioritize them among the many things we want for the game. At they moment, they aren’t planned for the near future, but they’re on our radar.


Off-Meta Archetypes

How do you consider a card archetype when designing certain decks? For instance, Bilgewater is known partly due to its Deep keyword, making units like Nautilus and Maokai late game power engines when the player has toss enough cards. Do you plan on going back to some of these keywords and applying them to regions that don't really have any cards in that region (like adding Deep cards to Demacia/Noxus) to encourage off-meta builds, or are you planning to keep these keywords mostly in one to two regions (like Scout in Bilgewater + Demacia) for consistency?

Quote From RiotUmbrage, LoR Game Director

The answer is, we approach it case by case. We always think about what are ways to re-invigorate existing archetypes with new content – the cards we released as part of Lunar Celebration are a recent example of that.

Encouraging off-meta builds into new regions is something we may do but, it typically has a higher cost than adding more support to an existing archetype – it has to make sense for that region's identity too both in terms of the strengths and weaknesses we want it to have but also theme. Additionally, there's a higher cost to make a variant, because we have to make enough cards such that there's a critical mass to create a viable alternative.

Gluttony Card Image Powder Pandemonium Card Image Molten Breath Card Image


Focus Speed

Are you guys gonna come up with a new keyword for spells that "cant be used in combat or in response to a spell"?

Quote From RiotUmbrage, LoR Game Director

Yep, Focus speed is coming in Empires of the Ascended.

Exhaust Card Image


Card Art Development Process

What is the process of creating card art? Let's take the card They Who Endure as an example. Is the game concept first worked out and then the art department takes over along with the narrative team to name the card or do you have the art and lore department come up with the card art first and that then gets named with effects assigned to it?

Quote From Melell - Narrative Lead for LoR

It's a very collaborative effort overall between Design, Narrative, and Art to create a card! Generally it's some variation on the process in this image where different teams take the lead on the process and drive at different points.

We all start out brainstorming together so that everyone can make early contributions. Though each department will be responsible for making sure that each card gets the assets that it needs, we all certainly inpsire eachother. For example, sometimes a designer's temporary names (hello Swole Squirrel) will stick around because we all love them, or a sweet piece of concept art will inspire a design from a designer (like They Who Endure), or we'll come up with character type/storyline that we really want to see (like the Traveler's story).

Melell also provided this graphic chronicling the development of Gift Giver (click for full-sized version)

 


That is all the answers for questions submitted in January. If you'd like to submit a question for a future segment, join the official LoR Discord server and post it in the #questions-for-devs channel!