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Wintermond
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This champ sounds really really awesome, I am super tuned right now! :D
Did I understand it right that she gets this perma-slide stuff? Because that sounds pretty awesome when they get it balanced!
Did I understand it right that she gets this perma-slide stuff? Because that sounds pretty awesome when they get it balanced!
El Psy Congroo.
|You can't spell slaughter without laughter.|
No, the perma-slide thing was one of the things that didn't work out.
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Wintermond
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Crazy Smurf
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Jun's a fanboy :P
But good work on collecting all this information. Must have been over like 50 or more pages.
But good work on collecting all this information. Must have been over like 50 or more pages.
Sounds interesting...
Would have likes the "situation button" or w/e it was called. Make people think a bit more rather than just faceroll. In all honesty, I would have likes the perma-dash attack. It adds a level of difficulty to champs that we haven't seen for a while. Orianna is the only one that is 100% about positioning and, she's just as difficult with her managing her mana costs as well.
Would have likes the "situation button" or w/e it was called. Make people think a bit more rather than just faceroll. In all honesty, I would have likes the perma-dash attack. It adds a level of difficulty to champs that we haven't seen for a while. Orianna is the only one that is 100% about positioning and, she's just as difficult with her managing her mana costs as well.
Sig courtesy of GrandmasterD. Go get your own sig from them. :D
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Xypherous is one of the best Rioters in my opinion, being at the forefront of designing new champions and mechanics as well as taking the time to answer many MANY questions on the forums when he finds the chance.
Tonight, I decided to not just read his posts, but share them with mobafire.
My personal comments are in yellow. :)
How much he'll talk about her before the release:
Xypherous:
I don't think there will be a lot of confusion.
She's a lot more straightforward than Orianna and Renekton. No new systems, mostly a skill template prototype that I want to see work, which will hopefully allow us to put slightly more interesting abilities on fighters in the same vein.
A simple champion for simple minds. ^_^
Predictions on her kit:
Xypherous:
There is no rebound ability on her kit anymore. Stop spreading misinformation. :/
When you see her Q, I hope you'll get what it means. I think it's a fairly flexible starting point for a lot of skills, hopefully being a more interesting category than 'point and dash to target.'
That's just a hope though - We'll see how well received it is. It should be fairly obvious in retrospect.
Rebound shields are never gonna happen. Too much maintenance. lol
Riven's playstyle and scaling:
Xypherous:
She's very offensively oriented, but she does have a simple defensive move. You'll want to buy as much AD as humanly possible though.
I don't know about Glass Melee Carry though. No one's really going to approach Master Yi/Tryndamere levels of damage for a while.
I don't like trying to fight a fed Yi/Trynd anyway...
Riven's mobility
Xypherous:
Hm. She is very highly mobile, especially after you get some skill points in her defensive moves. Although she doesn't have a blink/teleport/blinkstrike or a MS increase. So.. that kind of narrows it down for you.
I'd still get Youmu's ghostblade though. It fills the gap in her mobility quite well, as well as giving her pretty much every statistic that is humanly desirable on melee anyway.
Sounds like a melee-version of Vayne. Good glory...
She totally has a dash. But, that's not all...?
Xypherous:
I don't recall saying anything about not having dashes. I just said no blinks/teleports (Arcane Shift/Deceive/Shunpo) or blinkstrikes (Audacious Charge, Shadow Dash, etc.)
Xypherous is always breaking new mold. ^_^
Eliminating the guesses
Xypherous:
Safeguard is a blinkstrike type ability which blinks to ally.
What the hell is it?!
Riven will not be shooting sword beams...
Xypherous:
Funnily enough, I did try this. It didn't work really well, mostly because you couldn't aim it very well, and you ran into the whole 'why don't I just run up and hit the guy for 4 times the damage?'
Shooting sword beams would be gg...
A philosophical discussion about dashes?
Xypherous:
I suppose the main question isn't what the dash does, but how many dashes you can possibly put on a character without people feeling like you're just outright cheating at that point.
Vayne on steroids?
Just how much fun is Riven?
Xypherous:
Hm. I shot for the moon and didn't make it. There was a ton of skills/abilities that I tried on the character that didn't quite work out.
It wasn't the fact that one individual skill didn't work, just that a cohesive kit wasn't forming together.
A list of things that didn't make it: Inertia, Hookshot, Countercarom, Context Button, Perma-Sliding Autoattack, Beam Sword, etc.
The thing that did make it in (and finally worked), I'm happy with. Based on how people respond to it, it might be a feasible kind of basic ability template.
All of these sound amazing, but it sounds like Xypherous wanted more. :o
Difference between a blink and a dash:
Xypherous:
Blinks have no travel time and are instantaneous. They also can go through walls, pretty much.
A dash has a travel time and a direction typically.
That's about it.
I hope you're soaking this all up.
The importance of her passive:
Xypherous:
Her passive isn't defining, unfortunately.
It merely serves its' purpose as more kit glue. Character defining passives haven't really been my style.
So, she's not like Anivia or LeBlanc. More like Shaco or Talon. :/
Burst assassin or sustained fighter?
Xypherous:
She sits somewhere in between those, depending on how you build. She doesn't have an innate sustain (heal) mechanic though.
Life steal!!
What's wrong with a perma-sliding auto attack?
Xypherous:
Perma-Sliding autoattack means you always moved a distance to attack. 30% of the time, this felt amazing as it did exactly what you wanted it to. 40% of the time, it was just like 'Huh? Oh, that's right' and the other 40% of the time it got you killed.
The thing about making someone with two viable combat distances is that you don't know what your combat distance should be. (Almost always, choosing the further of the two is strictly better). It's a very hard balancing act.
Interesting stuff, but I can't really comment on this stuff.
What IS a perma-sliding autoattack?!
Xypherous:
Hm, you know that scene in samurai movies where like, the guy prepares to draw his sword while still and then suddenly dashes forward and hits someone in that motion?
That would've been your autoattack. It didn't work out.
I may revisit it and try to finesse all the problems out.
$$$ How much will Riven cost? $$$
Xypherous:
That is correct. The champion designer has very little say on what the price of the champions will be.
Marketing handles that.
6300? I welcome our new Chinese overlords from Tencent!
More on perma-sliding attacks:
Xypherous:
Err.. I mean.. err.. *hides under table*
Actually, the main benefit of the sliding autoattack was more time. Most melee champions have to wait for their attack animation before resuming to move and chase you. The sliding autoattack was just like 'run run run slice keep running without losing momentum'
This was the ability, yes. Unfortunately, in order to make it work, I had to shut off a ton of autoattack AI in order to reduce the amount of situations it randomly fired and got you killed, but it still wasn't enough to solve the randomly put you in a worse spot case.
The excessive amount of melee champions:
Xypherous:
Well, the champion I had been working on, is unfortunately blocked by particle tech. This champion was deemed the most ready to be put into production for this release cycle.
Tech-blocked! >:(
Other abilities that didn't work out:
Xypherous:
Inertia was a system that gave you a fury-esque resource for moving. This is where the sliding autoattack came into play, as I never wanted you to *stop* moving. You would then burn your fury-esque resource to power dashes and the like.
Hookshot is yes, Amumu Bandage Toss that latches onto Terrain, et al.
Context Button was just that - hit this button to do stuff that you'd most likely want. For example, if you were running, the button would make your character do a running slash. If you just autoattacked a character, that button would basically reset your autoattack and attack the same character again, etc.
I was trying to recreate that button in DMC/God of War/etc. where it was 'Hit this button and MAGICAL AWESOME DESTRUCTION HAPPENS.'
I would like such a button. :)
The topic of being tech-blocked:
Xypherous:
Um what does "blocked by particle tech" mean?
Blocked by particle tech means that there's a certain effect that would be required on this character that our engine currently doesn't support.
For example, if I wanted to make a 'Portal' based champion (no, I'm not making a portal based champion) I would need the tech to make the Portal display what was on the other side.
A portal gun consumable item needs to be made. NOW.
Auto-attack while moving (Ashe's dream skill):
Xypherous:
have you try a champion that can auto attack while moving or maybe the ability to toggle the sliding auto attack?
Trying to get autoattack while moving to work was the goal of sliding autoattack, yes.
I'm thinking about the toggle, but it's hard as it's really micro-intensive to the point of finickiness it feels like.
How Riot decides what champions to release:
Xypherous:
This is roughly an accurate picture of what goes on.
Why those other cool abilities didn't make the cut:
Xypherous:
Hookshots actually feel somewhat weird in terms of using them in high mobility engagements.
The reason is that, in most fights you want to go down a corridor of some type.
However, to hookshot forward, you need to shoot your hookshot at a terrain that might be forward, so you almost always end up targetting at an odd angle.
I just couldn't get the others to work cleanly enough because I was focused on making her Q ability feel good. I might revisit them in the future (or hand those mechanics off to other designers)
More on the mysterious Context button:
Xypherous:
Context button fails, just because our game *isn't* God of War and DMC, unfortunately. Feeling like the game is deciding what ability you use in a PvP setting is a bit off.
Why not make a Dash attack that stopped at the nearest enemy champion it hit and have it apply on-hit effects? Works in all situations! :D
Magnets!
Xypherous:
Particle tech? It's that water champion we've wanted since Well, isn't it! ISN'T IT!
Oh my, look at my hopes... I can barely see them way up there....
No, unfortunately. The tech in question is magnetor-type particles. (That is particles that can attract other particles in a physics sense)
More magnets!
Xypherous:
No no. Magnetor type particles are used to make other particles follow a leader particle in a way that makes sense.
Think of a flock of birds or a group of fireflies/locusts. You want the flock/firefly swarm to move a certain way, but you want them to move around a point but still have some random motion.
Possibility of a magnet spell?!
Xypherous:
Not really. Particle tech is strictly visuals. Nothing about design.
I guess if you want to think about it, imagine a champion which was like, 80 cute little blob slimes dancing around. (Note, this is not the actual champion.) You'd want them to follow a leader slime, but you'd also want them to have some random motion. This is where you'd use a magnetor (for the leader slime) particle that affects the ways the other slimes move but in a way that makes sense.
Riven in the grand tanky-dps scheme of things:
Xypherous:
Well, I can't promise anything super.
All I can say is that she doesn't have a on-hit skill, or an instant speed gap click-on-a-champion closer like Irelia's Q. Hopefully she'll be moving around the battlefield much much more that that.
I have tried very hard to make sure that attack damage is a compelling purchase though. But again, I can totally understand it if you're sick of Melee DPS by now. By their very nature, they have to embody some similar elements to work in our game. Being in melee range is very very dangerous.
I feel the character is simply more fun going brut/youmu's as a large portion of her skills care about movement and positioning but it's pretty hard to keep atmogs from being viable, due to how mid-elo works, unfortunately. I actually suspect something like Atmog's Annie works. :x
From the numbers, if you buy a BF Sword, your full combo deals about 250 more damage, so there's something to the notion of getting AD.
No on-hit modifier. We can expect greatness!
On CC-immunity regarding dashes
Xypherous:
To clarify: You are still CC'ed but the CC can't stop your movement if it has already started (unless that CC has a knockback or forced movement component). When you arrive, however, you will be CC'ed.
Blinkstrikes are speedy:
Xypherous:
A blinkstrike ability must have a target. (Audacious Charge, Safeguard, etc.)
A dash is fired at a direction.
For example, Lee Sin can't safeguard to a point that you specify.
I call them blinkstrikes because the speed at which they actually move is absurd. Audacious Charge has a speed of 3000. :(
Kog'Maw's Daddy!!!!
Xypherous:
I'm not part of Creative, so I don't know off the top of my head. Sorry.
Can't wait to meet big guy. Wonder if it'll just be a bigger version or if there will be lore regarding how Kog's in a larvae phase.
The process of champion designing:
Xypherous:
I think we did a short blurb in the spotlight for a little while on champion design/crafting, but it turned out that designers aren't actually the most fun people to listen to on a general scale. XD
At least when we talk strictly about design.
On how reality hates ranged-dps
Xypherous:
So, in general, we actually do try to space out different archetypes when planning about what champions to produce.
And then reality happens and things don't go as planned. I know that two slots with 'ranged dps' got bumped off and so you have back to back 'melee dps' sometime this year, simply because reality reared it's ugly head.
Does this mean we'll get a whole bunch of ranged-dps in a row some time in the future?! That would be real nice.
On Riot's view of the Champion Concepts Forum
Xypherous:
Well, I know a lot of us do browse the champion concept board from time to time but, personally, I don't really have the time to sift through tons of submissions to find gold. The success rate for being inspired is a lot lower than playing Bastion, for example.
At a personal level, I find myself inspired by more ordinary things or other games. From time to time I will read the concept board, but it's not a great avenue for research, unfortunately. The ideas have to work in our engine and our design ideals. While a lot of the ideas are cool, a lot of them don't work simply due to that constraint.
Yes, it is kind of sad that a lot of great ideas could be undiscovered, but the amount of work it would take to find all of them feels like panning for gold given that many submissions.
That's right, stop posting your stupid ideas on there.
Riven's kit resemblance
Xypherous:
Actually a lot closer to Renekton and Lee Sin, in that you want to use your skills to use your other skills better. Irelia/Shaco/Talon have great individual skills, wheras Riven is all about executing her one-skill chain and her variants of that skill-chain.
To a question about his ability to answer questions... so... dam... well...:
Xypherous:
I think I was one course away from being a Philosophy Minor. I'm actually a Computer Science Major.
Philosophy - Useful for honing analytical skills and debate structure.
But alas, swooning does not happen frequently enough for my tastes... that CS major may have something to do with it.
The man can swoon.
His personal history in game-design
Xypherous:
I actually started my game design career officially at Riot actually, about a year ago.
However, my toying with game design, is roughly as follows:
I think my first foray into making games was with game creation engines. I did ZZT for a few years, then failed horribly at making MZX games.
Then I heavily modded Tribes for a year and then took up Computer Science in college. Since modding tribes was effectively doing CS, CS in college was relatively simple. Along the way I also got into modding Diablo 2 and dabbling in various other games. (RPG Maker, etc.)
All game designers I know are also game maniacs. We play a wide variety of games constantly. This is in contrast to for example, playing one game really really well and in-depth (like mastering the entire Halo franchise or something.) However, it's impossible to shut off the 'design sense' once you've picked it up. You start picking apart every game you've ever played for design flaws or perks.
I'm not actually sure what helped overall, but I will say that modding, philosophy and computer science and playing a variety of games have been the biggest influences on my game design.
The kind of combat is Riven being developed for:
Xypherous:
A champion that crashes into the middle of a fight and causes a large amount of disruption then quickly dances to the edge of the fight when she gets unwanted attention... and then crashes into the fight again at a moment's notice when it's safe for her to pile it on.
And then kills everyone with her improbably sized sword.
Sounds OP.
PONIES!!!!
Xypherous:
Fluttershy would simply not be complete without the surrounding butterfly swarm.
(NOT ACTUALLY HAPPENING.)
Answers to two questions this time!
Xypherous:
1. No, actually.
2. Not sure. Release cycles are up to build engineers and QA verification.
Someone posted this on another thread already I think
Regarding the recent slew of champions (repetitive and non-innovative):
Xypherous:
I completely agree you with that we can push the boundaries a bit more than we have. However, you have to understand, that I am only one designer in a design team. Every designer has their own particular style and audience. I cater to a somewhat more novelty-seeking and flow-based seeking crowd, while other people do enjoy simpler straight-forward designs who is designed to feel solid.
For example, a lot of Coronach's champions appeal to me as a player simply because everything screams simple elegance with an interesting neat twist. It may not be completely game-changing, but that elegance is something that I really enjoy as a player in most games. Brand for example has that simple elegance/combo twist that makes him really interesting for me but I could certainly see how that might be too simple for a particular audience.
While I don't disagree with you, I think there is a spectrum of audiences that want different things. For example, successful AD carries typically don't have an overly complicated skillset because the mind-share of those characters have to be on positioning and autoattacking.
The common notion that we 'restrict' ourselves with anti-patterns is a bit off though. I've never had one of my (certifiably insane) skill ideas shot down or outright rejected due to "violating an anti-pattern." They just don't work well gameplay wise.
What he's been working on:
Xypherous:
Yes, I was working on an AP/Support/Off-Tank mage champ before this.
...wow. Now that I type that out, that seems convoluted.
AP Support Off-Tank will be the future FotM!!
More teasing about Riven's Q:
Xypherous:
It's just a very very simple move that's not very complex. In fact, most of my work on it was to make it feel as simple and as intuitive as possible. Since a lot of my designs are fighting game inspired, you can probably take a fair guess as to what in fighting games I haven't tried to port over yet.
The relevancy of Super Smash Bros.
Xypherous:
Man. That theory doesn't have much merit, but Riven was actually inspired by a chara from SSB.
Not that half his mechanics made it in to Riven, but whatever, I tried.
Riven's code name:
Xypherous:
Allright, I'm heading off for the night.
'Marth' was my internal name for Riven.
Most OP s.o.b. in the aforementioned game...