League of Legends New Champion Introduction In Terms of Networks
This discussion is inspired by a recent article on Kotaku regarding why Riot Games won’t produce a champion (a playable character) that is more than one unit in size for its premier game League of Legends. League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), where players control individual “hero” characters equipped with various moves. Said games stem from real time strategy games (RTS) where players control armies of sorts and micromanage the armies’ movement, attacks, and resource gathering. Part of the elegance of League of Legends is its simplistic structure. Champions only have 4 main actions, 2 universal actions and are moved by intuitively pointing and clicking. However, complexity arises when teams coordinate group attacks, or even when two players pair up in a “lane”, or a straight path where a large amount of battle occurs. Recently, player speculation in regards to a public beta teaser has caused many to believe that a “2 in 1” champion is being worked on. The teaser involved two types of masks appearing when individuals playing in a public beta environment (PBE) died. These masks seemed to match the concept art of a fan named Rakoon Jesus, who designed a fictitious champion duo named “Dha Ma.” The champion featured micromanagement of two units, and abilities associated with said units.
When asked on ask.fm about the possibility for the release of a “2 in 1” champion, Daniel Klein, a champion designer at Riot, responded in the negative, indicating that it would require too much UI/control redesign, and that skills learned while playing with a “2 in 1” champion would not translate to other champions. In addition to what Mr. Klein said, a “2 in 1” champion would dramatically complicate gameplay and increase the possibility of releasing an unbalanced champion. In terms of CS2850, champions can be considered nodes in a network, and their “connections” could represent relationships. A relationship between champion A and champion B could be defined as +/- if A counters B, -/+ if B counters A, or = if they are equal. Just as we defined a balanced graph in this course, a balanced champion graph exists if each node in the network has about the same number of +, -, and = signs on their side of all their connections (for example, a champion A linked with champion B with a connection of type +/- would have a “+” on its side). This network is not enough however, because pairings and combinations of champions can exist up to the number 5, which is the number of players allowed on a given team. Champion combinations add an extreme layer of complexity to the associations between champions themselves, and the idea of the associations themselves (e.g. the idea of one champion or group of champions being better than or equal to another) is dependent on how champions move, how their abilities work, etc. A champion with multiple movable entities would drastically complicate the network and any associations it, as a node, could potentially have with other champions. As was said in the beginning of the course, a seemingly small change has drastic effects when put in terms of an extremely large array of associations and relationships.
When League of Legends releases a new champion, hundreds of hours of time are invested into the reducing the possible number of issues that could arise with regards to fairness and champion equality. These hours are spent considering various champion relationships as described above in terms of graphs. Champion complexity and game changes make the League of Legends experience fun, but a more extreme change like adding a “2 in 1” champion could break the game for quite some time. I doubt Riot Games is about to do that right now, or any time in the future.
http://kotaku.com/why-league-of-legends-won-t-add-two-for-one-character-1729940670