Anyone else feel like there new champs are getting silly? I know there a company and there in this to make money (no matter how often they claim to be growing esports), but there recent champs seem to be adding champs for the sake of adding champs. In the little over 1 1/2 years that I have been playing LoL they have added something like 15 champs some of which could of just been reworks for currently existing ones(lucian >mf, attrox>trynd, yasuo> yi). Not to turn this into a dota vs LoL topic but in that same time dota's added like 1, and I mean dota ass dota not implementing previously existing characters into dota 2

Sorry for not contributing to this topic directly but I gotta say I'm incredibly tempted to make the "Jumping the shark with the amount of chomps" thread about Matt Rorie..

@dizzyhippos: Considering Riot's business model for LoL revolves heavily around selling champs, doesn't it make sense that they'd continuously be releasing more? I understand that this can quickly lead to oversaturation, but at least since that is a big part of how they make money, there is financial pressure on them to make new champs as compelling as possible. If these new ones you're talking about are truly uninspired reworks of existing ones, Riot will learn their lesson when they don't sell well.

Nah. The upcoming champ, Braum, looks to be pretty original.

@joshwent: That would be a vaild argument if they didnt also sell skins for like 10-30$, and have you ever met an NA LoL fan? they will buy shit no matter what, I am more talking about the games balance and such. They cant keep adding unnecessary champs and expect people to believe the game is balanced (which it very very rarely is)

ya original but broken as shit, I admittedly haven't played him on PBE or anything but a champ that makes projectiles useless in a support role? that sounds like a pretty broken concept to me

Only once, and then it's reduced damage. No difference from say a blackshield or windwall.

The only person to person comparison I agreed with was aatrox to Trynd, and barely even then. MF/Lucian and Yasuo/Yi are nothing alike in playstyle.

It's more about skins for champs than selling champs themselves, you can get champs with the free currency.

@dystopiax: Not the current MF but the old pre rework MF was lucian minus the dash and with a stationary ult

Hmm. Admittedly I'm not a LoL player so I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. If this is the case, then yeah, they should probably reign in the amount (or at least quality) of new champs if they want to keep the game as legitimately competitive as they try to make it seem.

I'm one of the (few?) folks who is actually excited about the future of eSports, and Riot has made some great strides in the push, so it would be a shame if they unbalanced the game through an apparently unnecessary need to just constantly create more content.

Still, I'd imagine the competitive players at least could easily weed out any champs that they felt didn't add much to the game.

This is already happening, again not to turn this into a dota vs LoL topic but at TI3 all but like 5 heroes were played at some point, even with the massive rework they did at the end of season 3 LoL at high level is still like the same 20 champs

Though I know absolutely no one cares about this, thematically League has long since jumped the shark. I sincerely hold doubts their writing team will ever be able to recover from the releases of several new champions who bring something that doesn't fit to the setting (Jinx being the major offender). They've been inching further and further away from their fantasy aesthetic, and everything's just been piling up to a point where they'll never have a good story going again.

It sucks that they stopped what little story they had just because they had a split over whether or not Katarina/Talon/La Blanc on the same mission working together would be capable of killing King Jarvan III. League's lost its' narrative. I'll be shocked if they ever pick it up again.

To explain my distaste for Jinx, I got nothing against crazy characters, and her music video was awesome. She just felt like they took the Joker, made him a lady, and slapped her into League. Generally I just think Piltover/Zaun are stupid places with the worst stories that produce rubbish characters (and they ruined Viktor's lore for one character's rubbish story).

TL;DR: I'm just bitter about the lack of narrative or cohesive story these days, and miss the Journal of Justice. And know that it'll be impossible to get that story back with the shitton of characters there are now. Also you get characters like Lucian and Jinx who look like they come from completely different worlds. There's no thematic unity. It's a clusterpuppy.

LoL champions have always felt a bit created for the sake of creating it. That doesn't mean there isn't some creativity there. Its certainly not as bad now as it was when they were on that two week cycle for new champs. Take Jinx. Sure, she follows the Riot rule of sexualization, but her mechanics and what she brings to her role are fairly interesting (at least more interesting than triforce based ADC like Ezreal). If you want to talk about boring and lazy champions, I'd say look at Annie and Ashe, who have been around forever, and mechanically haven't evolved in any real interesting ways (aside from Annie support I guess?).

Mechanically they're sound, and they've gotten so much better at making interesting kits over the years. Just talking about lore. On a side note, Ashe is one of my favorite champions purely due to her lore. I thought the Freljord conflict was awesome. Too bad nothing will ever come of it.

I'm not entirely sure "story" matters in these games as much as skills mix and balance. Which is the reason it takes a while to add another character to Dota (the Dota Ass Dota version) because adding another hero dramatically changes the hero-hero interaction and balance and must be handled carefully. Throwing that stability away just to add another hero appears to be a "cash grab" instead of a feature improvement.

One of riots head writers gave a talk about "story not mattering in games" so ya I wouldn't hold my breath on the lore of that game getting any work anytime soon

That's not true at all. It's more than 20 even though there are plenty of not competitively viable champs. The pool is also expanded if you're not the top 1% of the playerbase.

And they've slowed down champ releases a ton. There's only been 2 this year as opposed to like 14 in 2012 or something like that, and the champs that have come out have new mechanics not seen in other champs- things like the ability to block projectiles. The game is fine on a competitive setting. I don't know DOTA but even if more champs are competitively viable that doesn't mean that a game isn't competitively balanced if it has a smaller viable champion pool. As long as the champs that are played are balanced and there aren't 1 or 2 champs that completely wreck other champs then it's fine. Ofc it would be better if all 100something champs were played but just because they aren't doesn't make the game broken or anything.

I don't have any qualms about new champs being released, except for two things:

1. It can make learning the meta of the game and how to co-operate with and go against different champions pretty daunting for new players.

2. Some older champions have been almost completely forgotten. Case in point, Sion. His model and default splash art are both horrendous. His kit has been also untouched since Season 1. Even when Riot went through their whole 'Take Randomness out of the Game' phase, Sion's (almost) useless passive persisted. His ultimate is also broken now, as it was made before the Ravenous Hydra existed. I know that Sion is apparently due for a remake, but I've been hearing that for a while now. Off the top of my head I can also remember Amumu as being basically untouched.

Apart from that, new champions can add necessary flavor to the game, as well as introduce new mechanics to play around with (such as the mechanics behind Yasuo's Wind Wall being included in Braun's abilities).

His passive is strong, but as for everything else...

...I mean, I stomped the fuck out of that guy pretty hard with Tristana, so I don't know.

@adequatelyprepared: Sion is scheduled for a kit rework and VU. It's been in the works for some time already. Beyond that, pretty much every other old champion that genuinely NEEDS a rework has gotten one. Many of the others are still viable and still good. They may not fit the competitive ranked meta at the moment, but that meta is constantly shifting. I think the only other champs needing a rework of the original list are Alistar (which they've said they are working on increasing his overall skills quality) and Zilean (who is virtually fucking worthless).

It only has 12 more champs than Dota 2 (119 vs 107).

They released 10 champions total since the beginning of 2013, slowing down significantly. Their kit design also has greatly improved in recent years; and no, Lucian is not comparable to Miss Fortune, Yasuo is very different from Master Yi, etc.