Legends of Runeterra Dev Tracker
This thread was added on May 03, 2020, with posts from Cashmiir, Dovagedys, RiotCrowtaro.
Super interesting read. I love getting insights into Riot’s creative process - both on this game and on League.
Glad you liked it! It was the first time I've been able to work with the LoR team, and it was really delightful. They're incredibly talented. I hope I can do more of these in the future!
You can't just tell me there was a Heimerdinger alternate wincon but not reveal what it was
UNCONKABLE would be able to shed more light on it. But if I remember correctly it was trying to build tons of turrets. It's similar to how he ended up, but I can't remember what the wincon part was.
That was worth every minute reading. A bit bummed out you didn't get to share some of the other champions' background, but I still really appreciate this post and this amazing game!
When going into the meetings with the devs I have an idea of the general topic, and then just kinda wing it when I ask them questions. When I transcribe the meeting (bane of my existence) I figure out what I want the story to look like. Unfortunately for this one I realized after the meeting that I wanted to talk about the champs separately. And I didn't really have a meaningful story to tell about every single one. One of my drafts had a few fun facts about the others, but it just felt like a disservice.
Based on the Braum flair I can tell you this: Braum's earliest iteration was basically just a set it and forget it. Basically, you'd select another card and he'd take all the damage for that card. It just didn't really feel super exciting to play, so the team tried other things until landing on what he has now. :D
“I came into the office one day and there were a bunch of explorations on the wall, and I saw this dude on a chariot with these three ghostly sharks. And it made such little sense that I was immediately in,” laughs UNCONKABLE. “One person on our team at the time absolutely hated it.
Burn the non-believer !
Don't worry, we later gave the non-believer his own framed copy of the artwork. I haven't seen it, but I'm just going to believe that it now is displayed right above the mantelpiece in his home
This was really cool. Especially giving us behind the scenes on how different artworks were picked and mechanics being tested.
My personal favorite moment in the article was reading “I’m a big fan of Yu-Gi-Oh,” says UNCONKABLE . Yugioh is my favorite card game, and hearing someone from the Legends of Runeterra team mentioning is felt amazing. The initial trailer for Runeterra and all the Reddit posts and discussions focused on Magic the Gathering or Hearthstone, I didn't think they were ever being influenced/making something Yugioh inspired. I gave some feedback during an early LOR survey sent to my email about taking influence from Yugioh, and I am so glad they did in a way :)
Edit: Looking forward to more of these articles and other champion's design stories! Keep up the great work guys :D
There's actually a lot of Yugioh fans on the team, including myself. I'm a pretty lapsed fan personally, but when Duel Links dropped you know I was in there grinding to KoG
Thank you for sharing! Truth be told, I was anticipating to see Braum while I was reading the article heh. I'm glad you guys settled with the current version, I feel it really does fit Braum better. :D
I know, I'm bummed I didn't get to add him. I play him a lot in League and he has a special place in my heart (EVEN IF I HATE FRELJORD DECKS WITH ALL OF MY BEING).
I can't make promises, but I'd love to do more of these and cover the other champs we didn't get to talk about. Fingers crossed!
What a fun read. Makes me think, theoretically, eventually we'll have every single champ from LoL in LoR.
We do want to include every champion from League of Legends. We don't have a clear timeline on when, so it may take quite a while, but we absolutely do want to try and include all of them eventually.
Wasn't LoR Senna developed before LoL Senna?
Yes! I worked with Senna's DNA team and one of the things we talked about (but didn't talk about in the article because it was uncharted territory at the time) was Senna's LoR and League development timelines.
Okay, I wasn't very sure of my claim, and I wasn't expecting Riot Cashmiir to answer me.
Just to be clear, LoR Senna was developed before LoL Senna?
Yes! LoR Senna was developed before LoL Senna, but the teams worked together closely to ensure there was a consistent story and that both versions of Senna were representative of who she is.
Edit: Grammar. WrItEr AcKsHuAlLy
Thanks for the insight ! You didn't talk about Freljord, but I really like how Ashe and Sejuani complement nicely each other, both for leveling conditions and when they are leveled up.
When you do Lissandra, it would be cool (haha) if she had an ability like "Whenever you Frostbite an enemy, deal 1 to the enemy Nexus". This way, when all 3 of them are leveled up and attacking, you get a big wombo combo !
I shall pass this feedback on to the team, but I can't make promises. I'm just a writer and have no influence over the game's design. :)
But that would be pretty solid and absolutely horrifying. Thanks. I hate it. :D
Wow Kalista and thresh left out :( kalista is understandable because she already got redone(and it’s much better).
I AM SO SAD SPOOPY GREEN GHOST IS MY BOY!!!!
We're hoping to do more of these in the future, so I'd love to go back and talk about the ones we missed in here. They all have really interesting stories. I can't count the amount of times UNCONKABLE repeated that when we were talking.
Thank you Riot Cashmiir. You have made a man's day.
Also, that name is very cool :D
Awww shucks you.
Lol ty! I've been using it for years. Since Classic Runescape through Vanilla WoW up to now. :D
Edit: Your name is the bane of my existence. Second only to Num Lock.
It was nice to get an insight as a new player, I'm having a lot of fun so far with my good ole pal TF. As much as it was nice to get an insight though, it felt like this was just a flavour of the full creative process, is there any more content that goes in-depth on card design and the creative process from a mechanical sense that people know of? Would be very interesting for me
This is something we'd like to do in the future!
The article was a very interesting read, especially as it helped me learn a bit more about the different regions! Also hearing that one of the devs is a fan of yugioh put a smile on my face. However, I’m still very new to the lore as this is the only game I’ve played, didn’t know anything about League of Legends before this. I wanted to ask, what’s the difference between Runeterra and the summoners rift? Is that a different region not in the game yet?
Summoner's Rift used to be a central area where combatants from Runeterra came to fight. I'm not sure if that's still the case or not.
But ST is just the name of the main map in League. So it's not exactly a natural environment for these champions.
Just asking will you do this for every single champ
I would love to! LoR is great and I really love learning about this and sharing it.
We're hoping to do more of these in the future, so I'd love to go back and talk about the ones we missed in here.
That would be great! While this text talked about some instances of champions for which the LOL mechanics were hard to translate into card games (fast!), what makes me more curious is how you guys came up with some of the designs that are more unique to card games and don't really match much with their LoL-selves (Maokai with toss/mill, Nautilus with Deep, ...).
Also would love to hear the history behind Swain's design, as I feel like he has a lot of different facets that could have ended up with very different versions of the champion card.
Would love to do more of these and cover those champs! I'm also very interested to know that!
Hey Cash, a bit late to the party here but is there anything you can share about Quinn's development process and why the devs designed her the way they did/where they took inspiration from?
As a Quinn main from League going on 5 years now, I absolutely LOVE playing her and her team of rangers in LoR - not only due to their amazing theme and visuals, but also because of the Scout mechanic that accompanies them. Forcing fights feels so good, especially in combination with Rally.
This is coming from someone who's never played card games before and swore he'd be disappointed if Riot released one! I'm having a blast so far and feel incredibly grateful to have my favorite champion in the game, so thank you :)
I didn't get a chance to talk to the team about Set 2, but I'll see if we can cover her in a later article maybe!
My manager is also a Quinn main, and as a Yuumi main, there's nothing I love more than running at someone with Youmuu's Zoomies and just obliterating them in one shot. So I'm pretty in love with her LoR mechanic. :D