Champion (League of Legends)

A champion is a playable character in the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game League of Legends. As of July 2020 there are 148 champions in the game, with new ones being regularly released since the game's original release in 2009. The game's champions feature a variety of design styles, which Riot designer August Browning admits as being eclectic: "you have a crazy girl in a city of technology who runs around with Hextech weaponry blowing up buildings, then you have a knight in shining armor with a giant sword who can summon a magical, bigger sword from the sky to wreck his enemies."

Gameplay

Each player controls one champion. Champions are controlled via player inputs from their mouse and keyboard. By right clicking with the mouse somewhere on the screen, the player will move the champion to the cursor.

When a player right clicks on an enemy turret, minion, champion, or the Nexus itself, their champion will begin moving towards it. When the champion gets close enough, they will begin attacking the enemy unit automatically. This is known as an auto-attack, or a basic attack. Champions will hit the unit with a variety of weapons including swords, fists, bows, and guns.

Additionally, every Champion has at least five abilities: a passive ability, and abilities mapped to the keyboard keys Q, W, E, and R, the latter being the "ultimate" ability.

Design

League of Legends character design is derived from a variety of fantasy and sci-fi tropes and genres.

Originally Riot wanted to release the game with just 20 champions, but after some consideration they soon doubled this number. In order to meet the deadline for release, Brandon Jew recalls they brought brought in an "army" of paid interns and used them to supplement the work on character design. Riot's had 12 designers, with about half of those were interns. Each designer was working on two champions at the same time and they each only had two months to work with their champions, with a lot of the work also being outsourced.

One design philosophy is to "take a common trope, or something that’s exciting, and then you blow it up to 11". Examples of this include Master Yi, a samurai who not only has giant oversized sword, but also swords on his boots.

With such a wide variety of champions, balancing the game has proven difficult.

The process of designing champions as a "particularly complex process, something that in turn is heavily collaborative." "the Champion submission process is one to which all Rioters — not just the Champion team, not just game developers — are able to contribute."

Occasionally, champions have also been "reworked," where their in-game abilities and traits, as well as their backstory and lore are changed.

Released in 2013, Lucian was the first black champion in the game. Riot explained that this was done to "challenge the preconceived notions of what's possible."

Since 2013 Riot announced they were slowed the cadence of releasing new champions, opting instead to focus more on making individual champions of higher quality. However, in 2016 they stated that they will continue to add new champions for "some time."

In 2018, Riot released the champion Aphelios, whom PC Gamer referred to as the most complex champion ever. Aphelios has five weapons, each with a unique basic attack.

Riot acknowledges that some character designs, like Jinx being an anarchist, may not be as well understood by League's global audience.

In 2017 Riot stated that an LBGTQ character would be included in the game at some point, and that they were finding the right time and proper storytelling method.

Additional character designs or "skins" are available for purchase for each champion. This feature is the main monetization for League of Legends.

Released in 2017, Rakan and Xayah are the first champions to have specific in-benefits while playing with each other.

Controversies

Dutch-Surinamese footballer Edgar Davids won a lawsuit filed in a Dutch court against Riot Games for using his likeness in an association football-themed skin for Lucian without his permission.

Story

Each champion has their own unique story and lore. In 2015, a character was killed for the first in the lore. Gangplank was killed by Miss Fortune in one of Riot's new lore "events," and also made unavailable to play in-game for a period of time. During this event, the new champion Illaoi was also introduced.

Appearances in other media

Quotes from Sona, specifically her incarnation as "DJ Sona," appears in the music video for Basshunter's song "Masterpiece".

Reception

Some champions have become so popular that they have been the focus of virtual pop groups like K/DA or have outfits created by designers at Louis Vuitton. LV designer Nicolas Ghesquière designed skins for the champions Qiyana and Senna.

IGN called the visual style of the champions "highly inventive" and "charming."

Criticism

In 2014 Sarah Beck of Women in Game Studies criticized designs for both male and female champions for promoting unhealthy body types. She also noted the lack of racial diversity among the human champions.

Some character designs have been criticized as overly sexualized. Riot received widespread criticism of Kai'Sa's design upon her released in 2018. Ryan Mireles, Lead producer of champions was admitted that "Kai’Sa’s neckline didn’t land well with players and that it made her look unnecessarily sexualized, even if it that wasn’t the intention." However he offered an excuse that this was done to make the champion look more human.

Gameplay

The constant addition of new champions, as well as patches making changes to the gameplay mechanics, is a perennial criticism of the game, as well as a cited reason for player burnout.

In 2020 professional player Rekkles criticized Riot for adding too many crazy new designs, suggested players should not be forced to play the "new generation" releases. He cited the release of Senna and Aphelios in 2019 which changed the meta too strongly.

Research

Choong-Soo Lee and Ivan Ramler of Saint Lawrence University studied the effect that the free champion rotation could have on whether players chose them in game. Using a custom Python program to produce both a Minimax algorithm and linear regression-based model, they found that at lower tiers of play players were more likely to choose free champions.

Building off of the research of Lee and Rambler, Marcal Mora Cantallops and Miguel Ángel Sicilia studied whether the 2015 Bilgewater lore event ("Burning Tides") influenced player's choice of playable champions and their interest in learning more about the game's lore. During the event, seven champions whose backstories were associated with the world of Bilgewater were made free-to-play, they were: Gangplank, Miss Fortune, Twisted Fate, Graves, Fizz, Nami, and Nautilus. Cantallops and Sicilia found that while these champions did not see a statistically significant increase in play during this time period than other free rotations, there was still an increase of interest in learning more about these champions according to Google Trends.

In popular culture

A woman in China was seen on video camera praying to a statue of the champion Garen, after apparently mistaking it for a statue of the deity Guan Yu.

References

This article "Champion (League of Legends)" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Champion (League of Legends). Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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