Author: NGA-♀りAsakawa Rui (♀
What will happen if one day, League of Legends no longer updates heroes? As of the new hero Nila, there are already 161 heroes in League of Legends. This is A very large number. Since its official launch in 2009, the number of heroes has continued to expand. The developers of League of Legends have planned for when they will stop designing new characters so as not to scare away new players.
161 characters are a lot of numbers in any game. For example, several have more longevity than League of Legends. Of the game IPs, Mortal Kombat has 97 characters, Super Smash Bros.
has 80 characters, and in recent years. Among the popular games, APEX has 23 characters and Overwatch has 32 characters. The latter has been criticized for its slow update speed. Riot Games 's own VALORANT has 18 characters, and this number is still increasing. Dota 2, the old rival of League of Legends, currently has 123 characters, while Honor of Kings has 110 characters.Over the past 13 years, League of Legends has maintained its leadership position by continuously launching new heroes every year, and this year, we have received 4 new heroes.
However, Riot Games said that this situation will always come. Come to an end. Phroxzon, the lead designer of the
Summoner's Rift team, participated in the alliance blog Broken this week. by Concept's program was 2 hours long, and he mentioned that Riot Games had discussed the topic of one day when League of Legends would no longer update heroes.
He said that the hero team was already considering an "end update" time. point, to put an end to the hero list, he added, if League of Legends can no longer. Introduce intuitive and clear characters, and the final roster of Rift will appear.
Of course, League of Legends will not end updates anytime soon, and Phroxzon said there is still a lot of design space before the final roster arrives.
There are several factors that will lead to this. Unable to continue launching new heroes, one of which is English The hero is not intuitive enough. If the player encounters Thresh and Thresh throws a hook, this skill seems to have a hooking effect, but the hook crosses the player, which will make people wonder what the skill is. .
"If we make a hero that's not intuitive enough, it's going to be a problem to make more heroes because that's It greatly increases the game knowledge you need to know to play the game. "
Gwen is the best example of League of Legends being "not intuitive enough". Phroxzon said that Gwen's core gameplay is based on a skill set that presents huge visual challenges for newcomers. It is often difficult for players to identify what this hero with scissors wants to do. To make matters worse, novice players will sometimes be directly killed by Gwen.
This design is a huge no-no for Hero Team. This game already has 161 characters. Novice players will face a steep learning curve for and if they enter the game. In particular, the skill sets of some heroes are becoming more and more complex, and the mechanism is not as simple as it appears visually.
Riot Games does not want novice players to add any more burden to this process. So, when will Riot Games stop making new heroes for League of Legends?
Phroxzon did not give a final answer, but the author believes that the maximum limit for the League of Legends hero list will not arrive so soon.
In recent Riot Games official news, they hope that League of Legends will remain a popular game in the next decade, and even decades to come. Then, maintaining the frequency of hero updates is an essential strategy. Players always need freshness. In fact, in the hero blueprint at the beginning of the year, the gameplay leader Reav3 also mentioned that they have slowed down the release of new heroes.
Although four new heroes have been released in 2022, Lenata and Zeli were almost completed last year and are planned to be launched during the premiere of Battle of Two Cities in November. However, after considering various factors, the Heroes team decided to postpone the release until this year. Therefore, the new heroes that really belong to 2022 are currently only Belvis and Lenata, and there will be a new tank hero of Shurima in the second half of the year.
Moreover, what Phroxzon said in the podcast is probably a bit of hype. In fact, the hero team is as eager as ever to bring more new heroes to players. They firmly believe that "part of the charm of League of Legends is the never-ending learning curve." No one dares to say that they have mastered all heroes, especially As designers continue to adjust heroes, this is why many players keep playing.
Reav3 once said, "Once you learn League of Legends and all the characters in the game, the game will start to become less attractive. Every new hero we create will add new gameplay that players need to learn. This This is also one of the reasons why we ensure that all new heroes have unique gameplay. "
Not only that, the hero team also conducts major reworks of old heroes every year, and also updates some outdated heroes. For example, Udyr will receive a new skill set this month to modernize his gameplay. Aurelion Sol will also get a much-needed update later this year. Since Riot Games has no intention of launching League of Legends 2, new heroes for this game should be released continuously, but it is indeed difficult to solve the problem of novice players entering the game. After all, the number of heroes is already very large.
But in my opinion, if a game has stopped updating its most important content, then there will be no need to consider the cost of newcomers joining the game. I am afraid that it will be difficult to attract more newcomers by then. For MOBA games, after all, how to maintain existing users may be the most important thing, and the lack of continuous launch of new heroes will also affect skin sales, which is the main source of income.
