How Riot Games is Creating New LoL Champions

Riot Games has been releasing new LoL champions and a lot of them have received mixed reactions. The League of Legends community has always been a place where a lot of criticism is being made but ever since 2019, they have been more aggressive than ever. Why is it that Riot Games can’t seem to make a ‘balanced’ champion on their first try lately? Let’s take a look at how the company tries to create new champions.

How Riot Games Creates New LoL Champs

Riot Games has actually stated that their goal is to create original champions with unique designs from already existing models. With over 150 champions, it can be difficult trying to create a new concept that will both stand out to create an identity for the champion and feel original and not just a copy of another champion from this game or another game outside of League of Legends intellectual jurisdiction.

The champion design team also confirmed that they try to make the new additions as unique as possible, even if people might think that it looks overpowered. Since Riot Games is a growing company, a lot of people are working on the design of all the new LoL champs even if at times it feels like they don’t know what they’re doing. In the end, not all champions are overpowered on release and those that start out as broken eventually become balanced.

The Public Beta Environment

The good thing about League of Legends is that there’s a server dedicated to test champions before they are officially released globally. This server is hosted in North America so it can be a bit difficult for players from other countries to participate without experiencing latency issues in-game. If you insist on trying to play on this server, you can some PBE Accounts right here at LolFinity for a reasonable price!

YouTubers like Vandiril have always made it their mission to showcase minor and major bugs. They dedicate their time look for even the smallest mistake that may or may not be gamebreaking for the sake of making the game function normally. This is why champions are a lot tamer when they are released but it still doesn’t change the fact that other players will still find exploits that even an entire server has missed.

Overview on Recently Released Champions

To understand how Riot Games release new LoL champs, we should take a look at some of the champions that have been recently. We’ve chosen the top 3 champions that we think best represent how the game continues to evolve for better or for worse, depending on how the player base views these decisions. These champions have been at the highlight of controversy ever since they were released and continue to be criticized today.

1. Aphelios

Aphelios is a good example of how Riot Games messed up after releasing a champion. When he came out, he was broken beyond repair and the bottom lane became a place where it was impossible to win against this champion at higher ELOs. Even in the esports scene, Aphelios had such a high win-rate that most teams had to ban it if they weren’t going Blue Side because it was almost always a guaranteed loss.

The champion was probably the biggest mistake in League of Legends history and has impacted how the community views Riot Games. The champion design was undoubtedly innovative and introduced a new kind of AD Carry that had different weapons and skills depending on a weapon-queue system. Sadly, Riot Games didn’t take into account how each of the weapons were individually stronger than their intent.

2. Akshan

Akshan is a champion that, upon being revealed, made the community extremely angry. They were sure that this champion was something that would destroy League of Legends as a game because it looked extremely broken on paper. After all, a champion that was able to revive his entire team could potentially provide a negative play experience and eventually make games unplayable because they wouldn’t spend as much time in the death zone.

Unfortunately, that’s not exactly how the champion performed upon release. It turns out, it’s not easy killing specific champions during heated teamfights and Akshan’s range made him an easy target for enemy bursts. He wasn’t exactly bad but his abilities were good at best. It turns out, the League of Legends community didn’t take into account a lot of factors and jumped to the conclusion that he would simply be overpowered.

3. Yuumi

Yuumi is probably the only champion that we think had a lazy design. Her abilities and the general idea surrounding her was too basic and didn’t really take any real skill to use. It’s so bad that players started uploading videos of them simply attaching themselves to their AD Carry and playing a different game entirely because you can’t really get reported as being inactive because your champion is still technically moving around.

Riot Games has made improvements in Yuumi’s design to prevent players from simply being able to attach and AFK for 30 minutes. This champion’s release was also the herald for Riot Games to create more advanced new LoL champs that would take players more time to master and give them unique roles that aren’t simply limited to their lane. Unfortunately, the company can’t delete a champion despite a lot of players wanting to get rid of Yuumi.

The Future of New LoL Champ Releases

It is most likely that you’ll see more champions being released with extremely long ability descriptions because that’s how Riot Games makes sure that they create champions that have fun new abilities without them being broken. The good thing about long descriptions is that they include limitations for those champions that would otherwise make them extremely broken.

So far in LoL Season 12, Riot Games hasn’t released any champions that seem extremely broken. They all seem to have their own identity while being fun to play. Riot Games continues to grow as a company and with their champion design team expanding, they are on the right path towards adding new features to the game that players can all enjoy.