Champion Roadmap: April 2022

Guess what time it is. If you guessed “time for another Champion Roadmap” then pat yourself on the back (unless you read the title already like most people, then I’m not nearly as impressed). But yes! It is time for another exciting edition of the League of Legends Champion Roadmap! In written form this time because as much as I love talking, it’s way easier to hide subtle teases in text, which makes these fun to write. But enough about me, let’s talk about what you all came here for: champions!

It’s been a little while since Renata Glasc took to the Rift in all her power-suited glory. In our last Roadmap I mentioned we were going to slow down new champion production a bit. We want to make sure every champion gets the time and attention they need before they’re shipped, even if that means we don't hit every position in a year. While we don’t know exactly how many champions we’ll release this year, it should be pretty similar to last year.

That being said, we think the champions currently in development are pretty exciting, and that’s exactly what we’re here to talk about. I’ll also go over a couple upcoming VGUs, as well as a new project we’re trying out called a Comprehensive Gameplay Update (CGU)—I know, another acronym, but I promise we’re not adding more just to see how many you can keep track of—but more on that below. So let’s get into it.

A Whole New World

Don’t you dare close your eyes! The Champions Team has something coming soon. Something beautiful, something inevitable, something foretold. A new skirmisher for all those jungle players out there. A new Empress to submit to… and you will submit.

Those who do so willingly will be rewarded by becoming part of the ever-expanding Lavender Sea, crashing like waves against the enemies’ defensive structures. Give in to your Empress and let her feed on your essence, so you may become part of the new evolution of Runeterra. And as an added bonus, if you succumb to her you will also bear witness to her true elegance, her true beauty, and the true face of the Void.

Who wouldn’t want that? I already submitted in January. And while there wasn’t cake, it was still a good time. So what are you all waiting for?

A Joyous Occasion

Next up the Champions Team would love for all of you to join us down at Oyster Bill’s Oyster Shack! Grab some of the best oysters in all of Runeterra while you listen to one of Oyster Bill’s tall tales!

In fact, just last night we stopped by and saw the place was a wreck. Tables smashed, bottles broken, strange glowing puddles all over the place. According to Oyster Bill it was caused by a colorful but deadly stranger who came to Runeterra from a land across the seas.

He claimed some Noxians were getting rowdy and one of them accidentally knocked over the stranger’s oysters. The colorful one laughed a most joyous laugh as they stood up from their table. The Noxian looked confused at first, then, thinking the stranger was making fun of her, got in their face. The rest of her war band stood to join her, grabbing their weapons when mist suddenly filled the restaurant. Oyster Bill said all he heard was joyous laughter and the sound of splashing water. When the mist cleared all ten of the heavily armed and armored Noxians were dead and the stranger was nowhere to be seen.

We laughed as we always do when Bill tells one of his famous stories, sure it was just a random bar fight that caused the mess—but hey that’s not nearly as exciting! When one of the other customers doubted the story, Bill doubled down on his claim that it was true, and that the mysterious stranger was, in fact, living in a room above his restaurant. He said that if any of us wanted to go talk to them ourselves we were welcome to.

We passed that night, but who knows. Maybe if you join us next time we can go and see if this stranger from the land of a thousand colors is real or not.

Guarding Spirits

There isn’t much to say about Udyr that wasn’t covered in our last update—he’s still a big boi hanging out in the Freljordian wilds, communing with spirit animals. Base Udyr is finished at this point and now we are focusing on his skin catalog, with most of the team working on his Spirit Guard skin. We really want to pour a lot of love and attention into that skin, with it being an Ultimate and all.

One of the goals for Spirit Guard is to keep some of the essence of old Udyr, so to do that it will represent the time he spent training in Ionia, and will also use the same animals as pre-VGU Udyr (Tiger, Bear, Turtle, and Phoenix). We wanted Spirit Guard to immortalize his old animal forms, while also cranking them up to 11. I don’t want to spoil everything yet, but I will leave you with concept art and an early model of his Spirit Guard skin before he channels one of his animal spirits.

Star-Forging a New Dragon

Let’s talk about Aurelion Sol. Back when we announced the Star Forger, a lot of you were super hyped for his release. So hyped that he had one of our highest purchase rates on day one. Tons of you really loved and wanted to play a gigantic, arrogant star dragon. Unfortunately, we didn’t really deliver on a gameplay kit that matched that excitement, as most of you dropped him after just a few games. His playrate plummeted to one of the lowest in the game, where he has been ever since. That said, he still comes up in the top ten most liked visuals whenever we do champion surveys, even though his gameplay always ends up near the very bottom of the list.

We’ve tried some small tweaks to ASol, but when we discussed what we should do to help him out, we came to the consensus that we should just start his gameplay over from scratch.

We didn’t think patching up his kit with small changes would deliver on his promised thematic fantasy, so we decided to try a new type of champion update: a Comprehensive Gameplay Update or CGU.

The goal of a CGU is to update gameplay for two types of champions: Those that have high quality art and narrative, but whose gameplay just doesn’t quite deliver on their fantasies, or champions with more complicated gameplay issues that can’t be solved by changing one or two abilities (like the small adjustments to Tahm Kench were able to accomplish). We then rebuild the champion’s kit from scratch with the same model, theme, and narrative. ASol will be the first champion to go through a CGU, and if you’re happy with the results we may take a look at other champions that fall into these categories in the future.

Anyway back to Aurelion Sol. Our goal is to give the space puppy an entirely new kit with massive changes similar to VGUs like Urgot’s or Sion’s, while making sure that it’s still thematically cohesive with who he already is.

We want to emphasize his dragon fantasy, as we don’t think he currently delivers on that part of his persona very well. We also think our new take on his star forging gameplay will be both spectacular to see and more intuitive to play. While things can always change, we’re currently targeting some time at the end of the year to get a new and improved Star Dragon in your hands. We really hope he’ll finally deliver on the fantasy you all were excited about many moons (stars?) ago.

Digging Deep Beneath the Sand

Let’s talk about the champion that won the VGU poll earlier this year: Skarner. We haven’t yet officially started on Skarner’s VGU (it will start very soon), but that sure didn’t stop Larry “BravoRay” Ray from doing some high-level sketches for inspiration. BravoRay is a huge fan of Skarner and couldn’t help himself so I thought it would be worth sharing some of his explorations.

The first two rows are attempts to keep Skarner’s theme pretty much the same as live while making him more unique on the League roster by adding other fantastical elements rather than just a traditional scorpion body structure.

The third row contains explorations of a full reboot of the Brakern. It explores them as ancient protectors of the old Shuriman civilization before it was lost to the sand. The idea is that they are constructs built from crystals housing thousands of elite warriors' souls.

The last row is an exploration of a version of Skarner where his current lore is continued. We haven't committed to this yet, but in those versions he is captured by Piltover and experimented on in order to create a Hextech guardian they can control. But he regains his memories, escapes Piltover, and is now hellbent on destroying the city for what they did to him and his people. And now he has sweet Hextech augments to help him do it. Piltover will soon have a taste of their own medicine, and it is bitter.

Keep in mind these are all super early ideas coming out of BravoRay’s crazy head, so we aren't locked onto anything yet.

Shortly after we officially start working on Skarner we will do a bigger /dev blog with a lot more information from game design and narrative as well. For now let us know what you think of these explorations and if anything sounds exciting to you.

Outro

Well that’s about it for today. Hope you are all as excited about the upcoming champions and champion updates as I am. Look out for another Roadmap later this year where I will cover The Pride of Nazumah, a new high skill top lane tank from a region of Shurima that hasn’t been seen yet! See you all then.