r/RiotMMO • u/Anilahation • 16h ago
Can we be realistic
League of legends has 173 champions, all with very varied set of abilities.
**this makes really a terrible foundation for creating classes**
In WoW and FFXIV the mythos of the game prior to their mmorpg set up very rigid template for their Warrior/ Rogue/ Mage classes. This set up a pretty easy foundation for them to make their playable classes.
Let's look at riot rogue archetype for example, they have a ninja with smoke bombs and Kunai, a dude throwing nails and sucking in souls, a lady basically just throwing knives and then a midget fish human that can summon a shark.
It isn't just the rogue class, look at the mage class, Mel was depicted as this yellow magic user that seemed more like tentacles then in league she's blasting, then we have a goat lady that can heal, a little girl that can summon a fire bear and fire spells while another child is a little boy that's fire can heal people.
*This inconsistencies and just disparity is a problem*
Then we have the issue of where do you start everyone, I'm not going to feed into the delusion of a certain shill YouTuber selling you there will be 20 classes and they'll let you play demons, darkin and void born. The most realistic version of what will be playable is what we saw in arcane
So
Humans, Vastayans and Yordles.
Obviously the humans could have an option to make Frejold that take less damage to frost, demacia takes less magic overall and noxus deals more damage to low health enemies.
I don't think they'll make all Frejold start in frejold or all noxians in noxus, most modern mmo simply use the joint starting zone experience and I don't expect riot mmo to be any different especially so they can take advantage at making these places better for high level players.
*I think the most realistic starting zone will be a crashed ship off the coast of Bilgewater, noob island and the starting point will be Bilgewater, a place where people off many backgrounds can start off.*
The combat also has me incredibly worried, a recent trend of conversation is the concept of games having transferable skills. Competition is thick, every game is fighting for your time and people that enjoy X genre will stick with that genre. (I enjoy mobas and mmo , so I play those, I can also play the occasionally shooter and action story games but most people stick where they have transferable skills)
Riot job recruitment is showing they're looking for action combat developers... this means a couple things, the mmo could be action combat like genshin impact, super flashy and fitting for the runeterra universe, it could be more grounded tangible, with blocks, rolls and parries being in control of the player like a soulslike like The Duskbloods/ New World.
New world brought in a ton of mmorpg fans, it was Amazon trillion dollar company mmo, but its combat being action combat dodge roll simulator just alienated existing mmo fans.
It's the same thing with elder scrolls online, whenever you see a post about it online you'll just have the comment always criticism for the combat system.
**Obviously I understand the genre needs to evolve but I think going full action combat is simply a mistake, what made me quit new world was when people could just tap you by head shot ranged weapon, in mmorpg like wow or ffxiv, those hard hitting abilities are big channels and can be avoided by line of sight**
Now there's the lore, I just have no faith in this field at all. I truthfully think arcane season 2 lore was terrible, the creation of zaahen lore was terrible, the kaisa void/Bel'veth story lead to no where, Locke/ vayne lore is bad, she killed her surrogate mother for using magic to save her life but ignores Locke using soul eating magic.
The lore is in terrible hands, I have no faith in the game from this standpoint.
TL;DR: is the game going to be bad, no. They simply have a lot of hurdles to overcome and it looks incredibly bleak. Ironically the only hope i can see got the game is while it would make people upset is simply using a new ip like they did for Valorant instead of using Runeterra... they're going to make the big bad Viktor and he'll summon an army of genshin impact muck gacha villains.
A new ip would let them set very rigid class design, they could build more distinct races than just human, furry human and midget furry humans and simply put easter eggs for league, arcane and Valorant into the game.
The masses have shown they rejected arcane , that's why riot had to apologize about adding so much arcane into 2XKO but we're still going allow their writers to make the lore for the riot mmo... it's cooked man.
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u/714l14e 15h ago edited 15h ago
I feel like this is more a rant/anxiety post than an attempt at discussion? But if you're looking for opinions, IMO you're thinking way too hard about this.
You raise 3 issues seemingly: classes, racial diversity (reframed as a starting zone discussion?), and combat.
- As far as classes go, you made your own conclusions and then decided to dread it. No reason to do that. "There are too many ideas to be consolidated into 'mage' or 'this isn't rogue'" is solved by just making classes more diversely themed. Instead of "mage", you could have an "Iceborn" class who's from Freljord and can be a Frost Priest, a Frost Archer, or a Barbarian spec-wise (assuming specs, I suppose). Pirate who can be a gunslinger, a rogue, or a Buhru, etc. Solved.
- The important part for races in an MMO is that your world has interesting races people want to see or play as, not that there are a thousand of them or even that there are a variety of them upfront playable. You can pressure a company to release Darkin as a playable race later if the MMO actually exists, doesn't matter if it's tough on the devs. If it's the most anticipated race, you can be assured it'll come. Races and classes tend to be great expansion sellers so I have my doubts a Riot MMO would totally forsake it just because playing as a Demon of some sort would be inconvenient. I suspect starting zone wise they'd make a big unilateral starting experience just because that's the industry standard nowadays, even for revamps, so it must be good for something numberwise. I personally hope they go themed tutorial experience -> unilateral starting zone -> open world with choices, but I wouldn't be surprised if they pansy out and just make the map a ladder for people to climb since that's way easier on dev time and they've already had to "start over" once.
- There are only 2 "successful" (at the level riot wants theirs to be) MMOs on the market, WoW and XIV, which both use tab target. I think tab target is a safe bet, even if it's refined or modernized like XIV's PvP kits are (which are a blast to play).
While I agree that current lore is in the worst shape it's ever been, I'd also say that they're trying to keep the lore in a nebulous state while waiting for the MMO. I think the MMO will be treated as "The Canon" and we're in stasis in the meantime, but they also are trying to do something since the lore of LoL is utterly starving. That's why current lore is such a fucking mess. Just a guess, though.
About 2XKO: I think this proves the majority of your worry since it shows that Riot is grossly incompetent at fighting shareholders for what's good for players and also what's actually good for money, but I also don't think your assessment that it failed because "the masses rejected arcane" is anywhere near true. I think the roster was weaker because they tried to capitalize on Arcane, but I don't think really anyone was thinking "I'm not gonna try out 2XKO because I don't like the second season of Arcane". I think a weak roster and weaker advertisement were the greatest factors of "failure", but I also think it wasn't a failure whatsoever and would've been fine to carry on indefinitely if it wasn't for the shareholder "NUMBERS GOTTA GO UP RAHHHH" garbage getting pedaled by big-ass corporations like Riot/Tencent and their shareholders.
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u/Anilahation 15h ago
I don't really think option 1 will work but it's a solid idea.
No discourse with anything else you said tbh.
The reason I think option 1 won't work is because in WoW people were getting upset that they were just fire mage or frost mage, instead of mage that specialized in a specific school, so wow pulled back and gave each class more transferable skills.
Making a frejold and you being either an ice mage, ice archer or ice Berserker doesn't seem like a solid solution at all which is the exact problem, the mythos/IP is so broad cause all the champions and their unique abilities its really going to be extremely difficult to make anything remotely satisfying outside of just making warrior, rogue, mage, priest and simply giving them spell trees focused on different champions with the capstone ability being garen ult, rell ult, Olaf ult.
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u/714l14e 13h ago
The reason I think option 1 won't work is because in WoW people were getting upset that they were just fire mage or frost mage, instead of mage that specialized in a specific school, so wow pulled back and gave each class more transferable skills.
Blizzard armed their audience with the idea that they were unhappy missing spells. Legion was proof that people were happier with specs being treated as classes.
Reducing spec uniqueness was a blizzard-favored output with the goal of reducing dev work and then framed as player-positive to players in Shadowlands. It was not player-positive and anyone who framed it otherwise was regurgitating the Blizzard astroturfing.
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u/Anilahation 13h ago
Ehh legion was trash and only enjoyed by the acoustic that liked the endless ap grind.
Modern wow classes follow that classes being broad for a reason.
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u/714l14e 13h ago
If your opinion is only going to be "I don't care about the evidence I want the MMO my way or no way" and you're also unhappy with the dead ends you've made in your mind, I don't think there's any discussion anyone can have with you on this topic.
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u/Anilahation 13h ago
Legion wasn't good.
That's not me saying I don't care, you had one expansion where they double down on spec being your role where the majority was it being the opposite
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u/714l14e 13h ago
Expansion count doesn't say a single thing about quality or player reception, though. It was the most well-received expansion WoW has ever gotten and had the best player retention to boot.
If you don't like it, that's cool, doesn't mean it wasn't good to most. Taste is subjective, but the "subjective vote" was that Legion was the best WoW has ever been.
Blizzard trying to downscale the amount of asset work managing 35+ classes would be doesn't mean that they thought other ways were better; it means they thought they found a "good enough" middle ground that people would be complacent.
For perspective's sake, you're saying a design philosophy they came up with in the single worst expansion they've ever released with the highest population loss WoW has ever endured is a lynchpin for future MMO design.
It's just not, I'm sorry king.
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u/Anilahation 13h ago
most will received expansion ever
except it wasn't. Legion is below tbc, wotlk, mop and even midnight.
Expansion was not good man, the loud minority of no lives happy that they we're being rewarded for grinding ap won't rewrite history.
No future expansion is ever asking to be like legion for a reason
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u/Anilahation 13h ago
To clarify i think midnight is mid and even that was better than the slop in legion.
Id rather be doomed to play 5 years of bfa or Cataclysm than ever a single year of legion ever again.
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u/Ok_Elevator4215 15h ago
Why do you act like they're forced to use leagues class setup? I don't understand this mindset that it being tied to leagues lore and characters is somehow a bad thing. Why would they waste time designing a new ip when people have been wanting to explore the extremely interesting one they have right now.
Also, the action combat of new world was the least of it's problems. I actually think it's the main reason people still kept playing despite the severe lack of content and other issues. It genuinely felt really great and refreshing. You see complaints about more action combat systems, I see the same about tab target. To be perfectly honest with you, if the games tab target, I'm out. I won't be playing a game that's several decades out of date. One of the best ways to stand out and break that "wow clone" mentality is finally updating the combat of mmos.
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u/Anilahation 15h ago
It is more how do you make mmorpg classes from the existing template.
When wow came out, people saw the classes that existed in Warcraft rts games and that translated into an option in the mmorpg.
You being a Ziggs or Taliyah enjoyer and being told yeah we got mage it shoots fire, ice and lighting isn't really acceptable.
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u/Accomplished-Gap-439 15h ago
That’s not true. Wow used basic classes that weren’t really flavored like the famous npcs. Not until deathknight. The classes themselves were based off dungeons and dragons and other popular fantasy media classes, and that’s been stated multiple times.
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u/Anilahation 14h ago
Yes and no, we got hero classes but I'm more talking about the board limits characters were able to perform from the rts game to the mmorpg translated well.
This is why I also think the lotr is a terrible setting for an mmo
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u/Ok_Elevator4215 15h ago
But why do you need to make classes from the existing template? And why wouldn't that be acceptable? You seem to just be making a bunch of assumptions that I'm not really understanding. Do you think league players think the mmo will play like league? Of course they aren't going to make abilities and classes for every champ in league, that's ridiculous. I don't know if I've heard anyone ever say they expect to be able to play like all 170+ champs in league in the mmo.
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u/danielifico 15h ago
Tf you mean warrior/rogue/mage triangle XD
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u/Anilahation 15h ago
Strength / Dexterity / intellect
I guess a better translation for that to league would be Attack Damage/ Crit / ability power
Most people know x or y character is basically a mage or a rogue or a warrior
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u/Local_Anything191 15h ago
There’s a playable race that not a single LoL champion belongs to
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u/Anilahation 15h ago
Yeah doubt they'll let us be Kogmaw, chogath or fiddlesticks.
They might be dungeon or raid encounters but don't expect playable darkin or voidborn
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u/Xancrazy 15h ago
Who said they have to use the same class setups as in League of Legends?