The Avengers is awesome. League of Legends is pretty awesome too. Just for fun, the Avengers as LoL Champions! (note: powers listed are based on the movie, not the comic book.).
SPOILER ALERT: Some of the abilities have light movie spoilers.
Cooldown timers are approximate to communicate intent.
The Hulk
Iron Man
Captain America
Cooldown timers are approximate to communicate intent.
The Hulk
Passive: Whenever the Hulk takes damage, his attack damage is increased by 5% of the damage sustained. This effect can build indefinitely, but resets when the Hulk has not taken damage for 5 seconds.
Punch [Q]: On an enemy, deals 30 (+AD) damage and knock them back. When used on an ally Punch deals no damage but can still knock that ally back. 8 second cooldown.
Inspired by the great Ally Punch scene in the movie. In this context it can be used to punch an ally to safety, to catch up to an enemy, or to push your ally through a thin brush line, etc.
Inspired by the great Ally Punch scene in the movie. In this context it can be used to punch an ally to safety, to catch up to an enemy, or to push your ally through a thin brush line, etc.
Leap [W]: Leap to a location, dealing 60 (+AD) damage to enemies where he lands. 14 second cooldown.
Mighty Roar [E]: Passive: The hulk regenerates 2 Life per second. Active: The Hulk lets out a mighty roar, removing all CC effects from himself and nearby allies. 25 second cooldown.
Melee range allies, mostly used for waking up allies who just fell from the sky after redirecting nuclear missiles
Melee range allies, mostly used for waking up allies who just fell from the sky after redirecting nuclear missiles
Adopted God Flip Flop [R]: Grab an enemy and toss it back and forth dealing 40 (+AD) per slam. 90 second cooldown.
Works a bit like a Singed Toss, but with a Warwick/Skarner style CC to it as well as it lasts for a second or two.
Additional Commentary: I played around with some Bruce / Hulk transformation designs but didn't like the way it was working out. It started to have the Lee Sin / Nidalee complexity of 2 functions tied to every ability on top of requiring an enrage mechanic. So instead I chose to just go with a straight Hulk design that exaggerates my favorite moments from the movie instead. Finally, I had a lot of trouble coming up with a way to properly capture the "totally invincible juggernaut" fantasy, so I totally failed on that front.
Works a bit like a Singed Toss, but with a Warwick/Skarner style CC to it as well as it lasts for a second or two.
Additional Commentary: I played around with some Bruce / Hulk transformation designs but didn't like the way it was working out. It started to have the Lee Sin / Nidalee complexity of 2 functions tied to every ability on top of requiring an enrage mechanic. So instead I chose to just go with a straight Hulk design that exaggerates my favorite moments from the movie instead. Finally, I had a lot of trouble coming up with a way to properly capture the "totally invincible juggernaut" fantasy, so I totally failed on that front.
Passive: Iron Man's suit uses energy to bolster his defenses. Iron Man gains 5% of his AP as Armor and Magic Resist.
Laser Torch [Q]: Fire a Laser Beam that deals 120 (+AP) damage to the first target in its path and mark it with Guidance System for 3 seconds. Laser Torch deals 50% more damage if the target is also suffering from Missile Barrage. 8 second cooldown
Missile Barrage [W]: Launch 3 missiles at nearby targets for 80 (+AP) damage over 3 seconds. If there is an enemy with Guidance System on it, all 3 missiles will launch to it. 8 second cooldown
Billionaire Philanthropist [E]: Passive. Gain an additional 1/2/4/6 gold every 10 seconds
Orbital Unibeam Targeting Array [R]: Lasers from overhead satellites instantly damage all enemy heroes for 50 (+AP) damage, places the Guidance System debuff on them and reveals their location on the map for 3 seconds. 120 second cooldown.
Additional Commentary: Ranged AP Nuker. Probably could have been built as a melee hero from a lore standpoint and also how he's depicted in the movie, but the other champions turned out so melee oriented I figured I'd design Iron Man ranged. The damage on his ultimate is deliberately on the low side, I feel bad because it overlaps Karthas' ult a lot, which made me not want to do it. The Ultimate started as simply a full map reveal, but that didn't feel sexy enough, which is what led to adding damage and Guidance System. Not entirely happy with this one.
Thor
Passive: Thor wields the mighty Mjolnir. While wielding Mjolnir, 15% of Thor's Ability Power is added to his Attack Damage
Mjolnir Throw / Mjolnir Return [Q]: Throw your hammer dealing 70 (+AP) damage to all enemies along the path. The hammer will remain at it's ending location until you cast Mjolnir Return, which brings the hammer back to you dealing 70 (+AP) damage to all enemies along the path.. 6 second cooldown.
Mjolnir will sit on the map indefinitely. The hammer is a visible object in the world, but players may not interact with it. Mjolnir Throw has a standard medium-range skill shot range, but Mjolnir Return has infinite range (it returns to wherever Thor is at the time he casts it). Slight variant to Orianna's ball. Thor has a small sight radius around Mjolnir.
Mjolnir will sit on the map indefinitely. The hammer is a visible object in the world, but players may not interact with it. Mjolnir Throw has a standard medium-range skill shot range, but Mjolnir Return has infinite range (it returns to wherever Thor is at the time he casts it). Slight variant to Orianna's ball. Thor has a small sight radius around Mjolnir.
Control of Lightning [W]: Toggled. Melee attacks discharge a chain lightning dealing 40(+AP) damage to 3 targets. 8 mana cost per swing.
Dimensional Portal [E]: If you are wielding Mjolnir, drops Mjolnir on the ground. If you are not wielding Mjolnir, instantly teleports you to Mjolnir and you pick it up. 25 second cooldown.
Mjolnir Smite [R]: Only usable if Thor is wielding Mjolnir, Mjolnir falls from the sky and smashes target Champion for 300 (+AP) damage. Usable anywhere on the map. 90 second cooldown.
Additional Commentary: Melee AP brawler with ranged abilities. I knew I wanted to do the hammer return, because they play that up in the movie a lot, but it was really hard to make hammer return work in terms of 4 abilities on a LoL champion. In the comic book Lore, Thor could spin his hammer to create a dimensional portal to travel. I wasn't sure how to make that work, but I could see Thor vanishing in a flash of lightning from a departure location and then a bolt of lightning comes down from the sky and allows Thor to materialize at his destination. I think the final kit came out so-so on both the mechanics and aesthetic front. Basically trying to do the Hammer Return that had value to a Hammer out in the world still feels a bit forced, but maybe it's 'cause I've been staring at the design all day.
Additional Commentary: Melee AP brawler with ranged abilities. I knew I wanted to do the hammer return, because they play that up in the movie a lot, but it was really hard to make hammer return work in terms of 4 abilities on a LoL champion. In the comic book Lore, Thor could spin his hammer to create a dimensional portal to travel. I wasn't sure how to make that work, but I could see Thor vanishing in a flash of lightning from a departure location and then a bolt of lightning comes down from the sky and allows Thor to materialize at his destination. I think the final kit came out so-so on both the mechanics and aesthetic front. Basically trying to do the Hammer Return that had value to a Hammer out in the world still feels a bit forced, but maybe it's 'cause I've been staring at the design all day.
Passive: Enemy Champion ranged basic attacks that pass through Captain America hit Captain America instead.
Shield Throw [Q]: Throw your shield at an enemy for 60 (+AD) damage. The shield will bounce at up to 2 additional enemies before returning back to you. 10 second cooldown.
Vibranium Dissipation [W]: Captain America can no longer move or attack but becomes immune to all damage and spells in front of him. Lasts until Captain America attempts to move. 8 second cooldown.
The spell is activated like a short-range skill-shot nuke, which is done primarily to help determine the facing of Captain America. He puts his shield up and faces the direction cast. All damage originating in a 180 degree angle from that direction is negated.
The spell is activated like a short-range skill-shot nuke, which is done primarily to help determine the facing of Captain America. He puts his shield up and faces the direction cast. All damage originating in a 180 degree angle from that direction is negated.
Shield Slash [E]: Slash an enemy with your shield for 30 (+AD) damage and silence that enemy for 2 seconds. 9/7/5/3 second cooldown.
Personal Sacrifice [R]: All damage done to nearby friendly champions is redirected to Captain America instead for 2 seconds. 120 second cooldown.
Additional Commentary: He's got a shield, he likes to protect people, so he's gotta be a tank.
Fun! Looking for feedback?
ReplyDeleteYah. At this point in my life I've come to realize that all my ideas are bad until they've received feedback from at least 6 people :P
DeleteI really liked the movie also...
ReplyDeleteI'm honored to have the founder of the Wyatt School of Game Design do this :) No really, it's super cool. Can't wait to play some of the classes you worked on in a month -- taking a week off. You'll need to tell me which ones to focus on :)
So uh, my thoughts... With the caveat that I'm cheating with 4 years of LoL design experience here and look forward to similar feedback on my Diablo 3 feedback, haha :)
The Hulk -- I think this is a pretty solid tank kit and would work 'as is' pretty well as a more single-targeted less-sustainey version of alistar. My two critiques: 1)There's some of the dis-incentive to strike him portions (specifically, the passive), but I understand why you did it thematically.
2) I wonder if there's a way to further focus this around some signature moves that have different gameplay properties or use cases, perhaps in the punch and flip flop. But uh, it would still work pretty well and be distinct. Punch kinda gets there.
Iron Man is solid. I think you should make the Q-W interaction a less frequent opportunity because you won't have great zones of vulnerability for counter-play at the current cooldown levels in a 1v1 matchup in lane. I'd probably reduce the CD around Q. I don't care much for the passive, just because, you know, it doesn't really do much except toss you more power ;p R is an interesting team utility ability. I agree it's hard to make this work. I tend to think that the area you coudl play with to optimize would be around missile targeting patterns and tracking patterns. There's probably some really interesting gameplay living in there that can work. I'm always a little 'meh' on stat transfers like the passive as they make play balance tougher, especially survival to damage ones, but you could balnace this particular one pretty well.
Thor -- Q is obviously a no brainer and really solid gameplay. So, that already puts him off to a great start. Not a fan of the passive for reasons I mentioned before. I suspect you could do something else cool and thematic in there easily. Our passives are tough in general, as you end up giving yourself play balance problems if there's not a cool glue mechanic or simple opportunity creator in there. I find toggles to be fairly underwhelming (W), but a basic chain lighting attack does give him a bit of a role. You probably can add some geometry to how it works and make it a burst active and get better gameplay from it, but thematically, makes sense. E is pretty awesome, and the timing on it with Q will create good gameplay. R is pretty toxic in causing passivity, etc. Best not to do that one. Anyway, think Q + e make a really good character on their own, and then you can probably spice elsewhere as you are doing. He's going to be pretty kitable though as is, so you'd probably want to either leave that in and give a much stronger other advantage (such as, making him manaless so he can free harass, or giving him a CC break, or giving him a CC -- one of those three).
Captain American is fairly problematic but exceptionally well themed. He probably causes game toxicity with the R/W combo breaking AE initiates in a very 'what the hell just happened' sort of way. Also concerned about the readability on the W. I feel like you could make the concept work, but would have to taper off the absolute immunity aspects.
Oh, and, obviously Thor WITH your R does not have the kitability problems I mentioned, I'm just saying, if you yanked that due to game health, you'd have to fill in in the similar vein of more cc avoidance, or more cc, or more movement, or a strong advantage (such as, no attrition harass, etc)
DeleteOh and, by "Reduce" CD on Q on Iron man, I meant INCREASE.... you know, so that if he misses he's kinda in a rough spot for a few seconds during which someone might counter-harass or gank.
DeleteThis post wins, hands down.
ReplyDeleteOooh - feedback from the Sensei from the Zilean School of Ass-kicking. What an honor! I'm doubly honored that you'll be taking a week off to play! I'll have to make sure to friend you.
ReplyDeleteThe 4 years of experience designing LoL is evident in your feedback :) The Hulk passive wound up there honestly more as a relic of trying to do a Bruce/Hulk transformation design. When you say there's a disincentive to strike him portions that makes sense. Really it's supposed to capture increasing power over time. Maybe an easier-to-balance version would be where he gains damage/armor every second that he's in combat, and the bonus resets when 3 seconds have passed where he has not taken or received damage.
On Iron Man, I could see the Q and W going up in cooldown. I'm curious whether you think the Q or the W should be higher, or if they should be the same. I based the 8 second cooldown loosely on Urgot, who I thought had a slightly similar gameplay with Noxian Corrosive Charge with an 11 second cooldown, and a 2 second cooldown on the spammable missile follow-up. Those are flexible though - I could see moving the Q to be like 14 seconds, and then the W missiles to be 8 seconds, which leaves a big gap where the Q is in cooldown for an opening like you suggest but the W is still viable to use almost twice as often for either farming or for reduced damage when you want to get some damage out but don't have the target lock. I'm not sure if that has historically proven to be super interesting or super frustrating to have cooldowns that are not convenient multiples of each other, but I'm sure some playtesting would reveal it pretty fast. Not sure what to do with the Ult at this time. One idea would be to make it a long range "Conal" reveal, like a sensor sweep, or like an enhanced Ashe scouting arrow. The Passive isn't great, it's mostly thematic but the mechanic doesn't do anything interesting. I'm inclined to actually redesign the ult in a complete different direction (the only requirement I had is I wanted to play up the Q Guidance System somehow). The last change I was contemplating today is giving the Billionaire Philanthropist the ability to click as an active to drop a Sight Ward, but disables the bonus while it's on cooldown. This is partly 'cause it fits with the "information gathering" role, is easy to balance against a gold earning passive but it also has the side benefit of giving some hands on experience with sight wards to new players. Pretty consistently lower bracket players don't like buying wards. Wriggle's Lantern sometimes helps get some exposure, maybe this would provide another avenue for players to get accustomed to the benefits of warding.
For Thor, I made W a toggle mostly because I was worried the complexity of the Q, E and R was on the high side. But now that you mention it, this isn't the best toggle, and in some ways a toggle where I need to weigh a mana cost vs. damage is sometimes more of a pain to manage than legitimately interesting gameplay. If the game as a whole has been trying to get away from map-wide ults (which I totally understand) then R should definitely get redesigned. The only thing important to me about the R is that it somehow interact with Mjolnir - how it does that exactly I'm not picky about. Good candidate to revisit. I'll have to think about a Passive rework as well. Using the comic books for inspiration, something like a Sejuani style Ult or charge might be appropriate. Fly forward with hammer in hand raised over his head.
On Captain America I'll happily huck the R. I agree with the "what the hell just happened" concern, short of putting huge immunity bubbles on every person on your team it's hard for the enemy to know what's going on. Damage redirection in general doesn't read very well. At the same time I want to capture the sense that he can protect somebody - that's very Captain America. I'm currently thinking his ultimate could be leaping to an ally and shielding/protecting that ally. Might feel too much like Shen though :( For me the parts of the Captain America I like are the passive of blocking ranged 'cause it's different and I suspect fairly reasonable, and I think the right art treatment on W could make it work. If you get him to strike a really strong pose with a distinctive silhouette, scale up the size of the shield 30% pointing in the direction of protection and if need be, you could even stretch the shield or model/swap to a full half-sphere and have him kneeling inside of it. Some dissipation blips every time damage is dissipated could complete the picture - I dunno I could be wrong, might be really hard to make read. As for complete immunity, Complete Immunity is pretty key to a Vibranium Shield! Maybe there's a duration adjustment that would make it balanceable? A short duration like 1.5 - 2 seconds is more exciting thematically than making it a shield absorb quantity or damage reduction %. Mostly because it's Vibranium! Maybe instead of cancelling when you move, maybe it's kiss/curse and you don't have the option of cancelling early, so somebody who flanks you from the back can attack while you basically stunned yourself.
DeleteIron Man -- My instinct is to make the Q OR the W long cooldown, and shorten the other. IT end to think that the Q is the way to go. Urgot is a one trick pony, and that's his only trick. If the rest of him was strong, we'd tighten it up. People are fairly insensitive on 'fun' to the cooldowns in LoL when they are sub 20 seconds and you have other 'fast' abilities.
ReplyDeleteR as a hyper mobility move involving hammer makes sense, just not as a global. Could just do something similar to rammus maybe.
For captain America, I think charge to + shield isn't terrible honestly. Directional shield might be OK as wel, if there are limits to how much you could adsorb. I'd tend to think that the absorption on it should be fixed + a % of his health ro somethign...
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