This post was originally written on: 16/06/2021
Due to the niche of this particular area of study, and the lack of scholarly research done into the field of MOBA kit and build design, it will be difficult for me to find much academic literature on these subjects, and instead I would have to turn to tertiary sources to find the relevant information and guide me to where I could find primary written accounts of the development.
For this reason, I reached out to a friend who has been working in the industry for about a year, as Lead Designer of Predecessor. He has also been a veteran of the MOBA community since the release of Dota Allstars, and claims to have played every MOBA released since then. In order to gain relevant information from our conversation, I wrote an interview guide for myself.
I wanted to gain insight into the early design of League characters, and their kits, as well as gain an understanding of how those design principles have evolved since its release, and how those principles are now relevant to modern understanding of MOBA design, and how those principles apply to the Kit/Build Roguelike genre.
My guide was:
- How would you evaluate the initial Kit (Champions) design of League of Legends characters?
- How would you say that Kit (Champions) design has evolved since then in League of Legends?
- What would you say that new League champion designs do differently from old ones?
- What would you say Kit/Build Roguelikes gain from using this system of design?
- How have builds and build diversity evolved since the release of League?
From my interview, I learned these key points:
- Initially League characters were designed as catch-alls, with abilities that served to be effective in a range of situations, and felt fun and flashy to use.
- League character design has evolved, due to the high champion pool, to focus more so on giving new characters more streamlined goals, and higher effectiveness in specific situations.
- This evolution was partially due to wanting to give new characters abilities that functioned to create new ways of playing the game, and in order to provide a stronger identity to new characters.
- The metagame also contributed to this evolution, as the roles and gameplay patterns that players discovered and adapted, were then designed into the core of the game, in order to make new characters better suit the roles that had emerged from the community.
- Kit/Build systems serve to give designers a strong foothold in controlling the initial, progressing, and final power of characters in a play session. They also serve to give players the ability to adapt and manage their characters in a variety of situations, thrown at them by the opposing team’s build and kit decisions.
- Roguelikes gain the same advantages as it allows designers to control the overall power level of characters throughout a play session, as well as giving players a range of options to adapt to the situations thrown at them by these game’s systems, rather than a player controlled team.