League of Legends

At this point I would recommend to the devs to play this game just for educational purposes learning about how the abilities and other game mechanics work. I have only played 21 champions some of them only ounce have 44 of them that being the case my knowledge of the game is limited cause they have almost 150 champions and I only played 21 of them. Spend most of the time palying faovorites.

I already posted a lot about it but lets take it from a different angle

League of Legends Version of

Implosion would be an area effect charge ability 2 seconds does damage over time right away when charge is complete then implosion takes place pulling target to center. So player could avoid most of the damage but mage would have to stop holding down the button right before the opposing player
left the area of effect. So mage has to pay attention.

Chain lightning would be area of effect with eight charges oveer 8 seconds If you change target or target dies then have chance to change target for more damage. Or could be done by number of times you push the button key binded to chain lightning

Wall of Force get to pick location of Wall of force near or far away from the caster. Actually may already be that way but does not look like it in the videos.

Now let me mention two other abiltities Mecha Zion Zero transforms into a train and then charges for 8 seconds but you have to guide the train or hits walls or obstacles prematurely. Stops when it hits other toons or can be stopped manually by pressing ability button again. In Ashes of creation game it could be a very fast guided delayed blast fire ball. Also same champion has shield that explodes and causes damage if not used. Champion Looks like different version of Optimus Prime.

Still have over 100 Champoins i have not even played.

Skill shots are pretty cool but the problem with skill shots is they can be avioded every time if good enough So in LoL some abilties have cast times but you can actually change the direction of or place of area of effect during cast time. Matter of fact one ability is like a guided laser that you move around with mouse.

But there are other things to mention like facing values. but think be better if you guys studied this game a bit instead. It is unreal to me what Riot does with ailities. Hopefully at leason one person at IS plays this game.

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Jahlon

While there are no doubt some things you can learn from League of Legends, studying a MOBA for the way a MMORPG skills are going to work is probably not the best material to study.

mcstackerson

Jahlon wrote: »

While there are no doubt some things you can learn from League of Legends, studying a MOBA for the way a MMORPG skills are going to work is probably not the best material to study.

I'm going to be difficult and disagree cause why not. League has a large variety of ability mechanics and synergies. Yes, you wouldn't want to copy the abilities 100% but i'd argue there are ideas or at least things that can be used as inspiration for class abilities in an MMO.

Noaani

mcstackerson wrote: »

Jahlon wrote: »

While there are no doubt some things you can learn from League of Legends, studying a MOBA for the way a MMORPG skills are going to work is probably not the best material to study.

I'm going to be difficult and disagree cause why not. League has a large variety of ability mechanics and synergies. Yes, you wouldn't want to copy the abilities 100% but i'd argue there are ideas or at least things that can be used as inspiration for class abilities in an MMO.

I'm going to be difficult and disagree cause why not.

Intrepid is staffed with professional game developers with many years of experience each (let alone combined) in MMO's.

They would have already looked at LoL in their own time, looked at the game design choices, and factored those things in to their thinking in terms of MMO design before Ashes of Creation development even started.

It wasn't really disagreeing per se, but still...

Wandering Mist

I definitely see value in studying other games and other genres as long as you understand the limitations of what you are learning and trying to implement in your own game. I see a lot of games that see a particular mechanic that worked well in one game and try to put it into another without understanding WHY it worked so well in the first place. For example, fatigue and exhaustion mechanics work well in a survival horror game because they add to the sense of danger and suspense. Put those same mechanics in an action RPG and they become very frustrating, distracting and ultimately pointless.

That said, there are some design elements that I think all games can learn from LoL, centering around balance. LoL follows a cyclical balancing structure where everything has a counter. Champion B is strong against Champion A, Champion C is strong against Champion B but weak to Champion A. Unfortunately this balancing structure fails purely because there are so many variables to take into account. It is physically impossible to balance 140+ champions, not to mention the huge number of items and rune choices you can pick.

As for the skills themselves, one thing to keep in mind is that LoL uses a fixed camera angle that you would very rarely see in an mmorpg. This inherently changes the way a lot of skills work, particularly skills that involve jumping over walls. Traditional line of sight doesn't really play a part in LoL and instead comes from the fog of war and the bushes.

Noaani

Wandering Mist wrote: »

I definitely see value in studying other games and other genres as long as you understand the limitations of what you are learning and trying to implement in your own game. I see a lot of games that see a particular mechanic that worked well in one game and try to put it into another without understanding WHY it worked so well in the first place.

I totally agree.

For those of us that are not professional game developers, it could be an interesting discussion. Having not played LoL myself, nor any other MOBA's, it would be a discussion I'd personally find somewhat interesting.

For a non-professional to think to point to a very popular product out to a professional in that same general field though - that's kind of like walking in to high school science class and suggesting to your teacher that he should teach some of Isaac Newton's stuff.

As a professional myself, I occasionally have people point out things that are rudimentary and ask me to consider them - much as happened in the OP of this thread. This has happened in both fields that I've worked in at a professional level - and I no longer have an issue with telling these people to eff off.

Caeryl

I’m sure they’ve looked at many genres of games, but LoL can really only offer ability ideas on a small scale. The ability lists being made up of three + ult, is very different from the 10-12 ability skillbar we’re probably getting for Ashes, not to mention the abilities that can’t fit on the bar.

League is a good example of condensing skills in thematically fulfilling and meaningful ways.

For example, Bard can ult offensively or defensively (or to troll), he has a heal that’s also a speed boost that can be used immediately for a quick save or to get your ally into the fight fasted, or place many to charge as fall-back health when facing an enemy that has poke damage that has to be mitigated.

There’s also the fairly basic ones like Morgana with her ground AoE cooldown reduction whenever she hits an enemy with the AoE, her root, or her ult.

As far as combat as a whole, League doesn’t have much to offer an MMO since they just play so differently.

Magic Man

Indeed, there are lots of things they can learn from League. The game isn't the most popular game in the world for no reason. It doesn't have to be just that one ofc. There are lots of single player RPGs with amazing abilities. The point is simply creating a fun game for most of the people. You can't please everybody but games like League do a good job in pleasing a good majority.

Nagash

The devs of dawn of war 3 went down that road and it did not end well for them

Wandering Mist

Nagash wrote: »

The devs of dawn of war 3 went down that road and it did not end well for them

Why? What happened?

Nagash

Wandering Mist wrote: »

Nagash wrote: »

The devs of dawn of war 3 went down that road and it did not end well for them

Why? What happened?

dawn of 3 flopped and almost killed the studio

Songcaller

I have issues with ground AoEs (Totems for Cleric). Especially if items like Catfall boots are in the main game for Ashes of Creation. It is also less likely for people to transfer to a new game if they are invested in an old game with the same functions. Anything tethered to a spot or placed on the ground isn't the best application for Action Combat in any regard. This is a major issue I have with the Alpha combat though the Alpha combat doesn't have all classes in it yet.

To me anything ground based is lazy development and can be done in a million different ways that adds flexibility. What use is the ability to cast on the move if you just leave behind everything you can cast?

mcstackerson

I've been playing some league recently so this is kind of fresh in my mind. There are some abilities that you don't see a lot of in MMOs that i find satisfying to use and could be ported over.

To start off, I enjoy the charge abilities like vi's charge, sion's axe drop, zerif's charged ability and pantheon's spear throw. I just like the feeling of holding down the ability and letting it loose. It's nice to have the option to let it go earlier for a lesser effect. We sometimes get these kinds of abilities for casters but rarely for melee. I'd love to see a warriors having an option to augment there charge so they charge it up like vi before boosting forward. I could see all classes having abilities, wither it's with magic or a weapon, where they charge up and get a benefit the longer they charge. Tank could maybe augment there hook/lasso ability so they can charge it up to throw it farther similar to pyke.

This is similar to the other and maybe should just be a charge ability but abilities with a decent wind up like darius's ax spin, mord's hammer drop and sett's punch. I just find darius's ax spin very satisfying to use and could see it having a place on a figher class with a slower playstyle.

There has been a few games that have done this but i could see rogue/summoner getting something similar to zed's shadow clones. Being able to summon a clone and switch spots with it kind of like the rifter ability. Clone could also mimic certain abilities. Also could be something like wukong or neeko where you turn stealth and leave a clone behind.

Similar to kayle, you could have a buff that turns your melee attacks to range attacks temporarily. A fighter/mage might be able to temporarily throw flaming bolts with their sword.

I could see summoner related classes doing things similar to xayah or talon where after throwing an ability, it comes back either automatically (talon) or with an ability (xayah).

These are just some of the abilities i can think of, not saying none of these have ever shown up but I haven't seen a lot of them. I also think it would be fun to explore some of the ability synergies like how diana, kai'sa, and irelia's dash works, which i guess we kind of have with the drifter. We can get augments from social organization so even if an ability theme doesn't fit a class combo, it could fit one of them.

Neurath wrote: »

I have issues with ground AoEs (Totems for Cleric). Especially if items like Catfall boots are in the main game for Ashes of Creation. It is also less likely for people to transfer to a new game if they are invested in an old game with the same functions. Anything tethered to a spot or placed on the ground isn't the best application for Action Combat in any regard. This is a major issue I have with the Alpha combat though the Alpha combat doesn't have all classes in it yet.

To me anything ground based is lazy development and can be done in a million different ways that adds flexibility. What use is the ability to cast on the move if you just leave behind everything you can cast?

I think you might have gone into the wrong thread but catfall boots aren't in the MMO to my knowledge, they are a BR thing. It might be an ability a class has but everyone can't get catfall boots.

Ishka

I think that LOL can hardly be used to be taken as an example in terms of abilities since a MOBA is very different from an MMO, even though LOL is well done. But one of the things that could be legit to take inspiration on is not necessarily the abilities themselves, but the way their interact between themselves and the reward behind successfully using them.

Here are a few examples to illustrate my thoughts : Olaf is some sort of viking berserker with two axes, his Q consists of throwing one axe to a place (which deals dmgs obviously) if you retrieve it up by running onto it, it reduces the cooldown of his Q by 4 or 5s something like this.

His E deals true damages (damages that bypass any sort of defense) against a portion of Olaf's health , but what interests us is the fact that if you kill your target, the HP cost is nullified, also hitting with your auto-attacks reduces the cooldown of the E by 1s.

Nami is a mermaid with a magic stick, what's interesting is her passive ability interacting with allies and her W.
Her passive grants bonus movement speed to allies when they get touched by all of her abilities.

Her Q is a bubble that stuns enemies for a short duration. While it is obviously used to apply a CC, sometimes your target is out of range while fleeing the fight, but an ally is almost close enough to kill the target. So instead of chasing forever you hit your ally with the bubble to grant him the movespeed he needs to catch up to the target.

Her W is a wave that can be used on both allies to heal and enemies to damage them, the wave can bounce up to 2 times after the 1st use if target is in range. It means you can decide to start the spell on an ally to heal, then bounce to an enemy, then bounce back to an ally to heal two of them while damaging one. But you can do it the other way by choosing to hit an enemy 1st, to maximise your damages.

I won't detail the last two abilities, check it out if you are curious, and want to see the whole picture.

There is a lot of interactions in the champion's kit that adds depth and gives unique gameplay to a champion in LOL. I think that the way these abilities works are wonderful and could have a meaningful impact on the depth of the mechanics a MMO can offer.

Let's imagine that the tank can use a shield bash to stun an enemy which is it's regular use, but if the tank applied some sort of debuff by using his auto-attacks in a certain way or some skills, whatever it is from. It adds 1s to the stun, or reduces the armor of the target. You can invent anything...

Now in case of a Mage using an ice ability that froze a target dealing a bit of damage. By standing next to the frozen target, let's say he can change his fire bolt into an ice bolt giving different effects. Or maybe using a buff with an ice augment on it that grants a CD reduction on other skills or gives additional stats.

The mage is supposed to be ranged, here he can either play from afar, or take risks for more rewards.

Just by adding these kind of interactions between spells you add a whole level of new mechanics to a class and give it a unique gameplay. My ideas are pretty rough but I think they give you a good example.

It would be nice if a mage does more than nuking a target after a well timed cc rotation or that a tank use a specific timing with his shield's attacks to get more benefits from it instead of absorbing damage and applying crowd control.

That is how LOL does a good job at making a champion with a lot of depth and "uniqueness" in my eyes with 4 only abilities.

This is my humble vision, what do you guys think ?

Plateau

League has a decade of design work behind it, so of course it's going to offer a lot of insights, especially in regards to ability-based, team-based PvP. I could rant about a dozen different principles that I've learned from it, both playing it and reading dev blogs/forum posts the last 9 years.

But instead I'll just rant about the one I think is most universally applicable: visual clarity. Anyone who's tried to play League knows that there's just a fuckton to figure out, and a fuckton that you need to be able to recognize at a moment's notice: 140+ champions, 600+ abilities, an average of 4 skins per champion, dozens of items, and 60 runes. Not to mention the map and all the things going on with that.

Thankfully, League does a good job of making all these elements visually distinct and informative. Champions (and their skins) are designed to be easily recognizable, even at a glance because their silhouettes are distinct. Abilities are bright and catch the eye, and the FX team manages to make them all look cool and different. But they don't linger for longer than they need to, and their flashiness matches their power level, so they don't drown the screen in chaos (unless it's a big teamfight). Animations are appropriately snappy or impactful depending on the action. Many abilities have clear indicators of where they will hit before they go off, and AoEs have clear but unobtrusive outlines that help determine the exact hitbox (and whether it is allied or hostile). All abilities have pre-cast indicators to show the size of the ability (and the indicator is actually a few pixels short because they know players like to overestimate their range). The color of the environment in the background is less saturated so that characters and abilities stand out against it.

The HUD also has all kinds of considerations to make important information easily accessible. Over-head HP bars clearly indicate current and max HP, and how much damage each hit does. CC is indicated next to HP bars, as well as mana and sometimes special character mechanics (like ammo or character portraits to indicate the target of certain abilities). Ability icons display all the pertinent info for the ability. The tooltips have color coded info, and good formatting to separate different parts.

Not to mention the kit design (gameplay clarity) which tries to make it clear how to use abilities/rotations correctly. They tend to not have fiddly, nitpicky differences which would make it hard for new players to tell if they're doing things right. They don't want people to have to do a bunch of mathematical optimization to play their character half decently. In other words, there are clear success and failure cases; clear thresholds between full-effect vs. glancing-blows (not just physical hitbox thresholds, but HP or timing thresholds, too). For any single system or ability, there are intentionally just a few decision points, which are more chunky and impactful. The less clear, more difficult decisions come into play once you start looking at the bigger picture with all the systems and other players interacting.

(Ashes of Creation, as an MMO, especially in solo scenarios, will have to find a somewhat different way to balance clear gameplay vs. interesting and plentiful decisions. Class kit's will be far more complicated than in LoL, but hopefully they still provide clear paths to optimization.)

But uh, that's enough rambling for now. Like I said, I think you can learn a lot from League, because they have put a lot of thought into various design principles over the years. Visual/gameplay clarity is just one (two?) of them. Unfortunately, it's one of the last parts of game design to be polished (for good reasons), like painting clear lines onto a clay model only after it's been molded and hardened. Which makes me realize now that I probably wrote this comment too early for it to be relevant, whoops.

voidshadow

I would respond as someone thats played league since 2012 and i still do but pretty much everything has been said already.

Gilgamesh

Jahlon wrote: »

While there are no doubt some things you can learn from League of Legends, studying a MOBA for the way a MMORPG skills are going to work is probably not the best material to study.

To the contrary, I would say it's the perfect place to learn from. MOBAs are kinda like MMOs without the time investment. League might be the BEST place to draw inspiration, Some abilites come to mind, they could implament an ability like Garens Spin2win or Trundles Q that saps attack power from the target while you gain a flat amount of attack power yourself. Hell there are several abilites that could work in an MMO.

Hence they're probably making one themselves

Wandering Mist

Gilgamesh wrote: »

Jahlon wrote: »

While there are no doubt some things you can learn from League of Legends, studying a MOBA for the way a MMORPG skills are going to work is probably not the best material to study.

To the contrary, I would say it's the perfect place to learn from. MOBAs are kinda like MMOs without the time investment. League might be the BEST place to draw inspiration, Some abilites come to mind, they could implament an ability like Garens Spin2win or Trundles Q that saps attack power from the target while you gain a flat amount of attack power yourself. Hell there are several abilites that could work in an MMO.

Hence they're probably making one themselves

I would say the ideas for some of the skills can be transferred to an mmorpg setting as well as some of the synergies, but not the implementation of them. Remember that MOBAs like LoL come from an RTS background which plays very differently to an mmo.

consultant

Reason I said study cause really cannot put into words what some of the aibliities effects are. you Could in fact go through all abilities for all champions in 200 minutes easy just by choosing the option to do so on champions sreen with out really playing.

But It is more about very specific game mechanics like already mentioned Sions charge ability Decimating Strike. Easy to avoid so better to use it when toon is slowed or stunned or rooted. But also you can start casting in an area a player is going into like when being chased. So if you cast ability in front of toon on low health making it nearly impossible to run away so toon dies. The very nature of the ability gives the toon some strategy to learn. Real simple in fact. Real simple is lot better than no strategy.

Another thing would like to mention is there are some narrow places in the jungle so if some one is chasing you start casting it and they have no were to go but away from you.

Thing is I am talking about ONE ability I cannot post about every ability. Think it would have some value playing and studying the game from design point of view.
Paragon tried to make a 5v5 moba and they flopped. And that was Epic games triple AAA studio. So not recommending cloning. But worth taking a look at.

Atama

mcstackerson wrote: »

To start off, I enjoy the charge abilities like vi's charge, sion's axe drop, zerif's charged ability and pantheon's spear throw. I just like the feeling of holding down the ability and letting it loose. It's nice to have the option to let it go earlier for a lesser effect. We sometimes get these kinds of abilities for casters but rarely for melee. I'd love to see a warriors having an option to augment there charge so they charge it up like vi before boosting forward. I could see all classes having abilities, wither it's with magic or a weapon, where they charge up and get a benefit the longer they charge. Tank could maybe augment there hook/lasso ability so they can charge it up to throw it farther similar to pyke.

This is similar to the other and maybe should just be a charge ability but abilities with a decent wind up like darius's ax spin, mord's hammer drop and sett's punch. I just find darius's ax spin very satisfying to use and could see it having a place on a figher class with a slower playstyle.

I’m guessing you never played TERA Online. The Berserker class for that game is built almost exclusively on charge abilities. And it is one of the most tedious combat styles I’ve ever played in an MMO. Hold down the key... hold it... hold it... then release, to slam down a big hit, or spin in a circle, or whatever. You can choose to not charge the abilities and they’ll work but then they are lackluster. They do a lot of damage but they make combat slow and annoying. Being melee makes it so much worse because you have to be positioned just right before releasing and if you are fighting a quick or otherwise elusive enemy forget it.

I think there’s a good reason you don’t see that much in MMOs. It sucks.

(I hate that I leveled up a Berserker so high thinking it would eventually get better but it didn’t, such a waste of time.)

Wandering Mist

consultant wrote: »

Reason I said study cause really cannot put into words what some of the aibliities effects are. you Could in fact go through all abilities for all champions in 200 minutes easy just by choosing the option to do so on champions sreen with out really playing.

But It is more about very specific game mechanics like already mentioned Sions charge ability Decimating Strike. Easy to avoid so better to use it when toon is slowed or stunned or rooted. But also you can start casting in an area a player is going into like when being chased. So if you cast ability in front of toon on low health making it nearly impossible to run away so toon dies. The very nature of the ability gives the toon some strategy to learn. Real simple in fact. Real simple is lot better than no strategy.

Another thing would like to mention is there are some narrow places in the jungle so if some one is chasing you start casting it and they have no were to go but away from you.

Thing is I am talking about ONE ability I cannot post about every ability. Think it would have some value playing and studying the game from design point of view.
Paragon tried to make a 5v5 moba and they flopped. And that was Epic games triple AAA studio. So not recommending cloning. But worth taking a look at.

Abilities like Sion's Q work because of how the map is designed and how the fog of war works. As you noted, out in the open Sion's Q is ridiculously easy to dodge unless you are already cc'ed by another ability. What makes it threatening is being faced with it in a narrow corridor or Sion using it in bushes where you can't see him casting it.

The same applies to things like Fiddlesticks ultimate. I really can't imagine these types of charge up abilities working in an mmorpg where you can clearly see everything that is going on.

A lot of the gameplay of League of Legends is based around the fog of war which won't be a factor in an mmorpg.

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