League MMO

[Yvaelle]

What do you guys think of a League MMO?

For those who don't know, there are currently ~200 people at Riot Games working on an unannounced new project.

Also Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street, former Lead Designer for League of Legends, former Lead Designer for World of Warcraft's golden age, just left the LOL team to take leadership of the new project.

Also Marc "Tryndamere" Merrill, founder of Riot Games hinted at a League MMO on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/marcmerrill/stat...743744?lang=en

Also they just released a Runeterra Map that is highly evocative of an MMO open world:

https://map.leagueoflegends.com/en_US


So that's all pretty neat!

I was trying to figure out how to do class design in an MMO based on League, because I see that as a big challenge. League champions have a lot of character, very few but iconic abilities. You can't just make an "Ahri" class, with 4 abilities, it would get extremely boring.

So I think what you could do is sort out LOL classes like, "Enchanter", "Juggernaut", "Assassin", then let them pick spells like a talent system from existing champions. Sort of like the WoW talent system, where different abilities would be on tiers and mutually exclusive. You would need to sort out tiers to be of similar types, so Q would typically be a movement speed-type ability. W would typically be self-buffs. E would typically be CC. R would have the widest variety.

Diver example:

P - Choose between Vi's Blast Shield, Evelynn's Demon Shade, Pantheon's Aegis Protection, Warwick's Eternal Hunger

Q - Choose between Vi's Vault Breaker, Warwick's Jaws of the Beast, Lee Sin's Sonic Foot Thing, etc

W - Choose between J4's self-shield, Nocturne's spell shield, Diana's moon balls, etc

E - Choose between Evelynn's Allure, Diana's moon clump thing, Warwick's howl thing, Xin Zhao's knockup, etc

R - Choose between Nocturne's ult, J4's ult, Warwick's ult, etc

F - You probably make these more interesting than just Flash+Smite/Ignite/Teleport

G - Same as above


Then you add on a layer of ability customization similar to Diablo 3's rune system. So for example maybe you take Ahri's Q boomerang ball attack thing as an assassin-mage, and innately it does the usual damage, but then you slap a rune on it that causes it to heal when for each enemy it touches, or does extra damage on the return path, or true damage, or it travels further before returning, or it travels shorter with a shorter cooldown, or it switches it to physical damage, etc.

Then the final layer of class customization I'd slap on this system is, you can pick one ability in any tier (Q, W, E, R, P, etc) and switch that tier out for any other class's talent tier. So you can be an Ahri Mage type spec, with Ahri's same Q ball, same W shield, same E charm - but you're like "you know? I don't want to pick a mage ult, I want a Diver ult" - so you swap out your ultimate for a Diver ultimate talent tier, and you grab Nocturne's ult. Now you're a true Mage-Assassin.

So the other bit I'd put on all this, is how ultimate cooldowns refresh - I'd switch that out for Overwatch's ultimate charge system. So your ultimate doesn't just come up after a set predictable period of time, the more activity you have in the game, the more charge you accumulate - and then sooner your ultimates come back up.

[The Stormbringer]

I'd be interested in that, sure. I'm not sure how they'd make it an MMO, though. Some sort of leveling system would be needed.

[jackofwind]

League lore is just a clusterfuck of constant retcons, I'm not interested in the world at all.

[The Stormbringer]

League lore is just a clusterfuck of constant retcons, I'm not interested in the world at all.

It was interesting with the Summoners and the Institute of War, but I have to agree it was hard for the world to progress that much when all major conflicts and disputes were settled within the Institute. While I don't like all the lore changes (and the fact that almost none of it is in-game anymore), I can see why they did it.

[Niwes]

if its a good mmo, partially based on classic mmo behaviours and also bringing in some new concepts or mechanics, and IF they did a good job and it is polished, i would love to have competitive mmo to wow i.e. i would like that. but lets see how they will go.

[Deleted]

If they really have to makes non LoL League games I would rather prefer a RTS, or a Diablo-like dungeon crawler.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Would love an mmo, I don’t really play league any more but I love the characters so I keep up to date with it and the story’s they put out are great. Once then get every thing in order it should be a top notch world.

[Yvaelle]

If they really have to makes non LoL League games I would rather prefer a RTS, or a Diablo-like dungeon crawler.

When I picture it in my head, it looks a lot more like Diablo 3 than World of Warcraft - not just the top-down view aspect that reflects League, but the character customization and story telling, and even gameplay.

[Gaexion Ramza Beoulve]

[StrawberryZebra]

I don't think there's, realistically, enough space to work with for a league MMO. Not in terms of the geography of Runeterra, but more for the design space. Most of the important figures are already playable characters in LoL to begin with, so it would seem very off having them being NPC's in another game. The fact that LoL already exists crowds out a lot of the same space that an MMO would occupy. The expectation would be that the MMO would "play like LoL", which ultimately would leave a lot of players disapointed with it.

If anything, we're more likely to see an MMO set in the LoL universe, but at a point in it's past - Before the League. So the current champions aren't even born yet, Magic is running rampant and wars are common place. It gives the opportunity to show how, and why, Runeterra came to be the way it is. It also allows them to include cannon reasons why people in the past could create massive statues that come to life whenever magic happens near by, while at present casting 4 much less potent spells in a row leaves you completely out of mana.

When all is said and done though, I'd much rather Riot work take another pass at Rising Thunder. Since they acquired Radiant Entertainment, development on it ceased entirely. Having a similar 2D fighter with LoL characters sounds like something Riot could do extremely well, especially given how Rising Thunder had already lifted quite a few Moba mechanics to begin with. Plenty of champions would work out well too. Not only your typical fighters like Riven or Vi, but also ones like Blitzcrank, Ezreal, Annie and even Sona could potentially fit in with those kinds of game systems.

[Yvaelle]

I don't think there's, realistically, enough space to work with for a league MMO. Not in terms of the geography of Runeterra, but more for the design space. Most of the important figures are already playable characters in LoL to begin with, so it would seem very off having them being NPC's in another game. The fact that LoL already exists crowds out a lot of the same space that an MMO would occupy. The expectation would be that the MMO would "play like LoL", which ultimately would leave a lot of players disapointed with it.

If anything, we're more likely to see an MMO set in the LoL universe, but at a point in it's past - Before the League. So the current champions aren't even born yet, Magic is running rampant and wars are common place. It gives the opportunity to show how, and why, Runeterra came to be the way it is. It also allows them to include cannon reasons why people in the past could create massive statues that come to life whenever magic happens near by, while at present casting 4 much less potent spells in a row leaves you completely out of mana.

You know, I was thinking of the MMO as an opportunity to explore the League world and the stories they've written for the characters people already know and like - but on reflection I think you are right - it might make more sense to place an MMO during the most recent Rune War.

I would argue the MMO should be almost ENTIRELY PVE. If you want PVP, play League of Legends. Being able to pick one not both greatly reduces the burden most MMO's face of trying to balance two different games at the same time with the same tools.

Planning a grand strategy timeline around that period, you could do:

MMO Vanilla: Start of the Rune War
- Human nations discover and begin to clamor for runes
- Politics fails as nations no longer trust one another in the dash for power
- All-out war breaks out between multiple factions
- Gameplay takes place here
- Birth of Evelynn as final boss of the expansion, as she manipulates factions to maximize violence and strife, for her enjoyment

Expansion 1: Rise of Empires
- Birth of Noxus and Demacia
- War between these two factions

Expansion 2: Shadow Isles & Ionia
- Start by going to Ionia and dealing with different factions there
- Ionia is trading with the lost empire in the Blessed Isles (did it ever get a name?)
- End the expansion in the Blessed Isles, with the events of The Ruination, and finally see them as the Shadow Isles

Expansion 3: Birth of Bilgewater
- Piracy becomes a culture
- Sea-faring and so on

Expansion 4: A Tale of Two Cities (Piltover & Zaun)
- Steampunk expansion (Hextech / Chemtech)
- Biggest city to date
- Large portions of the expansion content occur within the mega-city (has to be a proper mega-city though, like the size of multiple outdoor MMO zones)

Expansion 5: Freljord War
- Ashe vs. Sejuani vs. Lissandra etc
- Iceborne and Watchers and so forth

Expansion 6: Shurima vs. Void
- Azir returns
- Shurima is back in business
- Tons of people flock to Shurima, but also all the other nations declare war on Shurima
- The Void starts invading again
- Is Azir the only one who can save us from the Void, or is the void returning because of him?

So this allows us to start the MMO way before most current champions are alive, and introduce them slowly. It doesn't just play out like League, it should actively avoid that.

When all is said and done though, I'd much rather Riot work take another pass at Rising Thunder. Since they acquired Radiant Entertainment, development on it ceased entirely. Having a similar 2D fighter with LoL characters sounds like something Riot could do extremely well, especially given how Rising Thunder had already lifted quite a few Moba mechanics to begin with. Plenty of champions would work out well too. Not only your typical fighters like Riven or Vi, but also ones like Blitzcrank, Ezreal, Annie and even Sona could potentially fit in with those kinds of game systems.

So like Street Fighter but with Vi vs. Teemo? I would play that

OH! You could do like teams too. So like you know how you can swap out champions in some fighting games? Same deal but with a bigger roster - with on-the-fly champion swaps.

So like instead of you picking Evelynn, and your opponent picks Darius, and you're just like "Whelp, I'm dead", you press your L1 button and Evelynn leaps off screen and your Yorick would come flying into the frame. Then Darius presses his L1 button and swaps his Lissandra, etc.

So instead of just Evelynn vs. Darius, you pick:

Evelynn+Yorick+Ahri+Ashe+Janna vs. Darius+Vi+Lissandra+Jhin+Thresh

You could even do a bonus system whereby if you pick fewer champions your remaining champions build ultimate charge faster or something - so you could potentially one trick in a fighting game if you were super confident in your Evelynn dodge-frames or whatever, but then you get faster ults, but your opponent has 5 different champions they can cycle through to try to find something you suck against.

[Daedius]

It's got a really intriguing lore prospect with all the locations, people, cultures, Etc. that I would totally like to see an MMO based off of. Though I don't like the idea of playing the champions of LoL in it as they are already established characters in that universe.

[StrawberryZebra]

You know, I was thinking of the MMO as an opportunity to explore the League world and the stories they've written for the characters people already know and like - but on reflection I think you are right - it might make more sense to place an MMO during the most recent Rune War.

I'd rather they continue the current story of League though LoL - Especially since most of them have been deliberately left open ended, I assume so players can create the ending to the story based on their gameplay rather than Riot just deciding that one outcome is cannon. This way, all possible endings are going to play out eventually, and it's up to the player to choose which of them they like the best.

Resolving those stories, particularly in a game that's running alongside LoL, would remove the conflict from the story entirely. It would also mean canonnically killing Champions too, think of cases like Rengar vs Kha, where only one can survive, or the battle for the throne of Freljord where there'd have to be a cannonical winner which would totally invalidate the entire event when it pops up in game.

Setting it in the recent past though allows us to visit familar places, even with the possiability of running into some of the worlds older characters like Ryze or Lissandra, but without breaking the story that already exists in LoL. It also allows Riot to set up the pieces in the MMO for what will, eventually, become the story for LoL in a way where the two would share a universe, but wouldn't directly interact with each other. A prequel, if you will.

What I think would be the bigger pitfall would be coming up with ideas for dungeons, raids and bosses that fit within the scope of the universe. They'd need to be all original creations, ones that would stand apart from the existing characters in LoL. They'd have to tread very carefully with named NPC's too, otherwise they could inadvertantly undermine the story of current day LoL by having you canonniclly kill someone you shouldn't have. The only monsters we've seen that fit the bill are Baron Nashor, Vilemaw and Dragons. I don't doubt there were more out there, but if one team alone can kill all of them, whatever takes a full raid to kill would need to be exponentially more powerful. Which undermines just how dangerous Nashor supposedly is.

So like Street Fighter but with Vi vs. Teemo? I would play that

Similar, the biggest difference between Rising Thunder and other fighters was that special moves were done with a single button press and had a cooldown, identical to what's already in LoL. It removes one of the early barriers into getting into fighters, being able to perform all your characters actions, right from the off and drops you straight into figuring out how best to use them.

Every champion in LoL has 4 moves already implemented and ready to go, so having to come up with new characters wouldn't be too daunting a task, but implementing them into a fighter in a balanced way could prove to be a challenge.

The most interesting thing about such a game, in my opinion, would be how to handle characters who don't fit into generic fighting game archtypes. How would you fit Janna in there? Or Braum? There's a lot of potential for some innovation in a genre which has been relatively unchanged for almost 20 years or so.

[Rawrajishxc]

This whole thread is pointless since it's based on a joke from twitter. They've said multiple times they're not working on an mmo and the new unannounced project is not an mmo.

[Yvaelle]

This whole thread is pointless since it's based on a joke from twitter. They've said multiple times they're not working on an mmo and the new unannounced project is not an mmo.

I haven't seen them state anywhere the new project is explicitly not an MMO?

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It's got a really intriguing lore prospect with all the locations, people, cultures, Etc. that I would totally like to see an MMO based off of. Though I don't like the idea of playing the champions of LoL in it as they are already established characters in that universe.

Ya you definitely wouldn't be allowed to play the characters, they would all be NPC's.

You might have move sets based on their characters though.

So if you are a Diver class, you might choose between Vi's punch or Lee Sin's kick - but you wouldn't be allowed to play as Vi, for example.

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What I think would be the bigger pitfall would be coming up with ideas for dungeons, raids and bosses that fit within the scope of the universe. They'd need to be all original creations, ones that would stand apart from the existing characters in LoL. They'd have to tread very carefully with named NPC's too, otherwise they could inadvertantly undermine the story of current day LoL by having you canonniclly kill someone you shouldn't have. The only monsters we've seen that fit the bill are Baron Nashor, Vilemaw and Dragons. I don't doubt there were more out there, but if one team alone can kill all of them, whatever takes a full raid to kill would need to be exponentially more powerful. Which undermines just how dangerous Nashor supposedly is.

This is an interesting problem but I don't think it's a big issue if for example, Baron Nashor takes 5 Champions to kill on the Rift (or 1-2, you know what I mean), but takes 20 player characters to kill as a raid boss in an MMO setting.

The biggest resolution to this problem is that we - as MMO players - aren't as badass as the champions of League of Legends.

So Mundo and Vayne might be able to late game 2-man Baron Nashor, but 'Mundo420' and 'Xx_VayneOTP_xX' would get wrecked unless they brought along 18 friends with them. Keeping Mundo and Vayne as NPC's allows them to be far more badass than the player characters in an MMO. The WoW comparison would be Illidan and Thrall - those two NPC's could probably 2-man Sargeras - but it'd take 20 mythic raiders to do the same.

[flyingspacesheep]

I'd totally play it if it beats blackdesert.

I've been waiting for blackdesert SEA to release and built my computer for it. Ended up not playing it because I wanted to focus on other things in life and have more time to play my PS4. So yea..

[StrawberryZebra]

This is an interesting problem but I don't think it's a big issue if for example, Baron Nashor takes 5 Champions to kill on the Rift (or 1-2, you know what I mean), but takes 20 player characters to kill as a raid boss in an MMO setting.

The biggest resolution to this problem is that we - as MMO players - aren't as badass as the champions of League of Legends.

The point was more that Nashor is a good benchmark, being the biggest and baddest monster in all of Runeterra. MMO Players are, eventually, going to get to the point where they'd dwarf Nashor with their power. Which means, as a boss monster, Nashor himself isn't anything like as threatening as he's made out to be and the Champions that defeat him are, on the whole, weaker than the players are.

For a standalone MMO that would be fine, but that kind of exponential power growth undermines the supposed strength of LoLs Champions in comparison. Champions are ment to be exceptional individuals, the best of the best.

On the other side, if the MMO players are just regular people, then what would make them remarkable enough for the player to fill their shoes? Places like Noxus have thousands of regular soldiers, but they've only got one of Darius. Playing as the grunts would, ultimately, be very unfulfilling. The player needs to be exceptional by default. Which of course means by the time they've hit max level they're probably going to be the kinds of people you'd choose to be your nations Champions themselves.

[The Stormbringer]

I like your Vanilla + expansion concepts, @Yvaelle, they're really good!

[khitranegg]

I don't think they've confirmed or denied the type of game this will be. While the Institute would pose a bit of a problem, I would love League's style for an MMO world. I'd worry about how well it'd work community wise however, MOBAs being how they are in that regard (I say that as a player of many of them). I'm also not sure if Riot's approach to balancing'd work particularly well either, but I'd be interested in being proven wrong

[Yvaelle]

The point was more that Nashor is a good benchmark, being the biggest and baddest monster in all of Runeterra. MMO Players are, eventually, going to get to the point where they'd dwarf Nashor with their power. Which means, as a boss monster, Nashor himself isn't anything like as threatening as he's made out to be and the Champions that defeat him are, on the whole, weaker than the players are.

For a standalone MMO that would be fine, but that kind of exponential power growth undermines the supposed strength of LoLs Champions in comparison. Champions are ment to be exceptional individuals, the best of the best.

On the other side, if the MMO players are just regular people, then what would make them remarkable enough for the player to fill their shoes? Places like Noxus have thousands of regular soldiers, but they've only got one of Darius. Playing as the grunts would, ultimately, be very unfulfilling. The player needs to be exceptional by default. Which of course means by the time they've hit max level they're probably going to be the kinds of people you'd choose to be your nations Champions themselves.

You know, I think the whole idea of levels may need to be looked at in MMOs. It creates this constant sort of power creep which is maybe unnecessary and often detrimental.

Like, could you create an engaging MMO without necessarily needing to level up constantly? Levels create this constant power-inflation each expansion, each raid tier (item levels), or even each quest (EverQuest: alternate advancement experience, WoW: Heart of Azeroth levels).

I think it would be interesting to create an MMO world which doesn't rely on constantly and significant power-inflation to keep making players feel more powerful than they were an hour ago (which seems to be the goal).

You could theoretically have no levels, or levels just be a prestige thing (like levels in League currently are, an Lv30 is no less powerful than an Lv130). You could do the same thing for an MMO.

Item levels are the harder bit though - MMO's use items (as a currency for power) as incentives for playing and doing challenging content. Perhaps you could do something similar in League but on a much shorter time scale. Example:

Suppose you instance a League story - Assault on the Kinkou Order. Zed has hired your band of mercenaries to storm the front gates of the Kinkou Order while his ninjas sneak over the rear walls and steal Tsunade's lingerie or whatever. Your team of player characters start battling through minions, encountering mini bosses, etc - and gaining both constant gold over time, and gold for CS, objectives, etc - and then you can shop just like League to buy items during the mission between pulls, gaining power over the course of the mission.

Mission completes, your items (Trinity Force, etc) vanish, you're back in the Ionian quest hub (Navori?): ready for the next mission. So you still have build paths and power spikes and power-inflation over the course of a mission.

The gameplay, like League, needs to be fun - rather than just skinner boxing us rewards as stimulation: the way MMO's currently do. Maybe you get currency though for your efforts, or loot boxes, and skins: the same way League and Overwatch do it today.

This way, you can have 7 expansions of PVE content, and still have Baron Nashor be a challenging encounter years later. And it's still worth doing because it's fun and rewards you loot boxes for skins or emotes or etc.

I like your Vanilla + expansion concepts, @Yvaelle, they're really good!

Thanks! I pulled up the League timeline and just scribbled up anything I wanted to see

I don't think they've confirmed or denied the type of game this will be. While the Institute would pose a bit of a problem, I would love League's style for an MMO world. I'd worry about how well it'd work community wise however, MOBAs being how they are in that regard (I say that as a player of many of them). I'm also not sure if Riot's approach to balancing'd work particularly well either, but I'd be interested in being proven wrong

Community is really key I agree, but while I expect to pull interest from existing League fans, as supplementary PVE content - the real goal would be getting MMO players to come to Runeterra: since the content is geared toward them.

So community quality isn't just reliant on the MOBA crowd, it's combining the somewhat-better MMO crowd's community spirit as well. Plus, even for the League crowd, adding community-building elements like PVE content and Guilds improve the sociable behaviour of the game: League is shitty because 5 strangers are forced to play together, then never see each other again, you can't be that shitty to your guildies.

PVE content also helps people be less shitty. In League the (self-defined) best player of the team is constantly looking down on their 4 'carries', in PVE content, its easier for your Diamond friend to just carry their Gold pleb-friends through Platinum content, or even for a Diamond-stranger to carry Gold-pugs through a Platinum dungeon.

That said, a lot of MMO's don't do a great job of fostering community spirit - lots of room to improve/surpass there too. And just maybe, some of that works in reverse - League players who play World of Runeterra - find guilds - and play League a little more civilized.