Data Informed Decisions with the Champions of League of Legends

In this 2019 GDC session, Riot Games' Nathan Blau presents the data and research behind the over 140 Champions of League of Legends.
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[@schebbi]

Timeline 00:00 Introduction 2:37 Champions are everywhere 6:50 Brief: What can this data inform for your game studio? 10:42 Kpop in Lol, Playrate of Akali graph 18:36 Breath vs Depth Framwork Introduction 20:00 Breath vs Depth 32:00 Mass Champion Survey : What do Assasin players like? 40:00 Mass Champion Survey, Example Yasuo 44:00 Favorite Champions of USA, China, .. 49:50 Data Descisions 55:00 Credits 56:00 Question 1 60:00 Question 2 End

[@chicoxin]

thanks you

[@Luxalpa]

The champions at GDC are saving us money by making more than half of our screen black when watching their presentation!

[@Malurth]

why is this video shrunken

[@Wyvernnnn]

he's a smol boy with a smol talk

[@dominicray6640]

28:16 the part where you can clearly see their plans for making Samira in 2019

[@SuperNikio2]

I'd say Aphelios

[@Djdavidnyan]

very good talk and excellent speaker, thanks a lot for sharing!

[@HappyCetacean]

tl; dw: Riot uses surveys and looks at player usage rates. Reworking champions and advertising can increase a champions' play rate, while nerfing them decreases it. I would have loved to know about some actual decisions they made using the data. This felt like a wasted opportunity.

[@ko12ko12]

Thank you for this!

[@SlyI42]

4:15 well I can confirm that works for me. Any game I play, I only stick with it if I really like at least one character. Sometimes I even try to play things I don't like, like Street Fighter 6, just because that one character. I instantly jumped into League the moment a friend send the Jinx's trailer to me (you can easily guess who I play in SF6).

[@Correct_Opinion]

Too many memes not enough info

[@Karma_c]

Oh, mass data! Then better nerf Irelia

[@getrekt8365]

Fun fact. Back in the days when i was a LoL player who actually bothered with the (early) days of their forum, i saw the preview for Irelia. Now, i wasn't a game dev or anything but i was amazed at how they thought this champ wasn't going to cause problems with the mechanics they had displayed. I posted in their forum my concerns and got downvoted to oblivion (back then their forum was pretty much like facebook). Even a riot dev posted smn defending the champ design. Guess what: after 7 consecutive nerfs, a complete rework of the champ and some nerfs more, Irelia was still OP (i have no idea where she stands now since i quit LoL). Shows you how out of touch these "devs" are when a simple player can almost pinpoint a champs future issues by watching a champion preview video while they have to wait for their "data" 'cause "200 years of collective dev experience" apparently isn't enough.

[@getrekt8365]

@@downsideupgoesgroar Thats where you are wrong though. They make the game for the mass because thats where they get their money from. If they made the game for the pros they wouldnt nerf half the champs they nerf because these champs are non existent in the pro scene. Also, if they made champs for pros why nerf Irelia then? Or rework her?

[@getrekt8365]

@@downsideupgoesgroar Yea sure. The 1,7 billion in revenue surely comes from the pro scene. Any data to back your claims?

[@getrekt8365]

@@downsideupgoesgroar well? Are you going to share that data?

[@getrekt8365]

@@downsideupgoesgroar If you google how does riot makes money or check riots reports you can easily find that its from microtransactions. I wasnt expecting to see LoL's troll-childs in a gamedev video but apparently you little trolls are everywhere. Grow up, manchild.

[@idunno402]

Data driven*

[@Wyvernnnn]

Americans really struggle to express themselves using a frame of reference other than the Avengers movie.

[@OMIMreacts]

hahahaha

[@Matkatamiba]

I feel like their design philosophies have shifted a bit since this talk since things change so fast

[@plasticflower]

How so? I don't follow League of Legends, so could you sum up how you think they changed?

[@DayOfCasual]

Funny how the video is not even about design... did you comment under a wrong video?

[@reccaman]

that was a whole lot of nothing

[@piulada]

So..... the reason why yasuo are not getting deleted from the game is china. Ok

[@Leaflar]

In summary - we found that the champions that ruin the game for the other 9 players are very popular. We now make only those and rework the old ones to be like those.

[@TheZenytram]

That is how you completely fucked up your playerbase. I guess no one in Riot played GrandChase.

[@nabkill0134]

​@@TheZenytramis that so? Then tell me why 2 years after your comment the game is even more populated than it ever before. By the logic that the design is unhealthy the game shouldn't be alive at all.

[@vhalenn7616]

What was that ? Did it makes any sens, there is a complete mismatchbetween knowledge and data, these are not the same thing. Associating characters and people personalities is juste reductive and clichee, this is a marketing, this is how tv commercials speaks to consumers ! Riot is dreaming about exepending IP, selling more not making a better game for the players. Data could make better games but this is just use for other things. This talk totally ignores gameplay, only visuals, immediate influence about basic stats gathered this is almost parodic. This conf is clearly below the average GDC quality that is a huge help for devs

[@notthenine2780]

Better nerf asol

[@getrekt8365]

Yes now it finally makes sense why this game kept getting worse patch after patch. At least it helps them to keep the masses who pay for the skins giving them huge profit too bad this doesnt mean the game is actually good or balanced.

[@ollie-d]

Not an informative talk -- a lot of this is super common sense but with terrible visualizations. It's also kind of hilarious that the strategy for saying "hey this isn't just gonna' be about League" was to use 3rd party and speculative data to draw comparisons to League. I was hoping there would be some interesting ideas gathered from abstract expressionism, but it was just clickbait for some hardly useful visualizations.

[@H1zoneTv]

we see that the problem with LOL comes from within, when the developers themselves have a stupid op char like yasou as their favorite...

[@SlayPlenty]

Oh pls stop with the league. It used to be a fun game. That's all we need. It's not anymore there is nothing you should take from these guys that would help.

[@TheKarikatur]

I actually like these conferences as they explain the dev's thinking along with the evolution of the game. If you think that league is now trash (not completely incorrect), watching this would probably help you understand a little bit more why it became like this.

[@LoboGuarah]

Are you serious?

[@coldDrive]

"i dislike hearing game devs talk and wish they didn't" how in the world did you end up in this channel my dude

[@SlayPlenty]

@@coldDrive wow you reframed my comment and criticized that straw man masterfully. GDC has really good and educative videos on gamedev but hearing how they went about redesigning Akali while the rest of the game is a wreck is like talking about how the walls on the toilet are repainted with new air freshener inside whilst the indoor plumbing has not worked the past year.. Critical Supremacy and oatquaker's comments are the best ones and most respectable Yours is barely meme worthy

[@adailtonneto1767]

​@@SlayPlenty so much arrogance

[@flaviocampos3581]

I would love to hear a talk from riot where they talk about " How we destroyed league, but we still have people playing by addiction and a terrible and unfair ranked system" 11 years, billions of dollars and every game ends the same way...destroying the nexus, and nothing else matters.... amazing.... I am not even going to talk about the client. Should I talk about champion balance? Your fav for example has the most disgusting skill in the game, the yasuo wall and you guys made different versions to new champions kkkkkkkk. Lets talk about how when something that players create you guys go and destroy it with patch? Like soraka top. A support on top? Hell no! But Sett can be a support, because he sells sexy skins xD. Yeah riot... Ps: People don't play AS because you guys destroy it and have tons of champions that are ridiculous over power and people just want to win. AS can't even stay in a bush... this is pathetic. I am glad I stopped playing 2 years ago.. and I had to FORCE my ban, because I couldn't delete my account and your ban system is trash, to stop playing because of addiction. (I made people had a bad time playing because you can't simply delete an account)