Designing a MOBA Champion: Part 1

Five years ago I fell into the addictive trap of MOBA style games. I tried playing DOTA 2 before but I was immediately confused by the insanely steep learning curve. However I was brought attention to a new MOBA called Dawngate that was being published by EA and developed by Waystone Games. What was different to other MOBAs was that there was a heavy story focus in the game, each character having fleshed out backstory and personality. The game even had a constantly updating comic that detailed the story of the characters and the world and in-game events allowed the players to vote on which way parts of the story went. It made me genuinely interested in the characters and the game before I even played it and I was determined to learn how to play just because I wanted to play as these characters. Unfortunately EA decided to scrap the game a few months after I started playing but I was already hooked to that style of game.

The next closest thing was League of Legends, which I started playing in order to scratch my MOBA itch I had been left with. However the game featured very limited story focus, the main plot of the game was that powerful champions were summoned to fight in an arena which is mostly just a justification for why they were even fighting in the first place. Some of the champions’ backstories (especially the earlier ones) were fairly simple. The champion Jax’s backstory was just that he was so good at fighting he was banned from using normal weapons, so he used a lamp-post and still beat everybody. Most of the newer champions had more fleshed out backstory that connected to other characters but it felt a bit disjointed with the other characters who didn’t. Up until about 3 years ago where they announced a major retcon of a lot of characters lore and also released a website solely dedicated to story content and lore which also contains and interactable map of the world league is set in, Runeterra.

It was also at this time that Riot Games released what I and a lot of the League of Legends community consider to be one of their best designed champions, specifically for how well his his narrative design feeds into his abilities and playstyle, Jhin the Virtuoso.

© Riot Games

Jhin is a serial killer sniper who is obsessed with the number 4 and believes that killing is a performance, and his performances must be perfect. This translates into his kit as well. Instead of like most characters Jhin can only shoot for times before needing to reload, the fourth shot automatically critting and doing more damage based on how low their HP is. His Q ability is a grenade that bounces four times, increasing damage on each bounce if it kills a unit. His ultimate lets him fire four long range shots that do more damage based on the enemies missing HP with the fourth dealing extra damage. All of his kit requires set up to be optimal, spacing out your attacks, waiting for minions to be low to bounce your grenade and finally ending your performance with a fourth shot flourish.

This kind of design, perfectly blending gameplay with narrative, is what inspires me as a designer and I am going to make an attempt trying it myself. I am going to try and design a MOBA champion and document that process on this blog with the next post covering what makes up a League of Legends champion.