A developer discusses the pitfalls associated with adding new mechanics to League of Legends!

For those who don’t know Riot Froxzone, a brief introduction is necessary. He has been here Lead designer of the Riot Games MOBAWhich means he’s the one who oversees most of the decisions made in the game, whether it’s the creation of new champions, the overall balance of the game, or future game modes. He doesn’t make all the decisions directly, but makes sure every team is moving in the same general direction (For example, if Riot’s desire is to make games faster, it would arrange that the team responsible for balance and the team responsible for creating new items have this objective in mind). They are recently expressed on social networks to explain to players how complicated it is to add new mechanics to a game like League of Legends.

Adding new mechanics to LoL is a crossroads

First of all, talking about Fraxzone Possible problems with the game code

. League of Legends code will have at least several million lines, and so it is impossible for every developer/engineer to be an expert in all areas of the code. It explains that a There may be no expert on about 5% of the code, And enough Able to make good changes on maximum 30% of the code. To this should be added the fact that the game code is constantly evolving, which means that every specialist must constantly train on the new changes brought to League of Legends.

LoL has become a bigger and bigger game over the years. This growth also implies the fact that The game must meet certain quality standardsWhich a less important game might ignore (bugs/freezes are more easily forgiven in indie games than in AAA, let alone competitive play). The more the game grows, the more it adds new challenges that must be constantly met to improve the player’s experience., or at least keep it of equivalent quality. This means that with each new specific problem emerging, experts must specialize in a specific area, indirectly reducing their general area of ​​expertise.

To clearly distinguish an expert from a competent person, it parallel to football, explaining that putting a developer in an area where he is not an expert would be like asking Messi to play goalkeeper. He could probably do it, but he would be less strong than a professional goalkeeper, and it certainly wouldn’t be the most consistent way to exploit the Argentine champions’ potential. According to Phroxzon, these choices are critical. 7 people who are only competent in one area will get worse results when working on a problem than three experts in that area. Identifying the current problems in the game, and knowing the right people to fix them, as well as which issues to prioritize, is a constant challenge.

To this should also be added Resources are limited in riotsAnd that’s what developers have to do sometimes Dealing with decisions made 10 years ago, early in the game. Besides that, we should see that Some priorities may change along the way. For example, last year some teams were moved to work on the Arena mode, causing some delays for teams responsible for champion creation and balance in Summoner’s Rift.

A concrete example

These explanations seem a bit vague, Froxzon gave a more concrete example. He chose to present Modification difficulties associated with the level difference between two players deciding to play ranked together. It already makes sense to make this decision Other possible changes are ruled outLike improving the matchmaking algorithm to have more balanced teams.

Assuming that this solution holds, Several teams of experts should work on it. Data scientists must Determine the number of games required to implement the seeding, and how it will interact with the old system. Other experts will have to investigate A way to store this new information, how the game will interact with it while anticipating possible future problems, Also of course not leaving security holes in the code.

The team responsible for Game client Whichever way you have to work The latter will receive this information, and can transmit it to the players’ computers. Finally there will be other things to implement in terms of information flow, which will be the responsibility of the UX team. They will need it Decide whether players can only invite themselves to ranked games, or if they can invite themselves, but the button will be grayed out in the lobby and prevent them from starting the game.

And how this information is given to the player (will there be a pop-up, or will it be written in red in the lobby?).

Of course, to validate this decision, it would be necessary that Every team of experts is available to work on this part of the game. For example, if the UX team is busy instead of working on the changes to be made for the arrival of the new season, they cannot focus on other issues. It is for all these reasons that slight changes are carefully considered, and it is not possible to improve everything at once.