Reworking older champions and updating their VGU is an integral part of bringing back those League of Legends picks who have lost their relevance in the ever-changing meta.
Champions like Volibear, Fiddlesticks, and Akali had some of the worst kits in the game and hardly saw the light of day in professional play or even in standard matchmaking.
Reworking them brought them back to relevance, and now, they consistently get picked in the most competitive of stages.
In the most recent Ask Riot: Lessons from Dev, Ryan “Reav3” Mireles, the lead producer of League of Legends’ champions team, opened up about the future of champion VGUs in the game and how their rework roadmap completely changed after Aartox in 2018.
Aatrox’s rework was monumental for the team, as before that, the team only focused on those champions and reworks that focused on accessibility.
The Aatrox rework changed everything for the League of Legends VGU team
The Aatrox rework wasn’t all positives, though (Image via Riot Games)
Reav3 said in the blog:
“Prior to Aatrox, new champions and VGUs had the same primary goal, which was to drive engagement. In other words, both VGUs and new champions were designed to get lots of players to play them. That way League of Legends consistently has fresh new gameplay, whether you’re playing with, as, or against the champion.”
However, the Aatrox rework met with a lot of criticism from the League of Legends fan base. Focusing more on playability took the champions away from their original theme, making them lose their originality.
Aatrox’s kit felt too much like Riven’s, and though he saw a consistent pick rate in pro play, this rework was not precisely what the League of Legends players wanted.
The most recent reworks of Fiddlesticks and Volibear were a massive success as they both came with an incredibly unique kit that stuck to their original themes and lore.
Reav3 admitted that, in some ways, when the devs update a champion, they’re really updating something that’s no longer theirs. It’s a character that sometimes millions of players have grown to love globally, and they want to ensure they do good by the players, first and foremost.
With VGU update goals changing post the Aatrox rework, fans will be quite excited to see how the future ones turn out.
Published 29 Jan 2021, 12:10 IST
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