Q: Is Aurelion Sol unique, or are there other "celestial dragons" in the universe?
A: We toyed with the idea very early on that Aurelion Sol had "sisters" out in the cosmos, with their own unique talents. Aurelion's was stars whereas "gravity" or "dark matter" would be another's. This idea became what's known as an "artifact" during the development process, in which it means it fell away from being part of the champ's story. Regardless, there is only one star-forging dragon. There are other celestial entities, but whether or not they are dragons has yet to be seen. Most likely, though, not.
Aurelion Sol has a simple but significant lore problem: he is too powerful to have any business with the world of League of Legends. Or any fictional world at all, for that matter.
When you decide that a deity created all the stars, not only do you place a significant portion of the observable universe under that deity’s jurisdiction, you also make him indirectly responsible for most of the universe’s physics and processes of matter itself. And if you try to define what other celestial entities do based on how much left you’ve got to work with, you’d only have planets, dark matter, black holes, asteroids, perhaps extra dimensions, and all the other heavenly bodies that simply aren’t as significant as the stars themselves.
It would be easy to ignore this, of course, and wait for the inevitable retcon when someone at Riot figures out that this perhaps has to be retconned, especially after a long-term trend of retconning everyone’s lore for the sake of making “relatable human characters”. But if one would like to maintain this hierarchy of power, then Aurelion Sol needs contemporaries, if not for the sheer sake of his existence to not be an accidental embodiment of overcompensating deviantart OCs. Contemporaries provide entities for Aurelion to feasibly interact with, outside of responding with only either condescension, indifference, or dragon’s breath.
Now, if you’re familiar with both Dota and LoL, you might ask “Wait, Dota claims that Ezalor, the Keeper of the Light, was an entity that single-handedly made all the stars too! How come there it’s accepted as good fantasy while this article takes potshots Aurelion Sol’s power level?” Well, the main difference is a matter of build-up; Dota already had a set of unfathomable ancient beings in place since its alpha (Ancient Apparition and Enigma come to mind), setting wide the scale of power before KotL’s addition and enriching the universe instead of making it irrelevant.
But otherwise, KotL and Aurelion Sol are quite the same in terms of capabilities, aren’t they? Which could mean that Aurelion Sol’s contemporaries would likely be similar to Keeper of the Light’s contemporaries. And it just so happens that he does have some contemporaries, and good ones. You’d just have to abandon fantasy science (where starlight can be solidified into crystals) for actual science first.
Keeper of the Light is part of a group known as the Fundamentals - fantasy entities that are actually manifestations of actual scientific theory. These four represent weak force (KotL), strong force (Chaos Knight), gravity (Enigma), and electromagnetism (Io) respectively, giving a weight and identity to the Dotaverse. They may not fit their themes perfectly or consistently with each other, but their kits each represent a part of the force that they represent themselves - KotL’s expanding light waves, Chaos Knight’s sudden pull of a cluster of units into one spot, Enigma’s Black Hole ultimate, and Io’s energising of other allies (although arguably, his whole kit really fits the part).
If you were interested in continuing along this line of thinking (and maybe ignore the fact that a star’s creation actually takes three of the four fundamental forces to operate), then Aurelion Sol could conceivably represent weak force - the laws that govern radioactive decay and allow stars to emit light and heat. And while fundamental forces aren’t exactly represented as heavenly bodies, it does give an alternative set of at least three other contemporaries to Aurelion Sol: one for the Strong force, one for Gravity, and one for Electromagnetism. It’s a graceful and possible alternative to this conundrum when you consider just how little can affect the universe on the same scale as all the stars themselves.
(This isn’t to say this is what Riot should do, by the way. Frankly, it’d be easier to just rewrite that dragon so that he makes stars in a fantasy night sky instead of the actual universe.)
Storm Spirit's original kit was a very different thing when it first appeared in Dota 1 (where 'maining' was a legit thing because luxuries like 'counterpicking' and 'obligatory teamwork' were almost unheard of.)
Q was a toggled attack-speed steroid. So long as you had mana to burn and an Orchid, you could reach Jah’rakal-levels of attack speed all the time.
W was a spell shield. That's it. No fancy immolation like Ember Spirit, but it was aight.
E was still Overload, except it proc'd at every fourth attack. So if you had a high attack speed, you could throw one out every time the last one wore off and keep your target on a permaslow.
R was a big AoE Skewer, except it brought allies along for the ride too.
This reads a lot like a mess, even by DotA's whacked standards - and it retrospect, it actually was. If you knew what you were looking for, you could see the efforts of creating an Intelligence-attributed carry, since Int. both increased his damage and his attack speed.
Now, why did I play this guy back then? Well, I liked the idea of playing someone with awesome attack speed all the time, unlike the other carries who were screwed if a clash happened while their attack-speed buffs were on cooldown, or if they got silenced before they could activate them. You could slap people all day as old Storm Spirit, and you didn't need to farm for a giant Agility stat to do it.
But in practice, Storm Spirit's kit didn’t hold together. W protected you from spells for a while, and nothing else. R was almost useless as an escape because it'd bring your ganker along, and it could end up repositioning your whole team into somewhere unpleasant. You certainly couldn't use it to gank - Storm Spirit was still squishy, and didn't even have any hard CC. You just slapped people and hoped they ran instead of turning around and killing you.
The reason Dota 2 players probably never heard of this is because the rework happened back in Dota 1, and turned Storm Spirit into the lightning-balling uncle that he is today.. No more of that attack speed or spell shielding - let's instead take that zipping around to an logical extreme, and make more consistent ways to proc Overload.
Was it so unlike the Storm Spirit that I grew to love playing that I had to give up on using him for a long time? Yes, yes it was. Almost everything that I liked about the old one was gone, replaced by a playstyle so drastic that I was shocked to learn that Orchid was still a legitimate item on his build.
But, it achieved the goal of making a real Intelligence carry. Higher Int. gave you more mana and regeneration, which on new Storm Spirit meant that not only could his attacks hit harder, but he could blow Static Remnant up as often as he wanted. His Ball Lightning let him both proc Overload and reposition himself wherever he wanted, ideally where his opponents didn't want him.The more Int he had, the bigger a boisterous nuisance Storm Spirit could be.
Reworking character kits happens for one good reason: the current iteration simply wasn't doing its job of what it wanted to do. Either it was lackluster, or it was getting outperformed by everyone else. If you raised the numbers too high, it'd be an unbalanceable pubstomper, brute-forcing its way into the usage through sheer number efficiency. Could Icefrog have buffed old Storm Spirit with 1000 damage shield absorption and wicked base stats to make him viable? Yes, he could have. He didn't.
If you lowered them into something reasonable, you’d find that ‘reasonable’ was ‘unusable’, and everyone who loves that character stops playing that character because they could do everything skill-wise perfectly and still do less than the guy with three single-target spells. There’s more than one League of Legends champion that languishes in the depths, waiting for their skill rework.
A good example of a kit that didn’t work is Karma from LoL. Karma’s old kit had three basic spells: Q did damage in a cone, W leashed onto a target, speeding up allies and slowing down enemies that touched the tether. E shielded an ally.
Her ultimate was something called Mantra, an ammo system that, when used, buffed the next spell used. Q gained a heal, W doubled in its CC effects, and E damaged every hostile around the target. Cool stuff.
But none of it was working out, because Karma's only worth was through her numbers. She didn't have hard CC. Her normal spells were all worth 3/4ths of a regular spell, while the Mantra versions were only worth one and a half of a spell. She couldn't turn around a fight if it was going badly, and she couldn't nuke someone on her own to justify her becoming a proper mage instead. If you buffed the base spells, she’d be so strong with her R that she’d overpower the rest. If you nerfed them too hard, she’d rely too much on her R to get anything done.
Note: this is an example of an old kit that doesn’t work. Karma’s ensuing rework is one that I have trouble getting on board with, even today, and also one I felt was done 50x better by Kael’thas from Heroes of the Storm.
Why? Because when I played old Karma, I felt like they tried to make an all-purpose support. Karma could heal in an AoE as well as damage! Karma could speed the whole team up or slow all the enemies down! Karma could shield one person and nuke all foes around them! Karma was one big constant efficiency booster, making everyone better at what they did, and didn’t need no big spells to turn things around, and that’s what I loved about old Karma.
New Karma was a mage with support-ish tools. Q was a skillshot that exploded, buffing it gave a second explosion on impact. W was a tether DoT that rooted if it stuck, buffing it healed Karma. E was a shield with a speed boost, buffing it shielded everyone around the target. And R got reduced to one charge and had such a small codlin that you’d only use it twice a fight if you got lucky with your shots. This isn’t to say that it wasn’t viable, oh no, it was way easier to balance and actually saw some tourney play. But it wasn’t the Karma that I grew to like playing.
I eventually picked up Storm Spirit again, not because I wanted to play an Int carry, but because new Storm Spirit was fun on his own too. And I got over the old one going away because I also realised that the old Storm Spirit was merely trying to be an Agi carry - and there were already Agi carries for that kind of play style.
Karma never really got back into my playing rotation, though. The old one was lost forever, and no one else did the same thing because old Karma did her own thing. And for me, new Karma played too much like other mages, which was something I didn’t like because I could just play the mages that I enjoyed playing more instead.
(Note: The Karma rework was ages ago, and not nearly as indicative of Riot’s current experience with balance than the more recent, more awesome Sion rework.)
Reworks are painful. Players who played the old kits will almost always get left behind, no matter how successful the rework gets. But reworks are also vital in keeping the roster diversified, making sure that new players have as many viable options to choose from as possible. With luck, they’ll find kits that they’ll love to play as, kits that’ll never have to be reworked again.
I was having a good time with the GP update until I read complaints about it. So congrats, nitpickers! I’m motivated to update this blog with something.
What makes a good interesting character in a MOBA?
If you’re the kind of person who’s interested in that kind of thing, you’re likely looking for these particular requirements:
1. The character is unique compared to the characters around them in the game
2. The character is unique compared to similair characters outside the game
3. The character fits into the game’s universe
4. The character plays in a manner that fits their lore.
5. The character’s voice lines reflect an interesting and befitting personality.
We’ll skip past the last two points for now, since they require their own articles to talk about. Besides, the first three points are what people initially judge a character by.
The first point considers the setting that’s already set up within the lore of the game that the character’s a part of. As long as the character’s fulfilling an archetype or role that hasn’t been covered yet, then they’ll be doing something unique by the in-game universe’s standards. You can be something as oft-seen as a wandering samurai or as rare as a punk girl in a fantasy setting, but if someone else in the lore is already doing that, you’re going to have to be doing something to distance yourself from them.
The second point is simply how we judge most fictional characters - we compare them to the ones that already exist. People are exposed to hundreds of stories over their lifetimes, all unconsciously having their expectations and experiences with certain archetypes changed. If we encounter an example of an archetype that fails to demonstrate something different from what we’ve seen before, we tend to label these examples as “boring”.
At first glance, Kunkka from Dota 2 and Gangplank from LoL do perfectly well in the first point, and fail spectacularly in the second. (I’m bringing in Kunkka as a comparison point - I won’t be talking about him as much as GP, so sorry for the moment, Dota. Don’t look at me like that, don’t you have a prize pool to polish?)
Both of them occupy unique niches in their respective universes, that of the seafarer. Sea-themed MOBA characters consist mostly of animal-hybrids and Lovecraftian horrors, leaving the humans’ remaining options as sailors of fantastical seas. Neither of them really have competition lore-wise - in Gangplank’s case, Miss Fortune falls more in the opposite side of what a rogue sailor does, specializing in bounty hunting, which also happens to create an interesting dynamic between the two. Kunkka gets his dynamic off of his eternal rival, the monstrous Tidehunter, in the rare game that he gets to play against one.
Both of them are also, quite literally, bundles of nautical terms that walk around and swing swords. That’s it.
How do you make a seafarer interesting? In a fantasy world centered on a landmass, a character whose occupation is sailing boats tends to be characterized by that occupation because it’s unique compared to what most of the other characters already do. Only in worlds where majority of the cast are seafaring (and non-aquatic) would a writer be forced to figure out what else would be needed to make such a character interesting, which leads back to our original question.
(If you tried looking at One Piece, you might notice that everyone there has a particular goal that they wish to accomplish, on top of their over-the-top appearances and abilities. Sadly, this is a MOBA, where we aren’t allowed to pursue narrative developments. If you tried looking at Pirate of the Carribean, you might notice that Jack Sparrow is still probably the only particularly interesting priate of the past decade. This doesn’t help us, because he’s played by Johnny Depp, and that’s almost a cheat code for ‘interesting character’.)
Or, can we count “seafaring” as interesting-enough characterization, as long as the characters in question embody that as much as possible? Kunkka and post-update Gangplank do this down to the letter, which implies that this is what their developers thought was the best idea. Again, the two are practically undisputed role-wise; there aren’t any other dedicated seafarers for them to be compared with. (Again, Miss Fortune’s thematics are someplace else, and almost never references her owning of a ship.) As long as they satisfy our expectations of what a seafarer is in a realistic manner, then they should be, at the very least, passable as good characters in a MOBA.
Or, are they simply the products of early-day lore development, stuck in a niche where they can never truly satisfy modern standards? Look at the newest characters of their particular games. There are scheming demons, but there’s only one scheming bayou catfish demon. There are ice wyverns, but there’s only one bibliophilic ice wyvern. Whether through giving a role a unique motivation or aesthetic, recent characters in these two MOBAs have demosntrated that they can both fill a unique niche and add something new to the archetypes that they’re assoscioated with.
In comparison, Kunkka is literally just an admiral. Gangplank is literally just a pirate.
Maybe this simply as far as any character from a game’s beta days is going to get. You only improve your lore writing the longer you practice writing a game’s world, but when it comes to updating characters from your earliest days, you won’t be allowed to change their “core identities” from what the players already expect. If you make too many drastic changes, at one point you’ll be asked “why not just make it a new character?” So, your only options left are either to insert a new angle to their identity (at which point lore enthusiasts violently disagree with your ‘unnecessary’ additions to the story), or to simply flesh it out.
The visual update to Tristana was a fleshed-out version of old Tristana. The model update to Faceless Void was a fleshed-out version of old Faceless Void. They’re still not doing anything too unique, but visually and lore-wise, they’re just doing what they did much better than before.
So…Gangplank. Old Gangplank was almost worse than old Karthus - his lines were the tritest ‘piratey’ lines that you could think of. His beta model looked like it got pulled from a childen’s coloring book. His oranges were the only unique thing he had going for it, and that decision was probably more for referencing scurvy than anything else.
Let’s look back at the third point - fitting into the game’s universe. Whether your a congregation of gods or a toony amalgam of sci-fi tropes, every playable character in your game has to make sense there. And old Gangplank was almost too out-of-place in Runeterra because of how little you could actually take him seriously. He sounded more like someone trying to act like a pirate than an actual pirate.
And maybe that was fine for when LoL had no idea what it was doing and threw everything at the wall to see what stuck (instead of, y’know, only sometimes, like they do today). These days, though, Runeterra tries to be a place with believable stories and places, with its characters trying to have actually-human interactions with each other. That’s a fairly serious settting for someone who randomly says “yo ho ho and a bottle of rum”.
Was goofy-pirate Gangplank ultimately an interesting MOBA character? In a vacuum, maybe. In old LoL, probably. In new LoL, he sticks out character-wise worse than Taric does visually.
Is new serious-pirate Gangplank an interesting MOBA character? In a vacuum, he only lost his goofy demeanor, but whether that’s a pro or a con is probably up to the viewer. In LoL, he’s still filling in the same niche, except in a post-Institute world, there’s no ultimate authority system that threatens his home’s existence, turning GP’s life down a fairly reasonable, yet less morally-comfortable, turn. He still has his citrus, and now has a currency mechanic tied to his character, as well as some newfound fifth-of-November shenanigans. Gameplay-wise, his new kit is more ‘piratey’ than ever, and that’s probably step higher than how ‘admiral-ey’ Kunkka plays like (Although to be fair, Kunkka is pretty ‘admiral-ey’; he initiates pretty well with his CC, makes tactical yet powerful hits with his passive cleave, and leads the charge with a charging ship!)
Gangplank is still, very much, a pirate through-and-through, with not too much distancing him from all the other Blackbeards and sea dogs in media. But if sticking with it is the best way of making him stand out, then they’ve done a much better job with him in than they did before.
Tom Cannon is a StarCraft player. He is also black. And in the hypercompetitive eSports scene, those two things just don’t go well together.
Getting into competitive gaming isn’t easy for anyone. Most professional gamers play their game of choice as a full-time job and put an incredible number of hours into mastering their craft. In many cases, the types of games they play — StarCraft 2, League of Legends, etc. — aren’t even easy to begin. They have steep learning curves, with huge bodies of required knowledge and existing players that have been learning and improving for years.
I feel like I just need to gush somewhere why I love this hero so much (tho I’ve only played him a couple times against bots so far - as usual), so here we go.
"Terrorblade is the demon marauder—an outlaw hellion whom even other demons fear. He stole from the Demon Lords and for his crimes was taught this lesson: even Hell has a hell. He was incarcerated in Foulfell, a dark mirror of reality where demons are sentenced to gaze into twisted reflections of their own souls. But instead of suffering, Terrorblade mastered his reflected worst self and turned his terror loose upon creation."
So can someone inform me of what fucking fourteen-year-old boy wrote Terrorblade’s backstory so that I can enroll him in some creative writing courses and then show him this shit in ten years so he can be embarrassed about it
Chill man, that's probably just for the festival announcement. Check out Tresdin's, Ember Spirit's and Earth Spirit's lore too on their respective announcement pages - not exactly up to Dota 2 standards either. His official lore will likely sound a lot better.
Whoops, pretty late in posting this. But you can't deny that this applies pretty neatly in Dota 2 as well. If Valve gathered their commendation data, they'd probably see a similar trend. (But why did I just post two LoL articles in a row? Dota stuff is pretty slow with TI3 done, so yeah, and this stuff is cool regardless of affiliation. Hopefully we'll see some noteworthy stuff on the other side soon - or maybe I should finish my IRL work first, heh.)
Last year's World Championship set a viewership record of 1.2 million concurrent viewers during the finals, and the All-Star tournament held in Shanghai this past May chalked up 18 million views over...
A pretty thorough explanation of how LoL's meta works now.
If you're in the Dota 2 community, I'm sure you're aware of the situation at PAX Prime. Here's a link explaining the situation if you don't.
*sigh* I don't even. PAX is too open a celebration of video games to be exclusive. Riot is too concentrated on making the LCS awesome to have ever cared. Valve is too busy being awesome and running Steam to give all those indie game developers a place to go, instead of worrying that their F2P game played by thousands didn't show up to distract people.
Because really, neither of those two companies have any reason to worry so insecurely about the other. Valve is Valve, and wouldn't ever be hurt even if this was done intentionally. Riot already knows how it's better to focus on doing things differently instead of repeating what everyone else is doing and putting them down just to catch up; this'd be an immature tactic at best.
And biggest of all, it's freaking PAX. People go there to celebrate all video games: console games, computer games, mobile games, triple AAA games, indie games. It's everything from aspiring developers trying to be heard to Nintendo of all people announcing a new 3DS variant. PAX is just too big to let a fan feud between two games get in the way of anything.
Consider what happens whenever someone plays a sci-fi game like Mass Effect and comes across a new alien species. Their thought process would probably go something like "Whoa, who are these guys? What do they do? Wonder how they'll react to me?" As it turns out, that game has a built-in encyclopedia that updates itself with every unfamiliar name and organization that the player comes across. It's a given, of course, that Bioware loves to write the entire life stories of their characters and places, and they make these entries in order for their players to understand these details better. Unfortunately for them, players understand these species a lot better the moment they start giving angry glares and reloading their guns.
Players don't experience that lore in the game, only what happens in the game's present. Instead, it's the impressions gotten from interacting with these characters and elements in-game that are much more influential than any descriptive essay will ever be. The Heavy from Team Fortress 2 gets no more description than any other Russian soldier, but his in-game love for gunning down teams of babies make him memorable to anyone who plays or fights him. Tom Nook from Animal Crossing appears and speaks like a generous shop owner with simple origins, but the endless debts he heaps upon people have publicly marked him as the world's most vicious loan shark. It's what we experience when we play and meet these characters that define how we judge them as characters, and not as much their flavor text.
This happens to also apply to our dear Aeon-of-Strife-style games.
Every character in Dota 2 and LoL has a few paragraph's worth of backstory, giving them some personality and history before we ever play them. And that's good! In this kind of game, you have very few outlets to explain a character within the game itself; you have to invent reading material like the Archronicus and the Journal of Justice to supplement their lore. But lore doesn't substitute what we experience when we actually play them, only add to it. And the two outlets of characterization that players get whenever they play one if these characters is A) What they say in their responses and B) How they play in-game with their abilities.
Let me start with the example of Karthus, LoL's local lich. His old lore (look after the first quote) described him with no explicitly evil intentions, merely a neutral existence of dominion over his swamp, and the "unpaid volunteer" of the League. It made people judge him as either not necessarily bad, or at least concerned over the well-being of Valoran. So clearly his voice lines must reflect this-
"THEIR PAIN IS MY PLEASURE". Nope, they don't. It's as annoying as it is cliche. And since Karthus is one of those whose movement and attacking lines are still the same, guess what line I have to put up with whenever I play him? His gameplay also feels more like a walking missile silo than a neutral lich. If his lines and abilities were less destructive and more neutral and supportive, such as Zac (who looks like a generic blob monster but talks like a good guy and plays like the initiator that keeps on peeling foes off), then his old lore would hold a lot more water. (His new lore still doesn't line up with his playstyle either; in fact, I don't know what it's aiming for exactly.)
We can also look at the case of Dr. Mundo. Read his backstory and you'd think he was just another mad immoral scientist, who decided to pump super-steroids into himself as part of his experiments. Play him, though, and he morphs into a Hulk expy, saying his name all the time and throwing cleavers willy-nilly in an unstoppable rage. In his lore, that part's just a footnote, and it says little about him going where he pleases and more about him finding murder and science to be one and the same, but it's hardly his most apparent characteristic unless you try to delve into his character. He doesn't experiment, he doesn't reek of amorality, he just cleaves your face in.
What happens is that the lore and the playing experience don't match up. Instead of coexisting or supplementing each other, they end up at odds, creating a weird reality where the written canon insists that the character you're playing as is actually different from what you're playing as. It's possible to have tangential lore and playstyle, as is the case of Warlock where his neutral lore description tries to cover up just how far off the deep end he's gone (assuming that's intentional), but Riot has admitted before that a lot of their past lore was simply not as well-thought-out as it is now, and it does show.
To be fair, though, a fair number of Dota 2 heroes don't exactly line up their characters and lore perfectly with their mix-and-match abilities, though not to the degree of the above. And I did pick pretty much the most explicit examples from LoL, with most of the other champions not necessarily having conflicting characters and kits. In fact, most kits from LoL these days do line up well with the champions they're made for. Dota 2, however, has a good number more heroes whose personalities and abilities combine to create a cohesive whole character to play as, with everything contributing to a central theme. Thanks to Valve's good understanding of making unique characters and their inherent advantage, they can do this from the ground up instead of having to hold back for a roster with fractions of outdated characters. (Though Riot's visual updates are pretty neat, and at least indicate that they've progressed well since their beta days.)
So who are these ideal heroes that I'm referring to, then? Slark, for one, is one such example. Think about what it's like to fight Slark in-game: he dies quickly when he's focused, and isn't so good at outmuscling other heroes. But first you must catch him, and Lord help you with that - he shrugs off your stuns and Dusts to flee away, he leaps past walls you can't cross, he becomes untargetable and moves at nearly max speed with a mere click, and all this without taking into account the player's own juking abilities. And you just know he's waiting for you to over-extend so that he can gank you at lightning-speed - except unlike Riki, Nyx and the other assassins, he can run out of a baited gank as easily as he ran into it, laughing as he escapes with your statistics.
Take a look now at Slark's character, both in the lore and the in-game responses. He's a thief, but not just any thief; he's the only thief to have broken out of the deepest, darkest prison in the seven planes. There's no debonair charm with this fish, though; he's ruthless, self-serving and incredibly opportunistic. He'll leap at any vulnerable opportunity that anyone else will leave for him, while thinking of every possible escape plan he can take.
As an individual, Slark's character is an interesting mix of criminal lingo and ironic fishing terms. This weird contrast of themes, fish and filcher, not only makes Slark memorable, but fits his kit perfectly. He comes out of nowhere and takes your stats and your life. He's slippery enough to escape from most attempts to capture him. He may not win in a straight fight, but he knows it, which makes it all the more satisfying for him to kill the enemy when they don't expect it.
Another really good example is Rigwarl the Bristleback. In-game, he's one of the few true tanks that Dota 2 has; he can weather out damage such that focusing on him is usually a waste of nukes. But the longer a team clash goes on, the better it is for Bristleback; he's spreading his quills which accumulate damage the more it's stacked on people, he's pumping up his own attack damage, he's wearing people down with gobs of snot and he's basically tipping the battle into his team's favor the longer he sticks around. Bristleback loves an extended fight, because he'll bash and quill everyone dim by the time it's gone on long enough.
Hey now, doesn't that sound familiar? Rigwarl is described as one of the most rambunctious bar enforcers out there, isn't he? He's used to always getting into massive pub brawls which can go on for as long as there's someone else left standing, so much so that it took a walrus punch to the face to knock him out. He talks like every problem just needs a good bashing to be solved, served by yours truly. He's violent to match a violent environment, but he's also got enough endurance to be the last one still conscious by the time it's done. In short, his reputation for the pub brawl complements his abilities on the field so that whenever you play Bristleback well, you feel like you're playing as the best bar enforcer the seven planes have to offer.
It's worth pointing out that yes, these are Valve's later heroes, meaning that they too have progressed in character development since the start of the game's beta. But if this progress leads to overall more cohesive characters to play as, with personalities matching what a blast it is to play them, then it's no bad thing to have characters like these in our games as they keep on developing.
While looking at the designs of the hero/champion purely compared to each other, it is a little bit easier to pass off as not being a copy from one to the other. But then consider Riot’s past few hero releases.
Dota’s Naga Siren vs. LoL’s Nami
LoL’s Aatrox vs. Dota’s Doom
Riot isn’t quite clean of copying other games’ designs.
Naga Siren and Nami’s reveal dates cut a little too close for that to be probability (July 19, 2012 vs. Nov. 15, 2012). It seems weird to consciously copy the color scheme when you’re designing a support as opposed to a carry, but there’s no really strong evidence against this either except for their weapon of choice and their locomotions on land. It’s a possibility, and I lean towards Riot just making a coincidence; weirder things have happened before in history.
But for the latter, really? Is red-black demonic guy something that Valve owns now? Must fantasy games consciously color their demons differently in order to not be ripping off Doom? Hell, banner-wings versus charred remnants of wings, plus spine-sword versus sharp molten slab, should be enough to keep these guys apart in terms of design. Doom is already the Valve version of Warcraft’s Doom Guard unit, so he hardly has any monopoly over the concept in terms of appearances. He’s hardly a deterrent for Riot to make a demonic massacre man.
(Heck, we could make a case that Naga Siren also cuts too close to Warcraft’s Siren unit, but that’s already being unfair. Valve does enough impressive work as it is, updating outdated models from a game made in 2004. Riot could have used Koi Nami’s red-white color scheme as the default simply to not be accused of copying, but that would suggest that having to avoid Valve’s toes at all costs is a legitimate concern.)
Naga may not have been released until July, but concept art of the final version has been around since May 31, 2012. Granted, it wasn’t stated that it was final at the time, but Nami still came out very close to even the concept art. Plenty of time for Riot to consider a palette swap, at least.
As for Doom, Valve is the biggest competitor in the genre, so it would be benefical to Riot to avoid such similarities. It was pretty big news in the Dota community, just saying how much Riot was ripping off the design. Like what if Microsoft released a third-person action-adventure game, with a bald warrior wielding two swords, out to get revenge on the gods? Would it be fine if he was a Roman warrior, instead of a Spartan, and didn’t have red spiral tattoos?
Doom’s design may be close to the WC3 model, but Valve and Blizzard have had their discussion on the subject already, and Blizzard would definitely be after Valve if the sequel was coming too close.
Multiplayer cooperative shooters existed before Team Fortress 2, but that didn't deter Valve from making it. The difference between that and the ill-fated Dante's Inferno game is how you go about doing something that no one else has done before. If you can do something new, then any previous excellent efforts at the idea shouldn't discourage you.
Big news, though? You'll have to link me to those, because most of what I could find were mere one-off comments that hardly received attention. But in my view, the winged horned demon is just another archetype for use of fantasy world makers, and Aatrox and Doom just have too little in common for me to think that they'd be too similar:
- Their body proportions are different. Aatrox is lean and fit, with his banner-wings wider than his body and his head (plus horns) pretty large in comparison (those wings make up much of his silhouette in-game). He's hardly armored (if it's not actually part of his body) and armed only with that sword of his. Doom has a massive muscular frame compounded in armor all over; he's one of the biggest heroes in the game, with that imposing stature of his. Aatrox is mostly steel-black and blood-red in color, while Doom is predominantly armored-red with charred-black details
- Their weapons are different. Aatrox's spine-sword bends, extends, and stabs, like something forged to draw blood on purpose. Doom's hilted slab of molten metal is swung in huge cleaves, smashing through enemies with destructive force.
- Their kits are too different. Aatrox starts fights and keeps them going in one place, pouring as much damage as he can with auto-attacks, steroids and CC before he gets killed - and revived by his passive, depending on how much damage he dealt the whole while. Doom ults someone and relentlessly charges that silenced sucker, throwing out nukes and the occasional attack while his MS steroid and passive damage wears them out.
- Their characters, lore-wise and response-wise, are too different. Aatrox revels in bloodshed, waiting for the losing side to be apparent before he turns the tide of the war with a one-man massacre. Doom is just…Doom, a badass depiction of classic Lucifer who's lord of all Hell and knows it. Aatrox is all about war, while Doom's all down for hell.
If either side were to really copy a character from the other, though, I think it would be because that something was really enviable in terms of design. It's part of why I don't think Naga Siren influenced Nami very much - her design just wasn't that impressive compared to other merfolk, especially when there are some creative non-humanoid members of her species in Dota 2 such as Slardar and Slark. Admiration wouldn't justify the act, of course - I'd call bull if Riot suddenly announced an insane paranoid lumberjack champion, just as I'd call bull if Valve created a narcissistic executioner hero who used ridiculous weapons and liked the sound of his name a lot.
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