How Mobile is Riven
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
She is very highly mobile, especially after you get some skill points in her defensive moves. Although she doesn't have a blink/teleport/blinkstrike or a MS increase. So.. that kind of narrows it down for you.
I'd still get Youmu's ghostblade though. It fills the gap in her mobility quite well, as well as giving her pretty much every statistic that is humanly desirable on melee anyway.
I don't recall saying anything about not having dashes. I just said no blinks/teleports (Arcane Shift/Deceive/Shunpo) or blinkstrikes (Audacious Charge, Shadow Dash, etc.)
She does not use Mana resource
In testing did she come out like you wanted? Is she fun?
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
Hm. I shot for the moon and didn't make it. There was a ton of skills/abilities that I tried on the character that didn't quite work out.
It wasn't the fact that one individual skill didn't work, just that a cohesive kit wasn't forming together.
A list of things that didn't make it: Inertia, Hookshot, Countercarom, Context Button, Perma-Sliding Autoattack, Beam Sword, etc.
The thing that did make it in (and finally worked), I'm happy with. Based on how people respond to it, it might be a feasible kind of basic ability template.
Riven Passive
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
Her passive isn't defining, unfortunately.
It merely serves its' purpose as more kit glue. Character defining passives haven't really been my style.
Is she more of a burst assassin or sustain fighter?
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
She sits somewhere in between those, depending on how you build. She doesn't have an innate sustain (heal) mechanic though.
Why another meelee?
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
Well, the champion I had been working on, is unfortunately blocked by particle tech. This champion was deemed the most ready to be put into production for this release cycle.
What does "blocked by particle tech" mean?
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
Blocked by particle tech means that there's a certain effect that would be required on this character that our engine currently doesn't support.
For example, if I wanted to make a 'Portal' based champion (no, I'm not making a portal based champion) I would need the tech to make the Portal display what was on the other side.
What are Inertia, Hookshot, and Context Button anyways?
Hookshot sounds like a a typical Amumu Bandage Toss. Context Button, could literally be anything. What were its effects/contexts?
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
Inertia was a system that gave you a fury-esque resource for moving. This is where the sliding autoattack came into play, as I never wanted you to *stop* moving. You would then burn your fury-esque resource to power dashes and the like.
Hookshot is yes, Amumu Bandage Toss that latches onto Terrain, et al.
Context Button was just that - hit this button to do stuff that you'd most likely want. For example, if you were running, the button would make your character do a running slash. If you just autoattacked a character, that button would basically reset your autoattack and attack the same character again, etc.
I was trying to recreate that button in DMC/God of War/etc. where it was 'Hit this button and MAGICAL AWESOME DESTRUCTION HAPPENS.'
Hookshots actually feel somewhat weird in terms of using them in high mobility engagements.
The reason is that, in most fights you want to go down a corridor of some type.
However, to hookshot forward, you need to shoot your hookshot at a terrain that might be forward, so you almost always end up targetting at an odd angle.
I just couldn't get the others to work cleanly enough because I was focused on making her Q ability feel good. I might revisit them in the future (or hand those mechanics off to other designers)
Context button fails, just because our game *isn't* God of War and DMC, unfortunately. Feeling like the game is deciding what ability you use in a PvP setting is a bit off.
I'm really interested to know what her Q is now, you have been talking it up a fair amount.
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
It's just a very very simple move that's not very complex. In fact, most of my work on it was to make it feel as simple and as intuitive as possible. Since a lot of my designs are fighting game inspired, you can probably take a fair guess as to what in fighting games I haven't tried to port over yet.
What type of champion were you aiming on developing with Ravin?
A champion who gets into the middle of fights? or an Assassin type who works her way around and picks people off one by one?
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
A champion that crashes into the middle of a fight and causes a large amount of disruption then quickly dances to the edge of the fight when she gets unwanted attention... and then crashes into the fight again at a moment's notice when it's safe for her to pile it on.
And then kills everyone with her improbably sized sword.
So apparently, Riven is going to be ANOTHER melee DPS.
Please, for the love of god, tell me she is going to be an assassin-type character like Talon.
So far, your previous champion releases;
Talon- Melee AD DPS
Skarner- Melee Hybrid DPS
WuKong- Melee AD Tanky DPS.
Is there going to be anything new about her? Since I found out that Xypherous was designing, the champ, I had my hopes up HUGE, and saved up 7kIP already. Then, I found out that Xypherous, the king of Champion designs (Orianna, Renekton), has came up with another Melee AD DPS.
Please, tell me what her typical item build will be. I hope it isn't Atmogs.
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
Well, I can't promise anything super.
All I can say is that she doesn't have a on-hit skill, or an instant speed gap click-on-a-champion closer like Irelia's Q. Hopefully she'll be moving around the battlefield much much more that that.
I have tried very hard to make sure that attack damage is a compelling purchase though. But again, I can totally understand it if you're sick of Melee DPS by now. By their very nature, they have to embody some similar elements to work in our game. Being in melee range is very very dangerous.
I feel the character is simply more fun going brut/youmu's as a large portion of her skills care about movement and positioning but it's pretty hard to keep atmogs from being viable, due to how mid-elo works, unfortunately. I actually suspect something like Atmog's Annie works. :x
From the numbers, if you buy a BF Sword, your full combo deals about 250 more damage, so there's something to the notion of getting AD.
So, in general, we actually do try to space out different archetypes when planning about what champions to produce.
And then reality happens and things don't go as planned. I know that two slots with 'ranged dps' got bumped off and so you have back to back 'melee dps' sometime this year, simply because reality reared it's ugly head.
I'm guessing she's a mix between Irelia, Shaco, and Talon
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
Actually a lot closer to Renekton and Lee Sin, in that you want to use your skills to use your other skills better. Irelia/Shaco/Talon have great individual skills, wheras Riven is all about executing her one-skill chain and her variants of that skill-chain.
I'mwondering, seems like most likely wont have a tanky dps feel to him ... hopefully?
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
She's very offensively oriented, but she does have a simple defensive move. You'll want to buy as much AD as humanly possible though.
I don't know about Glass Melee Carry though. No one's really going to approach Master Yi/Tryndamere levels of damage for a while.[/i][/spoiler]