Just wanted to weigh in on the Riven conversations that have been happening recently. We’ve also had some conversations about this in past and recently amongst the Dev team, so I’m representing a combination of theirs + my thoughts. Riven is certainly at one of the lower play rates she’s had for a long time, there’s a few reasons for this.
- Back in early seasons, Riven was one of the few high agency champions. 10 years later, we’ve released a lot more champions that fill some of those same flashy motivations, which is overall a good thing, but does result in a decline in popularity
- It’s valuable that we have champions with high skill cap in the game. Not every champion needs to be easy to play and we want to have a mix of simple champions and high mastery ones that are worth investing in. Simplifying every champ in the game is not something we’re interested in. Champions with hard inputs is a legitimate player desire that’s worth supporting (fits some fighting game player motivations) so long as there are some simple Champs to balance that out.
- Is fast Q something that we would intentionally ship on a champion today? No it wouldn’t pass the bar, because it’s too much input complexity for a non transformative output. If a player is putting a lot of effort into their inputs, we’d probably want that to be rewarded with something a bit more tangible and satisfying, rather than faster autos/Qs. But at this point, Riven mains have invested so much into this mechanic that it would be a disservice to them get rid of it. I don’t think anyone is signing up to play riven right now thinking she’s an easy champion that’s simple to master.
The future
- Having said that, Riven does have some legitimate problems. Firstly she’s a bit weak. Given that items are changing in Preseason, there’s not too much benefit to changing her now though… I see a lot of posts that reference winrate sites like lolalytics blindly. Please look at this to make sure the calculation is correct https://twitter.com/riotphroxzon/status/1683675824883646465
- Do we reward Riven appropriately for her mastery investment? Maybe, maybe not. For a champion that is one tricked a lot, her matchups are quite feast or famine. For example, there’s lots of champions like renekton that feel like getting your teeth kicked in. She’s also a lot more one dimensional than she used to be.
- There’s probably some good work to be done here that retains her mastery points, but gives her a clear game purpose. You play Renekton to dominate early mid and try to carry that through to a win, but you play Riven to do what exactly? She used to be a decent midgame spiking champ that could snowball and run over the game, but now there’s many Champs that do that better than her. It’s not clear what her strategic identity is meant to be…
I’d be curious on thoughts
It’s because of mythic items and Bork, mostly Bork.
They can never properly buff or nerf irelia when she builds Bork every game. It’s good on her but she’s stuck in this loop of being an on hit assassin that builds almost no hp, so she’s essentially lost her identity and any build variety as a result.
I would love to play triforce hydra Steraks irelia again and be a Frontline engage champion that sets up fights, but now with no hp, you’re more of a follow up engage.