Champion design in League of Legends has always been a point of contention for the player base, with allegations of power creep seeping into the discourse around every new champion released.
August, one of Riot’s highest-profile champion designers, formally apologized for Zeri and Gnar’s designs and called them his two biggest “failings” as a designer.
“That’s my bad, I screwed up on that [Zeri],” August said. “If I had been a better designer maybe Zeri would be more playable. But sometimes we take a risk and it doesn’t pan out.”
August went on to say that Riot is deliberately not buffing Zeri because they don’t like seeing her in professional play. To be fair, Zeri’s design is difficult to buff without completely overtuning her, leading her to an outsized presence and win rate.
August’s other regret is Gnar, who became a staple in professional play due to his ability to bully the top lane in Mini-Gnar state and provide excellent crowd control in team fights. August says his visual design is more for casual players, but the unreliability of his kit makes him hard to play for lesser-skilled Summoners. Pros are able to manage, though, and any buff to his base kit would break the game at the top levels.
While both champions caused players grief over the months and years since they’ve been released, several Redditors commented that this moment from August seemed human and reminded them there are actual people behind the Riot veil.
For every single 30-minute game, hundreds of thousands of hours of thought and work went into making the game as enjoyable as humanly possible. It can be easy to forget, but developers love games as much as gamers do, and they aren’t happy when games are unfun as well.
