League of Legends and Arcane clash in Patch Notes 14.24. With over 150 champions in the game with each their own unique lore through in-game interaction, Legends of Runeterra and other media tidbits, League of Legends has created its own universe. Arcane is a highly popular show that has captured the imagination of both traditional and non-League players. It’s a fantastic piece of media and while Riot may have wanted it to be a promotion for League of Legends, I think it can be a standalone media product much like League of Legends should be, and the two world’s shouldn’t have collided into one. The collision has probably come at the expense of the League of Legends universe.
Controversial Viktor Rework
As an avid fan playing League of Legends on and off for a few year, Viktor is perhaps my second or third most played champion. His mechanical, augmented body was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise assassin and traditionally Mage looking mid lane.
Viktor’s kit has long needed a rework. Discussing his older kit, his W is was a weaker Veigar Cage. Event Horizon is superior in every way and it doesn’t even work as self peel against mobile champions and is too small of a radius to use even as an effective zoning tool. It just didn’t land as a CC ability and its uptime wasn’t long enough and its radius not wide enough to completely hold off major chokes or act as a space deterrent in teamfight settings.
Let the glorious evolution begin. Viktor is on PBE as the Herald of the Arcane. pic.twitter.com/WB8ezO2FJK
— League of Legends (@LeagueOfLegends) November 26, 2024
His Ultimate was clunky at best and doesn’t do too much damage for how easy it is to get out of if the opposing champion even has one movement ability or summoner. Its ability to chase was limited and outside of his E, everything about his kit was clunky; perhaps in character but never good enough to play at the highest level especially after the item reworks made him weaker.
His new abilities are better in the sense that they are more powerful and fit the overtuned kits of the new Legends introduced into the game. His Ultimate growing after takedowns is an interesting adjustment that makes him better in teamfights, and while he still maintains his identity in game mechanics as a squishy lane bully who is an immobile AP carry, his abilities remain evolutions of Viktor’s original kit, which is actually fitting considering his character.
Major Patch Buffs and Nerfs
Ambessa, Corki and Graves are probably the more prominent nerfs, and Poppy will also suffer a bit in her flexibility, but overall the adjustments to Warwick and Viktor make both powerful and thrust them firmly back into viability. Much of the other Champion adjustments are very elo dependent adjustments outside of Rumble scaling even better probably making him a prominent pick like he was in pro play for most of the year.
As a general rule of thumb for the nerfed Champions, they are very pop off dependent and are more snowball-y into the late game so it’s probably a tone back on early game power as a whole. The buffed Champions are generally scalers or had their scaling buffed which makes the overall design philosophy of the patch be centred around less extreme snowballs and more viability into scaling which is interesting as a design concept. The only major subset of playstyles that gets affected is low elo because games tend to stretch out due to players not being able to exploit advantages or win conditions but the champion pool in low elo is full of stat checkers which means as an overall buff to scaling and underperforming champions, it seems to be the right call.
Yuumi didn’t need a buff Riot.
The Arcane Buff and adjustments to champion power.
Arcane Inspired Overhaul
Viktor’s visual rework is also a travesty to his character design.
Arcane will never be responsible for League of Legends gameplay experience. Let’s be real. How many Arcane fans have played League outside of the original active user base? In this new wave, how many are going to consistently be playing the game a month or two out from now that Arcane has concluded? Ten percent? Five? I would argue even these are generous estimations and numbers are probably closer to the lower single digit percentile and it probably drops to a decimal percentage within the year.
People are fickle with their attention span especially in the media age. These Arcane fans will jump to the next shiny film and gush lyrical about it only for it to remain an afterthought within the year. This isn’t to blame this subset of media enjoyers, it can be argued this is in fact the correct way to enjoy an emergent media platform that isn’t constrained by television in the new age. However, after they claim they ‘improved’ League of Legends and it’s lore and design, they will not even live to see the consequences and if it comes up again, will sadistically brandish this change as a way that their fanbase was validated and given preferential treatment over their original loyal audience.
Quick update on Arcane Fractured Jinx and Viktor’s update:
We’re adding Jinx’s iconic finale hood to her first form (Hero of Zaun) in Patch 14.24. You won’t see it in PBE, but it’ll be live when the Patch launches. We should’ve had it in from the start, but hope you enjoy the… pic.twitter.com/rLoYAdqcXS
— Paul Bellezza (@RiotPabro) December 4, 2024
Arcane or the other League-inspired shows have the potential to rip up any existing lore for the sake of a two season story which has the potential to drastically alter and oversimplify champions and their background. For example, Arcane being cannon makes it highly unlikely that Blitzcrank is cannon. Blitzcrank saw play this year even during Worlds 2024 in the professional scene, and is one of the most divisive but popular champions in the support position due to both the design, theming and his unique abilities.
Making Arcane cannon made it so that old lore is irrelevant and new lore will likely cater to the whims of creative control that the screenwriters of the other League inspired film series decide to make to the settings and characters. It’s a shortsighted decision to appease a player base that is majority not going to stay and gives licence for filmmakers to liberally destroy character backgrounds.
For all the posturing and media League of Legends, and Riot as a whole does about how they’re not trying to exploit the player base with skins or Champions, the major characters shown in Arcane that are in the game either gained buffs, updates or are otherwise very strong in the meta. Coincidence? Often when a new skin line comes out it has seen that champion being buffed so it becomes more attractive to the user base, and now they’ve even introduced a predatory loot box system for the influx of FOMO new players coming into League with the Sanctum.
New chromas for your favorite Arcane skins are now in the Sanctum. Cash in your Ancient Sparks to unlock them all. pic.twitter.com/jIhavSpHDH
— League of Legends (@LeagueOfLegends) December 12, 2024
Monetisation is important. Predatory lootboxes in a game that doesn’t have them reeks of a money grab. It’s disappointing to think League Of Legends, and to a larger extent, Riot Games was above that and to be proven wrong. League is an old game and still remains relevant and effectively monetised hence it’s long lifespan as both a popular game and one of the majorly watched Esports in the scene.
Arcane becoming cannon is a shackle and colonisation of League of Legends. In an effort to appease the mainstream audience, it has betrayed and disposed of what made it unique, appealing and loved by its original community. This isn’t to say that the resounding success of Arcane is unwelcome. Personally it will be interesting to watch the other League inspired shows and how they explore the other regions and stories to tell within the lore. But the key is that writers should remain faithful to the original lore without ripping up the conception of a character as creative licensing in a lazy attempt to tell a story that isn’t faithful to what League of Legends players love.
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