Should Riot Games Stop Making New LoL Champions Permanently?

The addition of Nilah and Bel’veth to the League of Legends roster has finally pushed the champion pool to over 160 total champions. The introduction of this champion is a welcome sight for a portion of the player base while a larger set of people are not happy with Riot Games making new LoL champions. With so many champions available for play, is it time for Riot Games to stop making new LoL champions in the future?

The League of Legends Champion Pool

The League of Legends champion pool boasts a large number of playable characters that is extremely diverse, giving players a lot of options depending on their play style. All of these champions introduce so many ways to play the game that newer players won’t get bored of playing the game for a few months if they try out all the different champions available. Despite all that coverage, it seems Riot Games is still able to pull out new ideas to create new characters every year.

Out of all the online multiplayer games out there, League of Legends is one of the largest number of playable characters. It’s also one of the most active in terms of introducing new characters. This is both a good thing and a bad thing for the game because of the direction that players feel. While most are happy with new content being added, there are also negatives that make the community feel mad about the addition of new LoL champions.

Why Are People Mad About Having New LoL Champions?

There is nothing wrong with having new content in a game, unless the new content is absolutely terrible and takes away from the overall experience of the game. Unfortunately, there are times where that is the case for League of Legends. However, it’s not fair to generalize it as such since players have different reasons why they are upset about the addition of new champions in the game that both directly and indirectly have something to do with it. Here are some of those reasons:

1. Imbalanced Champion Releases

The biggest issue that players have with the release of new champions is the fact that a lot of them are released to be extremely imbalanced. We rarely get Riot Games releasing well-designed champions, with most of the releases simply being too broken or too weak. If a champion is too broken, it makes the game unplayable and if a champion is too weak, it almost never sees play and gets forgotten quickly.

Riot Games has messed up the game a lot of times by releasing a seriously overpowered champion that it’s understandable if some players are mad that they keep releasing more. While the more recent champion releases have been more tame in terms of power-level, there is still that small group of people that exaggerate that a champion looks extremely broken before it’s released just by looking at its abilities on paper.

2. Outdated Champion Models

A more reasonable reason why some players hate new champion releases is because they claim that Riot Games is spending too many resources on creating new champions while not being able to rework older champions quickly. It is true that many champions are in desperate need of a rework to help them keep up with the modern iteration of League of Legends and those same champions have simply been underperforming in their games.

Riot Games can’t make the game perfectly balanced, that’s true, but they can work on modernizing the older champions to help them keep up with the direction of the game. It might be a good idea to pause on creating new LoL champions and focus on updating the older ones. After all, reworking all content is still considered releasing new content because it still changes the overall gameplay by making use of older game models.

3. Inability to Own Champions

The final reason why many players dislike the release of new champions is because they can’t keep up with the game’s release. League of Legends makes it difficult for free users to own champions because of their high prices and the difficulty of getting blue essence. For some people, it feels like a pay-to-win feature since they need to grind for weeks just to buy one champion and Riot Games simply adds more that they feel like they’re getting left behind.

It feels like a petty reason to get mad at Riot Games, but the frustration of not having the same options as other players despite putting in the same, if not more, effort into playing the game can feel bad. Regardless of how other people feel, there will come a point where a new players will simply be too intimidated by the sheer number of champions to even attempt completing them. Luckily, Riot Games is introducing new options for players to own there champions.

Should Riot Games Stop Adding New Champions to LoL?

League of Legends definitely has enough champions to give players the diversity they need in terms of playstyle and in-game preferences, but to say if they should stop making new champions is simply not a good idea. The general rule is that games only become considered dead if the game developers stop adding new content. For League of Legends, the creation of new champions is simply the best content they can make for the game.

We don’t think Riot Games should stop making new LoL champions, but we do believe that they should slow down the rollout of new characters. Instead of having 3-4 champions every LoL season, it might be better to simply add a maximum of 2 per year. This way, players still have something to look forward to while the company focuses their resources more on fixing some parts of the game which are simply outdated.