League of Legends designer shares game design field manual | Hacker News Reader

League of Legends designer shares game design field manual

areadenial.games

46 pointsjmanjmanjman50 comments

This manual has too many AI-isms so I couldn't force myself to read through it. I wish they had just published the text in whatever way they wrote it. Nobody is impressed by walls of text anymore, it's not a sign of quality or effort.

But since we're on the topic: Riot has a lot of incredibly knowledgeable game designers who have spent years sharing much of the reasoning behind various design decisions. The two main ones that stand out to me are Riot August (creator of Jinx and Jhin) and Riot Phreak (previous head of the balance team).

Phreak in particular has been publishing videos on YouTube for years explaining their reasoning for the balance changes in each new patch. I don't even play and I still check out the videos sometimes.

The other one is Riot August. I've occasionally opened up his livestreams where he's answering questions and yapping, but the highlights are usually posted on social media platforms as clips.

There's a lot for which you can criticize Riot, but they're actually pretty transparent about communicating the decision making behind balance changes and listening to the community. Most games updates come in the form of receiving a set of patch notes, where if you're really lucky they might include some explanations for why those changes were made. Don't take community communication for granted.

As for balance, I think they've actually done a pretty great job. League of Legends has 171 champions and in MSI 2026, their latest international esports event, 104 were played. For comparison, DotA2 has 126 heroes and in The International 2025, 107 heroes were played.

> shares game design field manual written entirely by AI

I fixed the title for you.

AI is here to stay. Embrace the future of to-be-summarized-by-another-LLM content.

I love AI. I'm just as AI-pilled as the next guy.

But, somewhat ironically, LLMs are unbelievably bad at writing.

I can read thousands of words from my favorite authors without getting annoyed by their tics and their grammar. People like Nikhil Suresh literally make me laugh out loud when I read their writing. But something about AI-slop-prose is just obvious and gross and annoying to read.

It’s just optimized for generating text and evoking emotional responses rather than getting a point across.

A good writer says what needs to be said and no more, AI is on the other side of the spectrum, it just needs to say things just to say things

If you actually played this game and read the patch notes, you'd have a different perspective on this.

There's a lot of weird code and technical debt in the game client. For example, a map-wide filter (Nocturne's ult) is actually a giant minion covering the whole map.

Minions all the way down

Implementation details != Technical debt

Reminds me of how Fallout 3’s subway car is actually a hat.

If it works it works. The code isn’t the product.

It’s a common thing. For example the chess event in World of Warcraft Burning Crusade was done by placing invisible bunnies in a grid for the chess figures to target and move towards.

AI-generated, and also highly untrustworthy given its source - Riot Games is an extraordinarily player-, community-, and pro-player-hostile company. On top of all of the new and exciting ways that they manage to not only screw up software engineering but also screw over their users, their business model is selling skins at the expense of their games (in the sames sense that Google's business model is selling ads at the expense of search quality).

It would only be a slight exaggeration to say that Riot is the Monsanto of game developers - because EA/Activision/Blizzard/Epic all contend for that spot too.

Honestly, I strongly disagree. I've played a wide breadth of games, and I can't think of a game studio the size of Riot that is as community-engaged and pro-consumer.

Examples range from the quality of their patch notes, dev articles and videos, to their constant presence on reddit, and willingness to walk back decisions based on public outcry (Hextech Chests, League Classic monetization, etc).

Heck, after Riot gave up on Hytale, they were willing to sell the IP and assets back to the original creator while providing extremely generous severance packages for the entire team. I genuinely don't think any of the other companies you listed would have done the same.

> I can't think of a game studio the size of Riot that is as community-engaged and pro-consumer

Valve.

This is also just a crazy statement to make.

> Examples range from the quality of their patch notes, dev articles and videos, to their constant presence on reddit

None of this is pro-user.

What's highly anti-user is the not only permittance but endorsement of smurf accounts, kernel-level anticheat, penalizing users for your own bugs (said anticheat, crashes, LLM chat filters catching on nothing, "parental controls" that trigger on every user multiple times), propagating an extremely toxic community (players telling others to kill themselves or using racial slurs is a regular occurrence) by refusing to do chat moderation or any sort of sane penalty system, fining pro players in pro games for picking a champ+rune combo with a bug that they refused to fix for months (and that the player didn't exploit), whatever this[1] is, the CEO of the company intentionally doxxing the lead developer of a competing game, and many, many other malicious things.

[1] https://www.resetera.com/threads/riot-games-sends-cringey-ed...

Note my comment on size. I think folks forget how lean Valve is with only ~330 employees. I love Valve, but it's not quite apples to apples. Their flat, lean structure doesn't function like a typical corporation, and their industry-leading margins and functional monopoly (one that I enjoy) places far less pressure on their need to monetize.

That said, if we're trying to hinge our discussion on moderation, anyone who plays CS knows players to this day can utter the most reprehensible, racist garbage and expect no punishment. There is a reason Valorant, in comparison, has an incredibly diverse gender pool. I've heard from plenty of women about how "enjoyable" it is to use voice chat in CS.

This also doesn't even touch on Valve's role in gambling addiction...

I still stand by my original statement as it was intended.

This is the first time I’ve heard someone criticize the “selling cosmetics” business model. I assume you feel the same about R6, TF2 and CSGO, naturally.

Since selling skins is unacceptable, how would you have them make money given the game is F2P?

> I assume you feel the same about R6, TF2 and CSGO, naturally.

It seems like you think you've pulled a "gotcha" on me?

I don't play those games. I don't have any feelings about them. And they're not relevant to this discussion.

Please take a look at the HN Guidelines, and especially:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

> Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Selling skins is what they used to do originally, which was their edge over their competition that didn’t want to do F2P. Nowadays they engage in gacha, with skins effectively costing hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Backed by statistics, champs that receive new skins are also always guaranteed to be strong or even overpowered for a while (rebalanced before any tournament patch).

This reads like AI. Hard to read once you feel it.

Like if I wanted this information I could just prompt it myself. But if a human wrote it it would somehow feel worthwhile to read.

I'm only to preface 3 but this is the densest download of knowledge I've come across in a long time

Thats a joke right? It did literally make me laugh. AI-slop from a predatory scam-game maker.

I'm shocked to be enjoying this read as much as I am, given how filled it is with LLM-tics, repeated information, and excessive useless verbiage.

I sure wish they had posted whatver input they sent through the LLM instead. There's obviously something good behind there. There are opinions that still make it through the slop machine, and someone's story is still being told through muck.

Given the content, the disregard for the reader's experience is highly ironic.

zzzzz usual blabla about nothing

> The "It's not X -- it's Y" pattern, often with an em dash. The single most commonly identified AI writing tell. Man I f*cking hate it. AI uses this to create false profundity by framing everything as a surprising reframe. One in a piece can be effective; ten in a blog post is a genuine insult to the reader. Before LLMs, people simply did not write like this at scale. Includes the causal variant "not because X, but because Y" where every explanation is framed as a surprise reveal, the em-dash dismissal "X -- not Y", and the cross-sentence reframe where the same noun is negated then repositioned: "The question isn't X. The question is Y."

The information is hard to read because I had to run an https://tropes.fyi/ filter over the essay to make it readable.

I found it quite tiring to read as well.

I don't mind the AI tropes that much, the issue is more that the amount of information is exactly what was in the prompt but the AI manages to add many words saying nothing.

> The screen we shipped in January 2016 made two statements at once: pick intent said your plan matters, while the queue attached to it said what a ladder measures is negotiable. Players parsed the two separately, with total precision. They kept the first and burned the second down.

This is a classic AI construction to me that reeks of Markov chain thinking. The first half is probably the prompt to some extent. The second half ... doesn't actually say anything if you read it closely. Humans can write this sort of content-free fluff but usually they do it for a strategic reasons and not when they're trying to explain something. "Players parsed the two separately, with total precision" resolves a question of clarity that was never raised and for which there is no evidence of problem or solution (it is probably trying to say they understood and disregarded ... something that was basically elided). Then we have a tortured metaphor that doesn't tell us anything about what the players did.

It is quite tiring to read because you have to re-read things a few times to confirm that it didn't say anything and it isn't pretty wordwork worth reading on its own. Reading this is an exercise in trying to reverse-engineer the prompt.

Let me stop you right here and give you the honest take — you're absolutely right.

This lingo infuriates me

If only the popularity of the game wasn't 100% derived from original DoTA map by IceFrog, which this guy had nothing to do with.

Sure the genre and many of its archetypes were invented in the WC3 fun/custom map scene but LoL is more than a Dota clone. I haven’t really played it (my moba time ended with HoN) but it’s obviously very well made

It has matured over time but it was absolutely a hosted dota ripoff initially, including the playable characters. The fact there are also other spinoffs isn’t really relevant to its origins and lack of recognition or even an attempt at monetary compensation.

>or even an attempt at monetary compensation.

Who should pay who do you think in this?

Would love to hear.

Or is this the same as "reparations"? Poeple just dont want others to succeed.

I don’t know, like who even remembers Meian and Ragn0r, who created the original Dota before icefrog took over? I think icefrog benefited a lot from creating Dota and is widely credited - I mean it landed him a great job at valve after blizzard decided to ignore the great potential in their custom map community. The other devs that worked on it are basically unknown.

What makes it obvious to you, that LoL is well made? Userbase? Is candy crush obviously well made? Perhaps it is well marketed, more than well made?

Candy Crush is obviously well made. It's a scourge, but it's a well made scourge.

That's what I find so frustrating about games these days. The most effective business models (by a long way) are the ones that lean into all of the dark patterns.

They can attract great talent to work on them, and afford the time to build them well, because there's so much money sloshing around.

I understand what you're saying. I hold a different view of what is well made or not. Commercial success isn't the only measure. I believe dark patterns detract from the cultural value of a thing, which is how they came to be called that. Meta is a valuable company, but they could have made less money and provided much more value to society with different practices. There's a "rising tide lifts all boats" approach to commerce, and then there's the candy crush, perpetual enshittification, monetary maximalist approach, usually with negative side effects.

But that's beside the point. I don't think League of Legends is especially predatory, I just think it's a mediocre game that was well marketed at the right time to go "viral".

I think it’s pretty subjective at that point what is good and what isn’t.

Totally agree on the dark patterns though.

Out of interest what is a game you consider excellent that maybe wasn’t marketed as well?

Personally I really like dungeon keeper 1 (& 2 as well somewhat) - but Bullfrog was very unsuccessful as a company and went under. I don’t know exactly why, should look into that history

The example I always go to for oddly unsuccessful games, (good at least, I don't know about excellent,) was Super Monday Night Combat. It was something like Valve's Deadlock, a 3D MOBA game more than 10 years earlier, with a bit of The Finals aesthetic. (Coins, instead of blood, gameshowy, announcers quipping over the gameplay.) I had a lot of fun with it, but it seems like hardly anyone noticed it existed. They never got the critical mass of players needed to keep it going.

"I believe dark patterns detract from the cultural value of a thing"

+1 to that.

No it’s very polished in gameplay and balancing. I haven’t played it myself but I watched some others play it. Also looks great etc, so it’s obvious to me that it’s high quality

Would you say the same about a basketball video game?

IceFrog didn't create Dota, he took over maintenance of it from a long line of other people at the time, including Guinsoo (who added Roshan and the recipe system) who worked at Riot (though Icefrog was definitely the best maintainer, Dota was already hugely popular before Icefrog had anything to do with it).

Dota itself wasn't even original, it was based on a StarCraft 1 custom map.

The Starcraft map was called Aeon of Strife.

Dota was popular in its own niche and game was hugely imbalanced. IceFrog took it to somewhere so high above, saying "next level" is understating it.

That wasn't the point anyway.

There's nothing of significance in LoL vs the original DotA.

Same applies to DotA 2 btw. Valve is making changes for the sake of changes. Now every hero has a talent tree for example. Has the game become better because of that? I don't think so.

I bet if they did A/B when they rolled that update out, not a lot of people would have stayed on the new version.

As someone who has continuously played DOTA for the last 20+ years, I appreciate Valve keeping the game fresh. Sometimes they make changes that aren't so great, but the game is always evolving so it's fine. Despite that, even after all this time they've still managed to keep the spirit of the original WC3 mod.

As someone who continually played LoL, Valorant, and StarCraft 2 for long periods at different phases in life, I appreciate Blizzard keeping SC2 pretty much the same the most. I guess some people like change for the sake of change, but I just want to play and practice a given game. Just like chess and Melee have thrived without updates, I would much prefer my video games to not have frequent changes. I know I'm a minority in this regard. I'll come back to SC2 and counterstrike, but I'll never come back to LoL or Valorant because it's no longer the game I was playing.

But DOTA in particular, it was never just a "given game"; even from DOTA 1 they added heroes and items frequently. Adding heroes and items changes the game balance so it has to be continually rebalanced.

Yes, that's one of the reasons why I didn't play it. I probably would have switched over from LoL if it were more static.

If you want to criticize LoL design, simply mention that Pendragon stole all the community hero designs from dota-allstars.com

AND tried to bury the dota community in the process. Complete scum.

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