So big mechanical changes, like turning Sona’s Q into a charged shot that did more damage if you held down Q, were out. We followed one main guideline while developing Augments, which was, “Augments can’t change how the fundamentals of the champion works.” Sona players should still know how to play Sona, even with lots of Augments equipped. It was a lot of fun, and since we were doing a PvE mode, we thought, “Why can’t we let the player do that?” This led to us creating the Augment system: powerful add-ons you earn over time and equip to make your champion closer to a Doom Bot. In that mode, the bots were extremely powerful and would cast incredibly overpowered spells. However, we eventually found one simple line that summed up exactly what we were trying to do with the mode: “LET PLAYERS BE THE DOOM BOT”ĭoom Bots of Doom was a mode we ran several times in the past, most notably with the Teemoing in 2016. Most of our early ideas were quickly rejected because they became too similar to League’s existing item system-things like gaining extra stats or slight modifications to your abilities. Game system progression (which eventually became the Augment system) went through a lot of iterations. After much discussion, we landed on Ziggs because he seemed like strongest match for both the gameplay and thematic needs of the mode. Based on the team comp we had, a magic damage dealer felt like the right fit.

This meant we needed to add another member to the Odyssey team. For example, the original Odyssey line-up included five skins (Yasuo/Sona/Jinx/Malphite, with Kayn as the villian), but we wanted the mode to have five players. Other decisions took more discussion and development. We wanted to create four difficulty levels for most players to progress through as they powered up, and then one difficulty for our most hardcore players to test their mechanical and teamwork skills. These goals defined what we could and couldn’t do with the mode pretty clearly, and it helped us make some early decisions, such as having five difficulty levels.

Ship it in time for the launch of the Odyssey Event, which meant we had 4-5 months for development.

Add a progression system that persists over many sessions.

Make a PvE mode that players of all skill levels could enjoy, while still having an awesome end challenge for those who are committed to see it through.

We had some pretty big goals we wanted to hit for this iteration of a PvE game mode: (We hope you’re enjoying it and aren’t finding the missions to be too difficult!) When we set out to work on Odyssey, we knew we wanted it to feel like an epic event-a surprise League moment with new skins, a cinematic, and lots of missions and loot-and we wanted to cap the whole thing off with a brand-new PvE game mode.

By the time you’re reading this, it’ll be the future.

League of legends doom bots of doom