Morello's interview with Buffed.de

• The first few minutes talk about eSports and Season 3. Nothing big or new, but he talks about player salaries, the Challenger Circuit which promotes amateur teams "going pro", a bigger prize pool for S3 ( no amount noted ), and the weekly professional games that will be streamed.
• Dark Sovereign is indeed Syndra and is available, in full capacity, for players to try out at Gamescom. No more conspiracies about DS being another, different new champion.
• Syndra can pick up any neutral monster in the game, except for Baron and Dragon. This includes  blue and red buff monsters. There are a few cool interactions, like if Syndra throws red buff it applies the red buff effect on hit.
• No plans to make all champions free to play, a la DOTA 2 or HoN.
• They are working on a way to reward players who positively contribute to the community.
• Riot is definitely aware of the player demand for ARAM matchmaking.
• Riot plans to deliver on a "monster" champion  non-humanoid!) sometime this year.

buffed: Could you introduce yourself to our readers and explain what your job is at Riot?

Ryan 'Morello' Scott: My name is Ryan Scott, and I'm Lead Designer for Champion League of Legends

buffed: You've recently announced the third season of the championship and LoL "huge plans" spoken. Could you explain a bit more detail?

Scott: The third season of LoL championship means a new type of e-sports - especially for League of Legends. Most important is the fact that there will be paid teams. The guys want to be professional players, which means a huge amount of time. You have to work an additional 20 to 40 hours per week in order to be able to pay their bills because they can not live alone from playing. We want to change this so that the pros can work exclusively as a professional League of Legends players. By paying the players is possible. And with the money prices of the tournaments they will also want to continue to win necessarily.

buffed: Her teams from around the world in the Championship you want to have?

Scott: The third season of the Championship will be run like a traditional league in professional sports. Each week there are several matches between professional teams, and you can look at them. So instead of going to this 36-hour marathon, which is also a cool event, you can see, when you come home watch, just the latest LoL match. In addition, amateur teams compete in their own amateur league, called the Challenger League and about to ascend into the professional league.Including junior teams have the opportunity to reach all the way up and compete against the pros.

buffed: The Pros regelmäig play, but how is the game plan look like for the amateurs?

Scott: The Challenger League is to function as the university sport in America. But we still do not have all the details worked out for this format. You will definitely look at games from the Challenger League can.

buffed: There were rumors that the prize money for the third season amounts to 25 million U.S. dollars. Can you say something?

Scott: Those are just rumors, we have not announced any numbers. But we can already say that the budget will be larger for the third season as the second. And this concerns not only the prize money, but our entire investment. Consider the payment of players who regularly occurring events, and travel costs for players. These are all big expense items that we have away from the prize money. And yet even the prize money this season, is larger.

buffed: League of Legends is one of the fastest growing games on the e-sports market. So far, this growth actually accelerated. Why do you want to reinforce this trend just yet? Do you want to go the other games like Dota 2 out of the way?

Scott: It's just too obvious for us to invest in e-sports. We now have millions of viewers in every tournament. And so we the fans say basically, "We want to make e-sports is a big deal for League of Legends We love e-sports.." I think it would be irresponsible of us to ignore it. And with the third season, we offer our fans not only more e-sports, because they want more e-sports. We think of the best kind of e-sport, we can imagine.

buffed: Did you expect that the game is so important for the e-sports, as you've started a few years ago?

Scott : We're pretty impressed with how fast growing the game. But the game was actually developed from the ground up for the e-sports. All design decisions we make in regard to the fact that the matches handsomely both for spectators - such skills are to be adequately represented graphically - and offer the player an exciting experience. As the game is full of action, when team battles happen and the whole game speed are precisely matched to the e-sports and a professional level of play.

buffed: Some people say, League of Legends was second in as many countries a greater role for the E-Sports StarcraftCan you say something about it.

Scott: I would say that we at least play in the same league. I'm not sure if we really are now larger. The development in Korea has been phenomenal. It was incredible. There are smart people who think about the exact numbers, and I am not one really. But I know that has great significance in the League of Legends E-sports. And by how much the players deal with it and talk about it, they show us how important is it to them. Even players who do not want to play on a professional level of love, to watch the team. They love the stories and personalities. I think it is - together with some of our gameplay decisions - that's just perfect.

buffed: Let's talk about champions. Can you tell us something about Syndra, the Dark Sovereign?

Scott: We put them on here. It is fully playable. From the gameplay forth her ​​character is very interesting and something we have never done before. She is a magician who can create the objects that cause alone does not necessarily matter. But they can raise these objects move in a very interesting way, and change. You can also raise minions and spin through the air. This results in an interaction that I like to call "billiard": You can either minions or one of the dark spheres that can create it, lift it and then use "Force Wave" to hurl them from you. And all the goals that you hit with the thrown objects, stunned. You can make the parts work together to prepare and then to release those big moments.

buffed: So, is the first champion to start the Minions can be more than just kill them?

Scott: Yes, it's the first time that we let you do things with minions. You can hang up the raise and Baron Nashor every monster in the game and move through the air. So you can "Blue Buff" or "Red Buff" take. There are some funny moves.You can, for example, "Blue" steal from the enemy and take with you. We also have some "Easter Eggs" installed, if your "Red Buff" hurls at the enemy, he slows down.

buffed: I think, League of Legends is in part so successful because it is more accessible than the traditional DotA games.Champions like Syndra, the Dark Sovereign seem to make the game more complex. Do you want to League of Legends on the long term create more complex?

Scott: We have a design philosophy: The things we make are to make sense. This is not so much about simplicity or complexity. If you see something, it should do what you expect. This applies to all major competitively at computer games.The units in Starcraft, for example, make a very specific thing that is easy to understand based on their appearance.Counter Strike is another good example. If you pull the trigger, the guns react the same way as you would imagine. And the characters are bright green against a brown background. Everything makes sense. But that does not mean that the games are easy and simple. And therein lies our approach. We want to keep the game simple and straightforward design. I think there is still much to discover in League of Legends. We were too busy with the more basic character design, because we had not yet been exhausted. Leona is a good example: It's a great character, and yet it is rather simplistic, because we still did not have a normal tank. We have a great deal about the characters who would expect any. Now we will consider how we can expand the game now.

buffed: You think that is still the rule "Easy to learn, hard to master"?

Scott: Absolutely. I think every good game works like this. Which would be better to say: a game that is easy to understand.So a game to recognize in the simple and understand what is happening, but it is difficult to make everything perfect. This is our stance on this topic

buffed: You now have more than 100 champions. Will you publish you will continue with this speed, new champions, or approach it in the future a little slower?

Scott: With this issue we deal constantly. We believe that there are still plenty of room for new champions in League of Legends. But we will continue to monitor closely. Sometimes takes two weeks, sometimes three or four, until we publish a new champion. That to me is due to a variety of reasons. We decide not to slow down or speed up the development. We do what seems just reasonable.

buffed: In the community there is much discussion about too strong or too weak champions. Some players think that it should concentrate Riot existing champions before the release of the new balance. How would you answer these players?

Scott: I'll be honest: This has nothing to do with each other. It is as you would say, "you should not eat dinner, so you can go to the movies." In addition, League of Legends was never so well balanced as in the past few months. And while we have more champions than ever before in the game. There is no correlation between the balance and the number of champions that we publish. We have a team that does nothing else than to work on the balance of the game and think about how to keep the game in a healthy state, no matter how much game content we publish. New content keeps the game fresh and ensures that strategies evolve.

buffed: Heroes of Newerth has recently released a patch that anyone with a champion is free to play. Would this be an opportunity for League of Legends?

Scott: Champions are our way to publish new content. We leave you free to unlock by playing time and provide champions and skins in addition to the purchase. We think that's fine. It probably makes sense for a game like Heroes of Newerth to offer them for free. In Heroes of Newerth, there are more strategies, the strategies are superior to certain other massively, so you will need all champions to be able to play competitively. In League of Legends is different. You do not need any champion, to be successful in LoL, because we have no such stone-scissors-paper system.

buffed: I believe in Dota 2 are the champions also available for free. That you could put something under pressure, if the players are thinking, "In League of Legends, I can play only eight champions in the week for free. But in all the other games I can play for free."

Scott: Do people really play just something that is free of charge, or would they play something that's fun? If we continue to provide entertaining and well-balanced game content, I see no problems. And I think our players have shown us that we are on the right.

buffed: In your last interview you mentioned that there are plans for good behavior in the community to support and promote. Many new players LoL find that the community is unfair and they are heavily criticized for every mistake. Is there any news?

Scott: Not really. We have a team that is jokingly called "Player Behavior and Justice" (PBJ). Many developers would simply answer the question about the player's actions: "Well, we can not change, the Internet is very common.." We do not think this is right. You can do much to improve the behavior of players. Not only by penalties, and by removing people from the game who have no business there, but also by rewarding good behavior. However, even competitive games in general have this problem - no matter whether shooter or real-time strategy MOBA. I used to play a lot and learned a Counterstike racial insults, of which I had never heard of. The competitive nature makes for great tension. It is our intention to utilize the positive aspects of a competitive situation, to remove the negative and to reward those who stand up for a better playing environment.

buffed: Is there further away from the E-Sports plans to which you say something? Maybe about upcoming Champions?

Scott: We are also on the Gamescom Berengar, before the proud hunter. He is a predator, a sort of humanoid lion. He uses a system of "wildness" points in order to plunge into the fight and to shred his opponents. I can not reveal too about other upcoming content, but we have done with the players in the forum discussions about a greater diversity of species champions. Especially monsters were a major issue. We want to serve this year.

buffed: So less humanoid and more fantastic characters'?

Scott: Right. People are cool, monsters are cool. In the long run our champions are very varied, but in the short term, we could certainly still work on their diversity. With the monsters we are definitely on the right track.

buffed: Is there a monster concept that you could you put up does not work, and you, when the time is ripe to realize, you want?

Scott: I do not think there is something that we can not do. We always ask ourselves: Is there a cool version of it? Can we give the champion personality? The monster I leave to the exuberant creative. We want to have artists that are really funny stuff, but just draw. And these people are experts in creating wild creatures. No idea is off the table from the outset, but sometimes more difficult monsters, because it's just too much there, what could be done.

buffed: What is the craziest idea you've ever implemented?

Scott: Concepts for dragon-champions were very difficult to implement. A dragon champion was not a real dragon, because he is tiny. We deal with some technical problems, how we could implement the idea anyway. Perhaps it was, maybe not.

buffed: The dragon can grow with the level rises.

Scott: We must always remember that the poor implementation of an idea would be worse than not implementing the idea.

buffed: Is there anything else that you want to tell us?

Scott: The third season and EU Nationals inspire us the most. Once we're done with the business part of this, we will all try as many games as possible to look at. I am very excited.

buffed: Have fun! Thank you for your time.