Overview

The Rise of the Elements preseason update seeks to invigorate the current League experience by providing more unique scenarios to play around with the integration of elemental terrain changes and new buffs linked to player choice.

Commonly traversed Jungle locations on the Summoner’s Rift map (the buff spawn areas) become significantly altered with the selection of the permanent dragon element. Additionally, players will encounter the new Dragon Blessing system and Elder Execution features that will add game to game variance and more reason for players to prioritize dragon objective control and opponent counter-play interactions.

We hypothesize that the combination of all 3 new features will invigorate players' experience in SR, providing more memorable moments created from rare occurrences and making the map feel more alive. We are also primarily targeting existing League players.

Background

The map and gameplay updates has been successful in meeting gameplay goals through internal playtesting, but it has some issues:

• Need a way to track # of dragons and types taken per team, especially two of a kind.

• Need a way to communicate which elemental terrain change will occur.

• Need a way to communicate why the elemental terrain change has occurred.

• Need a way to keep track of # of dragon soul buffs are currently affecting the player.

• Need a way to communicate elder dragon execution threshold on enemy champions.

As part of the team, I was the UX designer for the in-game HUD changes implemented to support the creative gameplay experience. I was also directly responsible for creating, testing, and iterating on designs to hit our product and experiential goals. 

Goals

• Representation of systems should not get in the way of gameplay.

• Any gameplay interaction effects must be understandable without a tooltip.

• Consistent and clear system information displayed in both the SR map and players’ HUD.

• Solution scales with edge cases (i.e. Kled, Corki, Jhin HP bars).

• New alterations should enhance the emotional arc players are having in each game

Early Design Explorations

Players need to understand that the status of the map has changed, not just in the jungle but across the entire Rift. They also must understand what triggered the event and how they can plan accordingly for new terrain interactions. Therefore, any chances in the map should also be reflected in the minimap and additional information on the HUD to support new player needs.

Additionally, we propose the use of color, particle effects, elemental texture paintover, and sound effects can evoke certain emotional shifts or match the tone we want them to feel per elemental terrain change. These serve as emotional affordances that help a player make that emotional connection with the fantasy resulting in emotional impact within the user experience.

Elemental Terrain

Team Buff Tracking in HUD

Elder Buff on HP Bar

LoFi Wireframes

Final Product

The video does a better job at showcasing all the interactions that the team worked on to fully visualize the vision of transforming the map through dragon control and gameplay choices tied per game session. While most of my involvement was in the HUD space, I still collaborated with the team to create truly a bespoke and fun experience for League players.

You can interact with the final product by playing League of Legends!