Eve Online Lead Designer Jumps Ship to League of Legends

[Steven Bogos]

Eve Online Lead Designer Jumps Ship to League of Legends

Kristoffer Touborg says his overwhelming interest is in League of Legends' competitive scene.

Quick! We need a new designer for our fantasy MOBA: League of Legends. Who do we get? How about the lead designer of a science-fiction MMO about spreadsheets? Probably not the way it went down, but nonetheless, Eve Online lead designer Kristoffer Touborg has announced his plans to quit CCP to work for League of Legends developer Riot Games.

Touborg, who joined the Eve Online team five years ago, made the announcement via his public Facebook page [https://www.facebook.com/touborg], writing that "It's been an incredible five years, working for a company I love, on a game I love," adding "You can't do the same thing forever though. So I'm packing my bags again and moving to Dublin, where I'll be joining Riot games to work on League of Legends."

Touborg will be moving from Iceland to Dublin, Ireland, where the European branch of Riot Games is based. He stresses that this move has nothing to do with his employer at CCP, telling us that "Not a lot of people get that opportunity, but I did and I'll always be grateful that CCP let me work at a place where I'd get up every morning and be happy to go to work."

He didn't offer any details about what exactly he'd be bringing to League of Legends, but did tell us that "A few years ago, my overwhelming interest was the Eve universe; now it's League of Legends and the competitive scene there," suggesting he'll have something to do with the competitive side of the game.

Source: Polygon [http://www.polygon.com/2013/9/6/4701896/eve-lead-designer-touborg-moving-to-league-of-legends]

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[Ed130 The Vanguard]

I... Did not see that coming to be honest.

Going from spaceships and nebulae to LoL is quite the jump, hope it works out for him.

 

[Caiphus]

Well, at least he'll be used to working with a community that is renowned for being rather unfriendly.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Well, at least he'll be used to working with a community that is renowned for being rather unfriendly.

Understatement of the century. Y'know, for all the back and forth about which is better (League, obviously) at least in DOTA 2 I can instalock anything and get zero shit from my team about it. I used to take that for granted...

League is my try hard, DOTA 2 is my instalock Phantom Assassin (and only Phantom Assassin) fun times. Funny how melee carries are really good and numerous in that game and they're fuckin' shit in League unless you're pre-nerf Yi or gimmicky strat jungle pusher Aatrox.

Oh right on topic.

I suppose moving to a spreadsheet game to an action MOBA thing is a bit of a stretch but hey everyone needs a change of pace sometimes right? If his arrival heralds the twilight days of Season 3 I am fucking happy. What a disaster of a season.

League of Cleavers, blue builds, overnerfing half the cast, people discovering my J4 and banning him, League of Druggies, BotRK and jungle items were jumping from OP to shit every other week, League of Bruisers and the list continues.

The only good thing is that recently everyone noticed that Vayne is broken OP and she is safely in Permabanned status. Thank god.

 

[MCerberus]

This actually makes a lot of sense. He's moving from a game known for a lot mad-science experiments with players and fringe behavioral science to... a game with a lot of mad-science experiments with players and fringe behavioral science.

Also Wky: are you an ADC main? Because for everyone other than them, being under the yoke of the mad carry gods got annoying in s2. I'm more disappointed in the death of traditional AP mids in favor of assassin spam, being an Anivia main.

 

[sagitel]

League is my try hard, DOTA 2 is my instalock Phantom Assassin (and only Phantom Assassin) fun times. Funny how melee carries are really good and numerous in that game and they're fuckin' shit in League unless you're pre-nerf Yi or gimmicky strat jungle pusher Aatrox.

i present to you tryndamere ,jax ,fiora, lee sin, and darius!
and also aatrox is REALLY easy to kill.

OT: im not sure how should i feel about this. i know that LoL needs new designers because they tend to be stuck at icy things. but i dont know the guy and i havent seen any of his works. anyway lets hope for the best!

 

[Ferisar]

It's a sad day when the lead designer for what is one of the most interesting hardcore MMOs out there jumps to mass market pandering **** like League of Legends.

Aw poo.

More than half of the common carries in the game are melee, it's called "literally all of the characters commonly used in top lane". Also about half of the mid-lane carries, but that's more an artifact of the current season than a long-running thing. Have you just not played league in a year or so and missed this?

Not true. The common top laner remains a bruiser or a tanky-bruiser. Melee carries are the essential counterpart to the "Ranged AD carry", aka: reliant on auto-attacks to kill enemies. Most melee carries are absolutely awful, as they are easily crushed by either the lack of presence or their inability to stick to targets. The list generally includes: Yi, Fiora, Windamere, Aatrox, et cetera. These are NOT assassins like Talon or Rengar, they are sustained melee AA DPS.

Bruisers focus on picking out priority targets and control engagements either through forms of CC or presence in teamfights. These are anyone from Nasus to Darius or Renekton. They're a subcategory of tanks, but tanks in league of legends are just bruisers who focus on defensive statistics, not necessarily defensive play.

Tryndamere has had a semi-recent impact on high-end play, but nowhere near what you'd expect from an actual ranged carry. Pre-nerf Yi had an impact for a second, but he's going to likely fade into obscurity. The "melee carry" is innately hard to balance, as provided with too much power they snowball into Dota-2-like murdering machines in a game that doesn't balance around them, which is why they get nerfed every time one becomes even remotely effective. Their failure in being melee forces either drastic changes to make them viable or complete disregard from the devs, unfortunately.

This is all assuming a high-end playing field. At anything that's not there it doesn't matter what you play all that much as long it has all its buttons working.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I'll sure he'll Excel in his new job post.

Also, Riot Games' European branch is based in Dublin. Cool!

 

[Symbio Joe]

Maybe there will be some major leauge changes?

No for real bringing in a numbers guy is a good idea if you want some balancing to happen. As Riot tends to fix champions after the tournament circus has proofen them op, this could mean they are trying a more active approach. Another reason could be they are looking for a new gamemode that can reach the popularity of 5vs5 summoners rift, to broaden the possibilities for competitive players.

Or maybe...
an entirely new game. DUNDUNDUUUN!

 

[The Wykydtron]

This actually makes a lot of sense. He's moving from a game known for a lot mad-science experiments with players and fringe behavioral science to... a game with a lot of mad-science experiments with players and fringe behavioral science.

Also Wky: are you an ADC main? Because for everyone other than them, being under the yoke of the mad carry gods got annoying in s2. I'm more disappointed in the death of traditional AP mids in favor of assassin spam, being an Anivia main.

***** I ain't no ADC main! I play Ezreal or Fizz Mortune on the rare occasions I have to carry. I've got more back into Ezreal now the old S2 build Bloodthirster/Triforce is back in favour from blue Ezreal. Ezreal now does damage again! Yay! Wet tissue paper Mystic Shots are a thing of the past!

If I had to say "main" (because saying you main one role is sort of bad) I play loads of Jarvan jungle, Twisted Fate mid and Leona support. I have backup junglers and supports but it's TF or nothing mid. I'm getting into Annie as a potential backup though, why does nobody play her again?

"YAY! TIBBERS!"

Dead lol

League is my try hard, DOTA 2 is my instalock Phantom Assassin (and only Phantom Assassin) fun times. Funny how melee carries are really good and numerous in that game and they're fuckin' shit in League unless you're pre-nerf Yi or gimmicky strat jungle pusher Aatrox.

i present to you tryndamere ,jax ,fiora, lee sin, and darius!
and also aatrox is REALLY easy to kill.

OT: im not sure how should i feel about this. i know that LoL needs new designers because they tend to be stuck at icy things. but i dont know the guy and i havent seen any of his works. anyway lets hope for the best!

Well I like the guy who explained what the difference between a melee carry and a bruiser holding a sword of some kind is so I don't have to. As for Aatrox he does melt LEGENDARILY fast. He has some CC and you would think his passive would be effective but no... He just dies... Twice.

The point I was making is the strat where you buy a Doran's Blade, go jungle, take red, gank mid/top then halve the tower's health at level 2. You don't play teamfight Aatrox, you play an Aatrox who not only kills you in a gank at level 6, but he then immediately takes your tower 100-0.

Tryndamere is a splitpushing fuck, Jax is shit unless you're a bad and feed him, Fiora is shit (Fiora! Use your CC! Oh nvm lol) and Darius is a bruiser/tank who just so happens to have a shitload of true damage but gets kited like a ************. That's actually the entire bane of melee carries, they get kited by anyone with range. Probably why Ezreal is so popular, global ult, infinite kite and his overwhelming amount of Swag.

"Pulsefire systems, online"

"Let's do this."

*swoon*

Of course if a melee carry goes 7/0 in 15 minutes (that jungle Aatrox strat) it's a fucking problem. They're bad vs range if they're on an equal footing

I did have a hilarious Fiora build back in S2 where I took AD reds and quints, put first point in W for 15 extra AD, bought a Doran's Blade and voila, 101 AD at level 1. Get rekt son.

 

[Akisa]

Well, at least he'll be used to working with a community that is renowned for being rather unfriendly.

What?

Eve is a game where being a dick has actual long-term consequences, and escaping your reputation is essentially impossible.

On average, it has the most polite, well-adjusted and even downright nice player base of any MMO out there, to the point that the exceptions frequently get basically ridden out of the game on a rail. Where are you getting that it's unfriendly?

Funny how melee carries are really good and numerous in that game and they're fuckin' shit in League unless you're pre-nerf Yi or gimmicky strat jungle pusher Aatrox.

More than half of the common carries in the game are melee, it's called "literally all of the characters commonly used in top lane". Also about half of the mid-lane carries, but that's more an artifact of the current season than a long-running thing. Have you just not played league in a year or so and missed this?

Are you sure? CCP conventions the asshats are celebrated and are the large corporations. They scam, berate people, get people to humiliate themselves to save their ships so they could be played in the convention. I'm sorry but being a dick seems to be seems to be the way to go. I guess it's just not be a dick to the wrong person kind of thing though.

 

[anthony87]

This actually makes a lot of sense. He's moving from a game known for a lot mad-science experiments with players and fringe behavioral science to... a game with a lot of mad-science experiments with players and fringe behavioral science.

Also Wky: are you an ADC main? Because for everyone other than them, being under the yoke of the mad carry gods got annoying in s2. I'm more disappointed in the death of traditional AP mids in favor of assassin spam, being an Anivia main.

***** I ain't no ADC main! I play Ezreal or Fizz Mortune on the rare occasions I have to carry. I've got more back into Ezreal now the old S2 build Bloodthirster/Triforce is back in favour from blue Ezreal. Ezreal now does damage again! Yay! Wet tissue paper Mystic Shots are a thing of the past!

If I had to say "main" (because saying you main one role is sort of bad) I play loads of Jarvan jungle, Twisted Fate mid and Leona support. I have backup junglers and supports but it's TF or nothing mid. I'm getting into Annie as a potential backup though, why does nobody play her again?

"YAY! TIBBERS!"

Dead lol

*Raises hand*

Annie player here. Granted I only started a couple of weeks ago so I don't have a feel for an awful lot of champions but of the ones I've played so far Annie is by far my favourite. Build up your stun, pop Tibbers, GG. Had a taste of Draven last week though so I'm itching to play as him some more.

How does TF play anyway? Been thinking of buying him but I hear he can be difficult to play.

 

[MCerberus]

Yah, the best melees right now are tanks and assassins. Zeds in particular are known for being able to snowball and hard-carry. There's also the 'don't feed the Akali' situation. Anyway, TF is squishy as all hell and requires communication and setup for teleport ganks to be effective. Annie has no mobility, an awful late game, little utility, and if you wanted to just explode someone, Veigar exists.

OT:

It's a sad day when the lead designer for what is one of the most interesting hardcore MMOs out there jumps to mass market pandering **** like League of Legends.

Or rather, someone leaves a boring game where only rarely ANYTHING interesting happens for one people are actually having fun playing?

 

[The Wykydtron]

This actually makes a lot of sense. He's moving from a game known for a lot mad-science experiments with players and fringe behavioral science to... a game with a lot of mad-science experiments with players and fringe behavioral science.

Also Wky: are you an ADC main? Because for everyone other than them, being under the yoke of the mad carry gods got annoying in s2. I'm more disappointed in the death of traditional AP mids in favor of assassin spam, being an Anivia main.

***** I ain't no ADC main! I play Ezreal or Fizz Mortune on the rare occasions I have to carry. I've got more back into Ezreal now the old S2 build Bloodthirster/Triforce is back in favour from blue Ezreal. Ezreal now does damage again! Yay! Wet tissue paper Mystic Shots are a thing of the past!

If I had to say "main" (because saying you main one role is sort of bad) I play loads of Jarvan jungle, Twisted Fate mid and Leona support. I have backup junglers and supports but it's TF or nothing mid. I'm getting into Annie as a potential backup though, why does nobody play her again?

"YAY! TIBBERS!"

Dead lol

*Raises hand*

Annie player here. Granted I only started a couple of weeks ago so I don't have a feel for an awful lot of champions but of the ones I've played so far Annie is by far my favourite. Build up your stun, pop Tibbers, GG. Had a taste of Draven last week though so I'm itching to play as him some more.

How does TF play anyway? Been thinking of buying him but I hear he can be difficult to play.

Well you have a grand total of two damage moves, that put me off a bit but they do so much damage and end up with such low cooldowns it's almost a non-issue. Late game one move alone half healths squishies. TF is fun as fuck. He THROWS CARDS at people!

Q is Wild Cards, you throw three cards with insane range and they fucking chunk people. Pick a Card is where people ***** at TF, basically you hit W and he cycles between blue, yellow, red over and over until you hit W again where it locks the card you had up at the time, his next autoattack has an extra effect.

Blue is mana regen, red is an AOE slow and gold is a stun. So you have people panic locking blue cards when they REALLY have to stun.

His E is where his every 4th autoattack does more damage, pretty meh compared to the rest of his kit. His ult is where he reveals the entire enemy team for 10 seconds then can teleport almost a full lane away after a two second channel. So you have those TFs who teleport into the enemy team and die instantly then you have those ones who see their bot lane getting 3v2 dived and Hero Mode in like a boss.

He's basically an AD carry in terms of playstyle, you sit at the back, throw cards and stun people. You can focus the carry as long as you don't get your squishy, slow ass instakilled. If really feel brave, the moment a fight starts you ult in on top of the enemy carry and go for the kill. Hourglass is recommended if you do that though.

 

[gnihton]

League is my try hard, DOTA 2 is my instalock Phantom Assassin (and only Phantom Assassin) fun times. Funny how melee carries are really good and numerous in that game and they're fuckin' shit in League unless you're pre-nerf Yi or gimmicky strat jungle pusher Aatrox.

The reason they work so well in dota is probably because dota has the most obnoxious mechanics, your character has to rotate to attack or move (which I think is flat out retarded and is part of the reason why I only play League), so this means you can't kite around a melee carry by moving and attacking/spell casting on dota, you have to either run or attack. I've hardly played the game though, so I wouldn't know if there's more to it.

The only good thing is that recently everyone noticed that Vayne is broken OP and she is safely in Permabanned status. Thank god.

I've been preaching this for a while, she essentially has 2 buffed and free versions of ultimates on regular, low cooldown abilities. She has the highest true damage output in the game for god's sake, higher than Darius/Irelia/Cho, and it's completely free.

OT:

Hopefully this means we're not getting anymore reworked Yis or pre-nerf Rengars.

 

[knight4light]

Oh! OH! OOOOHHH!! idea.. what if hes going over there because its ccps plan to integrate eve with lol as well. If i don't get an eve based champion I'll be so disappoint. Dust warrior. calls in orbital strikes as r. auto attack is an assault rifle. q is a swarmlauncher. w sets mines or active camouflage . e...revive ability. able to drop the re-spawn timer to 0 on a fallen ally if you can get to their body before it dispersal.

background is simple. "wormhole opens up and that exact moment a an engine blows up and sends the person traveling through it to another dimension along with his partially disabled ship. He goes to the planet to scout it and finds he lands in the field of justice surrounded by all manner of strange beings. Finds out the league of legends is the best place to find a way back home. so for now he participates in league so he keeps his combat experience sharp.

>.> idk just an eve fanboy and lol fanboy here.. i think that would be awesome. never going to happen i know but still

 

[Manthraxx]

That traitor!

Joking aside, I hope he'll be happy with his new job.

 

[Caiphus]

What?

Eve is a game where being a dick has actual long-term consequences, and escaping your reputation is essentially impossible.

On average, it has the most polite, well-adjusted and even downright nice player base of any MMO out there, to the point that the exceptions frequently get basically ridden out of the game on a rail. Where are you getting that it's unfriendly?

Both from my own experiences and from the news. Don't worry. I partook in my fair share of the unfriendliness. But you'd be blind if you didn't notice that the sandbox allows some people to be raging dicks to each other.

In between trade hubs being littered with scammers, awoxing, suicide ganking, hulkaggeddon, and I think miner bumping is the latest craze. So yeah.