Character Concept Aika, the champion of love: Moba Design

©myrmonden

Permission is not granted to use any of this characters concept, lore,abilities,attributes and any other related parts from this design, if not credit is given to myrmonden.
(Contact me and we can work something out - e.g Hire me as a Full time worker or a Freelancer etc this character is just the tip of the iceberg)
I will follow a League of Legends design fashion for this character as I it is designed for a MOBA genre game or a similar game genre. + Most of my readers do read the League of Legend related articles (roughly 8000 unique readers yesterday on those articles), making it seems reasonable.
Well the best thing with making it be about League of Legend, is that it eases the communication for me. Now I can say well it would work similar to X or it would removes Y’s ability. Its especially good when using examples, and explaining situations.
 

Quick Overview:

Aika is a spell caster heroine. Based around displacement mechanics. And an ultimate that is better if she can focus it on alone enemy.

The player can choice to for example push away other enemies to get one enemy alone or try to combo all enemies with her abilities and finish of by focusing the ultimate on several enemies on purpose(to deal moderate damage to everyone instead of a lot to one).

Playing Aika is a lot about positioning and to be able to determine the opponents future positions. Making her a hard difficulty to play.

Lore:

Aika grow up with a disease commonly called as love sickness. She simply could fall in love with anyone at any time. Boys, Girls, Men, Women, Monster or Robots. It did not matter for Aika she likes everyone but on the same time she was always very emotional fragile and would get upset on her new interested in matter minutes.

  Because of this while Aika wanted nothing more then a stable relationship in her life she was shunned by everyone around her. Everyone grow tired of her behavior and she started living an existence in solitude. And for everyday it got worse, which made Aika's behavior even more irrational towards people. She was stuck in a vicious evil cycle.

Aika couldn't stand the loneliness, she started learning engineering to be able to build her own companions. At first it went miserably and she accidentally blew up hers parent home. Which was the final straw for them, Aika was no all alone in the world. But her conviction and dedication to one day find true love kept her motivated to still try and build better machines. Eventually she managed to build several more or less successful machines.

However, one thing she never could make work was to give her robots sentient toughs, sure they loved her but she knew it was just because he programed them to love her.

Aika now instead decided she had to go out in the world again and try and find love.

Aika does not know what she truly seeks in a partner, some days she thinks its a reliable guy she can trust on. Other days its a girl that really can make her laugh.

No matter what it is she truly desires she knew she needed a person that is strong. Building herself gear and modifying her most trusted companion Heart into Heartlite, which she had to send away into the outer realms of the world to support her new plan. She is know out in the world fighting people trying to finally find happiness.  

Appearance:

I am picturing something like

Modern Iron Color scheme(Black Gold)

But she would only have the gloves and a more revealing chest design which instead of a circle would have a heart(ofc) like in how Norman Osburn’s Iron Patriot has a Star instead of a circle. - This would be her chest and hand appearance.

Otherwise

She would look similar to Haruka in Amagami, wearing a skirt and body size. With a cute curled hairdo.

-If I was to further go into alt costumes, I would have her with one costume called Aika released which is her with a really revealing outfit(love hunting) and one outfit called Lab rat Aika, where shes covered completely in a lab coat kinda outfit, glasses etc.

Picking Audio:

It’s a DATE!

Normal attack, Love Blast.

Aika shoots a small repulsar attack from one of her gloves.

500  Range .  

Health	390 (+75)	Attack Damage	50 (+3)
Health Regen	5.1 (+0.48)	Attack Speed	0.555 (+.13%)
Mana	200(+45)	Armor	20 (+3)
Mana Regen	6.6(+0.6)	Magic Resistance	35 (+0.4)
Range	500(Ranged	Movement Speed	320

Passive: In denial.

Aika takes less damage(from both normal attacks and abilities) if the same champion attacks her again with either attack or abilities by 3% stacks up to 4 times last for 5 seconds, the time is refreshed if attacked by the same champion again.

All Aika’s laser abilities only damage once. But they have a continues displacement effect.

The right one? (Q)

Audio: Get over here Cutie!

• Range: 300 (increases to 600 if Aika moves)
• Cooldown: 20/17/15/13/11
• Cost: 75 mana

Active: Aika call for Laser support from Heartlite, which shoots a heart shaped laser beam to the ground forcing everyone towards Aika's current location.

The laser starts 300 range from the target location and then travels towards Aika for 3 seconds or until it reaches Aika, the laser travels 200 range per second.

Enemies hit by the laser is constantly receiving a small push by it, making them move with it. An enemy champion(or ally for that matter) can move out of it with the right angle or use abilities to escape.

Only enemies takes damage

After using The right one? The ability change to Maybe not... for the next 10 seconds.

• Magic Damage: 50 / 70 / 90 / 110 / 130 (+ 45% AP)
• Small kockback continuously by the laser

Maybe not...  (Q)

Audio: Not so fast Creep!

• Range: 150
• Cooldown: - Can only be used after The right one?
• Cost: 50 mana

Active: Aika get frustrated and user her gloves to blast away nearby people.

Aika pushes everyone in front of her away for a short distance, this ability pushes away allies too but only damage enemies.

After using Maybe not... the ability reverts back to The right one.

• Magic Damage: 80 / 95 / 110 / 125 / 140 (+ 45% AP)
• Knockback distance: 200 / 225 /250 /275 / 300 (Range)

-This ability I would think honestly is really cool. The laser will follow Aika, so the player can move around and make it hit additional foes. Of course it also makes Aika a great kiter but on the same time it pulls enemy closer to her. So her ability change to a small knockback ability.

The second ability is to create a nice little synergy with these 2 Q abilities.

Both of them also hit allies, so a good player can use it to help an ally running away. Help an ally to reach enemies etc.

Love Potion  (W)

Audio: No way you can turn me down after this.

• Range: 600
• Cooldown: 25/23/21/19/17
• Cost: 60 mana

Active: Aika throws a potion at target enemy. Aika is a lot better at physics then at chemistry(in more ways then one) and the potion gives the person that drinks it incredible strong heartburn stunning them for a brief time.  

• Magic Damage: 120 / 150 / 180 / 210 / 240 (+ 60% AP)
• Stun time: 2/2.2/2.4/2.6/2.8 Seconds

- A simple stun ability. I felt I needed one ability that will combo with her ultimate.

Matchmaker  (E)

Audio: You two would make a great couple.

• Range: 707 in a 45 degree angle from Aika, lasers moves to 500 range in front of were Aika is standing.

- Thats not a very proportional Triangle :)

• Cooldown: 40/37/34/31/28
• Cost: 100 mana

Active: Aika makes Heartlite fires a double laser to push two targets(or any other collateral people as well) to each other as Aika has recognized those two are a great match.

The laser pushes enemies and allies but only damage enemies.

Matchmaker is a quick moving laser and the 2 laser reaches each other in 1 second.

• Magic Damage: 150 / 180 / 210 / 240 / 270 (+ 70% AP)
• Small kockback continuously by the laser

-Great way to help a melee ally champion to reach an enemy champion. As with her first ability. Matchmaker is designed to both move around enemies  but to also help allies to move in closer to enemies.

 I set the front range of this ability to be at 500, so the player can do this ability followed by her first ability. So it becomes a 3 ability combo. Of course the player can stun afterwards and finish one enemy with the ultimate. But it wouldent work great if there is more then 1 enemy in the combo then (read below)

Heartsalinged  (R) Ultimate (unlocks on 6/11/16)

Audio: I won’t take no for an answer

• Range: 500(center of Heart)
• Cooldown: 150/125/100
• Cost: 150/225/300 mana
   Active: Aika calls for her strongest love attack now when she is sure this person is a great match for her. She summons in a gigantic hearth focusing from Heartlite. This Heart will zoom in if its only one target and deal huge damage otherwise if 2 or more targets are inside the Heart, Aika will be disappointed and cancel the attack. Enemies in the border of the Heart shape will take damage only if no one is inside of it.

• Magic Damage:
• 2 or more targets are hit: 250 / 400 / 550 (+ 100% AP)
• Only one target is hit(focused): 700 / 950 / 1200 (+ 120% AP)

- This is my take on  the old heroes in Dota like Juggernaut and Moon Rider. But I did not want to make a mechanic that simply is: If hero is alone deal huge damage. This is more about if hero is alone at a specific placement. The heart is fairly big but can still be used in team battles. Of course a good opponent might react fast and jump into the hearth to prevent the damage done to his/her ally. Because of this the damage has to be pretty high.

If was thinking on making the border hit by really high as it kinda harder for the player to hit the enemies with the border intentionally at least. But that just does not feel coherent it wouldent really make sense.

The animation would be something like a giant heart shape appears on the ground and then it zooms in and blast if its only one target. 

Hmm I  realize I am much more into doing magic users as I get to really think about the abilities. I am working on 2 more Designs right now and they are also magic oriented.(Maybe ability is a better word but I think that people get the meaning of Magic vs physical strength similarity). 

It's finally worth spending money in Marvel Avengers Alliance

Overall I think this change to the new Special Operation is a good pointer for game developers because one can see the evolution of the system. Let me first cover some history of Marvel Avengers Alliance. 


Over a year ago I predicted that with the enter of Magneto and Lockboxes in Marvel Avengers Alliance the game would stop being F2P as it was to hard to get lockboxes.
 Playdom did change that, I mean with Magneto the drop rate of boxes were just to low so it truly was forced system were the player had to use gold to get him. Unless the player was ridiculous lucky.

 With Omega Sentinel, Playdom missed the mark even more. This might sound wrong as everyone got her easy right, well. I had 400 boxes left when I had her! That's huge a miss, Magneto was a little to hard Omega Sentinel was way,way to easy. Don't get me wrong I hate F2P Models were its not possible to farm to anything, meaning the payer has advantage(which is how PvP is in MAA....) but this second attempt of random unlock chance for a hero was so over the top filled with boxes.
 As a game developer obviously it was a huge blunder the meaning is to get people to pay to get a faster access to the characters or less time spent etc - Note that in MAA I would say there is difference in time and time played. The player can for example pay to skip the research task which the player otherwise just has to wait out, to me this is the time I would argue is worth paying for the otehr time to for example farm lockboxes for Omega Sentinel in this case could easily be done and was never worth paying for.
 While the Free user of course want stuff, and should appreciate the easy going way at this point I think it was far too easy. Making there be no effort getting her. This leads to that the non payer but player user. The user who plays hte game a lot or not even a lot but regurlady is better word for it. They want to feel entitled to better/more characters/items then the casual user who only plays once a week.
 Omega Sentinel was easily farmable by just playing once a week. Playdom introduce the Group Boss system were the player could fight Ultron and get boxes(+ other loot) and the number of dropped boxes per battle was clearly to high. This + they still had the drop from all battles to etc.

To easy, making most people unhappy, the payer dont want to pay and the regular use dont feel need to play regulardy.

The next was as one could predict a hard nerf on the numbers. With Constrictor it become to hard I would say. The user now had to really do everything, max all tasks etc to have a chance to get him. But I would say it was just a little to hard.

  Pretty much on the same time, Playdom also rolled the PvP lockbox system which is an much easier simpler loot system. The player wins a battle get a box repeat 5 time per day. A very typical Daily system. However, I would definitely say that the number of loot in the PvP system is a little to low.
 Especially as it is based on the user getting lucky when loot drops(after 5 battle the user get the roulette for potentially more boxes). This + its more luck to get the right cover made teh PvP system not very good either.

Then the next try of Specal Operation, I think got it down pretty good. To get Satanna the user had to do most stuff and regularly farm the Group Boss. But it left the user with some boxes over so it was not impossible if the user had to much bad luck.
 I was happy with this system it only had one fault, the orignal fualt of the whole game system. LUCK!!!.

If the user was still unlucky he/she could get 1 comic out of 8 after opening 200+ boxes. That is of course very unlikely but many people still didetn get the characters and was forced to use gold(yes the user get some gold by playing(not farmable!) but anything  that requries gold = game not bieng F2P anymore).

But now Finally Playdom made a system that actually is really good. So I wanna say Kudos to Playdom, sure it took like a year and I am paranoid to expect that they changed the decrease the chance to get new comics...but giving them the benefit of the doubt this system is much, much better.


In this latest incarnation of the Lockbox hunt to get Loki. Playdom has introduced a Bonus Bar. When getting a duplicate now the user get 1 point in the bar and when it reach max its a guaranteed new cover. So this of course goes back to title of this article. Now I could pay for gold in this game. Before I flat refused as bad luck would mean it just wasted. Now its a 100% chance to eventually get Loki.
 This is a simple bonus system  but has a huge impact.

Now the player who is a plays the game at a regular base is almost sure to get Loki and the payer is sure to get something for his/her money.


Definitely a lesson learned here. In how to design F2P systems in a game.

Marvel Avengers Alliance recap of PvP tournament 11.

So heres my tought on the end of Season 11 PvP tournament in Marvel Avengers Alliance.


First of all it was soooo easy, really. So easy you wanna know why? For some reason huge number of blasters were in the pvp. I was like oooook, free win.
  Not many Blaters work in PvP defence as the AI stupid come on  people not even Thane performs that good because he rather use amber field then attacking. Hes a great character dont get me wrong but in the hands of the AI you need Ares to make it work. Suddenly I faced teams with like Thane, Daimon and Scrapper Agent.
 Its only 2 characters otherwise who works in defence kinda and thats Blaster Iron Patriot and Cable as they can just raw power them trough the enemies but at a certain ratio were people have high stats you cant kill anyone that fast anymore. Especially as this season everyone and their mother was running the new item, synthetic cube. Yej, cosmic cube power for everyone...good idea Playdom.
 (Btw I despise they called it the Tesserect in the movie, why not keep the same name as in the comics)

Everyone was using this item, which first of all his Fantomex passive, which is like the second best passive in the game after Ares war never changes. However, it counters Ares Passive, so quite good.
 It also counters Magneto...I cant explain how much i hated missing people when they are magnetized. Anyone who have followed the games character tier strength should now how potent Fantomex is and its mainly from that passive alone. Furthermore, as it can heal and set up a sheild against one attack(mirror reality) this hard counters War Machine and most other blasters that are offensive oriented like Thane. Which of course made all blasters a free win. Well overall the new item sure make it easy to win in attack(which always was but w.e)

 

99% win ratio in attack, about 25% win ratio in defence at 200+(exact same items and heroes in both set ups)

Like I said I would I used Emma Frost and Magneto. Emma like every season is still the Queen of PvP. If anyone tells you anything else they are wrong. Emma is amazing like always. You do the Aoe, even if they got Inflitorors they cant counter and they lose a lot of life. You can buff urelf for even mroe damage or buff the Magneto(for sick damage) or remove Stun Agent etc. But most importantly even when you face someone with like 64x60 gold items her psychic tap can still kill team easily. She also rapes blasters as she can then set up a tap on the blaster, even when its protected by an tank Agent. YES! I know all you blaster users are like 99% Tank agents, but it dont matter shit in the game. Emma can always get a tap and then Aoe for massive damage then ur hero will die when he attacks. But even without Emma the AI will attack the Tacticians sometimes and bam, another turn.

Ok, I only played the last 3 hours and toke a break when it was 2 hours left for about an hour.
 Still I sit nicely at 2000k+.
 Another good reason for this is how good Magneto is.
 Now with the empowered Iso you can always set up his Shield and then AoE attack. yes always AoE attack

Funny enough Mangeto is even better Vs. Inflitrators then Emma. Oh what happens if u attack Magneto he gets 1 more turn as the sheild goes away(well usually people dident even beat throught it but...)
 When I faced multiply infiltrator characters I just AoE anyway. Magneto gets one more turn and easily kills one of them. Emma like mentioned just AoEs and nothing happens to her.
 Only reason battles could take some time, sometimes. Was becasue of hte Cubes passive evasion saving them otheriwse I usually win at turn 1.

The conclusion from this is....sad.

Blasters dont work ( no news here)

But even worse Infiltrators dont work either. Then you just set up Magneto for 1 more turn. And you cant counter Emma or other uncounterable Tacticians anyway like Black Widow, Fantomex etc.
 I knew that these empowered isos would bring trouble.

Scrapper dont work either of course as Blasters got issues no one will stop the Bruisers.
 So its kinda like this agian, Bruisers, Tacticians and Generalist is the class you can run.

 Agian this is probably a huge effect of that Playdom dont test stuff. It really feel like they just put in stuff with no thinking at all. First of all the biggest thing in PvP execpt some overpowered isos is that the cube is sickly overpowered. If you dident get it,,,,,good luck wining.

Secondly the isos...some are clearly breaking the balance even harder then it was already broken. And some clearly dont work as intended. My favorite is the Splash one for Blasters. Normally splash in games  does a % damage dealt, but if for example Thane uses his Quick action that does ZERO damage, it still deals low damage to everyone if it splashes,,, actually it deals around the same damage as if his first attack splashes. So splash in this game seems to instead be set to some kind of arbitrary damage based on the characters level(my guess) and not how strong the attack is....(also dont get this dam iso, it does like 2k to me guys with 31k hp its really insignificant).

I mean just look at this screen

 

How can one not see that overlap. Its like 50 overlaps in one small screen.

I dont want to go into fine details but come on, if they cant even make that(image above) work before they release stuff. Dont expect new stuff in the game to ever be balanced.

Also btw dotn get Demon set as how much removal there is. Also the new item that was the PvP reward hard counters the Demon set so.....yeah I dont know why the rerealse it right now. That set was godlike when it was new at season 2-_- And then the stun part was godlike until stun got removed from the game.

As now with the Agent also have 1 iso(new inf suit) everyone is Stun immune. And I really doubt that the meta will go away from this. But it would be interesting to see if it did.



Lastly... no Spiral image. I usually post the image of recruit as it can bug for some people.

 

It Crashed for me this time while I was receiving the rewards-_-

Hearsthstone Card Design

So I been playing a lot of Hearthstone lately,

 And for some reason the game even thinks I am a GM in arena because I manged to get 9, two times...I was like what GM already?

But anyway while I could spend some time analyzing the game I done some of my own card design instead. Because its always fun working on card games.

I done 1 card per class and 1 neutral card so far.

I am sorry the cards are a little messy I was never the that great in UI artistically.

 I tried some different fonts to see which ones I liked the most and after that--- well if I do more cards I try to find a more better consistent one.  

Flavor Text: Everyone is scared of Varok Saurfang, his status makes people even be afraid of creating concept art of him or even worse concept gameplay with him. We are all surprised the bosses let us have him in the game.

I love this warrior set up with this armor(shield slam etc), so I wanted a creature that gave armor at first but I changed it into a battlecry effect that will enable the warrior to attack minions and taking less damage.

Furthermore, I would set this mechanic to be called Intimidation and it could be used on other cards e.g. a card with intimation 1 constantly fearing the opponents minions.

Flavor Text:

Not only is Vanessa the child of the most wanted man in Stomwind,she was also chased by deranged harvest golems all her youth, it’s no wonder she grow up to become kinda murderish.

I like the Vancleef storyline, I also like Combo effect in cards. Lastly I think rouge could need one more aoe card. But an expansive one.

 

Flavor Text: Embracing death, the lords of the nerubians become know as the traitors of their kind.

I wanted a character that returns stronger with Death Rattle. In the game right now most Deathrattles are either effects of a minor version of the minion. With this minion I wanted it to first be an Ok card but then grow stronger if its killed as it then ascend into an undead form, unholy blessed by the Lich King and stronger in death than in life.

I also made it have a lot of health by intention to make it hard to just suicide with it.

Flavor: Like the priest didn't have Op heals already now they also heal when you heal.

An interesting card for Priest vs Priest and Priest vs Paladin.

Flavor: Mages are not funny people that’s for sure, when they can’t polymorphing your most beloved minion they instead prevent your from summoning it in the first place.

Inspired by the Shaman system. I would really think that having a few cards which can prevent the other player from reaching a mana level would be very interesting. E.g. preventing the opponent to reach 7 for one turn as at 7 a flamestrike could otherwise be coming.

 

Flavor Text: Hunters got everything, crowd control, damage,tanky pets, even damage over time effects. Whats next trap gonna be like? Heal Trap?

I took the liberty of creating a new trap card( I mean a trap that don't exist in WoW) because these are my favorite part of the Hunter hero, furthermore I wanted a Damage over time effect on a hero.

I balanced this card by comparing it mainly to Mage fireball. I wanted it to do slightly more damage in total but cost less as its a secret, it has to be played early to make an effect lastly it don't work on some heroes.

 

Flavor: A real leader always protects his subordinates, as long as they promise to not resurrect him if he dies.

I feel at least one hero should be able to protect the minions by becoming a tank him/herself. And I would say that if anyone should do it its should be Uther the Lightbringer.

Flavor Text:

When four windwalls clashes with each others, a windhouse is created.

I know that Shaman is a very aggressive kind of gameplay, I don't disagree with that. But as an old shaman healer, I would like to see Shaman the more cards oriented towards defending.

Flavor: It’s a Bird...It’s a Raven It’s Crow. I don’t know they all look the same to me.

I wanted a card that is more useful than the acidic swamp ooze, but on the same time it's still as pointless if the opponent has neither armor or weapons e.g a priest.

However, it is not a dead draw as the card is still a 4.4 just a very expensive 4.4

Flavor Text: If you feel a burning sensation inside your stomach, you might not wanna stand next to your friends.

I love this kind of effects in card games, well in any game were the player knows he/she will take damage in the future(or some kind of death effect etc) so the player has to plan out when the cards should be played out, or maybe might as well sacrifice a minion which is will die regardless and so on.