LoR Interviews #4 – The Skilled
A conversation with Jun 'The Skilled Roy' Lee
My real name is Jun Lee. I'm a huge LoR fan, and I've hit Masters every season since I joined. The game is super fun and I absolutely love participating in just about every part of it!
We've heard you were a street magician for a long time… is that where your nickname, 'The Skilled Roy', comes from? And how did you go from street illusionist to gamer?
Oh man, that's a long story – yes, I was actually a street performer for a long while; and I guess the least harrowing way to explain the transition to gaming is that I no longer needed to, after making a good amount of money. Eventually I managed to get support to get into school, and it sort of just thankfully went well from there.
But street magic is not my nickname's origin, though!
"The Skilled Roy" comes from a Smash Bros meme which is why the accent is on The. Roy is widely regarded as one of the worst characters in Smash Bros Melee, and Roy's defenders often quote a line which is: "A skilled Roy can beat any Fox."
I played Roy with no tech skill as a joke, since I personally never took Melee seriously, but I was decent enough at it that a good number of people wanted to know what my tag was. I didn't have one at the time, but they referred to me as "a skilled roy", and I joked around that I actually was the "skilled roy" who so many people used as an example to defend Roy's.
In other words, I wasn't just "A skilled Roy," I was "THE Skilled Roy," and the name stuck as I continued to do well at Melee.
Pieces and Puzzles
I've been a huge, huge LoL fan for a very long time, so the transfer to LoR was really natural.
I've played MOBAs since the Warcraft III days, and I sort of just followed the Riot brand as it went on, from S1 LoL till now. In particular, their 10-year anniversary was one of the coolest events of all time, covering a bunch of upcoming projects from some of my favorite genres, like LoR being a card game, Project L being a fighting game, and Project F being an ARPG.
From there, I got into the LoR testing days and I've been hooked ever since. Before LoR I was a huge fan of Hearthstone, Artifact and Gwent – in particular, I used to grind Artifact and Gwent wayyyyy too much. A lot of Shadowverse, too!
You work as Project Coordinator at WaveformGG. Can you tell us more about them?
Waveform is a broadcast company that specializes in doing gaming-related broadcasts and activating special events such as conventions. We've worked at events such as E3, EVO and Dreamhack, and worked with companies like Behavior, Luminosity and RedBull. It's hard to get into the exact details because the jobs change based on the client, but if it's related to streaming or conventions, we can do just about anything (in my opinion, of course).
Being a Project Coordinator is a difficult thing to summarize in a singular statement that doesn't take away other elements from it – for example, part of my job is to coordinate the various different members of a team in order to execute an event or activation – and a lot depends on the context of a particular event.
For example: Are we traveling across the country? Do we need to ship gear? How many site visits do we have? Do we have access to power? Who is handling the graphics, how many rounds of edits does our client have? And the list goes on.
In short, I guess Project Coordinator is a role where you have to keep an eye over each piece of the puzzle, and help everyone put it together.
Piecing puzzles together is perhaps what you are best known for in LoR – even Devs seem amazed at your uncanny skills for hunting down leaks! =)
How did leaks become sort of your LoR specialization?
Honestly, leaks were never intended to be my specialization, but I tend to think that people are only interested in this type of content from me.
I just keep my ear to the ground on just about anything – from voice work, to patterns in release timings, to patch schedules…
Research is just that: hardcore reading and digging almost everything out there. From 4chan threads to lurking in Discords, reading over tons of text, searching up champion names, looking at release windows, monitoring voice actor patterns… It's a lot of things that are logically easy to do, but just the sheer amount of information out there can make things difficult. Some people don't actively monitor trademarks, for example, despite it being fairly easy to do.
So I guess focusing on leaks wasn't something I actively decided to do, as much as it was something that I realized no one else was able to, or willing to do.
I think finding one's own voice in the community is really important for content creation, so I guess this is mine right now.
Have you ever considered doing something like Necrit does? (Note: a YouTuber who does videos about League of Legends lore)
I have, but I honestly don't think people would be interested in my work. Making content is hard because I'm inevitably my greatest critic… I have nine scripts fully finished, but haven't really convinced myself to actually push onto them.
And it's hard to really push myself to put something out that I don't feel confident in.
Some of us feel this when writing deck guides – every guide is a struggle, and it's like you have to close your eyes and push it into the submission folder because it needs to go out, but it always feels like you wanna put more time into it.
Yeah, exactly.
The way I look at it, my videos are like hamburgers. I've got the meat, I've got the hamburger buns, but the condiments, the sauces, style and the presentation just isn't there yet. And it's hard to put out something when you can tangibly see where you want to improve.
I've been considering hiring an editor, but I am poor! I mean, I have offered the role to some friends who can edit, but I hate pushing them to match my drive for content when I can't even pay them a salary. I've been thinking of setting aside a portion of my paycheck for it, actually.
Are you aware that some members of the community get to know in advance which champions are going to be released? And, are you potentially a part of that group?
I am aware that some people do know ahead of time, but I am not privy to them directly. I've seen hints, and people just outright leaking, like Moe did.
My goal when I do speculation videos is to dig exactly into any mention I can find of the champions anywhere I can, whether that's surveys, LPP leaks or anything else in between. I have my own feelings on people having already seen cards and then "reacting" to them months later, but unfortunately I am not a part of that.
It's probably the only thing I particularly dislike as a content creator in this space – the "Matthew Effect" by which the rich get richer. When you get 'Day Zero' access to new cards (and let alone two months in advance), it inherently gives you a large advantage as a creator.
I'm not saying that the space should be so outright combative and competitive, but it definitely feels bad when you're not given that opportunity despite people, in my opinion, distinguishing themselves. The LPP program doesn't even have a formal application process, for example. Not much you can do about it, unfortunately, but the lack of direction for steps to take can definitely feel bad. And things like Riot releasing all their cards over Mobalytics feels a bit unfair to competitors like runeterra.ar.
Custom Cards
You were known for custom card contests, but I've recently seen less of those. How is the custom card scene developing in your opinion?
The Custom Card scene is an interesting one because it's a very small and close-knit community, yet regulars of the subreddit and Discord are some of the most entrenched fans of the games I've ever met.
They're incredibly creative people, and I love spending my time with them because they all share a vision of wanting to create things together.
The Discord would be this one, by the way:
We've recently added a set of channels for larger projects – I mean, not just a single Champion or a handful of cards – and a lot of our veteran designers are well on their way to making some of the best sets I've seen yet. And I'm currently working on taking custom cards to the next level, by attempting to make a custom level-up animation.
What is the best custom card you've designed yourself, the best custom card you've seen someone else design, and the worst custom card you've seen?
I'm going to refrain from worst custom card because I feel it wouldn't be conducive to what I like to do at the CustomLoR subreddit. To me, there are no bad custom cards – just cards early in their iterations.
But the best one I've ever seen is one that predicted Attach almost exactly. If our goal for custom cards is to make them "printable" in the main game, then this was insanely close.
This was almost a year before Yuumi's reveal, by the way, even using the old card border.
As for the best custom card I've made myself, well… Honestly I don't have much faith in almost any of my own creations. I forever iterate to try and make things better. But Snnuy, another LoR creator, reached out to collaborate and so I made a design for his video.
That’s super cool! May I ask – why deal more damage when the unit starts undamaged?
It may seem a little silly at first glance, but context matters here a lot.
One big trapping of Champion spells is that you usually have them when you have two copies of the champion, one of them in play.
So, imagine a scenario where you have Warwick on the board and you draw a second Warwick – you don't really need help killing weakened enemies; you have a 4+ power Quick Attack unit on the board. But what you will need is a way to damage units that aren't damaged already, to enable said Warwick.
This allows us to diversify from the existing "Ravenous Flock" designs that Noxus is known for, since Noxus specializes in dealing with damaged units. So, in a way, Warwik's spell could be seen as the opposite effect of what you'd expect for a Noxus card.
Also, dealing three to a damaged target would be very close to killing it outright, like Ravenous Flock so often does… but for Warwick, you will typically not want to kill a target with the spell – on the contrary, you want Warwick to hit, so he can progress his level-up. This allows you to contest things like Barriers without the risk of being blown out.
You seem to play Magic – is there any MtG card you really want to see in Legends of Runeterra?
Holy crap, Remand! It will never happen, but God, Remand!
An Armageddon effect (set both players to 0 mana), that would be dope too.
If you could bring one additional format (an old Labs format, something from another game etc.) to the game, disregarding any technical limitations, what would you implement?
God, Commander would be so ****ing baller. However, I think that LoR Champions are relatively tame as Commanders, compared to what you see in MtG.
Perhaps we could get "enhanced" versions of Champions that encourage a true Commander-type system, with greater deckbuilding payoffs?
That said, I would personally really love some asymmetric game modes, as they were always some of my favorites in previous games. For example, a three-versus-one mode (the one person having some super powers), or one-versus-one but with vastly different rules on each side.
Something like the latter happened with the KDA event, where depending on how you built your deck you had completely different bonuses – that was super dope and interesting to try out, although admittedly fairly niche.
Gwent has a great system for these extra modes and games that really feels rewarding to get into; something like that would be awesome for LoR to push on, especially for content creators.
Designing LoR
You are someone who is very invested with design in general, and particularly for LoR. What is your opinion on the current and future design of Expansions, starting with Bandle City to the Origins Champions?
It is very clear that all the current champions up to Ahri were designed at the start of the game, at least fundamentally. This means we start into a completely new and uncharted area right now, which is exciting but also scary.
Yeah, you're completely right. LoR was designed about over two years out, and by the time LoR launched they clearly had an understanding of what Bandle City was going to be.
So, entering this new space may seem very nebulous and scary, but it's important to note that the design of these new Worldwalker cards started over two years ago as well.
Despite us going into new territory from the players' perspective, it isn't actually that much different from what they had already been doing.
If I had to guess off the top of my head, Shawn Main or GMajor will likely be the ones in charge of "Set 5", as they seem to operate on rotation since Bilgewater – but a lot of changes have happened internally at Riot, so that might not hold water.
Now, in terms of current design and future design, I do have some really great points and some rather unfortunate points.
Current Design
Let's start with Current Design.
First, there's the "segmentation" problem.
After Bilgewater, as we know, Riot stopped releasing sets as a whole and broke them down into three parts, so that they could spread out content wider, giving us less initial content but sprinkling said content throughout a release period.
Generally speaking, this is good for a lot of players generally because it always feels like there's a lot of exciting things happening, and the meta gets shaken up every couple of months.
However, if these "thirds-of-a-full-set" are not planned out properly, it feels like some champions lack their crucial tools – they miss their followers, or paired champions to work with. In other words, this way of doing things effectively clamps down on the usefulness or enjoyment of the actual content, since some packages are largely unfinished.
This wouldn't be a HUGE issue if it weren't for the fact that almost every champion that gets released has been built to be largely different than the ones previously.
Only in a handful of examples do released champions synergize directly with champions from previous expansions. Bandle City had a LOT of those, thankfully, as it was one of BC's explicit design goals. But my concern was that this was a "revisit" for this set specifically, and not a larger shift in design that could allow Set 5 to benefit from this.
So lets say when Annie releases (fairly obvious given the leaks), if her partner champion isn't coming until the last third part of Set 5, and her design isn't harking back to her region's former cards, she would just feel incomplete, and that's not a fun state to see many champions in.
For example, you have Taliyah, who had to wait for Malphite.
On the other hand, as a positive, during two weeks in early April I did a quick tour of all other card games with easily accessible online clients – and I think I can say with certainty that LoR makes me play the least amount of "dead games" for both myself and my opponent. I always feel like I'm actively playing, and I never feel completely torn apart by such a rough hand that I lose the game instantaneously.
LoR does sacrifice some depth to make up for streamlining, and while that is a little unfortunate for, say, brewers and deck-builders, as a player I'm glad that I never feel like a game is over from the second I draw my opening hand.
Unfortunately, that does occur fairly often in some of the other card games I've played.
The nature of LoR's "segmentation," of designing Champions with their own pools of cards, allows a great deal of power to the cards' effects. There are very few "Questing Beast"-type cards that are just ubiquitous monstrosities that do everything on their own
While cards of such high power-level exist in LoR, they are segmented into their own archetypes. The Arsenal, for example: if it didn't have a restriction on it, it would be one of the least fun cards to ever play against.
But LoR ensures that many cards that are absurdly strong have deckbuilding or keyword requirements.
On the other hand, I think most people will agree that the "multi region" requirement is a little too easy currently – but again, thanks to LoR's core design it's actually quite easy for them to change and update that too.
I think that, by and large, LoR is a lot more balanced than people give it credit for, and often I find myself having infinitely more agency thanks to the card and gameplay design than I do in many other card games. The only other game that I find comes close in agency is Gwent, and I do love that game a lot, but it has a whole host of other issues.
So, in a long roundabout way: current design sucks in some ways, but its benefits are much better for me personally, especially as a player.
Future Design
Future Design is a lot more tumultuous from a design standpoint. Firstly, I strongly wish they would establish a general region pie.
For example: Demacia has explicitly been restricted to no longer be able to have Fearsome or powerful Healing effects, despite its original designs in Foundations having them.
Bandle City was explicitly said not to have buffs, but between Yordle in Arms, Primal Strength, Flamespitter, Friendship, etc, that just feels incorrect.
And while I don't mind them shifting the region pie, it makes custom design, and what I can expect from future designs, really hard to understand.
I know that a lot of players feel that region identity was largely shattered by Bandle City, because BC can do almost everything in the game – and while that's sort of BC's point, it makes a lot of other regions feel less specialized in what they can do. I don't mind BC having the most keywords and mechanics, but I'd just like a greater definition between regions.
Now, this is explicitly very hard – hell, MtG has difficulties doing this with just five colors, but this is something Riot will need to tackle eventually.
The Worldwalker champions, I think, represent a much better way to handle flexibility.
Speaking of design and decks as a whole, what's your all-time favorite deck?
Honestly, that's super hard.
A lot of people will quote Lurk for me here – it's what I've spent the most time on, and what I generally have the most success with…
… but I actually hate it!
I think I'd go as far as to say that it should have never been added to the game. Mind you, it is for sure the deck I'm best with, but I hate playing it, and I really dislike how it's been implemented.
I'm a huge, huge fan of Pyke in League of Legends, and Rek'sai too, and I was psyched to get both of them in LoR… but in true Monkey's Paw fashion they are bound together, and I cannot even build a deck with Lurk – it's just so insular that it's mind-numbing.
But, alas, it's easily the deck I have the most success with!
A true love/hate relationship…
You could say that, yes!
I think my all-time favorite was a deck, very very early on, using Go Get It and Mistwraiths of all things. It was essentially Shadow Isles Allegiance that either went Go Get It for the memes, or Precious Pet and Noxian Fervor for reach. Never really a solidified deck, but I loved it a lot.
Alternately, Nightfall is one of my favorite archetypes. The planning and sequencing required makes me have a great time playing the deck, and wins feel very rewarding!
Community and esport
Do you think it is possible for LoR to become a Pro eSports scene? What are the challenges it faces? What can the folks who are passionate about LoR esports do to help move it forward?
Now that's a very difficult question.
First of all: What do people want as an esports scene?
Because I'm not sure if anyone has an exact parameter to what they want.
Is an esports scene just Tournaments? Or is it a scene in which competitors can reliably make money and financially sustain themselves by playing LoR competitively? The way we handle the situation depends on what our end goals are.
Tournaments obviously are still happening, but if we're aiming for the level of, say, League of Legends Championship Series, I don't think that will ever happen – CCGs larger and more prestigious than ours couldn't achieve that.
Even MTG dismantled their Pro scene despite record profits, which goes to show that it's not just a "LoR isn't successful enough" statement – and even if Wizards of the Coast is bringing Magic's Pro Tour back, it likely will never be the same stature as the original.
I doubt that a future of people having a sustainable income playing card games is remotely possible. Companies can literally be making record profits and still shun the Pro scene.
TFT is another great example of this, despite being the largest strategy game in the world via Mortdog. Riot is seriously working on this front, and I have high hopes, but that is my point: TFT is still "working on it" – considering TFT's massive success, I wouldn't expect anything sustainable for LoR for a good while.
What do you think that folks who are passionate about LoR esports can do to help move it forward? You have said that the lack of clear direction / unity in the LoR community is hurting us more than it does us good. Can you tell us your opinion about how it’s hurting us, and what we can do to change that?
Yeah, that is the REAL issue I tend to see.
Currently the #1 thing we can do is continue to support each and every community endeavor. While the situation for some other games, like for example Smash, is different, there are some solid takeaways for pushing a competitive scene when the Developer is not 100% focused on supporting it.
This means more coverage, more content, hard work and streaming, pushing the boundaries to make esports a true passion project. If we prove that the community is there, Riot will eventually support it directly.
As for uniting the community, the first thing is to combat the toxicity that, unfortunately, part of the fanbase and creators have pushed onto it. This means stopping lies and misconceptions, pushing forth data, and supporting creators who are inclusive and positive.
Of course people can criticize the game, and I have done so multiple times, but people who are outright lying or allowing their salt to speak for them should be met with a level head.
When people were saying it had been more than three months since the last balance patch – when it had been less than one – or that Targon had more balance changes, I made a conscious effort to publically disprove those claims.
I wouldn't say to get into direct arguments, but rather tackle their statements and try to make them walk out their feelings, ask them questions, and try to engage in discourse whenever they want to summarize their feelings with "meta bad". Thankfully a lot of the fanbase realized their folly after the patch dramatically shook up the meta when people said it wouldn't, but inevitably it will happen again.
And people claiming power-creep whilst Scouts, Pirates, Spiders are all still completely playable — that is always very odd to me.
Is there anything you’d like to say to the LoR player base at large?
My number one thing to say to the player base at large is to not let anyone tell you how to feel. Think critically about everything – if you like or dislike a meta, you are valid in feeling that way.
This is a bit of a tradition in our Discord – would you like to write and share a Senryu with us?
A senryu is 5/7/5?
God, I'm awful at this… It can be about anything, right?
It’s harder than it sounds, so don’t beat yourself up about it! 😅
The final turn comes
You just set off my trap card
GG shake my hand
Bonus Track — Skilled Recommendations
I think my favorite anime is probably Hajime no Ippo if I'm allowed to group New Challenger with the original.
If anyone has an hour and a half, this is easily some of the best ways to pace a fight I've personally seen, with plenty of ups and downs.
New Challenger holds up a lot better because it's newer, of course, but I like the original a lot too. Then Trigun and Cowboy Bebop are other obvious recommendations if you haven't seen them – I've also enjoyed Durarara, Steins; Gate, Baccano!, Rurouni Kenshin, Death Parade, FLCL… just off the top of my head! =)
My favorite film is probably either Whiplash or The Hateful Eight.
Favorite book is a lot tougher to be honest; If I had to choose, I'd probably go by just about anything by Terry Pratchett 's Discworld books.
