“There’s a lot of characters that are close”: 2XKO dev responds to roster concerns at Evo 2025

While Vi was available to play at Evo 2025, the fighting game community still has some hesitation about embracing Riot’s upcoming fighter, 2XKO. However, Esports Insider found some answers at Evo 2025 while playtesting the demo.

Announced in 2021, 2XKO (formerly Project L) has been slowly revealing gameplay and content over the past few years, but it hasn’t been enough to give the FGC confidence. One of the biggest complaints has been the small roster of fighters, but this may change soon.

I had the pleasure of playing 2XKO for the second time at Evo 2025, including testing out the new fighter Vi. Like in the past, 2XKO felt visually stimulating, with bold and fun animations, and had excellent tag-team strategies (although it’s been ‘toned down’ since the last time I played to be more beginner friendly).

A member of the Game Analysis and Live Balance team (and active FGC member), Josh ‘NerdJosh’ Jodoian, sat down and played a few rounds with me. During this time, I couldn’t help but ask about the small roster.

According to NerdJosh, 2XKO started off as a small project at Riot. For that reason, the roster was quite small at the start (back when it was Project L). However, the team started to realize that it was growing into something a lot bigger. That’s when they started discussing the addition of more legends.

But why is it still pretty small after so many years?

“We have a high quality bar,” NerdJosh said. “There’s a lot of characters that are close but they’re not presentable yet.”

So there you have it — more legends are coming. NerdJosh confirmed that they are currently working on new legends, but he couldn’t give any details. The legends and the release dates are still unknown.

I then asked NerdJosh how a legend is picked. League of Legends has a massive roster to choose from, but it takes a pretty big discussion amongst higher-ups when it comes to which legend is added.

It likely takes a lot of strategising due to 2XKO being 2v2. This means that they have to make sure the legend’s tools work alongside anybody they’re paired up with. All of the legends must also feel very different from one another, meaning varying attacks and playstyles.

Over time, the 2XKO team has also been balancing existing legends (like Darius, who was getting ‘a lot of flack’ for being very strong and simple to learn) and figuring out how to make the game more approachable for less competitive players. One way was to simplify chain dashing and allow for fuse and auto combos together.

“We wanted people to get back into the match faster while still expressing themselves,” NerdJosh told Esports Insider.

2XKO still has no set release date, but hopefully more legends will be announced this year.