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Are they forced to work in an office with red lighting for the whole Noxus season?
Are they forced to work in an office with red lighting for the whole Noxus season?
I mean, with the current LA fires right now it does feel a bit like it today...
ARENA ANNOUNCED
Called it on the S2 release. Now I’m just hoping it’s all of S2 like it was last yearEdit: see below clarification from Riot. Second half of Season 1. I mistook the naming scheme and forgot it was Seasons are a third of a year now
Just to clarify a little - Arena will be in the second half of this season, not in the next season. So more like early March than early May
I'm kinda curious if the rift basic map we have now will be seen in some way or we won't see it again
It'll be seen again this year. We'll do a mixture of standard SR and visual treatments to SR at different times
/u/RiotMeddler are you able to share more info about the cadence of champ and champ updates and event structure with the new thematic seasons? Now that passes are tied to seasons, does that mean you guys are doing away with big event moments like summer event/worlds or finding a way to tie them with season starts. And for champs, it seems like general cadence has gone down a bit, was that a conscious choice?
PS is there any update on the Malphite VU, or would that be part of thematic season stuff too.
New champs - plan is one per season, tied to seasonal theme and/or narrative. As a result they won't be revealed as far in advance as we used to do (which also resulted in it feeling like we were talking about things so far in advance it then took forever for them to actually arrive)
Champ updates- also tied to seasons, though given no two updates are the exact same in terms of what changes, amount of work etc, there won't be such a fixed cadence. We'll have more than just LB this year when it comes to larger updates though. For Malph, nothing to mention there, that was never something we originally meant to announce, but instead internal experimentation that we accidentally leaked in a video and then felt we should acknowledge
Big moments like Summer and Worlds - still exist, will be tied in with seasons (not necessarily with a season start, but somewhere in it's arc certainly)
I saw the fire in the news, hope everyone is OK and pls stay safe.
two questions
will we get a vgu or asu with every season or when will we get news about next 1
with mel, we had 3 mages in a short time, where are the assassins, supports and skirmishes? :(
We've had some people have to evacuate their homes already. I'm packed and watching the news (latest fire is a pretty close to home, though still small so far at least).
Champ updates will be tied to seasonal stuff too. It's not just LB this year, details to come later beyond that though
Mages - will confirm other two new champs this year are not mages. Agree we've been a bit heavy on that playstyle recently. Aurora was originally more of a skirmisher but a more mage like playstyle ended up working better for her. Mel we wanted to release close to Arcane.
Basically Splits are now called Seasons, and these new Seasons (splits) will be divided in Acts (this one being divided in 2)
The old thing that was called Seasons is probably just gonna be called the Year now...
So for the Year of 2025 we'll have the first 3 Seasons of this new model, each spanning around 4 months, and each being divided into Acts (I think they'll usually go for 2 acts per season with 2 months each)
I'm wondering if they'll go Noxus, Demacia and Ionia for the first 3 seasons this year, these being the regions they mentioned they wanna explore in future shows based in the Runeterra universe
But from the sound of it they'll also mix some random thematics for seasons inbetween the ones that actually explore the actual lore of the canon universe... so yeah, we'll probably have a bee season someday lmao
Not sure we could/should stretch bees to a full season's worth of theme, though it's now slightly tempting to try...
For 2025 we'll be sticking fairly close to core Runeterra when it comes to season themes. In 2026 we're thinking we'll try a bit more of a mixture of core Runeterra and alternate universe depending on the season, though still working on the details there so that's very much WIP thinking
Is LB getting any changes to her abilities, or just visuals?
Just visuals from memory (or if there are ability tweaks in there, they're small)
Are there any news on the SEA servers merge or was it scrapped altogether?
Last I heard work on that was still underway (merging some of the smaller regions together for better matchmaking etc, larger regions like Vietnam would still be separate servers). Will double check that though
Is LB a VGU or ASU?
It's an update to her visuals and audio, with no or minimal gameplay changes
Saying it that way because at this point the definitions of VGU, ASU, midscope, other update etc feel super blurred because we've taken different approaches based off what makes sense for any given champ. I'm not convinced they're very valuable terms at this point as a result
Last I've heard is alledgedly the SEA server merge will come out at start of 25.S1. Thanks for the confirmation though, at least now that I know it's not abandoned
Was just told that's still the target by someone closer to that work, so fingers crossed should be live this week
Great dev video, lots of content. I was sad not to see a champ teaser for second season/not to hear more about the mysterious symbol at the end of the season start video but I'm guessing the storytelling of season 1 will slowly build up to 2nd season and hopefully then more will be revealed
Mysterious symbol - yep, deliberately mysterious for now. Will certainly become clear over time though
Second season theme and champ - plan is to save many of the details about that until close to the start of said season
This is crazy to me that you're talking about potentially having to evacuate from fires and then in the next breath go back to explaining game updates to redditors... Godspeed champ, hope everything is okay, and thank you for your time!
Appreciated. One of the trade offs to living in LA. Helps to have stuff to do while waiting and I generally like chatting about the game of course :)
I miss Reav3
Im still here! Not working directly on Champs anymore though. I am currently helping a bit with the champs team while the new Product Owner ramps up.
I miss Reav3
Don't we all. (He's still here lol)
Pkay so now reworks are tied up to seasons, but there won't be tease until the new season drops right? But what happens to old champs that barely fit in the lore or need a update, but already have a thematic season like Noxus for example
We won't 100% tie every champ to a specific seasonal theme, both new and VU/VGUs. Sometimes it will make a lot of sense so we will do it. For "Welcome to Noxus" LeBlanc was a key figure in the narrative and we felt like her old look was so outdated that the opportunity and the seasonal theme matched so it made sense to pursue. That won't always be the case though.
As Brice mentioned in the video we wont always have a seasonal theme be base Runeterra, it could also be a AU. In those cases the New Champions or updates can really be anything since region won't be a factor. We also might explore some seasonal themes that aren't directly tied to one specific faction.
Also champions can appear in the story of a different region, even if they are not from that region or faction
Are you still able to talk about gameplay related stuff, IIRC you mentioned you were lead gameplay producer but not sure if your title has changed these last few years
Im currently a Principal Product Manager on the Seasons team. Im focusing on Champs, Meta-games and Modes. So yeah I can probably talk about most of that stuff. SR updates not so much.
With less new champions, what about monster champs or humanoid champs? I'm guessing there will be a new one every 2 or 3 years now?
It really depends on what the seasonal theme is and what makes sense. With the new seasonal format I think prioritizing Champs that feel cohesive with the theme and narrative of the season is more important then if the champion is a monster or not. If a monster makes the most sense for a given seasonal theme, or for a story our narrative team wants to tell then we would make a monster for it.
Are we allowed any info on the roles of upcoming champs?
It’s been like 5 years since the last tank/engage support. Would kind of suck to get hopes up and then each season they release an assassin and mage or something 😭
Just is cool to know if you should expect to be excited for the champs of this year or not based on what role you main is all. But I understand wanting to keep suspense and surprise…
Currently, with Champs being very integrated with each season we don't plan on talking about them before a more official reveal. Was Rell 5 years ago at this point! Man time flies. Yeah we probably need another one in the future. I think we also need a another more aggressive fighter support like Pyke/Thresh. Been awhile since we made a support like that as well
didnt you guys cancel Shyv vgu bc of the seasons? and now are saying that updates wont always ties 100% to season then why cancel a rework we waited for so long... I may not undestand the things but it feels that way like you just didnt want to update her in favour of exalted skins and other champs
We want to time her release with a season that makes sense for her. She was ice-boxed for a bit for other projects that were higher priority but development has just recently started on her again. We still really want to get her update into the hands on players, we just shifted to focus on the Arcane champs (Viktor/Mel/Ambessa) for a bit.
u/RiotMeddler we getting ARURF “next patch”, by next patch you mean tomorrow 25.S1.1? Or the next one on Jan 23?
25.S1.2 (so yes, two weeks from now)
Is there ever something like going through every single champion in the game, looking at where they are, what they could need and just in general giving all of them attention?
Given some champions can go years without any changes, is that really a case of them being "perfectly balanced"?
Or is it some of them just not getting looked at in the first place?
Not just balance but gameplay too
I mean, yeah we have a list, but that doesnt mean we can work on everything all at once. We think it's important that we continue to evolve SR, make new Champs, and new game modes as well. It's about striking a balance between all of these things. Our design team does release mid scopes here and thier for champs that need smaller gameplay adjustments, and then we have VGUs and VUs for champs who need bigger gameplay changes or no gameplay changes. Its about prioritizing all these projects and choosing the ones we think have the highest value at the time. Different players have different wants/needs. Some want new champs more then updates to old champs, some don't even want new champs or updates, they just want new ways to play LoL (Game modes) and some play SR a million hours a week and want to see big changes/evolutions to that.
I hope we can at least still have one update per season! It would be nice if we could have two (say, both LeBlanc AND Vladimir), but I understand that might be too much to ask. I think having a goal of at least one per season would be great especially for the ones themed around regions cause there's always at least one champion who's important to their region's lore and in need of an update (say, Lux for Demacia, Ashe for Freljorld).
The reason we keep it open is that the new champs/VGUs are still the main priority. New gameplay generally has a much stronger effect on engagement then just a VU. We can't know ahead of time how much resources new champs and VGUs will take so it would be hard to commit to any number of VUs. For example, Shyvana has a TON of skins and with a Dragon form that is basically 2 models per skin, plus animations and VFX for both models. If we were shipping a Shyvana VGU for a season we might have to pull a large chunk of our art team into the production of that project, which would probably cause us to stop or drastically slow down VU development for a bit. Likewise a new Champ like Hwei would do similar things because of hoy many abilities he has (though not to the degree of Shyvana of course)
Generally speaking our priority is New Champs/VGUS > VUs. That being said New Champs/VGUs take a lot of design time before we lock the kit, and its hard to predict exactly how long it takes us to lock a kit. The art team usually works on VUs, on the side, while they are waiting on design to get the gamplay right for our bigger projects.
Lol, what a mess So no hopes for her rework this year, like you guys first said?
Not his year sadly
REAV3!!!!! ❤️
Ahem. Sorry, had to get that out of my system. Missed ya dude!
LOL! Glad to see your still playing league....and still waiting for that Quinn VGU. Well at least she's getting further long in line every year :P
Also are you able to share the DNA team working Mel and/or LeBlanc like for old times sake
LeBlanc is just a VU so it doesn't have DNA. Lonewingy has been driving it from the Art side, since its really just a art project. Art and Narrative for Mel was a collab between Frotiche/Champs team with artists/writers on both sides contributing. It didn't go through the normal DNA process because she was already a established character from Arcane (Ambessa was similar) Design was done my Emizery.
We actually locked her spell reflection thing like 3 years ago-ish, when I was still Team Lead on Champs, before production on Arcane season 2 started. Just that one ability, as we wanted to ensure we could make a cool kit out of it.
Did you guys consider using LeBlanc's look from LOR? Could you tell why the team decided to go with what we've seen instead of that? (I'm not complaining, I think the new look is even better! Just curious).
We used that as a starting point. That was still heavily based on LoLs old current version though and we felt she needed a bigger overhaul to really achieve who she is portrayed as in the narrative. Overall her facial features/vibe is still pretty similar to the lor version, she just got a new outfit.
If a seasonal theme is in an alternate universe, would the new champion for that season be from runeterra or from that universe?
From Runeterra
u/RiotMeddler are you able to tell us if Leblanc is a Visual and Game Update? Or just Visual Update? And those collars that she have will it be adjusted to decrease a little bit of her size?
Its purely a Visual Update. We believe that her kit is in a good place. She has a unique space is the game as a Mage/Assassin hybrid and her kit still works well in that niche.
So is Leblanc a VGU or ASU?? In one of the comments shes mentioned as a big update and the guy in the video said visual update, I am confusion.
Its just a visual update
It's a great thing that you pay more attention to VGUs and VUs, just like you used to back in the old days. As a veteran player, I am very grateful for that! Even so, I want to ask you a question. Are the ASUs still a thing since you said nothing about them in the recent devblog? Have things changed? Are seasonal changes affecting them as well? I mean, if I remember correctly someone said that these are specifically made by the skins team, which differs them from classic VUs. Just curious, since I really liked them as a concept.
Visual updates have come back to Champions team. From a development perspective ASUs and VUs are basically the same thing. They both get built the same way. The difference really was in the goals. ASUs were targeting super popular champions that skins team made TONS of skins for, and were super outdated. The old models/rig/animations made it hard for the skins team to make high quality skins for those champions compared to newer champions. Some of them were so dated that it literally took twice as long to make skins for them and then the skins looked twice as bad as new champs. So it was about making it more sustainable to make skins for really popular champs that we make skins for all the time. Hence the name "Art and Sustainability Update." Visual Updates were more about updating old champions whose theme/art were really outdated, or don't really match where they currently at in the modern IP, or in some cases don't make much sense in the modern IP (Like what was jax?)
So just Mel this year?
3 seasons per year, so 3 champs in 2025
ohh ty for the reply I hope we can see her 2026 but I hope you take the time she needs and deliver a great rework in terms of gameplay and visuals but I hope you wont ice-box her in a year and then tell us last minute again
She won't release this year and we don't currently have a timeline or season planned for her. We just restarted some very early design explorations
Interesting, any teasers or the other 2 planned champs? Or will there be another dev update video later in the year teasing them?
Plan is that most of the details about them will get revealed as part of their season's reveal or arc (champs won't necessarily be start of season releases each time).
This is in bad taste. Unless you’re trying to make a political point, in which case working for riot is laughable.
Not sure I follow sorry? We can literally see smoke and fire from both the office (which is close to an evacuation border) and from where I live (as is the case for many other Rioters, some of whom have already had to evacuate their homes).
Further down the line are champion reworks planned to be tied into seasons? I'd love to see the Shyvana rework tied in with a Demacia season.
Most at least will be tied in with a seasonal theme. Still discussing whether it'll be all or just most.
Sad to hear that, but thank you for answering! There are still a few popular champions that could benefit from an update, like Miss Fortune and Lux. To be exact, there are champions who are in worse condition (Janna, Kennen, even LeBlanc prior to the update) and I fully comprehend that. However, just like you said, their new skins that are not legendary or something above (Ultimate, Exalted, etc.) will still be lacking and look bad, despite having really great concepts and designs. Although it may seem biased, don't get me wrong. The reason I enjoyed ASUs was because they maintained popular champions with high standards. Moreover, updating them quickly is advantageous as their skin catalogs will keep expanding. I don't want to offend, but it seems like you're no longer interested in doing ASUs because skins still sell. It just doesn't make sense to depict specific champion with a more cohesive design anywhere other than the game, just to keep saying that they're doing well. I will keep Miss Fortune and Lux as an example since they are popular. Just look at all the promotional artworks, figures or anything related to them. Who is trying to deceive whom here? For clarification, I really like their LoR designs. They look much better there and I hope to see them updated in League at some point. There's still a chance I guess!
Popular Champions aren't off the table, to be clear, especially if it makes sense for a seasonal theme, where they might be featured heavily in the narrative.
I thought lb was on point, lonewingy does beautiful art. Is it OK to ask if she is also working on a new champ or is she more a supervisor position?
Im working with her currently on a new champ, but its still a ways off