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Wow, they look a little happier here :p
Wow, they look a little happier here :p
I mean, still a lot of work to do, but things are feeling a bit better at least!
One thing that we missed from the video I figure might also be of interest coming in patch 13.4 is that we'll be increasing LP gains/losses, from an average of 15 to an average of 22. Should get people to appropriate ranks faster. We're making the change based off feedback received and because we'll have two seasons in ranked this year instead of just one like we used to, so doesn't seem appropriate to stick with the same tunings
Thank you so much for these quick /dev blogs! It's alright the the video quality isn't what you used to make, and that there isn't a script that you've been working on to make it entertaining. What matters is that you get updates as soon as you can, the moment you're confident about the features that come to League PC. Thank you for being communicative and hearing us out. It means the world to us the players. Keep the hard work!
Glad the format's working for you. We'll probably polish them a little more over time, but overall do want to stick with this 'Grab a space in the office, talk about what's happening, get stuff out quicker' approach
The most exciting thing here for me was hearing about the 2v2v2v2 game mode and how much it is inspired from TFT's Double Up. The addition of augments there for your champions is something we've been hungry for since that one Odyssey event (which Mort originally worked on before being added to the TFT team).
Can we just give Mortdog and the whole TFT team WAY MORE MONEY AND RESOURCES, please?
While the 2v2v2v2 mode didn't start with Double Up as a reference point it's certainly been interesting seeing all the parallels between the two as we've worked on the mode. And then yeah, at some point, we just embraced things like Augments as a term and Double Up style health. The level of game to game variance and adaptability TFT offers is the sort of thing we'd like to deliver with this mode.
In terms of TFT resourcing the TFT is dramatically bigger at this point than the team that launched the game :)
Very happy to hear about the double ASU.
It's very important to update those poor models, it will help with selling skins too.
Although I really wonder how long Lee Sin and Teemo are going to be, considering they also have a lot of skins as well.
We're still figuring out timeline as mentioned, should have an update with a rough estimate at least to share soonish. It'll definitely be a while though, as you say there are huge skin catalogs there and we're just starting the work on them both at present.
The format is excellent and it exactly what is needed. I don't know if you can discuss this yet but is there any news on the essence emporium revamp?
Nothing I can mention quite yet, I'll make a note to get that in one of the future videos though
Any justification for the change from 15 to 22? I support the change but I was just curious what the driving measure for the change is. Is it to just decrease the average number of wins to reach the next division, or is there more to it?
EDIT: just kidding, I don't know how to read!
On one hand, we've done a lot of calculations and modelling as to how this will let people get to an accurate rank quicker, what the extreme potential swings per game look like, how it affects duos etc.
And on the other hand it's also basically a 50% increase that we can try out and adjust as needed.
So some art and some science.
I’m surprised the Teemo ASU isn’t coming with a mid scope considering he has the roll in Wild Rift
We've tried a few iterations of gameplay changes for Teemo but they haven't met the bar for change vs. improvement. There's still potential though if we can find something that is a clear improvement
Is there something missing from the "Champions & Champion Updates" section (based on the video chapters)?
Feels like just stating something that should be standard in the first place and then jumps to ASU section. Like the announcement part of champion updates was cut.
I think that's just our wonderful, patient, editing team trying to stitch together something that works from the messy takes Brightmoon and I delivered...
I complained when SG Xayah/Rakan weren't included in the last SG batch.
However, considering they will now be added, i have to thank them for listening to the feedback.
I've been a little more hopeful for the future of the game in the last few weeks compared to the beginning of the year.
It was actually always intended for some of the "Wild Rift Debut" skins to come over to League PC but it was a matter of figuring out the process and pipeline for it. Questions we're still working on answering actually.
I don't think we did the best at continuing to communicate that message to you all and it got sort of buried in the reactions of the moment that they were Wild Rift exclusive at the time. So the reaction you had is honestly on us there.
Hopefully that talk about lore means they're establishing a central lore team so the lore won't be left in the hands of the skins team again (Ruination)
We're figuring out how to have all the different teams (across different games and non game stuff like Arcane) work on the lore in a coordinated, cohesive manner. Not centralizing all decisions though, we also want to make sure many people making creative decisions are on the game/product teams themselves and in touch with what matters to players of those games etc.
Everyone involved did a good job with it
VGUs and mid-scopes are what I am most interested in and it just felt like the important part of that section was missing.
Gotcha. Yeah, we'll touch on those as soon as we've got some meaningful stuff to share. Midscopes you might often hear about through other channels though (e.g. Quick Gameplay Thoughts) since they're pretty focused on game health/meta/balanceability
What I am curious about are older game mods like blood moon, nexus siege, project, etc. You don't mention them anywhere which leads me to believe we shouldn't be expecting them at all? Just feels a little worried that Riot almost pretends they never existed.
A lot of the older modes got played once or twice by players who then went straight back to SR/ARAM. When it comes to deciding between bringing those old modes back versus trying something new like this 2v2v2v2 experience we're trying the new things as a result
Feedback on the 2v2v2v2: Augments sound very fun but one of the issues with nexus blitz was repetition of gimmicks. Once you've seen each a few times - only a couple remain fun, others get frustrating.
Hope this can help and 2v2s in LoL itself is the base for the fun of the mode rather than needing extras :)
Yeah, I think that's a very fair note. For augments we think we can avoid some of the issues many players had with Nexus Blitz events by letting players choose their own augments (versus game chosen events), having a large pool of augments (so you don't see all the content too quickly) and designing augments such that they synergize with what your champ/team comp are trying to do, rather than forcing unnatural/undesired play (though don't get me wrong, some will definitely change playstyles if you want to opt into them)
Rioter might be looking for comments to reply to in this thread, so I am going to inhale all my copium and ask.
In the future, far or near, will it be possible for Mordekaisers dragon to come back?
I think that's very unlikely. Sorry that's not the desired answer, but I can't see us putting that effect back on Morde in the foreseeable future.
So which skins are off the cards then? (ie: exclusive instead of “debut on WR”) Any chance of Mythmaker Zoe making its way to PC in the future?
We honestly have no idea just yet which ones we might do other than the Star Guardian ones we mentioned. We picked those as the first ones because of just how requested they were.
If we figure this out and it goes well then maybe it will lead to more but we don't know for sure at this time. We could find out that this is actually really hard to do and maybe we should be more selective. We just don't know yet but either way you'll hear from us when we get there.
One thing that concerns me regarding skins ported from WR is the possible difference in quality. Wild Rift legendary skins, for example, seem to have way fewer voicelines than on PC. And some WR-exclusive skins, like SG Orianna, seem to be simpler both in design and in splash art quality.
Gonna take note of some of these things to mention internally and try to make sure we cover some of these when its time to follow-up.
Seeing devs communicate like this is always good so thanks Riot for putting in the effort
On theme with the pricing changes, I wonder if Riot will ever make all champs free in practice tool. It elevates the new player experience by a lot imo, being able to make a more informed decision with your BE is pretty big. I remember having champions that I wanted to buy for weeks and when I finally got enough IP I realised I didn’t like them as much as I thought I would
Potentially. It's something we're going to talk about soon internally, with a plausible outcome being we then just try it out in a trial region and see how it goes. What we'd want to understand from that trial would be:
What affect does this have on the new player experience? Are people actually more likely to stick with the game if they're spending more time in practice tool instead of in regular games? Seems plausible, but would want to confirm
What effect does this have on revenue? Money's far from the only thing we optimize for, we do have bills to pay though so need to understand what sort of trade off we'd potentially be taking
How does this affect server performance? Practice tool takes about 5 times the server capacity per player versus a regular SR 10 with 10 people in it. Need to make sure we don't completely overload things at the expense of all other LoL games
Hey Meddler, can I ask if there is any expected timeframe for further lore news? Is this a general "talk about it later" or is it coming within the next couple of months?
I'm not quite sure yet. Sorry that's super vague, lore stuff with this new direction is trickier for me to talk about given there are a lot of other folks across the company who are part of the whole process. Will definitely update when we have more to share (or you might just hear from folks outside of the LoL team too of course!)
Can you talk more about the 'Less New Champions' topic please
What in particular's on your mind there?
'Grab a space in the office, talk about what's happening, get stuff out quicker'
I like seeing glimpses of the Riot office like this, it's fun.
Also can't wait to see future Champions, skins and updates leaked through someone's monitor!
We've already had to blur some monitors and/or discard some promising takes when stuff like that was up prominently in the background! I'm sure we'll get it wrong at some point and leak something, seems like a reasonable risk/trade off though
SERAQUEEN JUST KEEPS QUEENING
💅👁👄👁👑
When you say not centralising do you mean like for example, arcane is still its own thing outside of canon but how they do something would influence canon and vice versa?
We want to get to a state where Arcane, LoL, LoR etc are all clearly building in the same canon so that that's not even a question that needs to be asked or point of confusion :)
This is probably a controversial opinion, but I don't think every story across all mediums have to be 100% consistent with each other. There's a trade off between cohesiveness and creative freedom among different teams; finding the right balance is undoubtedly a difficult task.
I think what's most important is understanding and staying true to the core identity of the champions, the little details don't need to always be the same if it's a detriment to the creative process IMO. For example, I know some LoL lore fans are upset Arcane doesn't follow canon 100% but to me it's not that big of a problem as long as Arcane's canon is consistent with itself and doesn't betray the core essence of the characters. The Last of Us show is another good example of what I mean. There are a few details that aren't "canon" to the game but they don't break what's fundamental to the story, in fact they enhance the story for the given medium that it's in. I hope this makes sense.
Agreed that 100% consistency on literally everything isn't a desirable goal let alone realistic. The exact placement of a Zaun shop you see in Arcane versus potential portrayal in a LoR card? Not really important. But key things like critical character motivations, relationships, important world events? Huge value in those being consistent, recognized and respected across different experiences IMO
Do you have already a first expectation on how much the new change will affect new champs? Since while I agree these stuff need more focus would be for example sad if we ony get 2 new champs in a year or so
Not certain. If I had to guess I'd say 3-4 in 2024, but that's a very rough estimate
Get those LoR skins in there too.
Which particular ones are on your mind?
Don't you think that 22 might be too much? After every time someone gets a lucky win streak they will get exposed by being way worse than everyone else in the game making the game very unbalanced.
This change won't be changing the fact that you need a certain level of MMR to sustain a rank - a player who hits a lucky streak without appropriately belonging there would fall out with net negative gains unless they could maintain a good winrate at that level.
I wonder if the wild rift ports are part of riot accepting wild rift is somewhat dieing or was a failure - giving up trying to entice people over with unique skins.
Personally I never saw the appeal of playing as complex a game as a moba on mobile, and play/activity rates at least in the west seem to reflect that pretty heavily.
Not at all. WR's been going well. We have generally seen people want to play on one platform or the other though (comparatively small number of players want both a PC and a mobile MOBA). Makes a lot of sense from both a player and a business perspective to share the most resonant skins etc across games as a result
What about players who gain on average let's say 20 to 22 LP per game currently? Will they also have their LP gains/losses adjusted?
Yeah you'll probably have something in the range of +32-35
How will the less new champions affect VGUs going forward? At the moment they are in a near extinct phase and the updates you have on them (usually a single one at the time) is usually lumped in with new champions.
This is a reduction in new champs specifically in 2024 (and potentially beyond). We're not reducing investment in VGUs
Well, my favorite lol feature is champion releases, and even hearing these great news I would like to know how drastically releases will decrease (4 per year idk)
Will this reflect on the 2023 releases as well?
and these changes only apply to the year 2024? Or Beyond?
Thanks for asking :)
The process of making a new champion is a pretty long one, so moving people to other projects today probably won't affect 2023 champs at all (so much of the work has already been done there).
At a very rough guess, probably something like 3-4 new champs in 2024. Not sure yet for 2025+ and we've got some time to figure out what makes sense for the longer term like that
This is super SUPER amazing news! Having one cohesive canon will be a lot stronger for the narrative overall I think, even if some really minor details differ due to fun creative liberties taken across games
I'm very excited about this too, I think long term it'll be great, does mean some slow down right now as we get stuff figured out however.
And yeah, we'll also still have some degree of adaptation to any given medium of course. There's a lot of stuff that's just part of gameplay, or just memey fun, that can and should diverge. I don't think anyone's getting confused over whether Yasuo dying 10 times in 15 minutes is canon or not for example
Why the arcane team? You guys haven’t even stayed if the show was cannon or not. So that seems like added confusion in the mix.
My point was exactly that. He won't be able to sustain it so he will fall after a few games. That doesn't change the fact that at his peak lp he was way out of his league. So those games will feel unfair to his teammates.
In addition, there is the psychological part of league. When someone is losing they are tilted, obviously. So of course they won't stop to take a breath and refresh, they will keep playing. They go on a losing streak till they can no longer lose because even on their worst day, they will win that game. After that, they will go on a winning streak because they are no longer tilted and their skill level goes back to normal, and then the amount of positive energy carries them over their skill level for the cycle to continue.
This is already happening, but the increase in lp gain will mean the amplitude of this oscillation will rise. This means the skill difference between the lucky player and their teammates will be higher.
Matchmaking is exclusively based on MMR after the change we made at the start of the season - so the matches you play in after this change will be the exact same matches you played in before this change, even if visual rank is a little different.
3-4 new champs, does that include VGU,ASU, or not?
VGUs and ASUs are separate
Wait so does stuff like performance rating factor into MMR? If not, How do you determine if someone is on a 'lucky streak' or if they 'appropriately belong there'?
Do they maintain ~ a 50% winrate at their current MMR? If yes, then they probably belong around there. If their winrate is lower than 50% at their current MMR, they might've gotten lucky or something. If their winrate is higher than 50% at their current MMR, they probably are below where they should be.
I thought this change also implied that you gain/lose more MMR for each game. Are you saying the change only affects LP gains?
Yes, this change only affects LP gains. MMR works quite well at what it's designed for, which is to evaluate skill player that matchmaking can use to create fair matches.
I may have missed it - but with all the changes to aram, will any of them get adjusted or reverted?
As someone who loved the game mode, the changes were exciting but have made the mode less enjoyable. I know it's a pretty hotly split issue, though it seems people who almost exclusively played ARAM have disliked the changes the most.
Heavy changes and/or reversions to death timers and tower rubble