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hey folks - I know this video was longer than normal (23 min+!) but there's a ton we have in store in 2024. We'll be hanging around to answer your questions throughout today on this thread!
hey folks - I know this video was longer than normal (23 min+!) but there's a ton we have in store in 2024. We'll be hanging around to answer your questions throughout today on this thread!
SHYVANA UPDATE CONFIRMED
SHYVANA UPDATE CONFIRMED
THIS IS NOT A DRILL
BOTTOM TEXT
Confirmed!!! Y'all have been so patient, thank you for keeping hope alive
SHYVANA UPDATE CONFIRMED
SHYVANA UPDATE CONFIRMED
THIS IS NOT A DRILL
BOTTOM TEXT
EZREAL GOT A REAL REASON TO KISS THEM LEGGIES NOW GAMERS!
(This is not canon pls don't Shaco x Fiora me again)
I hope Ezreal still likes her.
Arena is now a 2v2v2v2v2v2v2v2 mode LOL
Honestly super cool update to the mode. Very excited to see it back!
The team is continuing to improve and refine Arena and we're excited for you to give it another go! I know the question remains WHEN WILL ARENA BE PERMANENT .... and the answer is.... we don't know yet. We need to get it into a state where it maintains a strong level of engagement but I'm feeling really excited about this next iteration and we'll see if you all like it
EZREAL GOT A REAL REASON TO KISS THEM LEGGIES NOW GAMERS!
(This is not canon pls don't Shaco x Fiora me again)
Is that a real thing damn.
u/RiotMeddler what do the Vanguard changes mean for the minority of the Mac players? From my understanding it's incompatible with Mac systems.
Vanguard will not be required for Mac. The Mac ecosystem and OS is substantially different in ways that make us take a different approach for that system.
Great video, thank you for the amazing effort. Would you be able to expand on what Vanguard means for macos players now that it's being used for league as well?
Vanguard will not be required for Mac. The Mac ecosystem and OS is substantially different in ways that make us take a different approach for that system. If that changes in the future we'll reconsider
We try our best to give as much feedback as possible on /r/LeagueArena but it seems to just fall on deaf ears most often. It's like player opinion is not being discussed outside of Riot's internal testing team and then you're wondering why no one is sticking around to play it?
Perhaps we can get something going together on the sub, just maybe a collection of feedback?
I actually didn’t know this existed. I’ll start checking it out
I can't wait to see how she's implemented since we've never seen her fight in the show. I really would've expected Sevika to be the first Arcane->LOL champ but im still excited
Yet. Haven't seen her fight yet :)
Hey reav3, I recall you mentioning that for a time the team looked at potentially porting silco for renata glasc, but that didn't pan out. Are you able to share how the team got to being able to port ambessa now
Ambessa is a fighter with a clear power source. She is much easier to port into LoL then a character that doesn’t ever fight
Where's project L you cowards?
That no game announcements this year has me quite worried
Project L is still trucking along and announcements about it will come direct from the Project L team, not via those of us on LoL, or at a LoL event like League's 15th birthday/anniversary.
And what about playing on Linux with WINE? Will there be any option for us?
We'll get some more info about Linux for you all soon, it's not something i know the answer to off the top of my head and I want to make sure I talk with the team and get you the right info.
Hey Riot Brightmoon I have a question well on the season video you can see the steam icon. Is this an announcement that league of legends will appear there? u/RiotBrightmoon
Sorry, nothing to report there I don't think that icon was mean to refer to steam
I think y’all are sleeping on Vanguards implementation, I’ve had a few Smurfs on Valorant that got banned very fast because they were botted accounts. This could be huge for preventing the g2a account bot farm accounts plaguing the game for the last 5 years.
That's a huge part of the rationale behind adopting Vanguard here yeah. Direct cheating isn't as big an issue in LoL generally as it can be in some genres like shooters. Botted accounts however have been doing quite a bit of damage to many queues, be it encountering levelling bots that are miserable to have as team mates or people on botted accounts who don't care about their account/identity. We think addressing that should be a pretty significant improvement to the overall experience for most players
Hey guys (and girls!) from the LoL team, just wanted to say that this video really got me excited. I know that everybody is going bananas in the thread because of Vanguard, but you guys REALLY kept that promise of better communication. I really wish some of my other favorite games would take a note or two from you guys. Thank you very much for the work, and I hope this season live up to the hype this video created on me!
Thank you for the kind words, we're going to keep working on the communication thing throughout this year too of course as well :)
Not sure what installing Vanguard has to do with combatting smurfs, inters and ban-dodgers (because thats the main issue and installing vanguard wont have any effect on that) but everything else looks alright.
Doubling the duration of arena matches is a bit of an ick for me though
Vanguard - one of the big issues right now is the number of accounts that get levelled with bots, creating a range of relatively disposable accounts that a certain type of player will then use without care for how they affect others, whether their account gets banned or restricted etc. Vanguard should let us rapidly detect and ban said accounts, hence the improvements to smurfs/inters/ban dodgers.
Arena - Doubling teams won't double duration, agree that Arena doesn't need to be a dramatically longer mode. For most teams it'll be about the same length, if you're in the final two it will likely run a little bit longer. Regardless of the number of teams present though each round half of the teams in game are going to be losing health, so elimination will mainly happen at the same pace
The day I have to install a closed source kernel level anticheat to play League is the day I never play it again.
I'd rather deal with a few cheaters here and there then deal with the security implications introduced by that in this day and age. If Vanguard was ever exploited it would have complete and total control of the system that's not only obviously bad for the users but will be devastating for the company if it happens and has the capability to spread.
You should reconsider kernel level anti cheat altogether. It's not worth it. There are excellent well researched reasons Apple doesn't allow it and hopefully Microsoft follows suit to shut these kernel level anti-cheats (and the cheats themselves that use them) down.
Its understandable some people will feel this way and is something we discussed at length. In some regions like Korea we had the opposite reaction where players did not trust the integrity of ranked unless we did Kernel level anti-cheat (we have been using a different solution there for some time).
The second part on top of cheating is that bot farm accounts have been increasingly turning up in ranked games. A de-ranked account with more essence sells for more. The match quality of lower ranked games in many countries has been hit pretty hard and this adds to our arsenal to fight that.
In regards to vanguard, now that hardware bans are a thing how much risk are players using custom skins, maps, lines, etc?
ATM I'm pretty sure riot just couldn't detect players using that stuff nor did riot care that much about it, but with the updated system should there be a warning for them?
Our goals for Vanguard are not to explicitly target customization like you mentioned but it is likely it will break many of those types of hacks.
We strongly discourage those tools mostly because of how unstable they tend to be. So our crash reporting fills up with false-positives that we spend time investigating rather than legitimate issues.
I’m guessing skins and shit just won’t work at all and be blocked off until third parties figure out a way around it, but depending how sensitive vanguard is I’d be afraid of a hardware ban because it detected a skin editor or even cheat engine installed lol.
We tend to reserve hardware banning for more egregious or repeated violations. I can't share what our explicit policy is right now or guarantee we wont change it in the future
And what about playing on Linux with WINE? Will there be any option for us?
No unfortunately not. From a security point of view supporting WINE would be like having a bank vault at the top of Nakatomi Tower then installing a doggy door in it.
Are you able to elaborate what that is, seems a bit simplistic to go with strength again since darius already embodies that so well
I cant at this point no, want to keep some things a surprise. The fact that she is clearly a warrior that fights makes it a lot easier then Silco though. That why we gave Renata the robot, to kind of be like her "goon" since chembarons usually have goons fight for them. It would have been weird to suddenly give Silco a robot that was never in the show
True, but it's still very annoying, like obviously they give no guarantees for making it work but purposefully breaking it with no chance of fixing it seems too hostile
This was a scenario where we didnt have any great options. We want anyone to be able to play League with whatever setup they have but Linux support leaves a large security hole
mac users are not required to have vanguard so they can keep playing
Correct
You say that, and then you don't require Vanguard on Mac.
Is that 200 years of security experience in Riot?
To support Linux as a 1st class OS we would need to port the client. Supporting WINE on Linux is possible with work but would also open up a whole new vector of attack.
I call BS on that statement. Linux protects the user from invasive surveillance and elevated permissions from untrusted parties. This does not constitute a "security hole". If you require kernel level surveillance (like on Windows) just for anti-cheat, then I don't trust you either.
Supporting WINE on Linux is what I'm referring to. If there was player demand for supporting Linux I would rather do it as a 1st class OS.
Thank you for your response. Indeed I'm sure it's very effective at stopping bots and other methods of cheating and will improve game quality and those aspects are something I can look forward to, I don't get to play much these days but appreciate high quality games.
I think if you're going to ask the community to install a kernel level anti-cheat it would at least be good faith to open source the effort so it can be peer reviewed, you guys can offer all the reassurance under the sun in videos like these but Riot is still owned by a Chinese organization and anyone with any kind of technical background and familiarity with some of China's other practices are right to ask questions and be skeptical.
When it comes to macOS, I presume there probably isn't any cheating software out there to begin with since Windows is a much more accessible platform for that kind of thing but since kernel access level is restricted would I be correct to assume cheat detection can be done in userland much more effectively thus negating the need for Vanguard?
Thanks again and take care!
Appreciate the kind response.
I do like the idea of being able to open source to build trust we are doing what we say we are. Unfortunately, it also makes it much a lot easier for hackers to find new ways to circumvent. There are always new ways to circumvent anti-cheat solutions so the perpetual arms race will continue. As much as I dislike it "security through obscurity" is an extra tool we have to employ but not the only one.
Yes, there is a lot less macOS users and very few cheat solutions. The viability for things like bot farms falls off as well.
That makes sense! I assume the story of Arcane 2 also played a role in her choice as a champion. Happy for her, sad for Sevika :')
Excited for all the new champs and updates!
I mean just because we are making Ambessa now doesnt mean we will never make Sevika. I think if characters from Arcane, who have clear combat abilities, end up really popular with players, then we would consider bringing them over to LoL as new champions
It's sounding a lot like this primarily affects ranked games, and considering the implications in alienating certain players (especially with how vanguard requires secure boot and TPM 2.0 if I understand correctly) wouldn't it make sense to make vanguard a requirement only for ranked games and not normals? Understandably this does complicate implementation, but likely not to an unreasonable extent. There are also a lot of unranked players, who barely ever encounter cheaters and even less often bots, so having vanguard mandatory there would only bring in the negatives with trust and such.
What I'm mostly wondering is if this is being considered at all? I think it would majorly reduce the friction here and also allow for limited accessibility for linux players.
I appreciate your considered response, its a lot more effective than other approaches. Linux options are a topic of conversation, queue limiting is an interesting idea but may have systemic knock on effects or vulnerabilities. It would be irresponsible for me to promise anything at this point.
We are going to communicate in more depth about the Vanguard rollout. Thankyou for your patience
Security through obscurity? are you nuts? You're inviting trouble.
Those who can exploit Vanguard can now hide in the shadows because there's no accountability for Vanguard's codebase.If you want security, open-source the damn driver, security through obscurity invites nothing but trouble, not just on the security front, but the trust that users have in your driver as well.
As stated, we do not rely on obscurity. I agree open source is good for trust. Today, I believe exposing the code would invite more harm than good.
As an aside, the Spectre vulnerability is one of my "favorite" hacks, and worth the read if you are interested in that space
Sorry to bother you but last roadmap in October the Freljord champ was called she but in this roadmap it was just neutral mage. Is it ok for me to expect a female mage this time? :(
Yes she’s still female
I have dual boot with Linux and Windows. I dont need secure boot nor TPM. With this I will be unable to play League after almost 14 years?
This should, please take it as such, be a call for help from the loyal playerbase. We have very important security questions of our privacy when it comes to something that runs in the background even when League isnt played. This should NEVER happen. If something is trying to run in the background there is a huge backdoor for keylogging and other stuff that Vanguard can be getting from us.You also need to take into account that in EU the regulatory services mandate you cannot send data to the outside of EU, you are under the same thing that Meta and others got hit by.
With all this said please provide us with information what is going to be done on the backend of our systems and how will you plan to solve issues above like TPM and dual boot.
I appreciate everything about your post. Context, concerns, and relevant expertise. Some parts of your questions I do not have knowledge on but will chase down.
We did experience the EU regulation changes around proving player data is accounted for, erasable and kept in the region of origin. That was some painful work but I 100% agree with it. Your online data and identity should be owned by you.
We are going to release a more in depth communication, so I do not want to derail that by saying something inaccurate. I could ask you to trust but I recognize that has to be earnt.
I appreciate that riot are working on more in depth communication and would like to humbly suggest/request that a third party security audit is conducted and posted for Vanguard along with a checksum which could be used to validate that the version of vanguard on users PCs has not been tampered with since said audit.
I think that actions like this could really show a commitment to security and transparency around this which might provide players with a little more than a "trust us!" and go a good way to earning said trust.
Thankyou. I am not sure on the feasibility but I will pass your suggestion on