[2023] Clash, Ranked & Skins | Dev Update - League of Legends

When a champ's close we're going to stop talking about them in things like these Dev update videos. Want to save some surprise, some elements etc for teasers, reveal and PBE. In terms of timing Naafiri should be hitting PBE late June.

The shift back to monthly isn't about population size, but about how we've seen people engage with clash, sentiment about it, perceived specialness etc. At biweekly we see a lot more "I'll just wait for the next one"/"this happens often enough it isn't that special"/"it's hard to get my team together all the time". In retrospect the monthly schedule we originally had for Clash looks like it was a better fit for a larger time commitment that requires some preparation and in exchange should be more of a high moment

Diamond, Master and Challenger are also additions that weren't there from the start. Season 1 was Bronze (top 25% or so from memory), Silver (top 10%?), Gold (Top 2%? can't recall at this point) and Platinum (almost nobody).

Yup. We have been saying the filming date because we can't address stuff that comes out between the shoot and publishing date in the video itself. So we wanted y'all to know that in case something happens and we don't cover it!

Jax - on track for this year still yes.

TFT - will get emerald at some point yes, still figuring out exactly when makes sense in terms of at a set launch, as part of the last midset with 9.5, some other time again though

Something we're trying at the moment is bringing in a guest for each dev update. This time that was Steph, who leads the team that does skins and some other stuff. As a result there's a lot of focus on skins in this particular case since that's her area.

PBEing late June, live in July

Hiya, demotion shields are still in place. Getting promoted into immediately demoted is a pretty bad experience we can avoid while maintaining integrity, if you really aren't cut out for a rank you achieved you won't hold it long term.

Yeah. We'd very much like shorter timelines too, and if these were champs with very small skin catalogues we'd be pretty close to ship. Champs with tiny skin catalogues are generally either new (and don't need an ASU) or pretty niche (so give a lot less benefit when ASU'd, since fewer players are benefitting from the upgrade)

July

Lemme double check with the team on plans there

Still underway, can't offer a specific date yet.

Still coming, don't have an exact date to share today though

Mid July (same time as the 2v2v2v2 mode, Naafiri, soft ranked reset, new thematic etc)

No updates on the Essence Emporium atm. We're still working on it but don't have anything to share beyond Brightmoon's post a few days ago saying this:
"We should be able to update you all on this in the next few weeks! The team has just finished a lot of under the hood changes that will make the Essence Emporium more stable & less hand-coded for each one."

Current thinking - we'll try some non SR Clashes as additional clash runs and some as replacement for that month's SR one. See what sentiment and play rates look like for each approach, figure out what to do longer term

Yeah we're not going to try and force particular gender ratios for a skinline. We instead want to make sure we're going for champs that make sense with that theme, bring something new but resonant to the theme etc. Sometimes that will mean particular skin lines skew towards male or female champs

Yep, we felt consistency across similar games in our ecosystem was pretty valuable here, so wanted to adopt the same terminology and general visual approach Wild Rift had used with Emerald that was well received. TFT will be adopting Emerald as a tier as well in the moderate future (exact timing TBD)

Odd, will pass that on

Huh, good eye. I believe that was an accidental inclusion in the video rather than a deliberate one. Icon updates are the sort of thing we'll fit in where possible around other work, I don't believe we've got a large batch underway at once though

We did double PBE capacity recently in response to queues for the latest TFT set. Might potentially be able to do more again at some point. PBE's not going to be able to accommodate a large proportion of the overall playerbase though, and our priority's on using it to find bugs and do late polish so that the full launch goes as smoothly as possible

Still coming this year, will be in a later dev update when we have specifics to share

PBE's late June, going through balance and bug fixing at present

We're considering options beyond ARAM yeah if there's a game mode available that Clash could make sense on. Can't promise anything, but open to it and discussing future possibilities certainly

If the ice drake goes well for WR we'd be open to adding it to LoL PC as well at some point. Adding additional drakes isn't one of our higher priorities at present for preseason/large gameplay update work though, we think other issues are more pressing gameplay wise

Oh for sure. It's not just a champ's gender though, but their personality, how their kit would tie in with a theme etc too that will determine fit.

Ty for pointing it out! We are including it now. Was just an oversight (and ty Meddler for raising it to us).

Emerald will be added at the same time as the ranked reset in July, so people will go through placements again (shorter this time) rather than getting moved around within the tiers when it's added

PBE late June, live mid July

Moderate. Softer than the start of year one

Yeah something we missed on the article was denoting which ones were event tokens vs mythic essence. Currently having the article edited to reflect what currency will be required for each one.