[2021] Quick Gameplay Thoughts 9/10 - The Gameplay Analysis Team: Who we are & what we do

Hi there.

Just to first create a clear distinction: it's the designer who would decide if an idea is unworkable or not, we'd provide them data & evidence with which to make that decision. Since Pyke is on my mind, for a long time in development his W was true stealth, which we tried to make work in a number of ways before changing it to camo. At one time it was a toggle that consumed a unique secondary resource (he was manaless), eventually we made it a fixed duration, and eventually we made the warning indicator that lets you know he's stealthed nearby (which remained when we converted true stealth to camo).

that iteration was wild.... I think Yone went through more iterations than any other champion I have worked on in my 8 years at Riot

Pyke with 2 charges of his W that gave true stealth still haunts me. Glad we got to show this prowler's claw footage in the article though!

Early iterations on champions are always fun, Akshan for example had his R as a basic ability when the ability was first introduced onto the kit.

Interestingly, Yone W was also a heal and not a shield for the longest time, right up until just before ship!

nope. For this team we don't require any experience... just that you have good communication skills, good design sense, and are relatively high ranked. You would need to relocate to California (eventually, after Covid stuff), but we help with relocation costs a bit

The fact that this was even considered in the first place speaks volumes.

In my opinion, what it speaks to is that developers feel comfortable that they have space to experiment and that they have resources around them that can give them confidence in what their designs are able to do. Like mentioned in the article, we want to empower designers to take risks like this - and they can do so in part because GAT is able to demonstrate what the potential outcomes will be.

One interesting one that came to mind for me is Samira's W, but it was actually the opposite of what you're asking: we thought something wouldn't work, but found it was the best solution.

We originally tried the windwall version we have today, but the designer thought it was too risky; we tried a ton of iterations, including an auto-attack dodge spell (Jax E without the stun) and something similar to Gwen W. Ultimately, we found that her play pattern required a strong defensive spell that was favoured against ranged champions, and this made the most sense.

It was really messed up since he didn't actually need vision to use it. We had a game where a Yone was against a Shaco jungle, and he knew the Shaco recently used Q around raptors, so the player just spammed the button in the Fog of War near the raptor pit, and eventually dashed to the Shaco and killed him LOL

It would be a QA Engineer role in the Los Angeles office - not currently posted.

Abilities like Vex R have a lot of what we call "levers" that can heavily change how the spell actually plays out in practice. From simple things like missle speed and width to more complex things like damage split on the missile hitting v when Vex actually takes the R, as well as of course the complexities of whether or not it can reset and the conditions (kills only?, takedowns?, 2 seconds reset timer or 10?, 3seconds recast timer or 15?). All of the added complexities make for a completely different spell with even the slightest change of any of them, let alone multiple at once. A lot of testing is experimenting with those levers until what we find feels like hits our goals for the spell and are satisfied with the output of the ability.

yes

At one point when Kayle hit level 16 in development she could permanently just fly through walls and such, no terrain collision. Because she's an ascended angel, ya know. I had a good time splitpushing with her, and then when the enemy tried to collapse on me, I would just fly off the map...It was the first time someone seriously asked the question "if you go all the way off the map on one side, do you come out of the other side like Pacman?"

It would require a work visa, so generally needs to be from the US unless you individually have some other way around that

I literally pitched it as "nothin personnel: the item" when brainstorming assassin mythic active items. Its in-dev temp name was Coldsteel Sai.

TL;DR Yes, Vex R dash was a strange interaction with her kit for a lot of development, but we think it's in a good spot now.

Originally I felt similar to how you felt (Vex R placing you in a suboptimal position often), however through continued tuning of the W ability in particular, we have hit a decent spot as far as viability of R casts, since the shield and burst should reward you heavily for taking "riskier" Rs. While this may place your body in danger, the trade-off of your HP for the damage you are dealing is frequently worth it, especially against ranged characters.

Speaking of ranged characters, a secondary positive effect of current Vex R is that it places you within range of W against ranged characters, which otherwise would often be a "dead spell" as far as the damage is concerned against them.

You do not. But maybe one day.

We tried this, and it often interfered with Vex wanting to cast W while fear was up after casting R. That kind of anti-synergy in a kit feels pretty bad, so we ended up not going in that direction.

Also tried that! Had similar problems but also ended up giving the Vex player too much power and agency in a spell that could reset on kill.

We only have an influence on the game design aspect of the champions! There are teams that are dedicated to narrative, aka the story and lore of a champion, while we work separately on what that champion actually does in the game. For the most part they flesh out the character themselves but occasionally they have to work around the game design aspects (for example Akshan's revive was written into the story based on the mechanic we added into the game) so its possible something like the thematic you are describing appears in League, whether its through game mechanics or story writing, but I can't say for sure as I don't work on those teams.

Typically, the designer (and their design lead) has the final call. Designer and GAT member frequently talk through the changelist, the pros and cons, design intent and expected result. If there's a disagreement on these, then we can do any number of things including : bring in more opinions from more senior members of GAT side or design side (including going all the way up to meddler if it's important enough), put something in test to validate the hypothesis (with test goals), ship it with contingency plans (eg. Make a winrate shotcall. If this is more winrate than predicted, then revert it or pull back). There aren't too many issues because everyone has good interpersonal skills and it's handled in a professional manner.

Any large preseason feature goes through him for sure, so like elemental terrains, dragon soul, item rework, that kind of thing. I can't really think of anything smaller scope that he had to be tiebreaker for though.

There's also a big difference between meddler having to be tiebreaker in an official capacity (very infrequent, because it means all of the above processes have failed) and just meddler giving feedback and letting us make the call (relatively common).