League of Legends Dev Tracker

Brink of Infinity (what shipped earlier this week) isn't what we were originally building. Once we knew we wouldn't be able to deliver a cinematic like other season starts we looked at what we could do with limited time, Brink of Infinity was the result. It wasn't intended to be a replacement or at the same level as a regular cinematic, thinking was it would be better to try something that do nothing. In retrospect we should have definitely talked to you all in advance about how things had gone wrong and arguably might still have been better off not shipping Brink of Infinity (was something not up to standard much worse than nothing etc)

It was planned, got scripted, we got partway through development. The reason it didn't get finished is something I can't share specifics on, and I'm really sorry about that because I know it's a frustrating answer. I can say I'm very certain we won't hit the same issue with a cinematic for next year's season start.

Edit: Actually, to add a bit of tangibility - we saw some speculation that Aatrox would be in the season start cinematic because of the Aatrox ward skin, just like Ornn and the Ornn ward skin last year. That was indeed the plan, Aatrox was one of the featured champions.

Still coming, delayed due to tech limitations (using the AOE targeting reticle to display where the ward is going to go looks pretty terrible). We're still planning to have it out within the next few patches or so

Things I'm confident enough to mention: - Game mode (2v2v2v2) as per the video, that I'm personally really optimistic will be a very fun experience - We're not doing a visual novel. We're prototyping a different take on a meta experience instead. Happy mentioning that, work isn't yet far enough along to offer any more, though will do so in following months be it what's working or what didn't - A new thematic for the event that pairs well with the 2v2v2v2 game mode concept (so not a return of any of the existing ones).

Beyond that - Not sure yet, will keep you folks posted. I don't think we'll hit the scope of the Odyssey event, but are certainly working to rebuild ability to run varied events regularly.

Puppet shows?

Uh....

One of the things we're doing is team changes so we can have more than one ASU underway at once. We're aiming to share a few details soon on that (hopefully a couple of champs we're targeting and our best guess as to timelines)

1. Working on a game you also really love, missing the mark on stuff, seeing everyone else sad and upset about that does feel really bad

2. I'm not the most emotive person to begin with when doing stuff like this and tend to hate being on camera, so apologies there...

It's something we'd like to offer, hence inclusion in Wild Rift for example. With the way Summoner's Rift was built it would require some pretty substantial overhaul's to the map's art unfortunately. Whenever's the right time to update the map as a whole we'll definitely do camera stuff like that.

I think the current version of SR has held up really well visually, but it's certainly going to hit a point sometime where the amount of stuff, both overall appearance and opportunities like that one, makes the case for another full update

https://twitter.com/LeagueOfLegends/status/1614028829823209472

Or just, we're busy people who have a lot going on, and we need time to issue a proper 7 minute response.

https://twitter.com/LeagueOfLegends/status/1614028829823209472

And then there's this :)

We absolutely should have. I pushed for us to make something when it became clear we wouldn't have a cinematic. Brink of Infinity wasn't meant to be a replacement for the CG but it certainly felt that way and taught me to never bring a blueberry muffin to a birthday if everyone is expecting I'm going to bring a birthday cake

I'm saying there's a lot of vitriol directed at game developers - not just Riot ALL game developers - by a noticeable amount of the community on social media, and it's getting out of hand. And those extreme examples, impact people more than you realize, which dampens the noise of truly passionate, thoughtful, well intentioned humans. There is a feedback loop of gamers being angry/hateful/sarcastic/disingenuous, based off some things that may have happened in the past, and game developers have in some cases cowtowed to that behavior and rewarded it. Now, people think they can still approach devs in that way, because they do feel passionate or something, but think that being really angry is the way to get change to occur. It's not.

As a gamer, I can't think of any other game developer I interact with in the way that Riot players can interact with Riot. So I can understand being really upset if say, a game comes out, it's not what was expected, or it feels like something you l...

Ah, apologies if we put a bit too much weight on the cinematic in our delivery. We wanted to cover that up front as the most recent thing, the trigger for talking like this in a much rougher than usual format, as something that was extra painful given other misses. Didn't want to convey we thought it was the central or key issue.

Going to do our damnedest. Looking to be a lot more proactive where we haven't been recently, I expect there'll also be some emergent stuff where reactive discussions are also needed too though (in addition, not instead)

What's your preference on format? I tend to favor text blogs or similar just personally (hate being on camera most of the time), but I realize a lot of people tend to prefer video content regardless.

Yeah, that's the intent. 4 teams of 2 players, matchmaking against a random other pair each round, buy items and gain levels between rounds. Lose enough rounds and you get eliminated. Still figuring out a lot of the details in terms of how many rounds, map layout etc.

Lemme ask about getting it onto YouTube as well if it's not already being done.

Based off what we've prototyped so far I think that one will be a game mode that works really well for some players and isn't of much interest to others. If you're looking for things like a focus on tactical champ v champ combat, figuring out which pairings of champions work best together and how builds should change in this context, this mode could be pretty exciting. If you're looking for different experiences, then yeah, might not be the right fit.

We're working to get back to offering a wider variety of modes for a range of different tastes. This is the example we were best placed to talk about today and we figured more transparency and specificity on what we trying than we've been offering recently was important, even if this example wouldn't appeal to everyone watching

We tried to cover as much as we could in a short amount of time (I already think 8 min is a long ask) so while we didn't cover everything we will continue to have updates on more parts of the game in the coming weeks and months

In retrospect, yeah, most of this should have either been in the recent dev videos or should have been things we brought up with you all last year.

There are also a couple of things, like the recently prototyped game mode I mention, that didn't exist when we were producing those videos in November and December.