League of Legends Dev Tracker

Skins don't see uplift sales after updates, Coporate Mundo included. Its next to nothing compared to a new skin on the crustiest champion.

Mostly because those who want Corporate Mundo already have it ^^' they do not need to re-buy after an update.

We do the updates because we care. Last year we updated Asol, Ahri, Jax and a handful of midscopes.

I'm trying to point out the reality of "can we get 10 updates a year" etc.

We have considered it and experimenting! It's not as easy as taking it and just putting it in.
I think the bet analogy would be early day google translate. You can write in language and then the translator will spit out somewhat similar thing in a different language, but it doesn't really work and will need someone to comb through it and figure out what is wrong and what the original person is trying to say. Sometimes it saves time... sometimes you are better off rewriting everything.
We are still bottlenecked by some disciplines that are usually short. Thus, we are looking at ones that require lower work from those disciplines. Trying to figure out what works and what doesn't...what might be better vs worse.

Ahri and Jax both saw 1-2 patches of players trying the champion and then return to base line.
The biggest impact was probably Asol! He has a much better baseline now compared to previous (though currently still in the yorick and even slightly lower depth than velkox) and we don't worry about pro issues as much.
However, the amount of champion that has an S tier theme and is heavily held back by their design is minimal.
Evelynn, Warwick and Akali are probably the champions that were the biggest winners from VGUs. But even that the engagements doesn't compare to releases like Kai'Sa, Senna, Kayne and Sett.

We did pretty heavy analysis for multiple updates. Most will try out the update for one or two patches and return to the champion they love best.

Hey Nicky! <3 Hope you are doing well!

We recently updated the webpage with a more current timeline. Right now it just says "early 2024."

This page goes over a bit more of WHY its been closed for so long, but high level- we didn't hit our goals of 2021 when we first updated the page. There was a lot more we needed to get ready before we could open them back up and we underestimated how long that would take. https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-au/event/league-of-legends-partner-program/

The best answer to this question is honestly going to be "it depends". There's so many different paths into the industry that it's kind of hard to nail down a "this is the way".

The best advice any of us of our respective crafts can give you is just... start doing the thing you want to be an expert in, and learn everything there is about it. Want to be an artist? start making art. Want to be a game design? Start making stuff.
Literally start creating stuff or practicing the craft.

It may work out, or it may not, but if you don't start doing the thing you want to do, then it's never going to just come to you. Just because you're in something now, doesn't mean you can't change. Pretty sure all of us can name someone who was in a different career field before they just popped into games.

To be honest, if updates were a grand slam in terms of engagement (players coming back to play them, continue playing them, uptick in players in longterm of playing them), I do think there will be a lot bigger draw to doing them. Unfortunately, we have done enough of them to see that they may uptick shortly but have no long term impact or even mid term impact.
It buys us goodwill and sentiment, but only on some reddit threads and twitter. Some countries are more change adverse than others

Popping over here to cover the Vanguard question! I'll try and poke folks for the others.

Currently it's planned to be deployed with the 14.4 patch, but that could always change depending on development shenanigans. You should start seeing prompts to download and install Vanguard starting in 14.2 (also with the usual development things can change caveat).

I think there are alot of factors.
1) We have higher and higher bar with higher organizational complexities. Discipline bars (engineering, art, design, sound etc etc) have all increased over the years thus it is harder and harder to do. Moreover, we just have more people to align (especially Lore wise) as multiple teams are working in the same universe.
2) Champs team had lots of veterans that we are branching out and helping re-staff other teams. Eg: Modes. We did refill those headcounts, so as time progress things might speed up. Teams need time to settle in and work well together.
3) Active decrease of champions. We actively decreased the amount of new champions each year because we were looking to staff up these other initiatives.

I don't know much about how we got to the point where there wasn't a modes team etc. That was before my time here :)

Yeah you're right that currently we still don't support Linux and at least at the moment we don't have any plans for that to change. That's not to say that it will always be the case, it's just one of those harder decisions to make when it comes to supporting operating systems.

The impact from cheaters/scripter/botters has been pretty substantial over the years and Vanguard will put a massive damper on that. Unfortunately some fringe user cases like playing League on Linux will likely be stopped almost entirely in order to better combat the cheaters who want to ruin everyone else's time.

The ways that Linux users currently are accessing League will likely break and/or will no longer be able to play League. In order to continue playing League you'll need to migrate either to Windows or Mac. I know it's definitely not the answer you're looking for but unfortunately it's the only option for now. :(

I'm not trying to say that, I'm going to be real with you. Others are not doing it because there is very real cost and thus most companies would look for something in return (New game release that you would have to purchase, DLCs etc).

League is ultimately is a free game. If we pause everything to attempted to do this many reworks...I don't think we would be in business for very long. It also isn't sustainable.

Ex: If we scale up rapidly in this economy (when most companies are downsizing), sure we can support that for a couple of years. But what happens when all of the champions are updated? Where do these devs go then? Unlike other companies, Riot does not heavily let go their devs whenever projects release.
If we don't scale up rapidly, as we trickle in the update content... there is a very real question of which is more important and what tradeoffs we are making. Do the next couple of new hires go towards updates, or new mode, or new champion or new seaso...

We have done things like VFX and splash updates. However, some of these champions are pretty gnarly behind the scenes, thus if we were to update even textures...we would want to update everything if possible.

I want to talk a bit more about the updates on deck in the next roadmap (Ex: Shyvana). Not sure when the best time to talk more yet. Maybe April, maybe later. I think with Ambessa, I'm not looking to spoil too much :D We have some neat things planned for her and spoiling it too early will not be as fun!
Sylas was the champion we ended up making last time we attempted to make this mage.

Our tech is not at the place where we can do that just yet.

You are right when you say that updates makes no business sense. Updates are pretty costly, we are not just updating the base but re-doing years of investment into a champions (skins etc). I don't think there are lots of other companies or industries that will turn old releases into new ones without selling something or other. We also found that large updates actually have a pretty good chance to turn away returning players (your most loved champion isn't like what you remembered and thus higher barrier to return) and turn off some mains of that champions (you love the way the champion is now). Not to mention
The reality is, no update on a single champion will move the needle for a player to come back, engage in the game more etc. I know lots of players that are vocal on reddit do believe that updates encourage them to play more, but the reality is that new champions are a bigger draw with no comparison.

However, to maintain long-term overall health and game fidelity...

Surprisingly, overall his playrates are not that low. His playrate could be higher in higher elo etc, but it's not too problematic. Usually it's more problematic for a champion to appear too much in pro.
I think we would see how the new season shakes out first!

I agree! I think the team wants to level up a bit (we have a handful of new to champs team designers and myself) before attempting. Considering this is like what... the 13th rework he is getting? XD

Riot Yelough joking tells me that he will do it when he is ready for a promotion in a couple of years.

Season 2024 has begun, and devs from across League of Legends are here to answer your questions. From the CG to the announcements in our ...

Did the person play normals or just aram?