u/RiotMeddler are you able to tell us if Leblanc is a Visual and Game Update? Or just Visual Update? And those collars that she have will it be adjusted to decrease a little bit of her size?
Its purely a Visual Update. We believe that her kit is in a good place. She has a unique space is the game as a Mage/Assassin hybrid and her kit still works well in that niche.
If a seasonal theme is in an alternate universe, would the new champion for that season be from runeterra or from that universe?
From Runeterra
Did you guys consider using LeBlanc's look from LOR? Could you tell why the team decided to go with what we've seen instead of that? (I'm not complaining, I think the new look is even better! Just curious).
We used that as a starting point. That was still heavily based on LoLs old current version though and we felt she needed a bigger overhaul to really achieve who she is portrayed as in the narrative. Overall her facial features/vibe is still pretty similar to the lor version, she just got a new outfit.
Also are you able to share the DNA team working Mel and/or LeBlanc like for old times sake
LeBlanc is just a VU so it doesn't have DNA. Lonewingy has been driving it from the Art side, since its really just a art project. Art and Narrative for Mel was a collab between Frotiche/Champs team with artists/writers on both sides contributing. It didn't go through the normal DNA process because she was already a established character from Arcane (Ambessa was similar) Design was done my Emizery.
We actually locked her spell reflection thing like 3 years ago-ish, when I was still Team Lead on Champs, before production on Arcane season 2 started. Just that one ability, as we wanted to ensure we could make a cool kit out of it.
REAV3!!!!! ❤️
Ahem. Sorry, had to get that out of my system. Missed ya dude!
LOL! Glad to see your still playing league....and still waiting for that Quinn VGU. Well at least she's getting further long in line every year :P
Lol, what a mess So no hopes for her rework this year, like you guys first said?
Not his year sadly
I hope we can at least still have one update per season! It would be nice if we could have two (say, both LeBlanc AND Vladimir), but I understand that might be too much to ask. I think having a goal of at least one per season would be great especially for the ones themed around regions cause there's always at least one champion who's important to their region's lore and in need of an update (say, Lux for Demacia, Ashe for Freljorld).
The reason we keep it open is that the new champs/VGUs are still the main priority. New gameplay generally has a much stronger effect on engagement then just a VU. We can't know ahead of time how much resources new champs and VGUs will take so it would be hard to commit to any number of VUs. For example, Shyvana has a TON of skins and with a Dragon form that is basically 2 models per skin, plus animations and VFX for both models. If we were shipping a Shyvana VGU for a season we might have to pull a large chunk of our art team into the production of that project, which would probably cause us to stop or drastically slow down VU development for a bit. Likewise a new Champ like Hwei would do similar things because of hoy many abilities he has (though not to the degree of Shyvana of course)
Generally speaking our priority is New Champs/VGUS > VUs. That being said New Champs/VGUs take a lot of design time before we lock the kit, and its hard to predict exactly how long it take...
Read moreIs there ever something like going through every single champion in the game, looking at where they are, what they could need and just in general giving all of them attention?
Given some champions can go years without any changes, is that really a case of them being "perfectly balanced"?
Or is it some of them just not getting looked at in the first place?
Not just balance but gameplay too
I mean, yeah we have a list, but that doesnt mean we can work on everything all at once. We think it's important that we continue to evolve SR, make new Champs, and new game modes as well. It's about striking a balance between all of these things. Our design team does release mid scopes here and thier for champs that need smaller gameplay adjustments, and then we have VGUs and VUs for champs who need bigger gameplay changes or no gameplay changes. Its about prioritizing all these projects and choosing the ones we think have the highest value at the time. Different players have different wants/needs. Some want new champs more then updates to old champs, some don't even want new champs or updates, they just want new ways to play LoL (Game modes) and some play SR a million hours a week and want to see big changes/evolutions to that.
u/RiotMeddler we getting ARURF “next patch”, by next patch you mean tomorrow 25.S1.1? Or the next one on Jan 23?
25.S1.2 (so yes, two weeks from now)
didnt you guys cancel Shyv vgu bc of the seasons? and now are saying that updates wont always ties 100% to season then why cancel a rework we waited for so long... I may not undestand the things but it feels that way like you just didnt want to update her in favour of exalted skins and other champs
We want to time her release with a season that makes sense for her. She was ice-boxed for a bit for other projects that were higher priority but development has just recently started on her again. We still really want to get her update into the hands on players, we just shifted to focus on the Arcane champs (Viktor/Mel/Ambessa) for a bit.
Are we allowed any info on the roles of upcoming champs?
It’s been like 5 years since the last tank/engage support. Would kind of suck to get hopes up and then each season they release an assassin and mage or something 😭
Just is cool to know if you should expect to be excited for the champs of this year or not based on what role you main is all. But I understand wanting to keep suspense and surprise…
Currently, with Champs being very integrated with each season we don't plan on talking about them before a more official reveal. Was Rell 5 years ago at this point! Man time flies. Yeah we probably need another one in the future. I think we also need a another more aggressive fighter support like Pyke/Thresh. Been awhile since we made a support like that as well
With less new champions, what about monster champs or humanoid champs? I'm guessing there will be a new one every 2 or 3 years now?
It really depends on what the seasonal theme is and what makes sense. With the new seasonal format I think prioritizing Champs that feel cohesive with the theme and narrative of the season is more important then if the champion is a monster or not. If a monster makes the most sense for a given seasonal theme, or for a story our narrative team wants to tell then we would make a monster for it.
Are you still able to talk about gameplay related stuff, IIRC you mentioned you were lead gameplay producer but not sure if your title has changed these last few years
Im currently a Principal Product Manager on the Seasons team. Im focusing on Champs, Meta-games and Modes. So yeah I can probably talk about most of that stuff. SR updates not so much.
Pkay so now reworks are tied up to seasons, but there won't be tease until the new season drops right? But what happens to old champs that barely fit in the lore or need a update, but already have a thematic season like Noxus for example
We won't 100% tie every champ to a specific seasonal theme, both new and VU/VGUs. Sometimes it will make a lot of sense so we will do it. For "Welcome to Noxus" LeBlanc was a key figure in the narrative and we felt like her old look was so outdated that the opportunity and the seasonal theme matched so it made sense to pursue. That won't always be the case though.
As Brice mentioned in the video we wont always have a seasonal theme be base Runeterra, it could also be a AU. In those cases the New Champions or updates can really be anything since region won't be a factor. We also might explore some seasonal themes that aren't directly tied to one specific faction.
Also champions can appear in the story of a different region, even if they are not from that region or faction
I miss Reav3
Don't we all. (He's still here lol)
I miss Reav3
Im still here! Not working directly on Champs anymore though. I am currently helping a bit with the champs team while the new Product Owner ramps up.
This is crazy to me that you're talking about potentially having to evacuate from fires and then in the next breath go back to explaining game updates to redditors... Godspeed champ, hope everything is okay, and thank you for your time!
Appreciated. One of the trade offs to living in LA. Helps to have stuff to do while waiting and I generally like chatting about the game of course :)
Great dev video, lots of content. I was sad not to see a champ teaser for second season/not to hear more about the mysterious symbol at the end of the season start video but I'm guessing the storytelling of season 1 will slowly build up to 2nd season and hopefully then more will be revealed
Mysterious symbol - yep, deliberately mysterious for now. Will certainly become clear over time though
Second season theme and champ - plan is to save many of the details about that until close to the start of said season
Last I've heard is alledgedly the SEA server merge will come out at start of 25.S1. Thanks for the confirmation though, at least now that I know it's not abandoned
Was just told that's still the target by someone closer to that work, so fingers crossed should be live this week
Is LB a VGU or ASU?
It's an update to her visuals and audio, with no or minimal gameplay changes
Saying it that way because at this point the definitions of VGU, ASU, midscope, other update etc feel super blurred because we've taken different approaches based off what makes sense for any given champ. I'm not convinced they're very valuable terms at this point as a result
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