[2023] July Dev Snapshot + AMA

Originally posted by tylerhk93

Hey all!

Love the game and happy to see it being supported! I think we as a community are still a little confused on the role of variety patches. I think we thought it would be a way to breathe new life into old archetypes, but at times it feels like the cards have been slotted in as teasers for the next expansion. Is this a consequence of the realities of how hard game development is or is this a goal of the variety card system?

Originally posted by butt_shrecker

When can we get more emote slots?

Originally posted by butt_shrecker

Is there any discussion about speeding up card releases? The current pace feels lack luster, especially when the new cards don't impact the meta. And the wait for a new archetype in a players favorite region feels agonizingly long.

Originally posted by Piercingforce

Is duplicate protection for relics still a priority? The protection for gold chests was a nice touch but as someone trying to unlock all relics it really hurts not getting any unique ones week after week. Also return of rubin streams when?

Originally posted by Ploinker23

targeting thoughtful and intentional VO design

I disagree that this has been accomplished. Making several of Samira's followers silent (inc. the one that is mysteriously silent "as part of her character") and adding a bunch of animal followers to cover this up does not make the game feel less hollow. It's a band-aid over a snake bite and it's still really disappointing.

Originally posted by Own-Kaleidoscope7539

When this game launched it had cross-shard play, though it got removed due to technical issues that arose when wanting to implent new features. Most of the other people I know that play this game are on a different shard, and while I understand that some things have to be axed to add to the game, I don't fully understand what features prevent cross-shard from being a thing again, could some light be shed on this?

Originally posted by davetron

Hi! Here's the more detailed answer, from our operations director Scott Hansen:

We built a cross-shard friend challenge early on in LoR and it took a lot of dev time to maintain and test and infrastructure costs. Shards are basically designed to be self contained. For security purposes, certain things can only talk to other things in a certain way. Other challenges are for things like the databases that store what each player owns (and there’s a LOT of cards), what your decks are, etc, they get very large very quick. Then for matchmaking, it’s designed to only look within a shard for speed and efficiency, also since each shard has different weights on what your ranking is. When we enter a game, for both game start, and game end, you need to update all the back end systems that need new information. With cross shard, we essentially solved this by making a smaller “separate shard” that managed the communication between the shards, which requires servers to run, and a lot of new weird edge cases to test and maintain, every single release.

Then when we were updating our back end matchmaking code, we were faced with the difficult decision of spending a lot of time fixing it, or removing the code. We decided to remove the code, given the very small percent of games that were played on it daily. To rebuild it would be a large, complicated project which still would face the same original problems. Since a very small percentage of players used the feature, we decided not to focus on this right now and put resources towards new card mechanics, and game modes.

For one shard, we investigated and found a lot of complicated tech and legal hurdles that we would need to jump through. Storing player data is complicated, legally, as well as who can access what varies around the world. This varies based on different country legal guidelines (things like GDPR). This would also impact every Riot game, since we run on a lot of the same back end systems as other Riot titles, which moves to being a massive coordination and prioritization effort. Which resulted in the same decision of not prioritizing it, like with cross shard friend challenge.

Originally posted by Tangolino

Hello, my question to you guys is related to MacOS.

Would it be possible for Riot to tag the iOS/IpadOS version of the game to be able to run on M powered macs (like Marvel Snap does).

Even being a straight "port", just letting us download it and run it as is would be better than running through the means we have now.

Thank you

Originally posted by ZerglingSergeant

(I hope it's ok to make 2 posts but I did have a comment that was important to me after reading the info on pets).

As a player that started 6 months ago it's a big bummer to hear we won't likely see new pets, I do understand if the economics don't allow for it though. But I would like you to consider other options for us newbies to get some cool pets.

What if you rotated out the selection (possible on an individualized and random basis) of pets available. Like take all the legacy pets and each month give each player access to 4 or 5 to purchase from the list. This method would keep the pets individual and unique (thus special), increase purchase rate (I'm not buying more pets if I see the same options everry time i open the store. Well I might but none of the ones I have access too are appealing). This also creates some FOMO and interactive responses that will increase purchase rate. Then maybe some of that revenue could be put back into making new pets to add to the rotation.

Originally posted by TheRealPuzzle

Hello, and thank you for this snapshot, and AMA it's really nice to see how much the developers care about the community and the game!

I have a question regarding the rotation, are there any future plans for printing new variations of already existing cards in the future and including them in standard play or even changing the existing cards themselves? And if so, regarding champions, if new variations do get printed, will we be able to use owned cosmetics we already had for those champions?

Thank you for your time and have a great rest of your day!

Originally posted by unclecaramel

Mostly a path player so heres my question

First is.thatIs the relic and painful slow grind of path going to see any meaningful changes. The path grind itself was fun at the begging but as more champion are added it often seems super painful to play. Esspecially when it comes to relic which is often very core to certain decks and often than not you have player stuck month without them

Second path deck balancing, is there anything real changes for some of the decks in path who are either weak or hit hard because of pvp changes or is inchonherent mess of champ design

My biggest issue here is varus who has furious strike that doesn't really go well with his game plan and the momentous strike recieve the farsight alteration which actively goes against whag varus wants to do. This hasn't been fix since varus release and often then not pvp changes that mess with decks do not rececieve any compsention for them like VI'S deck poro canon samira changes that makes arrel useless .

Originally posted by gay_poro

Hey LOR DEVS,

Let me start by saying I LOVE YOUR GAME SO MUCH! Thank you for all the effort you put into making this such a fun, accessible game. I will play it until the very end, I swear it on the King himself (you know which one I mean).

It feels like such an injustice that LOR isn't getting the resources that I think it deserves, since it's such a fun and quality game. But I guess I'm biased as a mega fan, and I'm glad you're here to keep making the game fun for us. I think we all knew it was a small team right now, and hearing you acknowledge that is very refreshing. Transparency is so valuable.

I wish I could help make LOR the massive hit it deserves to be. I want to scramble and ask "how about monetising this?" or "how about this feature?", but I trust that you know what you're doing and want it to succeed as much as I do. I wish there was a way to support my lovely LOR DEVS more, I want to make you and your game successful. I think I just need to keep my faith in you all.

Overall, the thing I want most is to keep having fun with the game - and I'm still doing this all these years (!!) later (my latest obsession is making a control / value Poro King deck work).

Here's a throwaway question; How about some new Prismatic styles? :^)

Love love love,

GAY PORO

PS: If you fancy losing some LP, here's my Poro King deck:

EVIL KING: CUCQCBIFBYAQMCRLAEDAKKYBA4GA6AQBAEEBACABAEATKAIBAMRACAIECQAQCBIBAEBQIEYBAQAQ6AIHAUBAEBQFEUXAGAIBAUYQCAQBAMBAMBIUEA

Originally posted by possumish

As a massive lore enthusiast and a Norra enjoyer- I'd like to ask about the proccess of making an exclusive LoR champion! Specifically about the ideation phase; like what would make a charecter a good candidate, or if some followers in the game are made with the intention to make them a champ eventually, or even about their pairings with other champions lorewise (Like Jack with Samira and Sett).. Love the game and exclusive champions are the goat!

Originally posted by dannymanny3

Hi team! Thanks a bunch for this platform to share some thoughts/questions. Really enjoy the snapshot videos, and am excited to hear the platform open for us to ask more questions in them as well as here!

I am particularly interested in the ability for player customization and personalization. For the Custom Shop, which ideas are currently being ideated to curate the inventory? There will be individuals that will be seeking more than just skins, including previous exclusive card backs, emotes, and perhaps even icons. Will all of these be in the pool to unlock? If I am looking for a specific guardian, Tibbers, will there be the possibility to select that? In my mind, I would love to see a system such as "Mythic Gems" in order to unlock a select cosmetic of the player's choice from the full least of previous ones.

Additionally, I would love to see even more ways of unlocking some content. Particularly tied to Mastery numbers, region road completion, and overall playtime. Custom titles for Champion Mastery, i.e. Ricko Rex's Hand of Noxus was mentioned to be ideation by Rubin, so I'd love to hear how that process is shaping up. He had made mention that there will be an emphasis on future-looking rewards, rather than retroactive rewards. Can players expect opportunities to unlock rewards such as Titles and Pins from a not-so-strictly competitive format? Pins/Titles/Icons for playing our favorite champions (in both PvE and PvP would be very cool)

Thanks, team!

Originally posted by RawRockKills

This one is for /u/ggmattb

When are we getting fishing mode in LoR

Originally posted by Fracrosed

I am just dropping by to thank the team for making this wonderful game <3

Originally posted by something_archaic

Not a question, just some thanks.

This is an awesome game. I’ve been playing since beta and I really appreciate that I’ve never felt forced to “buy” anything to enjoy everything the game has to offer. That being said, I’ll echo a point I saw earlier; themed boards are fun, but when you are able to bring boards back, general boards not tied a specific champion might offer more appeal to someone like me who buys one or two boards but wants to use them for every deck.

That being said, the focus on gameplay over cosmetics will definitely keep someone like me coming back time and time again, and if there are good options to spend my money on, I’ll continue to buy cosmetics over time to support the game and you all. Thanks again for all the community engagement!

Originally posted by MikuShikhu

Any word on if Seraphine and Norra will ever be added to PoC? ^{_^}

Originally posted by ZerglingSergeant

Hey I have a few questions I hope that is ok. If you can't answer them all even one would be great! These are just things I'm curious about and are not meant to be any form of critique on the game.

• It would be hard to ignore the similarities between the new ambush mechanic and Morph from MTG. I imagine it would have been beneficial to investigate how that mechanic was received, what cards worked well and what cards were flops, and player preception to the mechanic as you developed the ambush mechanic. How much effort is put into investigating the systems introduced in other TCGs and using the information from that investigation to influence your decision making? #
• As the game matures new mechanics may add more complexity to the game, while this is great for experienced players it can be daunting for new players as each expansion adds to the list of things to learn. How do you balance this demand for increased complexity while still making the game approachable to new players? #
• To what extent is the team open to changing core mechanics as time goes on? Are things like starting life total, starting hand size, landmark interaction, or the mulitan systems on the table to receive an experimental change to improve game health? # Thank you so much for the community communication and on a larger scale the amount of effort and care put into developing this game. While I and others here may have many strong opinions on this game, both good and bad, it is very apparent that the devs care about the health of the game and releasing an enjoyable and engaging product. Thank you.

Originally posted by ZerglingSergeant

Alot of people are asking about PoC changes but no one seems to be asking the most important and the PoC community is dying to know..

When are we getting Ashe?

Originally posted by abetadist

Thanks for the AMA! I think one of the biggest challenges for LoR is monetization. Boards and Guardians are limited because you can only use one at a time. Card skins are scalable but seem to take lots of resources to make.

I had some questions around Prismatics, the other obvious place for scalable monetization. For me personally, the original implementation of Prismatics were not very interesting.

• Are/were animated cards considered, either significant animations or just a bit of motion like in Hearthstone? Are animated cards still being considered or were there strong reasons why these are not being implemented?

• Are other Prismatic styles still being considered for implementation?

Originally posted by Kieron_Marshall

Would you consider opening a community poll so that people can vote on future cosmetics similar to the community card kitchen?

I know there are other games that open competitions where the most upvoted designs are created so that they can first grasp the enjoyment of the player base before spending the resources to create it.

Personally I think this would be the best way to handle cosmetics moving forward and would also let people vote for what they would like to see!

Originally posted by Piercingforce

Thanks for the response and I await my chance to acquired Galeforce in the future.