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SenseiChroma: Do you sometimes go around Reddit or other media platforms to create new ideas for a card?
DanCast(DC): We go around LoR player communities on Reddit and elsewhere quite often, not for new card ideas specifically, but to understand what players are liking and not liking about the game. Better understanding people's impressions and desires factor into what we make in the future more broadly.
IDKhow2Discord: Thanks so much for doing this AMA, super big fan of the Runeterra universe, been playing League of Legends for 7+ years, LoR since closed beta and super excited to finally try and participate in a Riot AMA! What was the process like play testing for the balance of this segment of the Targon release year, specifically the new region of Targon itself? Was Targon created holistically then segmented, or has development and balancing always been aware and aiming for the current style of a segmented release for the region? As the only other region expansion we’ve seen so far, Bilgewater seems like it could have been wildly different in terms of both thematic resonance and balance if it and the other original 6 regions new champions added in Rising Tides had been separated into segments. And if Targon was originally created holistically do you think the segmented release will make balancing harder going forward, as some card synergies or natural archetype counters have already been developed, but not yet released?
Dovagedys(D): Thanks for the question(s), It's a complicated question with a complicated answer. Ultimately, we know we want to be able to provide new cards to everyone at a satisfying cadence. Originally, we had planned to release new cards every 4 months, but over the past 6 months we quickly realized that is not fast enough. We wanted to move to a two month cadence, but most of the work for Targon and the region that comes after Targon had already been done. We definitely did extensive play testing and balance work on each segment. We believe that all three releases bring new things to the game and are fun to play.
Intrif: Your favourite Colour?
D: Purple. Bearly Leah(BL): Getting in on the easy answer here, blue or purple!
TheSkilledRoy (TSR): I am a huge fan of designing custom cards in just about all the card games I play, and some card games are very transparent with their design philosophies. While I understand LoR is a much newer game than some of those games and thus might have less nailed down in the way of philosophy; we saw relatively recently some of the design process outlined in your "From Champ Select to Your Deck" Article. For those of us who either wish to design custom content, or for those who might one day wish to apply to work for LoR as a designer, would it be possible to get many more articles in the same vein as that one? I feel as though many of the designing/custom group would love to hear what goes into the game and what considerations/values you have for each Region.
Careless Whisper(CW): Great question, and I'm glad to hear the previous articles were helpful. More articles on design and our design process is definitely on the list of to do. Knowing what things y'all are interested in learning more about helps us a ton!
Tail Lover: When can I expect the other league champs with tails to be added to this game? I know you likely can't answer this but I can dream.
DC: What about a champion that sometimes has a tail?
TSR: LoR's coding and way of handling various effects such as card positioning and sequencing is really fascinating. However I'm curious just how much is easily able to be modified/used for card design. For ex; Hypothetically speaking is it possible to reference the opponent's username in a levelup animation? For example with a champion say Pyke and The List?
DC: The tech team tells me it's harder than you'd think. We had a cosmetic concept where we wanted to put your game name on the cosmetic but we decided it wasn't going to be viable.
Maple: Hi Rioters! Thanks for helping us. Following the balance patches this summer, and the release of COTM are y’all considering reexamining the presence of Aggro/Combo in the game? So far it seems that these new tools empower midrange and value strategy to a great degree, but don't seem to have any new threats to keep them in check. Thanks!
D: Great question, Maple The release of Targon is still very young. I think there are still a lot of evolutions and learnings to come as people explore and the meta evolves. We are constantly evaluating the meta and working hard to ensure a healthy and diverse play experience. We want players to be able to play all kinds of decks and be able to have fun and find success. If we notice certain decks over performing we will continue our efforts to tone down cards that are overbearing and pushing other options out of the meta, as well as buffing cards that can encourage more decks that are under represented.
IDKhow2Discord: Any chance of getting long term profile stats like matches played, lifetime number of 7-win Expeditions trials, the ratio of achieving 7-wins per expedition attempts etc., so I can finally prove to my friends I’m the Expedition king of LoR? Any fun stats in general or fun personal stats you keep track of behind the scenes on individual profiles you could one day share? (Numbers of Poro’s summoned?)
DC: Yes, we believe a player profile that contains some type of match history plus a record of feel-good stats/achievements like this is a great feature and something that provides a social foundation for seeing what other players are up to - what they pursue and accomplish. It's something we will be working on.
ASDASDS: What is your least favorite card and why is it so?
BL: I have a hard time playing around Ledros. It's silly but I always forget about him and then die to him! D:
Domi: Hey guys, thanks for this AMA. About Taric's ability: Why did you "nerf" his interaction with Playful Trickster day 1?
D: Thanks for the question! We knew about the Taric + Playful Trickster combo and originally intended to have it go live with Call of the Mountain. However, after some discussion among game design, play test team, and game play leadership we decided that the opponent's experience was potentially too unfun. We want to ensure that both players are having fun in our game. Losing isn't very fun, but unavoidable in a 1v1 game. However, losing slowly and being stuck in a trapped game is very unfun and avoidable. We want games that have a clear winner to end very quickly and the Taric + Playful Trickster combo had high potential to lead to games where 1 player had no mana and no actions to take, but would be forced to click OK repeatedly while Taric slowly attacked them to death. That sounds like a terrible experience and we wanted to protect players from being forced into situations like it.
EmpressTeemo (ET): I've read that LoR was planned to be available on multiple platforms (mostly mobile) very early on in the development. Was there any particular difficulty in porting the code over to mobile clients, or did you simultaneously code all the different builds at the same time?
BL: We built the code from the beginning to prepare for mobile - so that helped us a lot being aware of budgeting needs, especially on low end devices. Certain things, like trying to constrain ourselves to memory budgets per asset (such as texture), and running memory tests per build help us know if we're exceeding our mobile limits. This has been pretty beneficial over making it for PC then going to mobile, as we had less fixing to do for mobile launch.
TaGL: How do you decide which champions to add to each expansion? Is it more based on popularity, or how much they could bring to the game?
CW: Huge caveat that this will usually vary from expansion to expansion. Generally the process is we look at which champions best represent the region and can show off exciting mechanics or themes. Then we look at a swath of things like champ popularity, cool lore moments we want to expand on between champions, overall tone of the set, etc.
ASDASDS: Do you have a clear vision on what you would do once you will run out of regions to add?
D: Hi ASDASDS ! Yes. We have a clear plan for content that comes after our last 2 regions are introduced to the game. Unfortunately, we can't discuss future content right now, but in some cases we work on content up to 2 years before it's released.
TSR: League of Legends is well known for it's incredibly diverse range of Alternate Universes and Skins. Just recently we had a Spirit Blossom event synchronized with the LoL event at the same time. Judging from the new render of SBYasuo, alot of us were expecting some sort of premium version of Yasuo such as a skin for the card. Seeing as that obviously didn't happen, what is the team's stance on skins for cards? Perhaps with new VO/FX/Levelup Animations?
DC: We have loved bringing some of the alternate fantasies to LoR through our current cosmetic products. Card cosmetics will be in LoR's future, but we're taking our time to put our best foot forward on it, including some player studies. We have to think a lot about would players rather SB Yasuo be a skin or SB Yasuo be a new card with it's own flavor and abilities?Are there some fantasies we should do as cosmetics and others we should do new cards - can we do it both ways and have it be clear to players? That's what we think about. Let us know your thoughts on the boards!
CuriousThing: Hi all! Bit of a technical curiosity: in open beta, there was a bug that allowed a player to cast Spinning Axe discarding a card that was "about" to be discarded by another effect. What was the source of this bug? Was the game engine tied to the UI somehow?
BL: That's a fun one! Disclosure: I didn't work on this bug, and I don't work on gameplay itself. But from speculation my guess would be that while the card was marked for delete, there was a time in cleanup while the animation was playing that it was still clickable, and was not marked as discarded until the animation ended. So not as much to do with UI as a timing issue.
Splingo: The video containing the roadmap for future content (e.g. the addition of Labs, Gauntlet, the Event) was super awesome. Is there another one like that planned? When should we expect it?
DC: Yes there's one being planned now. Don't expect it too soon, but we want some way to talk about the end of the year with all of you. I hope the video works out
ET: Are there any super crazy mechanics or cards you wanted to implement into the game but scratched in the end? I'm thinking of stuff like the chicken that deals 1 damage when you hover it in Hearthstone, things that are just simply bizarre :D
D: There are a ton of designs that the team tries that don't make it to be released. Sometimes they aren't fun, sometimes we can't balance them, or sometimes they don't fit well with the rest of the release. In general, we try not to discuss these ideas publicly too often, because we may decide to use them in a future release and we don't want to spoil the surprise.
Ryu: This question is completely unrelated to this game, so I’m not sure if you guys can even answer this. I’ll be finishing my 4th year of college studying cyber security this spring. I’m still trying to figure out what sort of work I’d even want to do, but I’m just curious if you guys know of any opportunities at Riot Games? Or if there’s someone I could contact regarding this? I checked the site and don’t see any opening for security jobs currently, but did see you have a bug bounty program.
BL: We do have teams that work in security. So it's something available, even if the position isn't open now. I would definitely work on putting together something demonstrable of your skill, portfolio/Github/etc, so when the time comes you'd be ready!
Splingo: How does the team view the Spirit Blossom event? Was it a success? What were the major learnings from it, and do more events in the future seem likely?
DC: We do view it as a success - and our post-event player surveys showed you all liked it too! The main thing we want to improve from the learnings is the Quest/Win of the Day system. We want to emphasize the win of the day less, and instead have more progress come from having a more distributed cadence of quests throughout the event (not all up front). As well as have the quests be less specific (I know how you feel about challenge 100 units) On the rewards: we saw players want less shards on the event road, and some new more interesting rewards instead, so we're going to work on that.
Lhunatyk: The art and lore of LoR have been amazing! How do you choose which statline/effect goes with each art/flavor?
CW: Great question! During development design works closely with narrative and art to create the art with the statline and effects of the card. So it's less of "choosing" and more creating them together as one complete coherent piece. This will often mean chatting about the theme of the character, what is important about their stat line or effect, and how to best represent those mechanics in the art.
TSR: I do love a lot of the cosmetics currently available in the game (Guardians, Cardbacks and Boards) Can I hear some more about future upcoming cosmetics that aren't in those categories and more ways to sink my bank account?
DC: But you don't love emotes?? Why can't I Jinx OMG react in this Discord?
ImpulseNE: There seems to be many cards that seem like they are supposed to be attached to currently unreleased champions. Is there a reason for releasing these cards and will you be doing any else like this in the future?
D: Great question! Cards connections in LoR are a complex network of interactions. There are many cards that are designed for specific champions, but can end up working in past, present, and future decks. We try to release cards together that we think will be the most fun and create the most interesting interactions. And we think it's fun to allude to what could be potentially coming in the future. Yes we will continue to do so in the future.
Ace: How happy were you with the meta before the expansion hit, were you satisfied with the variety of decks played?
D: Hi, thanks for the question. I am extremely proud of LoR's meta since the launch of our game. Before we launched we had a goal of having a metagame that had 10 decks. And we knew that was a lofty goal. However, since the launch of LoR we have repeatedly seen metagames that have 20, 25, 30, and up to 35 different decks that are competitively viable. I am completely blown away by the metagame diversity in LoR's meta game and excited to see it continue to evolve over time.
Simple Enigma: Just like almost everyone else I love the emotes! So much personality in them and conveys really fun emotions. Especially with how rapidly new emotes are being added are there plans to allow for more emotes to be 'equipped' for a match? And of course which 8 emotes are you running now?
DC: Wait..are you hacking to run 8 emotes? Yes, I would love for everyone to have more emote access. We want this, but we want to build a lot of things, so it comes down to deciding our priorities on what delivers the most player value. There may be a time where we have to work on a related feature, so an opportunity to adjust this will come up. My ideal would be an intuitive UI that's fast to use on mobile where a player could access all their emotes. My current fav 6: Not Sure If, Wink, Cheers, Sweating, Into My Trap, and (of course) Obliteration
Domi: What was the hardest card from Targon to code? Is it some card we’ve already seen or is it one yet to come?
D: Funny question, Taric has definitely been the most complicated card to code in Call of the Mountain.
Callonetta: When you're not working on LoR things, what games do you like to play? Mostly card games or do you sink your time into games completely different than the ones you work on?
BL: I play a lot of League of Legends / Overwatch as well. I also love party games to play with friends and platformers, metroidvanias and rhythm games galore. Some of my favorite games are the Ori series, Super Mario Sunshine, Dance Dance Revolution and Beat Saber!
Callonetta: From card drawing, animations, and even gameplay itself, LoR seems unique in that “feels bad” moments don’t come up as often as other card games I’ve played. I was wondering what specific challenges you faced creating a game that felt good to play, and what you would like to do in the future to make LoR feel even better?
D: Thanks for the thoughtful question, Callonetta. We have a lot of great plans for LoR in the future. We have worked hard to build a great foundation for the game, but this is only the beginning. Ultimately, the ideas we choose to deliver to make LoR feel better will come from the community. We want to listen and learn from you all to help us choose the improvements that you all want. I think one of the most special parts about the LoR team is how dedicated everyone on the team is to listening to players and learning how to make the game better for everyone.
mcfries mcburger: What's the basis for your card design in terms of power level? Do you ever just think of a card and say "this card is too strong/weak" and how do you tune it to the level at which it feels juuuust right?
CW: Generally when it comes to the power level of a design we ask ourselves 2 questions. Is this card sensible given the rest of the cards? If not, are there numbers (cost, power, health, effect output) where this could be a sensible card? As for how we decide what sensible is, it's a lot of playtesting, feedback, and evaluating other cards that do similar things.
Callonetta: Other things that can make a game feel bad are long animations, slow draw speed, etc. I'm sure there are a ton of other things you all do to make the game feel clean and smooth to play (UI), how you can customize your own boards, guardians, etc that make it feel more like "you", along with game mechanics that feel fair. I'm happy for any answer at all! Mostly I'm impressed at how much attention to detail has been given to making the game feel really good to play as often as possible, and wondering how you work out what's working in those areas, what isn't, and what you'd like to improve.
DC: The best way to encapsulate it is the LoR team is made up of Rioters who really care deeply about the player experience and are detail oriented and very creative at their problem solving. I'm honored to work with everyone on this team.
Diogo gol: The enemy Aurelion Sol turning allied Celestials into 0 cost, was that a bug?
D: Thanks for the question Diogo gol! The interaction of Aurelion Sol level 2 reducing the cost of opponent's cards was a bug. We released a fix for that bug shortly after the release of Call of the Mountain.
nico🥀: Hi id like to say I'm a huge fan of LoR. I’m wondering what guardian you all like the most personally for me it's cosmo :3
D: Personally, my favorite guardian is Von Yipp, but it's really hard to choose because there are so many awesome guardians. And I'm excited for upcoming guardians that will become my new favorites!
ET: Hi Leah :> You mentioned you don't work on the gameplay parts of the game! As someone who has no idea of what software engineers do, would you mind describing which parts of the end product you've been working on?
BL: Absolutely thanks for the Q! I do metagame work on DanCast's team! So Events, onboarding, rewards, quests, end of game are the types of things my team touches. We work to make sure the "out of game" experience feels good to interact with too. There's also plenty of other engineering teams too! Such as those who work to keep our build pipelines running smoothly. And they're all essential to getting LoR out to players
Cowboy Toast: One of the best parts about Legends of Runeterra are the amazing animations we see with many cards, even if they aren't champions. The recent expansion especially is incredible and very beautiful with all the designs and animations. Anyways, what's your favorite pizza topping?
BL:: Pineapple and ham Pepperoni! I'm simple but it's delicious. Also I eat the crust of my pizza first.
CheezeDraco: Would you consider diversifying the rewards in gauntlets? Because the current icon rewards are granted for the first play/win and then the mode is usually ignored by most players until a new mode/format arrives.
DC: Yes, but we're working on rewards that we think will be a better fit and can be more extensible than icons. Be on the watch for one of those future Dev videos to learn more (again, not too soon)
Klonne: Could you guys already be planning/working on champions cards that are not found in League of Legends?
D: We often talk about making new champions that don't exist in League of Legends, but right now we are focused on introducing as many champions from League into LoR as we can. There are over 140 champions in League of Legends and LoR doesn't have 1/3 of them yet.
TaGL: Do you plan to give support to older archetypes like sea monsters and scouts in current(COTM) and future expansions?
CW: We do! Part of future content design is not just expansion of older regions, but also how to add to the archetypes already present.
TerraGen: Hey guys, thanks for doing this AMA! I love all the work you have done with LoR. I love everything about the game! My question is whether or not there is a plan to add in a spectate mode?
D: We are planning to release a spectate mode in the future. I don't think we have given an exact date yet.
ET: When LoR was finally released, was there a sick underground techno party with Poro DJs? How did you celebrate - if at all?
DC: LoR released under shelter in place here in LA (and in our international locations), so we ordered some desserts on DoorDash and played online games together. The poro DJs were all booked for LoR's Korean ad team
EtherealWonder: How did you join Riot, and what made you want to join Riot?
BL:: I was playing League since 2012, and that initially piqued my interest in Riot. I volunteered at a GDC (Game Development Conference) while I was in college and met a bunch of Rioters there. They were all really nice and that really made me want to join :). I graduated in 2017, and started working at another game company in Massachusetts. In 2018 Riot hit me up and after a bunch of interviews I joined!
TSR: Is 10 the final number you’ve settled on for the number of Regions?
D: We have some fun ideas for how we could potentially shift champions to regions players may not initially associate the champion. However, right now we are focused on getting as many champions from League into LoR as possible.
Callonetta: Do you have pets, and if so, what kind, and most importantly can I pet them?
BL:: I have 2 dogs, Jax and Leo. Not only can you pet them, but they demand pets. This post not sponsored by dogs
TaGL: Kind of the reverse of a previously asked question - have you designed any cards or will you design any cards soon, knowing they will be champions in the future?
DC: We don't have a handshake with LoL for anything like that at the moment, but we aspire to create interesting characters for the world of Runeterra that other teams can pick up and use if they wish. We just hope players love what is put out, and maybe if there's someone the community loves, they could be seen in another game or video or comic or such
Mimir, the Felony Fellow: Are the cards like the Startled Stomper Zoe’s creation? If not, is it a creation from her friends?
D: I'm not sure if Zoe creates them or transforms them, but she is definitely involved.
ASDASDS: Are there any champions that you agreed to never release?
D: No. We hope to release every champion someday.
eslb: What's your favorite ranked reward icon? This includes color differences from the ranks.
DC: Diamond Season of Plunder Alas, I ended Plat that season (just like every season)
TSR: A large number of champions are based on their "lore" forms rather than translations of their LoL gameplay; what goes into deciding what to focus on for champions? Thresh has an ability much closer to his ingame whereas Karma is entirely about her lore rather than how she acts in gameplay.
CW: There are a number of things we tend to look at when focusing on the champion. What is their role in the set, what mechanics do we want to show off through the champion, are there any narrative/story beats we want to hit with them. Usually we try to find what version of this champion do we want to design, and then go from there.
kino: When you design a champion, do you always have a primary archetype / deck in mind or do you intend multiple different uses for it? How important is champion versatility as opposed to the cohesiveness of its archetype?
D: It varies for each champion. We want all champions to feel special. Some of them are designed with a very specific deck in mind, like Nautilus. Others are designed with multiple decks in mind, like Shen. And yet others are more general, like Twisted Fate. However, we do want every champion to have at least one deck they are best in.
Mimir, the Felony Fellow: In roughly 3 weeks I'm gonna start my enrolment in a game development degree. As someone who lives in Portugal, is there any way to work for Riot (specifically in the LoR team since that's my favorite Riot game) without moving to the US, while being an active member of the team and not just work in localization?
BL:: LoR development largely happens between our LA and Hong Kong offices. There are other offices where other development happens though. The best way is to check the careers page and see what listings are available for the office you're interested in.
ET: Milk first or cereal first?
CW: Cereal first. ARE THERE PEOPLE THAT DO MILK FIRST?
Neo! Unicorn Rabbit Knight!: If you had a truck what would you put in it?
BL:: A smaller truck, of course.
Hanles: Hi guys! First of all thank you so much for creating such an amazing game and for your continuous support and regular updates. I would like to ask , what is your current view on the success of LoR so far? Has the number of players met your initial expectations or do you feel like there is still an unused potential to lure in new players? As a relatively new player myself who loves the game to death, I feel like so far it hasn't got the attention it deserves so I'd love to know what's the perspective of you as Rioters on the matter.
D: We are extremely proud of how many players have been enjoying LoR! We believe this is only the beginning and we hope to see more and more players joining the community over time.
Jason: Will there ever be a way to listen to the music of the boards before we buy them?
DC: Someday, yes I hope so. We have a lot of things we want to build and limited resources so we have to choose our projects with a lot of consideration. Since a lot of fans and creators preview content on video sites, we focus our efforts on more gameplay experiences for players.
A Badgerbear: What are your plans when a year from now comes and there are too many cards to balance? Will we have a similar thing to Hearthstone where sets from a while ago will be unplayable in ranked?
D: We want players to always be able to play with their favorite cards. We hope that our model for live balance will help players enjoy the cards they love. And we want to avoid situations where players aren't able to include the cards they love in their decks.
EtherealWonder: What's the funniest moment of friendly competition/dare/general tomfoolery you've seen your colleagues in Riot do for fun during break-time?
DC: Dovagedys still owes his team a rendition of a Taylor Swift song
Dovagedys: Yikes DanCast
BL: We play a lot of games together on breaks and such. I had a friend try to meme me in a game of LoR by vile-feasting my unit that he was going to kill anyways. Unfortunately that unit was Scarmother Vrynna and the extra damage won me the game he would've won. I still tease him about it.
Splingo: At one point someone from the team said that they would look into more options for making the data about viable decks that you all see open to the public. Any updates on that? It's cool to know that there are regularly 20-30 viable competitive decks, but it's hard to see past the data that fansites offer so we the players only have ever a limited amount of insight into what's actually working for people.
D: We do still plan on sharing more information around the meta, but we don't have an exact date yet.
TSR: What was the biggest emergent gameplay from the community that the team didn't foresee?
DC: There was too strong of an emote to include in the starting 6
Tail Lover: Lore question: In League, the only Yordle that has a tail is Gnar, and that makes sense due to him being ancient. But in LoR, we have Fae Bladetwirler, a Yordle that doesn't just have one tail, but multiple tails. Are tails on yordles a somewhat common thing nowadays or is it some rare special thing. Also are there any other tailed Yordles I should be aware of in the game already?
D: Keep in mind that League only showcases the champions in Runeterra. Gnar is the only yordle champion with a tail, but there are so many yordles that exist in the world of Runeterra that are not champions and many of them have tails.
Mimir, the Felony Fellow: Could we possibly have some place in the deckbuilder where we could see the card art and flavor text for everything else we can't maindeck? I wanna look at many celestial cards for description or lore reasons and I am never able to.
D: As of Call of the Mountain there is a new filter option in the deck builder that will allow you to see the Celestial cards.
mcfries mcburger: Though LoR has a slowly but surely growing competitive scene (e.g. DoR and serverwide tournaments), are there any plans to eventually have our counterpart to League's Worlds with splits and invitationals and everything?
D: We hope to have esports some day, but right now we have been very focused on making the game as fun as possible. We are focused on listening and learning to the community to be sure we are making the right improvements. We do hope to have in client tournaments and then eventually esports some day, but right now we don't have a specific date for them.
Garnetino: Seeing as there are only so many regions from Map of Runeterra not implemented in game (with 2 new regions a year), what would you do when there are no regions to implement?
D: Right now, our plan is to focus on 10 regions in runeterra. As of Call of the Mountain we have 8.
chrm14: I would like to know how you would like to lead new players to the game, and if you are thinking of creating an official deck creation system on the LoR website, and if there will be a community deck system like on mobalytics.
DC: Thank you for the thoughtful question. It's a problem space we think about, and we know deck creation is a challenging aspect for many players. Deck Bundles were one idea to give players something new they could use early. We don't want to repeat the work of our partners at Mobalytics, but we are thinking about ways to make it easier to bring friends into LoR.
Remake: Since the new patch I've had issues with Asol’s level up. So when I have 20+ power and round ends Sol sometimes just will not level up at all, this has happened in a few of my games where i have had a board 20+ power and he would not level up, any plans to look into this bug?
BL:: I can't speak to the specifics of this bug. But as a neat tidbit about bugs in general: For all bugs they will go through some triage process, including being verified by QA for a consistent repro, heading to production where they decide how impactful the bug is, and finally through engineering where we will of course attempt to fix it. There's a bunch of steps that go in the finding and fixing bugs that makes it a fun process.
Super Lasanh: Do you have plans to bring PVE game modes? Perhaps an event where there is a boss with a gigantic life, of which the community will have to strive to defeat and win prizes.
D: Personally, I would love it if we were able to eventually add some PVE and/or story game modes to LoR. It's something we talk about and hope that we can do at some point, but right now we don't have any specific release date for a PVE mode.
SenseiChroma: If you had a poro in real life, what would you name it?
D: Snack
SenseiChroma: How did you deal with the constructive criticism that most card game fans gave to you from the start of when the game was released? CCG fans of Hearthstone or MTG had made their opinions on your game, so I wonder what your opinions are on such criticism that you've been receiving the past few months.
CW: Constructive criticism is crucial for us to grow and improve the game. We always knew that initial impressions especially from CCG fans were going to be heavily rooted in other games, and that's a totally reasonable starting point. The hope is that as they play and learn more about LoR they're able to see the strengths of what makes the game great.
DC: To add on to the question; One of the areas where LoR's first impression isn't as great is in our rewards (say for Ranked or Gauntlets). In other CCGs, competitive game modes often reward cards. In games where high rarity cards are very hard to get, those rewards look very valuable. So if you just compared rewards like icons or XP to card packs or rare cards, it looks like our rewards aren't motivating. Our philosophy on more accessible cards makes it more challenging to come up with rewards here, and it may take a new player time to see how quickly their collection can grow through the roads and vault to appreciate that difference. We're working on future things we can use as rewards to help with this.
EtherealWonder: Dovagedys I'm sorry, but I have to know the story behind you owing your team a TaySwift song.
D: Honestly, it's a troll perpetrated by some devious people on my team. Once upon a time I was a singer. I'm also a gigantic Taylor Swift fan and I frequently utilize her songs, lyrics, images, and quotes in team communications. I don't really know/remember how the joke of me "owing the team" began.
TSR: A sandbox mode would be incredibly useful to help teach new players and give new scenarios for "puzzle" challenges and the like. Is there any technical limitation that makes this mode impossible to make? Or is this entirely impossible?
BL:: There are some technical implications to this unfortunately. As far as "puzzles" such as tutorials go, I know they can take some scripting for special circumstances, which makes it a large time investment. As far as a sandbox mode goes, there's a few things: exposing the right cheats on non-internal builds, the impact of having potentially infinitely long game times, or what to do about crashes as people try to do things that wouldn't happen in a normal game. We'd also have to contemplate how we load cards into the game at random (Do we need to check against your inventory, are we unloading cards no longer in use appropriately, is this impacting your game performance, etc). So not something I would say is impossible, but would take a decent time investment.
mcfries mcburger: Which poro is your favorite?
D: Nimble Poro. She's totally awesome. Also during development Steve Rubin (Live Balance Design Lead) wrote a short song about Nimble Poro and I will never forget it.
Intrif: Love you Riot(?) <--- Definitely a question
BL:: Oh my, uhm, thank you
IDKhow2Discord: Do you think Quinn is achieving her thematic fantasy right now? Regardless of power level, do you think she feels 'cool' as a champion?
D: I think so. I love Quinn and I'm really happy with her design in LoR. Her level up is one of my favorites.
r xy: how much do you take expeditions into account when designing a card (especially assigning rarity)
CW: They are a soft consideration when it comes to initial design of a card. We usually do a larger pass with Expeditions once we know the general shape of the archetype. Rarity is part of that pass, given rarity helps influence appearance rate.
Callonetta: What's your favorite thing about the player base of LoR? Least favorite? Spill the tea!
DC: Favorite: The dedication to creating a lively, welcoming, and meaningful community space for fans of the game and helping it grow.
Second favorite: The love for Spirit Blossom Corina and recognizing her from the promo art
Least Favorite: I don't know about some of your emote meta hot takes...
CW:
Fave: Y'alls meme game is off the charts and I love it
Least: Not enough love and support for the best bot, Slotbot
D: My favorite thing is the overwhelming positivity of the LoR community. I have been playing games on the internet for a very long time and I have never seen so much positivity in a game community before. It's astounding to me. I am very humbled by and proud of the community we are all building. My least favorite aspect is the hyperbolic language the community sometimes uses when talking about the metagame, segregating decks that have 52% win rate as playable or S tier and decks that have 50% win rate as tier 2, 3, or even unplayable. I think that language and thought pattern leads to the erroneous idea that there are a small number of decks in the LoR metagame, when the reality is that there are 20-35 decks that all have win rates between 47% and 53%.
SenseiChroma: Knowing that in today's time there is a pandemic going on, how did you deal working from home into developing the game as time passes by?
BL:: The pandemic is definitely a hard thing to deal with. I feel pretty lucky myself that Riot does it's best to take care of us during this time. Since I'm at a computer all day for my job, I try to take some time after work (or sometimes during, shh) to take a walk or rest if I need to. Also making sure to stay hydrated, get plenty of rest, do some cool new hobbies, and talk with people when I'm feeling down! Gotta keep up that strong mental energy.
r xy: can we please get an article on how the spell mana system came to be? (and more design articles in general pls) (and less broad pls, the champions article only had like 2 sentences per champion)
CW: That is a great question! No immediate promises, but one thing I personally want to do more is writing design articles for y'all. Knowing what parts of design you want to hear about helps a ton.
SenseiChroma: Was there ever a specific champion that you loved to main and play as in League of Legends that you wished was in LoR?
CW: I keep trying to sneak in Twitch, but the other designers keep too many traps down
Thanks for everyone who partook, and especially a huge thank you to all the Rioters who partook in this AMA! Hope to see you all again soon c:
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