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I want to properly start by thanking Riot for the hard work on all of their projects. They engage with the community, listen to us and manage to create amazingly fun games. TFT is definitely one of the most unique and I still can't believe they will add new sets a few times a year when some other games barely add new content.
From the first game I played, I wanted to have this on mobile devices and last week, Riot decided to mess with my productivity and give me early access to the app. I installed it on my way to work and spoiler, I didn't do much work that day. Now, I try to provide as much feedback as I can about this and hope to help at least a bit.
This post will be long and I won't add a TL;DR as details are important here. I appreciate if you are going to read it all.
My device: First, I want to specify that I play the game on my Samsung S8+ device, updated on Android 9. I take care of my phone and still runs well everything but I will update this year to have a better experience in terms of refresh rate, display, and processor.
Also, I am from Romania and that means very good internet both on Wifi and mobile data. After playing around 3-4 games, the phone starts to heat up a bit but nothing out of the ordinary and I get the same results on any other game with decent graphics. No unusual battery drain detected or other issues related to the phone crushing.
Connection: I played mostly on mobile data, 4G to be more accurate and it's great. I only felt some lag 1-2 times but I am very sure it was because of my location (I was getting close to the elevator). Besides that, the connection is great. I managed to reconnect to games without issue, I managed to switch between Wi-Fi and mobile data in-game without problems. Very well optimized but again, I have a very good connection so I cannot be certain on how sensible is the game to low internet speeds. As a suggestion here: it would be nice to have a very small indicator related to the connection quality or, at least have a small icon warning when the connection is poor.
Responsiveness: I love how snappy is everything. The interface is very simple at the moment but It's such a joy to use as it will respond instantly and bring you to the menu. I notice a small delay in responsiveness when I chose my little legend and arena. It's not laggy but it's slower compared to the rest. The nice response time is kept in-game too but here I had some issues with the items and moving champs. Sometimes, when I tapped on a certain item and trying to move it, it won't do anything and I have to repeat the gesture 2-3 times. The same goes for moving the units from one hex to another. Maybe I need to keep the finger there a bit more (that's what she said) to register the touch and hold commend.
Now, I imagine that you might add some more animations and transitions in the menus and that's fine but keep the focus on the instant response, it has such a nice feel to it.
Pre-game Interface and menu: Familiar, yet mobile. I like that you can start playing in 2 taps on the screen. This shows a good understanding of the mobile experience. You're on the go and you have some spare time so better get in the action as fast as possible.
We have our friends list, settings and notifications and that's the basic things we need atm on mobile. The shop will be a great addition too but I really don't mind not having it in the game.
You also talked about the emotes and that is the perfect chat replacement here. I think I perform better when there's no chat (I do not tilt easily on TFT but it's just one less distraction). One other thing I would like to have access to would be the icon. It would be nice to click on the icon and be able to change it from the phone.
Another thing to improve would be the Match found pop-up: Please integrate the countdown to the interface at it looks a bit off just being there, underneath the button.
Settings: Well, there are not too many at the moment and I expect they will come with updates so I will just insert here my wishlist for customization.
Video: Add options to choose between performance and visual quality similar to the one on PC; Add a preferred FPS option (and pretty please make the game run on 90 or more Hz as many new phones will support high refresh rate screens.
Notifications: Have some options to receive notifications on the phone when someone tries to invite us in a game or when we can claim the orb etc; Or send a notification when a new patch is available with the notes. Account: Provide more options to change the password or quickly access the account settings.
Loading screen: Well, from all the things, the loading screen does not look very well on mobile devices. I imagine this is still work in progress. A few suggestions: make the loading bar larger and..well, make everything larger (that also what she said). The icons, borders, text, etc.
In-game interface: I was a bit skeptical related to the game interface but it works very well and I didn't have any trouble finding items from the game 1. I like the item tab so much I wish it was an option on PC as well. Everything seems more organized that way. It would be nice to be able to change the order of items on that menu if I want to create some plan.
Also, related to the item menu, one thing that gives me some anxiety is the indicator showing how many items I have. It feels too much like a notification that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. I would prefer it more subtle after I check the items as it can be a bit distracting.
I had no issues with the shop, it's well done and helps me focus better on the game when it's closed. Selling the units it's also easy as you can do it in either direction. A small suggestion there would be to fade more the other options when you drag the unit. It would help to have focused more on that specific unit.
If we are in that area, the experience progression should be included a bit better in the interface, maybe something to mirror the win/loss streak. Again, I do not like floating numbers.
On the other side, I would love an option to hide the usernames from the right side. It would clear the interface a lot and it's not really relevant (at least for me). Overall, the text is easy to read everywhere. I did not have any issues figuring out what synergies I have and the small icons are working without issues as well.
List of Bugs encountered: Sometimes when there are 10+ units in a fight, they flash for a tiny second and glitch. At that time, the units disappear and you can see only the projectiles. Happened a couple of times but lasts only 0.5-1 sec max.
When I buy something from the carousel and get back to my board, the unit sometimes will appear coming from the left side and glitching into place.
The result of the fight is shown before the projectiles get to the little legend (for ex: I can get the black screen before the last hit gets to me and happens the same with the health bar).
When I got promoted to a different division, the Icon was missing and I had only the LP, name of the division and a big empty screen (I guess that how being in gold feels).
One serious issue I got is to be tested on other devices as well as it might be from my phone: A complete freeze of the screen in the late game fights. Sometimes it will just freeze for around 3-5 seconds in the middle of the fight and constant noise would come from the game (like a continuing beep). I got that on Wi-fi and data but not very often. The phone was on normal temperature and sometimes happened from Game 1 so not after a long gaming session.
I will add more to this list if I discover others and one important thing: the game did not crush once and that's pretty impressive for an early beta.
I did my best to explain my opinions and experience with the game and hope that, at least one point from this post will help. Also, if you have any questions about the feedback, please let me know.
Thank you for reading and Riot, thank you for making awesome games! 👊
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