Altombre

Hey, totally a reasonable question. The biggest cost you pay here is match quality/matchmaking for both queues. In this scenario, generally players in both queues for Swiftplay - all maps and compet-pool-only maps - would wait in queue longer for games that are likely lower quality in terms of being balanced teams. Especially if you start also trying to do party balance like avoiding putting 5-stacks against solo queuers, etc.

It's not impossible if both queues are extremely popular, but it falls apart really fast and is pretty difficult to maintain. Queue health is something we internally have to be pretty diligent about maintaining; it feels bad to be in badly balanced games and it feels bad to wait in queue for awhile, especially for a 10-15 minute experience. So, it's all a balancing act.

I think this is a reasonable take fwiw, it's something we've talked about. We just wanted to try the universal consistent approach first to see how it went.

I talk about this call on the other VAL subreddit here for a bit of context.

Hey! I can give a little context here. So, first off, this is a pretty simple change and something we'll be gathering feedback on; definitely open to reevaluating this if there's a lot of criticism here. To share some of the reasons why we wanted to pull the entire modes ecosystem into one pool:

• Right now, the majority of players who play Swiftplay still play it as a side mode, with Unrated or Competitive being their main way to engage with VAL. We've seen feedback from these players that Swiftplay games on maps outside of the map pool can feel "wasted", as they're not relevant to their main game experience, and they're mainly looking for ways to get fast reps of the VAL experience (warming up for ranked, practicing a new agent for Premier, etc.). By bringing all modes into the map rotation, we ensure that games remain relevant for folks who are also engaging in our Unrated/Compet queues, which are the vast majority of players who play these modes.
• For playe...

Hey all! Wanted to clear up any confusion re: the patch 7.04 preview for VAL:

This patch won't go live until next week, AFTER Champions. There are a lot of changes here that we've been testing for awhile, and I want to give some more context around how we're thinking about them:

Regarding timing: This is a big patch that we've been testing internally for awhile now. We're not willing to risk potentially disrupting Champions with a major patch during the tournament, so we opted to drop this patch afterwards to give player...

This is correct!

This is solid feedback; it’s something we’ve been thinking about too. Thanks!!

Working on getting this resolved - it looks like it's just using the text from our old map-launch queues, which used Unrated, rather than specifying we're trying out Swiftplay this time around. Thanks for your patience!

We had a mixup here - the Lotus queue is online now, in Swiftplay as it was intended. Sorry about the confusion!

You're correct! We're currently extending the window for the Swiftplay Beta to give us more time to gather feedback. In addition, we're adding a Lotus-only Swiftplay queue to give players the opportunity to learn Lotus before it hits Competitive queue.

Rest assured we're aware that this is an Omen nerf and we're in the early stages of exploring if there are any buff opportunities to compensate for this (but I can't make any promises - we want to see what the impact of this change is). We felt that the "inside walls red arrow" one-way smokes were unintuitive and unintended, and that we'd rather tune Omen around more accessible and intentional gameplay going forward.

Rest assured we're aware that this is an Omen nerf and we're in the early stages of exploring if there are any buff opportunities to compensate for this (but I can't make any promises - we want to see what the impact of this change is). We felt that the "inside walls red arrow" one-way smokes were unintuitive and unintended, and that we'd rather tune Omen around more accessible and intentional gameplay going forward.

If it goes well, we'll make it permanent! We just didn't want to assume that it'd be evergreen without getting player feedback, so we're using the beta phase to evaluate how the mode does. We're interested in two main things:

1. Do players enjoy a short core game mode like this?
2. If yes, is this the version of the mode we should make evergreen, or should we make changes to it?

Keep your eyes peeled for surveys and share your feedback!

That's the intent, yeah! We're hoping that some version of Swiftplay ends up feeling right for the game long-term, but we very much want to leverage player feedback around whether

A) Y'all want this mode to be evergreen B) This is the version of the mode you want (or if we should make changes)

Keep your eyes peeled for surveys coming your way, and share your feedback!

That was me! It’s 4.04 now, timelines shifted a bit :)

This is an unfortunate case where my first post saying we were aiming for 4.03 got noticed, but my follow-up post clarifying that 4.04 is the likely launch patch didn't.

Yoru's rework will be releasing in 4.04, not 4.03!

Hey, I was the one that communicated this in a thread the other day. Just as a reminder, this is still TBD - there's a very good chance that this pushes out another patch to 4.04, pending on bugs/clarity/prioritization. In general, we like to lean towards transparency when we can, but that also can generate additional confusion or frustration when those timelines don't pan out like we'd hoped.

At this point, the big takeaway I'd take from this is "Yoru changes won't launch during patch 4.01 or 4.02, but we're trying to get them out ASAP." I think 4.03 is aspirational, but Act 2 (4.04) is probably more realistic. Just as a heads-up!

We're currently aiming for 4.03 for the Yoru changes, assuming all goes well!

This transparency always comes with a bit of a disclaimer that it could change, but that's the timeframe we're shooting for right now.

Agent changes will be spread out over a few patches!

Agent changes will be spread out over a few other patches!