R0gueFool

Sorry for the delayed response, it's been an eventful weekend.

Ya Input/Output randomness is the same thing, just under different names (the games industry is bad at using consistent terms). In general Input randomness is going to be easier for players to receive and in a blanket statement like he was making there I would 100% agree that Input randomness is the preferred type. But like in most things a blanket statement tends to miss important details. It has been a long time since I saw that article, though I know what one you are referring to, I also wasn't at Riot at the time so take this all with a heap of salt, but I think I remember him saying that Riot didn't want to add more output randomness to the game, not that the plan was to strip it out or that any output randomness is inherently bad for a competitive game. I don't know LoLPC's current views/plans but I don't believe they see crits as a problem and given the ~6ish year since that article viewpoints can evolve/...

Balance is a big part of it for sure, but it is also very on brand thematically for the champion. He is mindlessly charging into battle and a battle cry fits that really well.

It is true that assassins typically deal damage with their abilities, however, there have been instances where assassins would build crit because it was very reliable for them. Rengar with the original Solari Chargeblade is a great example of this. He does end up dealing a bulk of his damage through basic attacks, and the original Solari Chargeblade gave him enough crit chance to count on it when going for targets. Assassins tend to want reliability because they need to put themselves at major risk when going for a target.

So while most assassins tend to deal damage through abilities, there are plenty that could reasonably build some amount of crit chance if it was just a flat amp to their basic attacks, Rengar being the obvious example. But crit chance being random means that building it has much more inherent risk, and an assassination attempt where you don't crit likely means a failed assassination. Thus building for AD+ARpen is more reliable, helping to create differen...

So to clear things up that is not the reason why we like randomness, it is possible that some Rioters like it for that reason and that it is 100% valid. But there are a number of reasons for random crits can be good.

First I want to define two terms that come into play here.

Post-Action Randomness - This refers to randomness that happens after an action is taken. The obvious example here being Crit chance like you are talking about. This is best used when you want to add variance to an otherwise "solved" situation. It creates drama and pushes players to react to what just happened. A great example is rolling a 1 or a 20 in D&D.

Pre-Action Randomness - This is randomness that the player is made aware of ahead of time, and asked to plan for. The obvious example here is the Dragons on Elemental Rift. You know ahead of time what one is going to spawn and are able to plan for that.

Both have their places and can be used poorly. But the existance of random...

We are open to changing it if it becomes a problem, but we think this is a case where the excitement is higher than the actual power, and that is a good place to be. It is always possible we are wrong, and if that is the case we'll reevaluate.

Thoughtful players like this are why I love riot.

Totally understandable, as compensation here is a fun fact of something we added to Sion in Wild Rift. When Sion respawns as a zombie he has a small fear around him.

Oh ya that was part of it too, I'm becoming a forgetful old man now.

As a rule, though we do prefer you to need to hold a button for charged abilities. We feel it is smoother and amps up the feeling of the ability. We don't like to make exceptions, and put a high value on consistancy/clarity but depending on the ability we might end up needing to bend that a bit even if we don't want to.

I did talk about this on Twitter!

Unfortunately, this is a fundamental difference between LoLPC's controls and our own. Any ability that you can aim must happen on button release in Wild Rift, whereas on PC it can be set to happen on button down. This is because on LoLPC you have your mouse to aim with at the time you push the button. Previously all abilities would happen on button release but abilities that don't have any aiming we can make things happen slightly faster if they happen on button down, we made that change last content patch.

Touch screen controls require any aiming to happen on button release unless it is something we want you to be able to adjust the aiming of. In Sion's case we would need to fundamentally rework, and reduce power in the ability if we were to allow you to adjust its aim while charging. We did make some slight adjustments to help compensate for this, but it still does mean that instant Qs are a bit rougher than we would like.

We play the game a lot, but it does vary based on the person's role. We have plenty of people who play the game daily (on top of our daily team playtests), but like too much of anything, it can also be draining. In those cases we take breaks from the game, play other games, or what have you, just the other week I was feeling this way so I opt out of our daily playtests and did play during my off time.

For designers, like myself, it is obviously important to be familiar with the game you are working on, but we also want to be playing other games too. It is helpful for new ideas, to see how those games solved unique problems, see what people are enjoying, get an idea of the current standard etc. But it is also good for us outside of our roles as designers, remember we are all still gamerz and started out playing games long before we even thought about making them. And we do want to enjoy other experiences (both in games, and IRL) like anyone else.

We are human and will miss posts, or it is possible that depending on the feedback the person who sees it doesn't have an answer. We don't all know everything about the game and might not the best person to answer something. Or just be busy and miss it or see it don't have time to respond.

In my case I have been off Systems and Balance for a while now and recently handed off Maps and Modes to another designer so I can focus more on champions. So it's a bit more difficult for me to talk about my work because it is often much further out. It makes it difficult to have the most up to date info on the live game, such as current balance. I also make a point to ignore raging and trolls, they don't want to have a chat so it doesn't seem productive for anyone.

I still try to respond to things when I see a topic I can speak to, or a good chat to be had.

Hype!

I like that we "beard your feedback" =p. We get feedback in a lot of ways. Reddit and Twitter are both places we frequent for feedback from invested English speaking players (Twitter has more non English speaking players). We also have teams that help out by getting us feedback from non English speaking regions. And our Insights team will often create surveys, you might have seen these in the game, or use other methods of collecting feedback.

We also talk a bit with pro players and content creators, during Elemental Rift's development I set up a discord server for content creators and pro players that we used to chat through everyone's impressions. And frequently watch patch run down videos, and other player created content to get a feel for how everyone is feeling.

Sion was one of the first champions I started working on, and I am not upset that this is the first clip from players that I found.

Elder Dragon is trying to execute you.... But Tryndamere has other plans.

It is something we are talking about, but not sure when, or what changes, if any, we would make. Wild Rift Asol has many of the same problems with satisfaction, appreciably, and living up to the promised hype by his "space dragon" fantasy. This has good potential so we are very interested.

But Lonely Mummy is his whole thing?!?!

As for Annie's Q this isn't a coding issue. We feel this is a better design for the character, the biggest reason being that Annie's Q is often used for last hitting and would require Annie to constantly be selecting targets, or changes to Q's targeting algorithm. The first ends up being very exhausting, while the second just creates clarity and learnability problems. Plus it being a skill shot lets us put some more power into it, and lets Annie build up her passive faster, or check brushes. There is a lot to be gained by making abilities a touch less reliable.

That is why I mean by "case by case", the secret thing that they don't tell you about game dev is that it is all about trade-offs and resources. It takes a lot of work (not just from me, remember everything needs to go through QA too) to make any sort of change ESPECIALLY if art is involved. So it really comes down to how valuable we feel a particular change will be vs the cost of making that change. Both games are different and have different problems we are trying to solve so "best fit" really comes down to a few things, and often that is what problems we are trying to solve.

In the Sona example, we are not seeing a problem with Sona being a powerful solo lane champion, so it would be a rather high-cost change with no clear goal in mind.

So generally an update needs to be solving some sort of problem, and the scale of that problem. Sometimes we will have a change in mind that is low cost but has a lot of potential upsides (Ahri update), and we are able to do it.

Right, the important thing to remember here is that any ratio only matters in relation to a champion's kit. Brand, for example, doesn't have a dash and Ekko doesn't get to lay long-lasting traps. Again I'm not saying the ratios couldn't be buffed, just that saying a champion has lower ratios than another, very different champion, doesn't hold much weight. I haven't played much of Teemo myself (outside of ARAM) but yes if his damage is low there aren't a lot of places for us to buff, and his first ability's ratio is something we could target.