RiotMeddler

Couple of thoughts/bits of context:

1. You'll climb faster each split (this isn't same number of games more times per year)

2. Because ranked isn't turning off in November/December a ranked split will last for 4 months with 3 a year, versus 5 months this year (so not as big a change in split duration versus 2023 at least as it looks at first glance)

Yeah, there's some trade off to getting rid of that preseason period on live for sure and we went back and forth a lot internally before deciding on this approach. One of the key things that flipped us though was the proportion of the player base who simply don't have any interest in playing when ranked is off who therefore bounce during preseason. Our thinking was those that want to take the break to play other stuff during that part of the year can do so regardless, so good to keep ranked on during the winter holiday period for those who do want to be playing it.

The people who work on midscopes are (mainly) the same team that work on preseason, so right now that's where their focus is going. Once preseason work's out of the way we'll take a look at things and see whether to put midscopes, other work or a mixture of the two on the docket.

Hoping so, would love to have a case for it being a more frequent mode. This version's very similar overall to its past run, we'd definitely be open to gameplay adjustments though in the future if the interest is there

^{^}

Very first version the spectator champs they were using as a workaround for broadcast were targetable, from memory one got killed by a Karthus ult giving extra gold to one of the teams even. Version after that had them untargetable and invulnerable. Then we got the actual proper spectator system in.

A Brand VFX update did get started by a VFX artist as a side project a while back. It's not currently on hold, given said artist had to swap all their time to some other higher priority stuff. I expect we'll get it finished and shipped at some point, but whether that's soon or a really long way out no idea at present, depends on other VFX projects.

Naafiri will be available for Worlds

Yeah, Naafiri will be playable at Worlds, Briar will not be

We don't know exact dates yet. 4-6 weeks is our general target. We'll go more like 4 weeks if there's a lot of stuff we've identified we can/should talk about, more like 6 if we've got less for this particular round but want to stay in the habit and cover some stuff. Going to start looking at potential topics next week, I suspect we'll have a fair bit this time so might be closer to 4 than 6, can't make any promises yet though

Oh sorry, when I say "League" here I'm just shorthanding "League of Legends the PC game", not implying that he's on something unrelated to the League IP

We'll share updated thoughts on Mythics in terms of what we've learned, future plans etc whenever we talk preseason gameplay in detail (plausibly this next update, depending on how many other topics we have possible that ends up in a deep dive slightly later)

Yeah, hard to say given how much has evolved over time. Looking at current state of things, I'd imagine a 6th player would mean a lot of additional roaming support style play from said position, probably with some jungle camps being taken as well? Guess could also be a second duo lane with some degree of roaming, but I suspect two champs generally out of FoW + more ability to contest jungle camps including on invades probably trumps presence in lane

I mean, if an example from more than 7 years ago is the best case you've got...

She'll be out before Worlds yeah. I don't believe she'll be playable at Worlds however since she'll be a very recent release (possible I'm wrong on that and she'll be disabled for playoffs but available at Worlds, will check)

Piece of trivia - League was originally 6v6 back in internal alpha (2008, maybe early 2009?), and the old Nexus art reflected that (hence 6 statues on it instead of 5). It's the reason Hexakill was relatively easy to add in the early days (code was all set up for teams of 6 already). Change to teams of 5 was well before my time at Riot, my understanding though is that teamfight clarity and lethality were both really problematic in testing at the time, and cutting a player per team did a lot to help things out.

Our first priority, and likely focus for quite a while, is going to be on better bots to help players get into the game. To state the obvious, accessibility for new players is a real weakness on League's part. A healthy flow of new players is essential for long lived games though so that's very much on our minds, given we want the game to have a vibrant community for a really long time if possible

Assuming that new player work goes well, we would like to try for other use cases after it though (to be clear, I'm speculating about future years). Things like better practice environment for players who know League but want to learn a new kit or like taking over from a disconnected/AFK player at whatever levels that can lead to a fair experience for both teams etc. Maybe someday a challenging experience for high skill players? Would very much like to, but our focus for bots is going to be on other use cases first, with other features and updates aimed at/prioritizing higher skil...

I'd be very surprised, he's working on an a new, unannounced game at the moment and seems to be having a great time with it. While I'd be thrilled to see him contribute some more stuff to League, I think he's very focused on trying new things in other genres instead (though as a side note, he was a really helpful advisor for some of Arena's development, so he's not completely uninvolved with LoL)

We did look recently at both potential changes to duo MMR/tier restrictions and at the solo only nature of the highest tiers, since we'd like to remove barriers to social play where possible. Conclusion, at least right now, was the edge cases and abuse cases would be high enough to make it a bad idea unfortunately. Wouldn't take it off the table entirely in the future, but don't want to reintroduce the range of issues we used to see in the past

I have no idea what you're possibly referring to.

Unrelated link

https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/rf1029/ixtal_does_not_exist_qiyana_is_lying_to_everyone/

In August's case, usually a few thousand rounds of nerfs.

On average, we probably still end up taking power out overall more often than not. Often have to push power up to get a good read on new mechanics being tested if someone's playing a new champion against people on champs they've played many, many times.