Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Red Post Collection: Quick Gameplay Thoughts: 9/14 & 9/19, October Sales Schedule, & More

Today's red post collection includes Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for September 14th and 19th, the October sales schedule, a new /Dev blog and /Dev diary on Ranked 2019 changes and more!
Continue reading for more information!



Table of Contents


Quick Gameplay Thoughts: September 14 

Here's Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for September 14th, including a look at average games per champion and more:
"Hi folks, 
Usual Disclaimers 
These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get delayed or even stopped. If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler  
Average games per champion 
Wanted to share some somewhat different data today that looks at, when you encounter a particular champion, how many games on average the person playing that champion will have played on them. This is related to the mastery curves talked about previously, showing how far through a champ's mastery curve your opponents or team mates will likely be. Figured this would be good to look at in part since common arguments I see are 'X champion only has a high win rate because only mains play them' or 'Y champion is OP despite a low win rate because most of their play is new people bringing their win rate down'. It's also a pretty easy to display piece of information, compared to something like mastery curves, so for once we can show all champs easily, rather than just a subset. 
As you'll see below the average number of games at the high end and low end can vary radically. That doesn't necessarily mean equate to 'most popular' and 'least popular' though. Some champs are popular and have player bases with a lot of average games played (e.g. Yasuo and Lee Sin). Others are pretty niche, but, when you do encounter a player, they're probably played that champ a lot (e.g. Anivia). At the other end of the spectrum new champs especially have low averages because, well, they're new, and people haven't had time to build up as many games yet, even if they're really popular picks (e.g. Kai'Sa). Some champs also have low averages because people are interested in trying them, but conclude what's on offer isn't for them (Ivern's a good example of this). That's not to say those champs don't have mains who've gone really deep on them too, just that they represent a smaller proportion of total games played on that champ. 
Data below. This is from all MMRs, in all regions.
Odyssey 
Hope you've all been enjoying Odyssey! Keep an eye out if so for a dev blog coming next week that will talk about its development, looking at things like the intended feelings to capture, approach to difficulty levels, work in progress augments (some of which didn't make it) etc. Additionally once the mode's been out for a while we'll pick your brains on how various parts of it feel (e.g. augment system, Kayn fight etc), so that if we take another crack at similar PVE in the future we'll be able to use that feedback to improve things further. 
If you're still having problems with the mission of augment systems, apologies. We've addressed a number of problems that cropped up with those, still working on some though. This has been a demonstration that the mission system especially needs to be bulked up somewhat if we're going to be putting this much weight on it. I expect we'll continue to do a lot of mission stuff in the future too, so we'll be investing more time into making that system more robust. Those issues are ones that the PBE can't catch either unfortunately, given they're about load on various server functions that PBE doesn't push the boundaries on enough to reveal problems (nor do some of the smaller regions either incidentally)."

Meddler provided his thoughts on Zyra:
"Been seeing the bugged plant AI reports recently, someone from QA's looking into what we're tracking at present, see if that's a known issue, if it's already been fixed internally etc. For those of you seeing that, when did it start (or get worse)? 
Q shape - We considered doing so earlier this year, based in part of feelings from a few of us here that it might be the right move. Did some surveying of Zyra players after they'd played a game as her to see if that would be a welcomed change. Somewhat to our surprise vote was fairly strongly in favor of keeping the current Q shape. Result could be skewed somewhat by people who really miss the circle playing less, so not being in the sample group as much, was a clear argument from current Zyra players though that a reversion wouldn't be welcomed. 
Regarding mid lane Zyra versus support Zyra, I think substantial changes would be needed to make Zyra a viable mid at high MMR. Her kit, right from launch until today, has had some elements that have been a better fit for the support position than mid, even if she did get significant mid play initially. In particular her E as sole defensive tool, but also farming/harass tool, leaves her really vulnerable in mid. Combine that with things like weaker than most roaming, lack of safety, we'd need to change quite a bit I believe to make her mid competitive with her support play. Attempts to narrow the gap with smaller changes, like the seed CD refund on kill, have helped a bit, but haven't moved the needle meaningfully enough at high MMR. At low/average MMR she does ok already statistically, though do see some vocal dissatisfaction from players about her mid lane state on Boards and Reddit certainly."

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: September 19 


Meddler also posted his gameplay thoughts for September 19th, including 8.19 context, thoughts on Kassadin, and more:
"Hi folks, 
Usual Disclaimers 
These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get delayed or even stopped. If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler 
Some more 8.19 context 
Our thinking on a few more things we're looking at for patch 8.19: 
  • Janna - As mentioned last week we're testing a buff to her passive's contribution to AA and W damage. Trying a larger buff this week (35% at all levels, instead of just late game), though might well go back to scaling values. Looking to get a clearer read on exactly how much power this lever gives.
  • Kog - We're been testing out buffs to Kog's Q shred, aimed at strengthening him a bit more as an anti tank pick, given he's currently a bit weak, that's been one of his historical niches. We’ve got some concerns about pushing a shred too high though, especially on a champ with reliable damage output like Kog. More likely we go for safer buffs at this point (e.g. potentially a bit of base MS and R range)
  • Thresh - Looking at giving Thresh a bit more power in the early game in extended trading/fishing, without buffing his all in when it happens. Testing Q mana cost and CD buffs as a result.
  • Nunu - Putting a bit of power into AP builds, since we're seeing those be quite a bit weaker than tank builds on average. Aiming to add only a small amount of power to tank builds and avoid buffing AP so much it becomes the only build you should choose. Also worth noting that what appears to be a significant nerf to his healing off champs is actually just a tooltip change (was always lower on champs, but tooltip didn’t reflect that) 
Kassadin 
We're also looking at Kassadin, though his changes will probably be in 8.20 at this point. Likely direction is that we chip a bit of damage off his Q and/or E AP ratios, make him a bit less dominant when he really gets rolling, given he's now got an easier time getting there with the lower ult CD early on. Haven't playtested those changes for him yet though, so possible our approach changes depending on how that goes. 
Odyssey Leaderboards 
In case you haven't seen them already we've been regularly posting Leaderboards for the Odyssey high scores, both top 10 by region and globally. 
https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/6J4vJkNs-the-odyssey-extraction-leaderboards-updated-sep-17 
Something that's been particularly cool to see is the variety of different comps players have been using to post said scores. We were seeing a lot of Yasuo stacking early on, recently we've seen other things creep in, like a 1 Sona/4 Jinx strat that a couple of teams have pulled off really effectively. 
Why we don't always buff a champion's defining strengths 
A question I saw crop up quite a bit last week we when first talking about buffing Janna's AAs and W was why we were giving her damage instead of buffing her protective/peel spells, given those are why you pick her. We do often target a champion's defining traits when buffing them to try and get/keep distinction between different champs. In some cases though we'll get to a point where adding more power to those strengths starts creating other problems. Adding too much peel and shield to Janna or healing to Soraka for example can lead to excessive safety for the allies they're protecting and low interaction/consequence play for extended periods as a result. That means if we want to buff them that finding other places to put that power's sometimes the way we think we should go. Some of our recent buffs to some assassins have also involved a similar situation. While they're characters defined by their ability to burst down a target that doesn't necessarily mean that buffing their burst damage is always appropriate. We'll then go for things like ult CD for target access on Rengar, or increased slow % on Kha'Zix W for utility as a result."

October sales schedule 

Here's Riot Evaelin with the October Sales Schedule:
"Check out all the champs and skins on sale this October! Like previous sales schedules, we’re not posting the exact dates for each champ and skin, but they’ll all be on sale sometime next month. 
Just a heads up—since we’re publishing these in advance, we won’t offer partial refunds on champs and skins purchased before they go on sale."

/Dev Diary: New Tiers & Placements in Ranked 2019

A new /Dev Diary (and accompanying /Dev blog) are out covering Ranked changes in 2019:

"Meet Ed, Primus, and Thiago. They’re working on two new tiers and a new placements system."

[Full video transcript here!] 


/Dev: Top Tier Changes to Ranked for 2019

Here's Sapmagic with a /Dev blog with more details on the 2019 Ranked changes:
"Hey everyone! Ed “SapMagic” Altorfer here, back again to talk about Ranked. With all the news around new tiers and placements, today we want to go in-depth on the very top of the Ranked ladder. Specifically, we’re talking about how we landed on Grandmaster as the new tier between Master and Challenger, and a few improvements we’re making to how the ladder looks and feels in-client. We’ll also detail how position ranks will work at Master tier and above when they enter regional previews next year. 
WHY WE’RE ADDING GRANDMASTER 
from
http://www.surrenderat20.net/2018/09/red-post-collection-quick-gameplay_19.html
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