Today's red post collection includes Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for October 10th and 12th, a /Dev update on Nexus Blitz, a new Ask Riot answering ranked questions, and much more!
- Red Post Collection: Quick Gameplay Thoughts: October 5th, 2018 All-Star Event Announcement, & More
- 10/9 PBE Update: K/DA Skins, Trick or Treat Ekko, Bewitching Janna, Count Kledula, & more!
- Ezreal Champion Update in 8.20
- 10/10 PBE Update: Loot & Mission Assets, Balance Changes & More
- Dragon Trainer Heimerdinger Now Available!
Table of Contents
- Quick Gameplay Thoughts: October 10
- Quick Gameplay Thoughts: October 12
- /Dev: Up Next for Nexus Blitz
- Ask Riot: Ranked Edition
- Feel Like a League of Legends Pro Player with Super League
- It’s On: The Real Players Behind the Legends
- Quick Hits
- Reminders
Quick Gameplay Thoughts: October 10
Here's Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for October 10th, with thoughts on removing the Jungle funneling penalty, popularity of different queues, 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
Removal of the jungle funneling penalty
As mentioned when it was introduced one of our goals for preseason is to remove the jungle funneling penalty (Monster Hunter). That penalty was added to discourage funneling both jungle and lane farm onto one champion without interacting much in either position with the enemy.
Our current belief is that two of the preseason changes should reduce the appeal of funneling enough we can remove Monster Hunter without an explicit replacement:
- Bounty scaling - Bounties will now be scaling somewhat off minions/monsters killed, not only off champions killed. That means that focusing farm so heavily on one champ becomes a bigger risk, with greater payout for the enemy if they can shut them down, given better options against funnel strats.
- Barricade (temp name) gold - Being able to gain rewards from pushing on a tower even if you can't take it down entirely makes leaving a lane uncontested a higher price to pay. That also reduces the appeal of funneling play in most circumstances.
We're still testing whether the combination of those two things should be enough. Looks hopeful so far though.
How popular are the different queues?
Something I thought it would be good to share was a look at how popular the different queue types in LoL are, both from an overall perspective and looking at how they vary region to region. Chart below showing a % breakdown (hours played in each mode) in early September for a few regions with different habits.
Looking at the regions shown:
- Overall - None of the regions, whether those shown here or the others not listed, is highly representative of the overall average. Every region has at least one queue in which they're noticeably divergent from average play rates.
- Korea - Korean players like solo queue a lot more than those from other regions, with low play in normals as a result. They play average amounts of ARAM, but have low interest in other modes compared to players elsewhere (e.g. Nexus Blitz or most RGMs we've run in the past).
- NA - NA Players play less Flex than almost every other region. They're bigger fans of non SR modes, with the most Nexus Blitz play of any region and nearly the most TT play (EUW has slightly more TT games).
- Brazil - Brazil's a newer region and so players there follow a couple of trends we see on newer servers, with more normal play and Co-op versus AI than average and less ARAM.
Some small item/rune changes in 8.21
We’ve got some small adjustments to a few items in 8.21, bit of context:
- Essence Reaver - Cutting 200g off the cost as short term help. Might have something larger for it later in the year, want to make it a better regardless now though.
- Edge of Night - Cost reduction by 200g as well. No current plans for changing its functionality, think we’ve definitely got it overpriced though.
- Time Warp Tonic - We’re looking at different possible ways to nerf TWT, given the amount of health/mana restoration it’s offering is excessive. Current version in testing is a change where instead of offering increased duration and MS during the duration it instead gives some restoration up front, doesn’t change duration at all and still gives the movement speed."
When asked about the state of Zoe, Meddler commented:
"Changes we were testing a few patches back haven't worked out overall, pulling back on those. Will be looking at some simpler changes potentially in the next patch or two, can't make any promises about what or if something will ship though yet."
When asked about how blind pick and draft pick compared, Meddler commented:
"Depends enormously on the region. NA from memory for example has a even (ish) split, while some regions have much more play in blind. Tends to be somewhat associated with amount of play in flex queue too, with regions with higher flex play rates generally showing lower normal draft, suggesting the two are heavily overlapped in terms of how many players tend to view them."
When asked for his thoughts on the popularity of Twisted Treeline, Meddler replied:
"We had a chat recently about our different queues. Issue of whether we should replace TT with something else did get raised, given its play rate ranges from extremely low in regions like NA and EU to effectively non existent in most other regions. We concluded we should still keep it despite that, though I expect we'd want to revisit that if things changed (e.g. if it's play rate declines further).
For reference, Dominion was substantially lower in play rate again than current TT when we made the call to remove it."
When asked for his thoughts on Zilean, Meddler commented:
"Theme and gameplay are distinct, though also quite niche in their appeal. Wouldn't look to substantially change either though. Counterplay can be a bit limited at times, but not critically so.
Visually he holds up ok. Showing his age a bit, pardon the phrase, but not to the same degree as other older champs.
Wouldn't prioritize any major work for him as a result."
Quick Gameplay Thoughts: October 12
"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
MF VO
Back when we were recording the VO for Gun Goddess MF we also looked at a VO update for MF's base VO, given we had voice actresses for all the required languages in the studio already. As you'll have noticed we didn't end up going through with that though. Wanted to share some details as to what happened there.
We recorded a lot of lines for a new MF VO set and put them into internal testing. Reaction was unexpectedly poor to it. To get a wider read we then reached out to Rioters who've played a lot of MF (mains or former mains generally) to get their thoughts.
Feedback was really split, with different people having different takes on who MF is. We then put that new VO into research labs with a number of regular players who came in to visit our campus, some of whom were MF mains, some of whom weren't. Once again we saw some really contrasting feedback, in particular the distinction between "spunky, playful" versus "bad ass, bounty hunter". We believe that reflects in significant part that our portrayal of MF has changed over the years. Her presentation in some of the newer stories for example is more the bad ass version. Her current VO, given its age however is more the flirty, fun earlier take on the character.
Between that disconnect over who MF is, and some sadness at moving to a new voice actress from some play testers we concluded it didn't make sense to use the new VO. That was a disappointment, given it felt like a great opportunity to update a well loved champ with a very limited set of lines. It was a case where the downside felt larger than the upside though. We'll hopefully take another swing at updating MF's voice at some point, starting with a better definition for MF's identity to base a script and performance off.
Couple of notable bug fixes in 8.21
I normally avoid talking about specific bug fixes given there are a lot in any given patch. Wanted to touch on a couple today though, given they're topics I've seen a number of questions on, the Zyra one especially.
Zyra - Got a fix for an issue where plants would get stuck trying to attack untargetable non champion enemies (e.g. Azir Soldiers or Orianna ball) and therefore be unresponsive when it came to attacking actual targetable enemies nearby.
Yorick - A bug fix for the Maiden to address cases where, while she's still following Yorick, she wouldn't always recall when he did. Mainly an issue in the jungle. Doesn't affect cases where the Maiden's no longer following Yorick."
Meddler provided an update on Lissandra's passive:
"Yeah, been working on some clarity and relevance issues this week. Been testing some changes as a result. Fairly confident they've addressed those problems while keeping the whole freeze your enemies on kill so they slow then explode thing."
Meddler noted when Preseason changes would hit the PBE:
"Preseason, so 8.23 in November."
When asked whether we would see a VS. event next year, Meddler replied:
"Not sure yet. We won't always do each event every year, want to give room to both try new types of event and let events breath a bit so they feel fresher when they come back (e.g. Pool Party skipping a year).
When we do do versus it's likely it'll always be with champs that have some reason to be rivals. That could mean in lore rivals like Yasuo/Riven or Rengar/Kha'Zix as you call out. Or it could be rivalries playing on other themes. Things like fire versus ice with Brand/Anivia, light versus darkness with Nocturne/Lux, small versus large with some Yordle and Cho'Gath etc (these are just examples, not promises)."
When asked about the state of Ashe, Meddler commented:
"Balance is reasonable, gameplay is fairly healthy (though does suppress immobile melee a bit much, resulting in a mobility versus slows arms race).
Appearance and audio are pretty middle of the pack IMO, so certainly wouldn't take time off champs showing their age a lot to work on Ashe instead."
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