Friday, October 18, 2019

Red Post Collection: Quick Gameplay Thoughts: 10/18, /Dev: Let's Talk About Urf & More

Today's red post collection includes Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for October 18th, a /Dev on Urf, a name change for RP, and more!
Continue reading for more information!


Table of Contents


Quick Gameplay Thoughts: October 18 

Here's Meddler with his quick gameplay thoughts for October 18th, including thoughts on the 10th anniversary, next week's PBE cycle, 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 
League 10 year anniversary 
We hope you folks all really enjoyed the 10 year anniversary stream earlier in the week. From our perspective it's been great to finally be able to share a lot of the things many different parts of the company have been working on for a while. The plan going forwards is that the teams working on each new game will be the ones handling ongoing communication about those games, particularly when it comes to revealing new details. Those of us on LoL won't be able to share news on those games with you all as a result. 
PBE update next week 
Next Tuesday should be an enormous PBE update as both the preseason changes and TFT Set2 go out. The plan is that TFT set 2 will then go live in 9.22 while preseason will soak for another patch to get more testing and go live in 9.23. We'll have some posts going up once everything hits PBE with a lot more details about what's in those patches, a few details below in advance as well though that, looking at current conversation, seem like they'd be helpful in understanding the direction we're going:
  • Elemental drake spawn
    • With the new changes the first three drakes that spawn will always be unique. E.g. Ocean->Infernal->Mountain is possible but Ocean->Ocean->Infernal is not.
  • Minion XP changes
    • As discussed we're taking some XP out of duo lanes and the jungle, then adding a bit to solo lanes. We're not going for a huge swing there though. Solo lanes are up 2%, duo lanes are down 2.4% and jungle is down up to 4% (less if you're getting catch up XP, so hard to quantify as exactly). We've kept level 2 breakpoints the same for both solo and duo lanes, so no one will need to relearn those. Jungle pathing should also be a bit more flexible, with XP removed from Krugs and added to Gromp to open up pathing more. 
Vilemaw post Twisted Treeline Removal 
We don't have any concrete plans yet but I do want to share that we're discussing possible ways to use Vilemaw in other game modes. Not sure yet about where that might be, could be things like an alternative to Baron on SR in some circumstances, a late game boss in TFT, a boss for an event game mode etc. Assuming we do find a good fit could also be quite a while before we had the right time to add Vilemaw to one or more of those modes. It's the sort of change we'd want to introduce in a preseason, a new TFT set, or an event mode that had a strongly matching theme, so the right opportunity might not come along for a while. . All very speculative basically, but wanted to mention we agree with the feedback that there's a lot of potential from using Vilemaw somewhere else so are looking into it."

When asked about Zilean, Meddler noted:
"We've got a Zilean skin in the works. Lemme see if there's anything about timeframe the team feel comfortable sharing."

As for Senna timing on the PBE, Meddler commented:
"Plan is that Senna goes out in 9.22. Most 9.22 content hits PBE next week, it's possible there's some reason Champions team might be putting her there a bit later that I'm unaware of though."

On Sejuani, Meddler commented:
"We'll likely add some power to Sejuani soon. Not sure which patch yet. We're not going to be doing much balance work to individual champs in 9.22 since preseason's just about to hit and we need to reassess everyone after that anyway. Possible we do do a few changes in 9.22 though and Sej would be one of the more likely candidates if so, given she's noticeably underperforming in solo queue and not meaningfully present in Worlds either."

Meddler talked more on what and what not to expect in the PBE in 9.22:
"No current plans for AP Bruiser items in preseason, though it's still a part of the item system we're interested in improving. 
9.22 is likely to be very light on balance changes for individual champs as is 9.23. We've found that trying to pre-emptively buff/nerf in response to systemic change can introduce as many problems as it solves so would prefer to ship preseason then adjust as need be, whether that's in hotfixes if really out of line, or in 9.24."

He also talked a bit more about Vilemaw:
Moving Vilemaw to another map would involve quite a bit of work, so it's not something we can do for preseason at least. Art's the largest thing there, with work needed on both the location Vilemaw would go into and potentially Vilemaw's anims, VFX as well to work well in a new location. 
Gameplay wise I don't think Vilemaw's a good fit for an early game boss that can be killed by one or two champions. Rift Herald does fit that role well, which is what we're looking to deliver from the Baron pit early game. Vilemaw by contrast reads more as a full team fight boss at, or potentially beyond, the threat level of Baron, at least as currently presented. Would be more inclined to look at things like a super late game replacement for Baron instead (e.g. post 45 minutes as a rare occurence). 

As for midseason changes, Meddler noted:
"We don't have any plans for large midseason changes next year no. While some players liked them sentiment was overall that it introduced both too much change per year and was disruptive during a period where players wanted stability from a competitive experience (both ranked and ESports). 
Regarding jungle timers for normal camps from what we've seen lack of timers there doesn't add meaningful skill for experienced players but does add significant barrier of entry for new players. Jungle's already a hard role for many to get into so making that harder doesn't seem useful. Additionally, while we're not currently changing respawn timers, it's something we expect we'll do at some point. The relearning that creates has been a frequently called out pain point from junglers, so we'd like to be able to tune when needed but with less friction created. Preseason's a good time to add functionality like this, given we're doing some UI work anyway so have the needed people temporarily on team."

As for the Hexakill gamemode on TT, Meddler commented:
"While we won't have Hexakill on TT this year before TT's removal as a regular mode we're certainly open to having Hexakill TT as an event mode sometime next year. It's one of the candidates we've been discussing already (no promises, but definitely under consideration)."

/Dev: Let's Talk about Urf 

Here's Fearless with a /Dev on Urf - "We’re bringing back URF as a one-time experiment to celebrate League’s 10-year anniversary."
"Hello friends! 
Happy 10 years of League of Legends! As announced during our 10-year anniversary stream, URF will be coming back for a limited time, starting on October 28, 2019. Not ARURF. URF! 
You may be confused as to why we’re bringing back a mode that we said would never return, and the truth of the matter is that this is an experiment. We’re trying this “new” version of URF for this special League of Legends milestone, but we still think the game mode is a risk when considering churn for players. That being said, we know that players have been asking for URF’s return, and we want to do our best to make it work. 
But we’ve been asking for URF’s return for a long time, why now? 
If there was ever a time to try and bring it back, 10-year is absolutely the time to do it. We’ve made a host of changes to (hopefully) improve some of the issues with the mode, and we want to give something back to our community, even if it’s for a limited amount of time. 
We’ll be looking through any and all feedback from you on this version of URF—as well as analyzing the same data points that helped us make that first decision to retire it—to see the impact of the changes we’re making. 
So is it all URF from here on out? 
No, definitely not. This is an experiment. We hope we’ve improved URF in meaningful ways, but we’re planning on this to be a one time thing. We’ve been transparent in the past that URF seems to have a lot of detrimental effects on players in the long term—in particular, it makes people burn out and stop playing League all together. If this becomes the case again, even with the changes, we’ll have no choice but to keep URF’s return as a one-time special event. 
We hope we’ve improved the sources of some of these problems with the changes we’re making to URF, as well as the improvements we’ve made to Summoner’s Rift and champions over the years. We are, however, far from certain that we fixed things. 
What are the changes? 
First off, we’ve added bans to Champion Select. Teams will lock in their bans first and then go into a standard blind pick. Mirror matches will be possible. 
Second, after weeks of testing, we did a full balance pass on all 140+ champions, similar to the way we’ve been balancing champs for ARAM. We’ve also dramatically upgraded the process we use to hotfix champs, allowing us to react more quickly when we discover champions are out of line and adapt some of the balance tools and techniques that we’ve been using to improve ARAM. We know that the ability to pick champions puts extra emphasis on the balance of the mode, and we’ll be watching to make sure we keep things in a reasonable state. 
And finally, we’ve added in some of the pacing elements from Summoner’s Rift that were introduced after URF’s debut (like turret plating) and tuned down our last pass at Elder Dragon to give more champions a time to shine. 
Is the Catapult of Champions coming back? 
Yup! We’re keeping all the changes from ARURF that are doing good work, so the cannon returns, Elder Dragon remains powered up (though a little less so), and a host of other smaller changes should keep games nice and snappy. 
That’s it for me! See y’all on the Rift, and happy 10-year!"

We're changing RP's name 

Here's shio shoujo and Beernana with an announcement on RP:
"Hey folks, 
We've made a few big announcements in the last few days, including the reveal of some new Riot games. With that in mind, we wanted to let you know that we won't be using Riot Points across all our present and future games. Our newly announced mobile titles, Legends of Runeterra, TFT, and League of Legends: Wild Rift, will be on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store, which do not allow different games to share game currencies. This restriction and other logistical complications of having multi-platform game currencies pushed us towards having a different one for each game. 
For those curious about the mobile version of TFT, while you'll use a different game currency on mobile, you can expect a shared inventory between the two platforms. 
With that being said, game currency on League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics on PC and Mac will be known as simply "RP". Any RP cards that you own or previously purchased will still work and the price structures are not changing at this time."

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