Grumpy Monkey talks Visual Updates
The conversation kicked off when a summoner asked asked how Sivir's Visual Update is coming along, to which Grumpy Monkey replied:
"She looks cool. She will be out soon. The skins are still being worked on but Sivr Pax is looking legit not much changed, just streamlined the design a bit for readability."
When bothered for a time frame, he noted:
"But I will say this much, She's not the next VU."
He continued, explaining the difference between a low-risk VU and a high-risk VU:
"So a while back one of the Relaunch guys (can't remember who, might have been Qqroon or Ironstylus) explained about high risk reworks vs low risk reworks. Master yi is an example of a low risk rework. We knew what he was going to be, is original look and concept was cool, the execution just needed a bit of polish to get to the current standard. It was mostly just visual work. Reworks get more risky as more aspects like gameplay design and lore have to be involved. So we wanted to do a few low risk characters before we hit the really work intensive Relaunches (like Sion). Sivir was mostly visual work, but there are some story elements that the writing team have been working on to make her tie into the world a bit better, and make her a major player in the Leagueaverse. That being said, the reason she's not the next one out is simply because we started another one before her."
When asked if Twitch was next up, he replied:
"It's not twitch, but Twitch is coming along nicely. I am really digging him. I have the sculpt done and the team has approved moving him forward."
As a follow up, someone asked Grumpy Monkey exactly what he meant by having Twitch's "sculpt done". His response:
"The sculpting phase is when I translate the 2d drawing into a 3d sculpture like I did for master yi and trundle.
https://vimeo.com/68653110
It's a phase where the design is getting locked down and streamlined for the actual game.
After sculpting it gets dropped down in resolution and we take the shadow info from the high res sculpture and use it as the starting point for the low res game model's texture."
As for why he can't just spoil the next VU champion for us, he commented:
"The team likes to announce these types of things very formally with lots of great support from all the different facets of Riot, from the web team, community,events, and marketing teams. If I were to leak images or teasers, that would be a waste of a lot of hard working peoples time."
He even refused to give any hints!
"No hints!! If I even give you the slightest of tidbits you guys will figure it out! You are good like that..."
Grumpy Monkey did, however, say that the current goal for the relaunch team is to get one rework done per month.
"Our goal is to have one rework done a month. Now having one done and having one released are two different things. Yi had been done for a few weeks, but SGU had priority, we didn't want to steal any even a little bit of it's thunder, also there were lots of platform techy stuff things that would have made the patch too big. So we held off until SGU was home free. So what I'm saying is, we try to be flexible.Just because a rework is done, doesn't mean it's time to release it. We try to time it with other stuff that can boost overall player engagement."
Ququroon also chimed in, offering a small hint on the next champion to get a visual update
"Well, I guess I could do that.
You guys know about that whole low risk, high risk thing, right? The next champion is a low risk."Completed Diana and Leona picture
As promised, IronStylus returned with a more polished version of the Diana and Leona art from yesterday!
"Hey! Here's a thing!
If anyone wants the raw images to turn into their own rez/image/whatevs, here ya go!
http://i.imgur.com/z4vN2RA.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/oy8DSlj.png"
You can also check out his reddit post fan alterations of the image and more!
Masteries Feedback
With the end of S3 right around the corner, FeralPony has started to poke around for some feedback on masteries.
"Salutations guys! It's not really a secret with Season 4 approaching at some time in the future we're going to be doing some gameplay changes. Morello and Xypherous have talked at a very high level about a few of the topics (we're still heavily in concept and prototyping phase atm) but one of the topics I wanted to grab feedback on is Masteries as one of my tasks in S4 is to give these guys another pass (I also worked on Season 2 and Season 3 masteries for context). It'll prob be a while before I can preview anything but I did want to get your feedback as early as possible during this process.
Feedback need not be limited to the following but some points I'm curious about are (Don't feel the need to answer all of them, any feedback is helpful)
1- Do you feel masteries as a whole should be stronger, weaker, or stay the same? There are pros and cons to each approach.
2- What are your current favorite and least favorite masteries?
3- Which tree do you feel is currently the best designed and why? Worst and why?
4- Which masteries do you think are the most overpowered and which are the most underpowered.
5- Any crazy ideas for a new mastery? It can be for any tree, at any tier. New ideas are always helpful"
You can leave your feedback on the EUW thread or on the EUNE thread.
As for future plans, he hasn't revealed too much - only commenting on the planned removal of the improved summoners mastery and to tinker with the CDR granted in offensive and utility trees.
"It's on my list. Current plan is to remove the Improved Summoners and shift it to be 5% and 5% in Offense/Utility. It'll take a little more shuffling and tuning beyond that but I agree its a concern just due to the extent it bothers some people."
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