Tonight's red post collection features RiotScruffy with another update on the Rengar Rework, DontHassleDaHoff commenting on the lifetime RP rewards that are still being worked on, and a sizable AMA from the English Community Team!
Recent News
More on Rengar Rework
"Hello Rengars. Two things to talk about today.
1. I'm trying out a unique vision active for the bonetooth trinket: Rengar places a trap that triggers when an enemy walks within its radius (~200 unit radius for testing). The unit is revealed with Rengar's heat vision for 10 seconds. His first attack against the revealed target will cause him to leap.
2. Lets talk about the ferocity change because I'm seeing a lot of comments about it. The goal here is that we do want Rengar to start fights and ganks at 0 Ferocity, but we have given him a lot of changes to compensate for this change. His E now has a stronger slow that does not decay over time (this is big). Also his ferocity bonuses on all 3 basic skills are buffed so that when he does reach full ferocity, he is rewarded with a big finisher.
I really appreciate the feedback you all are giving in this thread, Rengar is really going to be sick when we're through with him.
-Scruffy"
Lifetime RP Rewards
DontHassleDaHoff, a CRM Manager, replied to"Krusher - you haven't missed it yet and it hasn't been cancelled. We've been going through iterations of it to make sure its awesome. Once it's ready, we'll make sure you're aware of it. Thanks again for checking in!"He continued:
"We're still working out all the details, but I do know it will count any purchase you made, regardless of the Season. As for the amount to qualify, we're looking the set the initial threshold really low, but again we're working out all the details - so just keep an eye out for this in the future."When asked about how awesome it will be, he commented:
"On a scale of awesomeness I would say it's up there with an 11 Yordle scout squad given too much caffeine and free time. It's going to be awesome (at least we're trying to make it that way).
But on a serious note, I don't want to spoil too much. As Moons posted back on page two, we have some ideas around this and we're currently getting feedback from some of our players.
There are a lot of variables in play here, and if you look through the threads, they echo some of our concerns:
- don't alienate the players between those that have spent a lot vs. not a lot
- account for those of you that have spent "abnormal amounts" (quoting Kay911kay) vs. those that have spent less.
- most importantly don't suck
Our initial thought on this back on 2012, was to give our fans different Summoner icons, but that was at a time when icons weren't readily available and as Lavasioth pointed out - icons won't do.
Other details around tiers, rewards, and timing, are still under review."
English Community Team AMA
Ymir, Riot Draggles, and Riot Navigator, who collectively make up the English Community Team, all banded together on EUW and EUNE to host a AMA!Here's the EUW version of their AMA introduction:
"Hello EUW
We are the English Community team and we are here today to have an AMA with you guys and girls to talk about our plans for 2014. Firstly, let me introduce the team:
Ymir – A man who needs no real introduction. One of the first Riot employees with over five years’ experience, he has been the main point of contact for players covering all aspects of League of Legends. Ymir will remain a central part of the English Community team and will also be a focal point for Player Behavior and Justice. Expect to see him in threads talking about the Tribunal and all aspects of improving the player experience in games.
Draggles – You may know him from LCS Recap and you now will know him as a core member of the English Community team. Draggles will be highly focused on player communication on all platforms and will specialize on making sure that players are kept up to date on server issues, resolutions and fixes. In addition, he will be planning and executing multiple events throughout the UK and Ireland.
Navigator – Hi, I am Navigator. My role within the team is English Community Manager with my role designed to grow the English team and bring some cool events all over the UK, Ireland and Scandinavia. Previous to Riot, I was with CCP Games for almost seven years. My role will be looking at major gaming events throughout our supported regions and striving to have a Riot presence there as often as possible.
You can follow us on Twitter. Riot Navigator, Riot Draggles and Riot Ymir
Before we begin to answer your questions, there are some issues which we are not the best people to ask about. Champion design and balance is handled exclusively in the US so asking why Kassadin is OP and Soraka is UP is not something we can answer with any great conviction. Part of our plan for 2014 will involve more subject matter experts who will be there to answer those questions.
We also understand EUW stability issues are a big area of concern. First it’s important to really say this is the place we play. We play on EUNE and EUW as players here in Europe, so we know and we’ve been there with you anytime there has been an issue and totally get how much of a pain it can be.
EUW is huge, like 6 stacks Cho huge, and we’ve seen some real improvements on our side. This is something that we’ve really put a lot of resources into over the years and while it would be crazy to say ‘hey here’s a date when we’ll never experience a problem related to a specific issue’, we’ll never stop making improvements to both communication and stability.
In October 2013, Riot Errigal posted a comprehensive thread about the status of EUW and what steps we are taking to improve the experience for everyone. We see players bringing new friends to League of Legends every day and our commitment to providing the best possible platform for everyone is unwavering. We are getting closer to our new EU server centre and we are improving the communication to players when an outage occurs."
For the next part, I've broken up some of the more interesting or revealing answers into similar topics. Be aware that these have been taken out of order and sorted.
If you'd like to browse the full AMA follow these links to each servers thread : EUW // EUNE
General
When asked if we can expect anymore lore events, Riot Navigator commented:
"Lore updates are pretty fun. In recent times we have had updates for The Freljord and the Shadow Isles. These updates are amazingly popular with players and something that we hope to continue in the future."
As for the topic of disclosing future skins, Riot Navigator commented:
"Champion skins are something we really do not like to talk about and there are a number of reasons for that. We know you guys love it when a new skin is announced or shown, however, we have had instances in the past when a skin got delayed or cancelled which caused deep discontent among players. We want your experience with a new piece of content to be positive and fun so we really do not want to make promises that do not deliver the best possible experience for you."
Riot Navigator also replied that the team isn't suited to answer balance questions in this AMA, saying:
"Champion balance, design and redesign is something handled from our North America office. It is not a subject that Community people should handle for you as it is not work in which we are subject experts."
When asked if there are any plans for Summoners Rift this year, Riot Draggles replied:
"Hey MrHananen, thanks for your question. Summoner's Rift is a constantly evolving platform for play. It's our main competitive map, it's by far the map with the most active games at any one time - a lot of eyes are on Summoner's Rift right now. We're looking at ways that we can really enhance your experiences on SR, but obviously any change to a map with that much play time will have to be perfect before we make any official announcement or release schedule."Riot Navigator elaborated on this, saying:
"It is not really a question of 'getting used to it.' The English Community team do not design Summoners Rift, Howling Abyss or any other map. The design teams in North America handle all visual and map updates which will require significant testing time. Having a bush moved may sound easy but could have massive ramifications for play. The honest answer is that we will not know a final design on this team until shortly before changes go to PBE. If we were talking about very early concepts, which will almost certainly change over time, this can lead to a lot of unnecessary frustration."
As for some goals for 2014 that the community team will be working on, Riot Navigator mentioned:
"A lot more presence in our supported territories which are primarily Ireland, United Kingdom and Scandinavia. This will include presence at major organized events, looking at what our community are doing and trying to get there as often as we can to support them, meet and greet with players, organize bar meets, do Q&A's and much more. This is in planning but getting close to completion at which stage you should see a lot more info coming out so you guys can plan accordingly."
EU Server Problems / Amsterdam Data Center
When asked about the Amsterdam Data Center that's being built to help with the EU server problems, Riot Navigator replied:
"The Amsterdam Data Center is a massive undertaking and something that all of us in Riot are excited about. As we approach a completion date you can expect to see much more coverage on what the center is, what it is designed to do and how it will improve performance for players in Europe,
From Riot Errigal's post, our Managing Director for Europe:
New EU Server Centre – We have been building a brand new facility in Amsterdam to house the EU servers. We’re building it with the latest designs in infrastructure, all new hardware and bigger/more servers than the current facility has. It will be the newest datacentre for any Riot region, and will be the latest in terms of overall system architecture. This is a massive undertaking that’s already been in the works for several months, and it’s not something that can happen overnight. I hope we can share some more behind-the-scenes details from the new data centre once it’s ready to power on."
Ymir also had a few comments:
"Some real progress is being made and we got to watch the guys laying out the tech in a video last week. It's exciting stuff.
As for date, we're always pretty tentative as things can change in a heartbeat when it comes to projects of this size. We'll definitely be hitting you guys with a big update when there's more to share. Any info will always come from us as an update, the rumour mill is a fun old place but not 100% trustworthy :) "
As for compensation for all of these recent problems, Ymir briefly noted:
"I talked about this a short while back. Compensation was our way of saying we’re sorry that you had a poor experience, but the main problem is we’re not totally convinced it achieves that goal. It actually seems to cause more problems than it solves and we don’t want to feel like we’re paying you off. It’s not a matter of being stingy, but more a case of creating a poor environment for discussion.
We've always held up our hands when an issue is on our end and we’ll always accept where we've made mistakes and can do better. We’re not avoiding compensation for any reason beyond wanting to make sure we’re doing it for the right reasons."
Communication
On the topic of EU players not being able to communicate with the balance team as they mainly post on the NA forums, Riot Navigator commented:
"This is a big issue for players and we want to see that pain end. We are looking at a number of different alternatives that will allow you to have a real say and contribution to champion discussion. We have a couple of options on the table that we are looking at right now and should have a decision pretty quickly. I don't want to start giving the options as it could derail the AMA by having people say 'I would prefer this one over that one.'"
Riot Draggles also commented on the lack of EUW/EUNE developer interaction, saying:
"Great question. I'm working on this right now. This is something that has been in discussion for a long time, and you should have seen XenonTheStoic and Riot Martlet posting a bit on EUW recently. I really want them to come visit more often and engage with European players - their thoughts and design ethos should come directly from them as opposed to second-hand information passed down through the EU Community team. I spent a few days in the Los Angeles office recently to find out how different departments work and I feel far more "in the know" than I did before.
tl;dr Definitely working on this. Very important issue right now.'
Ymir also chimed in on this, explaining this point of view on the champion discussion threads only really appearing on NA:
"We actually have a number of regulars, they come and go as things permit. Sometimes a designer can be working on something they can’t talk about and they go into hard focus mode for a while. It’s like hibernation but you work from dusk til dawn rather than sleep. The number one reason?
Time.
I’ve spent years asking this and flipping it around from all sides and stripped down from timezones and location and how these forums work and speaking face to face in LA with impassioned discussion of how much ass it kicks when people post here. The killer is always time. It took me ten minutes to write this, check it and post it, and I’ll need to follow up with a reply because it’s rude not to. The guys in LA are not all forum bound all the time, when they do hit things up they tend to go into great detail and this is a huge amount of time spent. There are four English forums and when we’ve tried in the past to keep discussion level it’s just a mess and nobody walks away satisfied.
That’s a non-answer, you say! I agree, the problem is it’s also true and you can see why it’s a tough topic to tackle with an answer that you want to hear. What I can say is that they are always reading or taking suggestions and ideas from here and that whenever something comes up we’ll be sharing it. We also have a growing team here dedicated totally to European players and you’ll be seeing that make an impact as time goes by.
I hope this AMA actually kicks off showing we're dedicated to hearing your issues and also doing what we can to finding solutions as Draggles mentioned above."
Ymir also shared his thoughts about having a "single forum for all the servers", saying:
"Tricky.
You can see right now we have a Community Beta rolling and everyone there can talk from all over. You may have also seen on the Yasuo contest that EUNE and EUW shared the comments section.
I was initially a massive proponent of a global discussion board but there are still a lot of questions to ask and I'd heartily encourage you to try out the beta linked there as it will help us a lot."
Team Builder
When asked how Team Buidler is coming along and how soon it hit live, Ymir answered:
"It's on the PBE from 10pm CET Mon-Wed!
We're really far along and actually had a few days discussing every aspect of the feature. The feedback has been really great and the results interesting. Follow me on Twitter and I give a heads up when it's live on the PBE for testing.
As for when it isn't worth my immortal soul to say, we do have potential dates but we had potential dates last year for example. We'll always dip, duck, dive and dodge that question until it hits live because any kind of date is a promise and on our scale promises are very difficult to keep.
It's going well!"
Player Behavior Improvements // Tribunal
When asked about the current plans to improve the community experience as summoner's seem to ave "lost faith in the Tribunal", Ymir replied:
"We want you to have a great experience, that's pretty much what gets us up out of bed each morning. It certainly isn't the Dublin weather.
Improvements and changes are happening all the time, both as iterations on existing systems and new ways to build your team. All with the aim of making sure when you play League of Legends you have a great time.
We can agree that punishment is not something that historically makes changes for the better (I'll get the Lyte talk for you on that and paste it here later), especially in our game, and we want to really drive sportsmanship and the connection you have with other players to give you the experience you want. Rewarding players needs to be considered almost as much as punishment because there is an overall goal. We do want to make people feel good, but if that good feeling is at the cost of achieving a better experience overall it needs to be studied.
The Tribunal does actually work as intended right now, unfortunately the extreme examples are also the most shareable and as such get the most visibility. It’s rare you’ll see a thread about a standard case. If we truly believed the Tribunal wasn’t helping us make your experience better then we’d say so and we’re always looking to see what improvements can be added."
Ymir fielded another question about the effectiveness of the Tribunal, saying:
"The Tribunal does its job really well, however perception is always a big problem. If you come to the boards you'd be forgiven for thinking that everyone out there is a scurrilous steel wielding cut throat killer at times. However that just isn't true, the studies we've done and the numbers we have just undermine it as being the case.
That really isn't to say poor experiences do not exist, they do and we're actively working to make them better all the time. I'd say be wary of taking the cases posted here as standard, they really tend to be edge cases.
We also know that it can feel like nothing is done after you press report, it's a final act in your interaction with that individual for most people. That is intentional.
Action is taken constantly against those who don't reform, but the vast majority of players do and the positive impact of this shows.
The Honour Ribbon is not a permanent detail, it requires Honour to continue being gained in order to maintain it. We never go into the numbers of this as anything we give away can game the system, but we're really aware that it may have caused confusion for some.
We haven't forgotten about it, but the folks who I discussed this with are really deep in team Builder right now."
Leagues System
Ymir also had a few comments concerning his thoughts on the "new" Leagues system vs the old ELO system:
"I really, really like it and I feel a lot of people look back with fondness on a system that wasn't really that great. It works as intended in that it provides a league structure that promotes getting better and advancing through ranks with visual understanding and clarity.
We're always looking at what can be improved and I think a lot has been said on this, I believe it was Riot Socrates who talked a lot about some changes we've made and those are far from the only ones that have occurred. Like everything about League of Legends Leagues are an iterative process. That doesn't mean they're unfinished it just means we're constantly looking back so we can look forward."
Other
When asked if Riot will be producing any more videos like the Get Jinxed music video, Ymir commented:
"They do really kick ass and I'd be very surprised if we didn't. They are a lot of work though, and take a long, long time to get right.
Glad you liked the Jinx video, that was so hard to keep secret. People were rocking out to it in the office for weeks beforehand and the reception was phenomenal."
Ymir also commented on botting and scripts that violate the ToS, saying:
"We actually avoid comment on these topics for a very specific reason, it isn't that we're just twiddling our thumbs or totally fine with any form of abuse it's that we take every precaution to take care of them where we can.
Scorched earth, full blown Brand ult.
Then why don't we herald this? Because highlighting individual cases draws attention to things that can really make our job way harder in this regard. We care, but don't expect us to discuss this very often it at all for those reasons. Just know that if you have ever experienced an issue in League of Legends so has a Rioter and even if we don't talk about it here, we do behind closed doors and take action as well."
As for responding to feedback ( particularly surrounding the Magma Chamber announcement ), Riot Draggles noted:
"Nearly all decisions made in terms of project status, game balance, champion concepts etc are based on a HUGE amount of data collection. The data provided in this post was not designed to mislead you, and we apologise if it came off that way. 1v1/2v2 is not dead, and it's definitely something we want to continue with in the future - just not in the forms that we've shown before. We understand that we messed up, and we're sorry. But there were a lot of lessons learned in the process; we're going to use those to make a 1v1/2v2 experience that you will really enjoy."
When asked about the future of League of Legends merchandise, Ymir pointed summoners to the twitter of a one RiotRedQueen:
"A whole boat load of exciting plans, just plans right now but we've really heard you want cool stuff. Hell I want cool stuff.
Follow https://twitter.com/RiotRedQueen on twitter as she'll definitely be updating people there as plans become real."
No comments
Post a Comment