Red Post Collection: 3rd Party Skin Site Fraud Update, Featured Matches & The Landing Page VR, and more!

Continue reading for more information!

• Red Post Collection: Patcher & Landing Page VR discussion, Lyte on AFK/Leavers
• Champion and Skin Sale 7/11 - 7/14
• Soulstealer Vladimir now available! 

3rd Party Skin Site Fraud Update

Riot Draggles has posted an update regarding the recent surge of 3rd party skin selling sites, including the announcement that they will be deactivating all previously issued skin codes in an attempt to stifle these sites.

"Getting scammed sucks. Unfortunately the internet is full of shady people who take advantage of others. At Riot we strive to protect players from these scammers, and recently we’ve noticed an increase in fraud around 3rd party skin sites and skin reselling.

These sites promise limited edition skins for League of Legends, when in reality they acquire codes illegitimately and exploit players. They charge excessive prices (we found one skin for over $1,000!) and sometimes take payment and never provide the content. You can’t predict the outcome, and no purchase is ever guaranteed regardless of what the seller says. To make matters worse these services typically use bots. Bots are lame to play with and chew up additional server bandwidth, negatively impacting everyone.

Riot is taking action against these scammers at the source. We are working with multiple payment processors to inform them of the situation and recommend they no longer process fraudulent payments from these sites. Additionally we will be deactivating all previously issued skin codes starting today. If you have a skin code that you acquired legitimately please send a request to Player Support and include proof of ownership. We’d be happy to help redeem the content to your account, but please note after 07/23/14 we will no longer be redeeming codes for any reason. 

For more information about codes and how to send Player Support a request, check out our code cards FAQ.

Followup: Player Support will not be retroactively removing content and skins that have already been redeemed prior to this announcement."

Riot Yuka followed up, explaining there are no issues for players who have already redeemed codes:

"We won't be deactivating skins that you've already redeemed on your account using a code. What it means is that we'll be deactivating all codes that currently exist. So anything that hasn't been redeemed yet cannot be redeemed using the code in the normal way.

If you've recently attended an event and received a skin code from a Rioter, and you haven't had a chance to redeem it yet, you can contact support. They will need to see proof that you own the code card (e.g. a photograph)."

Yuka continued, being very clear that:

"Any skins you have will not be removed from your account."

In response to someone who recently obtained a code from LCS Wembley and couldn't redeem it today, Yuka suggested:

"Go try the codes in the client - if they don't work, contact support and send them a photo of your codes with your summoner name written next to them. :)"

When asked how players can snag free skins from events or Rioters in the future, Yuka noted:

"Cards issued at future events will have a set amount of days before they expire. (usually 5-7 days)

We are also experimenting with a digital alternative, which was trialed at Japan Expo in Paris last weekend."

Have more questions or concerns? Try the CODE CARDS FAQ.

Featured Matches & The Landing Page VR

With the patcher and landing page visual refresh heading to the PBE soon, a few summoners have noticed the landing page image no longer has the Featured Matches section.

Here's zerocontext with more on the fate of Featured Matches:

"TL;DR: We definitely know some players care strongly about the Featured Matches on the current client landing page, and we're still working on the experience! 

Okay, here's our general design philosophy behind how we want to surface content (both on the landing page and elsewhere, like the website): We want all players to have an easy and intuitive way of finding the experiences that they enjoy, which could of course include Featured Matches.

One complication is that only a slim percentage of players frequently interact with Featured Matches, which doesn't mesh well with how much visual space we give to them at present (which we could be devoting to other exciting features). So, we think a happy medium can exist in which players who do care about spectating high-skill matches have an easy way to do so, while players who care more about other experiences don't face the distraction of an über-prominent Featured Matches area on the landing page. Again, we're still exploring how this experience might work in the new design. 

We think the new client landing page that's heading to PBE (and the new tech supporting it) will be flexible enough to allow us to do a better job of serving up more experiences that more players find relevant. It'll take us a bit of time to fine-tune our approach, though, so I hope you'll bear with us... and continue giving us regular feedback as we work to improve the experience. 

Fortunately, you won't have long to wait before you can start judging for yourself the success of our initial efforts! :-)"

Riot Boompje on context and time for projects

In a thread where a summoner suggested Riot maintain a page listing the projects Riot is currently working on Riot Boompje offered his thoughts on context and the time it takes for projects to be announced:

"So another big point I'd like to add to that: 

We have a lot of stuff in development at any time, and by far not everything makes it to release. A few big and known examples are Magma Chamber or the Mac client (back in 2011). We really try not to raise any false expectations. 

Another thing, although it's easier to solve but not trivial, is a lack of context. Many people don't know that it can easily take us way over a year for just 1 champion in development. The way we think about skins has also changed. When I just started playing league (back in 2009), skins were mostly recolours or just a small change in the skin. Nowadays, the skins are really a way higher quality. 

Changing a feature from a technical point of view is also a lot more complicated than just.. assign it to an engineer and have it changed the next day. We have a ton of stuff all going on at the same time, so that list would also be very, very huge. And not everything will be going to release. Not at all. 

Then another point to consider is that players may not know the context. Not everyone will understand that making a skin takes more than a few days of work, or that rewriting a large piece of software (hello Client!, see PBE news!) also is a huge piece of work, that also has implications on back-end and server workings. 

For me, I'd feel a big blocker for doing this would be raising false expectations, or players having expectations that we in the end don't meet. Also think of it from an Ultimate Skin point of view. PulseFire Ezreal and Spirit Guard Udyr are awesome skins, and the release events were a super nice experience. But it would be a lot more boring for players if they would be aware of how those skins were coming along in the moments before release."

IronStylus bits

While testing out the "show as flat" function on the forums last night, IronStylus also hung around to answer a few questions about ChampUp - the team responsible for updating champions :

"Hi. I wanted to try out the new function that should be listed below this box that says "show as flat" and see how the system works. I wanted to see if a conversation could be had using either or both of the views. 

While we're here! we'll have a general ChampUp pow-wow. All casual, this is mainly just to test, but if you have any questions/ideas/feedback we can also jam on those. I'll be on here for a little bit then head to bed. I'll check the thread in the morning also. 

EDIT: Going to head to bed for the night. Keep the discussion going. I'll check in the morning. Also, please take any notes about how your experience is inside the thread by using the flat and nested views. I'd like to take that feedback to the team to see if any ideas that users have opinions about can be implemented or improved. Thanks!"

When asked if Pantheon will ever get a makeover, IronStylus noted:

"He's sorta just a dude from 300 at this point. I'd really like to find a way to tie him more thematically into Targon. That'll take some exploration though."

As for if there is a "list" for champions who could use a texture update instead of a vull VU, he noted:

"Not really a list per se, more of just a general understanding that a lot of our textures need balancing. Right now there's no one committed to doing TU's 100%, my hope though would at some point to have a concentrated effort to adjust those textures."

When asked if there are plans for Kassadin and if his old model could get some live, IronStylus noted:

"Yeah, there's a lot of discussion around Kassadin. For one, we could sorta just plug a new model onto him, but.. is that enough? Technically we're not really happy with where he's at in a number of places, especially animation. So the discussion is centered around scope. Since he floats it's sort of a unique situation. It'd be REALLY nice to have a full fledged VU of him, but, is that too large of a production? Lots of questions being asked. That's sort of what's making up the discussion."

As for Dr. Mundo, he noted:

"Welp, I think he's just a straight up fidelity update. I don't think he's slated for any time too soon, but at least I don't think there's a lot of challenge in just.. Mundo'ing up Mundo. Yeah, there's just a lot of technical stuff I'd love to do with him. Bring him up to the goofy brute that he should be."

and Cho'Gath:

"Well, we haven't really even started concepting Cho, but he'll have some pre-production work started on him soon. I still take the stance that I want him to be like a Kaiju of the Void. Whatever it entails to get that I'm up for! We have to scope it out though. That's a big team discussion."

IronStylus also shared his thoughts on the release cadence of new champions, saying:

"Indeed, things have slowed down a bit. I'm not 100% up on the skinny, as you said I don't work on the team really, but I think there's a general desire to make sure things are super cohesive when a new champion comes out. I think that can take additional bake time. Aside from that I'm not privy to the nitty gritty of production, but I think one of the reasons Relaunch has become a bit more consistent is to help out the churning of new content. In some cases are team is pretty much making a new champion. My feeling is that things will always sort of be a hybrid of champions, skins and now relaunches as being integral parts of content packages. 

I understand though. Champions are the biggest hype potential in terms of content, and can really have amazing promotional content, community discussion, and general excitement surround their build up and release. The champion release is still our biggest bang I feel. It feels like something huge is being added to the game, which it is. 

For me personally, I miss some of the old days of slightly faster cadence, but I trust that the guys over on the Champion Team know what's up and are fully aware of what they're goals and deliverables are, and how fast those things should be put out."

[ Continued ] Experimental Manamune and Muramana Changes on PBE

ricklessabandon has posted on update concerning the experimental Manamune and Muramana change he's been trying out on the PBE, looks like the build path changes will be shiping in 4.12 but the Muramana active change will not.

"update! (2014.07.10 @ 03:06) 

okay, got some really helpful stuff from the first iteration! i'm going to go forward with the build path changes to manamune in the 4.12 patch, and continue explorations with various muramana actives. the next version should hit the pbe sometime after 4.12 goes live. until then, i've updated the item details above. 

also, there were several bugs affecting tear, manamune, and muramana due to a one-time refactor we did that should all be worked out. just need to get the new tooltips in after 4.12 ships and then things should look much more normal! 

oh! one last thing… i did want to mention that i've been reading every comment posted here as well as any tweets that mention me and a handful of forum/reddit threads. i haven't had time to directly respond to them unfortunately, but they're definitely read and count for something!

muramana (last updated 2014.07.10 @ 03:06) 

this will temporarily be off of the pbe while we prepare the 4.12 patch 

[added] passive :: gains +10 bonus true damage (increased by 2% of maximum Mana if any number of azure stacks are active). also gain 1% attack speed for every stack of azure active. 

[remade] active :: spend 60 mana to gain 10 stacks of azure, then doubles the current mana cost and stack gain of this active. azure has a fixed duration of 9 seconds, and when it expires this active resets its mana cost and stack gain and then goes on cooldown (30 second cooldown). 

edit: to clarify, the passive mana-to-ad conversion from 'awe' is unchanged!