[Updated] Red Post Collection: Summoner's Rift Interactive Map & Gameplay Video, Season 2014 ending soon, SR Q&A on Nov. 7th, Kalista Discussion, No immediate plans for Quinn, & more!

They've also put up a Gameplay video of the updated Summoner's Rift!

Likewise, he noted that legitimate smurf accounts are NOT considered boosting:

Rhojin continued, sharing the standard penalty for being caught boosting:

"The time suspension for a MMR Boosting suspension is two weeks. Being punished does not ban then from ranked for the rest of the season but it does disqualify them for receiving any rewards, no matter how high they climb on the ranked ladder. 

If your friend was being boosted, our investigation will find them and a punishment will be issued (if one hasn't yet already been issued.)"

He continued:

"In regards to the suspensions, I really cannot comment on that. VPNs really don't bother us, we understand that there are players who prefer to use a VPN service. Rest assured that using a VPN will never get an account flagged for MMR Boosting. I am afraid I cannot go into detail about what we use in our investigations to determine what accounts have been involved in MMR Boosting. Sorry for the painful vagueness."

When asked if high elo and competitive players will be treated the same as lower ranking players in terms of boosting punishments or TOS violations, Rhojin noted:

"High MMR, Low MMR everyone is treated equally. It doesn't matter if they are in Challenger or currently sitting in Bronze, if they have been identified for participation in MMR Boosting they will receive the same punishment."

As for attempting to subvert punishments by boosting in other regions, Rhojin commented:

"Boosting from a different region does not prevent us from finding them or issuing punishments."

Rhojin continued, noting that players playing from from different locations is also factored in and accounted for in these investigations:

"Geography does not hinder our investigation process. We have multiple factors that are investigated when a report is brought to our attention. Our investigation is set up to factor in that there are players who play from different locations (A Friend's House, PC Cafe, College,etc) this is taken into account when identifying someone who has had their account boosted."

As for which category on the Riot Support site to submit boosting reports to, Rhojin noted:

"You can submit any boosting reports in the General Category under Game and Features"

He continued, discussing why the end of game reporting feature doesn't have a "boosting" option:

"The in game report system was set up to collect reports for the tribunal and other behavior initiatives. Negative or toxic behavior in games should be reported using this tool. 

Reports of misconduct such as MMR Boosting should be reported through a support ticket as the in game report system was not designed for these reports."

Rhojin also replied to concern that boosters are not punished in a timely manner:

"Our investigations take time and there are numerous players we are looking into at any given time. We investigate all reports sent to us, so your report hasn't been ignored. Even if they receive their rewards at the end of the season, if they are found to be guilty we can still punish them. There is no cutoff date to when an account can be punished for boosting."

Rhojin also touched on this later in the thread, saying:

"Our investigations are on going. While they may take some time to complete, every report will be looked into. There is no such thing as an open and close case to us in regards to boosting, while screenshots or other evidence you feel may support your report may be provided we still run every account through the full investigation process. If they are determined to have been involved in MMR Boosting they will receive the same punishment as every other confirmed player."

He continued:

"We look into multiple aspects when determining if an account has been boosted or not. Simply going on a winstreak will not put an account in danger of being punished for receiving a MMR Boost."

[Continued] Kalista Discussion

Meddler also had a few comments on Kalista following her champion  reveal and PBE debut:

 When asked about Kalista being permanent bond to an ally and why this effect doesn't reset if that particular ally disconnects of AFKs, Meddler explained the team's thought process:

"She is indeed. That's something we've spent a lot of time internally discussing but eventually decided was for the best. We want Kalista to form a permanent bond with an ally, since that then means the decision about who to bond with's a really significant and interesting one. Do you bond with your support, and if so which one does your lane partner want to choose? How does having access to Kalista's R chance your chance of lane partner? Alternatively do you bond with your jungler and gain strength during ganks/different opportunities mid/late game in exchange for lack of W passive access in lane? Or do you try going to a different lane than bot and get a lot of jungle pressure? Allowing you to change who you bond with to whoever's optimal at each point in the game diminishes both that gameplay and the feel of a soulbond we're aiming to create between two players for the course of the game. 

That does admittedly mean that having her soulbound ally disconnect/quit/afk stings even more than a 4v5 already does. Our eventual conclusion though was that we didn't want to incentivize players disconnecting to swap bond targets. Going with a really long DC/afk period until rebinding's possible would get around that, at that point though the point's pretty moot. If you've been 4v5 for 10 minutes the game's probably over regardless. There's definitely an appreciable cost created by making 4v5s even more painful, overall though we felt that the new gameplay we could offer this way outweighed that pain."

He continued:

"Yeah, fair question. This one came down to a cost/benefit assessment of how much should we limit the experiences we can offer and potential for cool moments in most games versus exacerbating an existing problem in a subset of other games. I'd argue we've actually been a bit too risk adverse in the past, limiting or avoiding some really cool abilities that 99%+ of the time would create great gameplay because there were some negative cases. 

Having said that this is definitely one we'll be watching really closely. It's not the sort of thing we've done as much of before (transfer of direct agency to another player) and as a result is definitely somewhat experimental. If that doesn't overall work as hoped we'll adjust."

Meddler continued, speaking to the decision to allow Kalista the ability to "CC" her team mate and her lack of access to an ultimate when her bound ally is dead:

"There's definitely some trolling potential in there, our conclusion though was that if an ADC on your team's being that trolly the game's probably over regardless. As a result we didn't want to limit some of the cool stuff we could hopefully offer because someone with other trolling opportunities might be annoying every couple of minutes. On top of that Kalista's ally always has the option of trying to escape with the ult of course - being pulled in doesn't commit you to being aggressive with it necessarily. 

Lack of an ult when her ally's dead's a definite weakness and ulting early's often a good play, as is keeping a really close watch on your ally's health and ulting defensively if needs be. As you say there's also a lot of options on the rest of Kalista's kit and that situation also assumes the enemy's killed someone else before your marksman, which has some benefits too."

Be sure to check out our PBE coverage for a better look at Kalista's abilities, release skin, and more!

Azir Changes on PBE

Meddler also swooped in to comment on the Azir changes currently testing on the PBE, including  a damage increased on his Q, a ratio decrease to his W, and a shield value increase to his E:

"The goal of these changes is to buff Azir's early game and reduce his late game strength, theory being that Azir currently gets shut down too hard sometimes early, but is an absolute monster late game. Having a distinct power curve's no bad thing, we do feel it's currently a bit too extreme though, hence we're testing these changes to tweak it a bit."

He also commented that they are currently working to fix a few bugs with Azir's R:

"Thanks for the report. We're digging into Azir's ult at the moment - his ult's occasionally failling against enemies in general (this isn't just a Pantheon bug alas)."

No Immediate Plans for Quinn

When asked about the Quinn range and movement speed changes that keep popping up on the PBE, Meddler replied that there are no immediate Quinn changes planned:

"We don't have any current plans to change Quinn in the short term at least. The range change was being tested internally as part of a set of changes that included a number of other things (much shorter ult CD late game, removal of ult damage etc). We'll probably explore some of that stuff again at some point, conclusion was that that wasn't an immediate clear win though and that we wanted to focus on the upcoming pre-season work instead right now."

Processing Global Feedback

When asked how exactly feedback from multiple regions is weighed and assessed when each region views a champion's balance differently, Meddler replied:

"Quote:

Sorry the OP was kind of vague, but I'll get to the point. What I'm wondering is how you balance this game when you get different feedback from different regions. This is completely hypothetical, but let's say NA thinks Irelia is OP, but EU West/East thinks she is weak. You also have Riot staff from each region (or who visit different forum regions). If different regions have different opinions on how to balance champions, how do you decide what to do?

"Short version - we don't balance off volume of feedback. What's useful is the logic and justification behind the feedback - one well put argument for why something's too strong, weak, abusive etc's worth more than hundreds of 'wtf nerf' comments. Sometimes that will mean a champ is considered overpowered in some regions and underpowered in others (Ezreal a couple of years ago in China, compared to most of the rest of the world, being one of the clearest examples). We won't always get that assessment right the first time of course, and there have certainly been cases where we've missed something or acted incorrectly based off a pattern in some region's, that's the approach we seek to follow though."