Red Post Collection: Meddler on Urgot, Story of Yorick's R, New Episode of All Chat, Lunar Revel / Blood Moon Cosplay

Tonight's red post collection includes Meddler discussing plans for small Urgot buffs in the near future, Reinboom weighing in on the most complext item to code, Riot Daemon with a story on the creation of Yorick's R, a new episode of Riot's ALL CHAT, and a look at Lunar Revel & Blood Moon cosplay!
Continue reading for more information!

• [Champion Preview] The Wonder Above

Table of Contents

• Meddler on Urgot - Full Rework Planned but Long Way Off, Small Buffs Soon
• Meddler on Irelia
• Most Complex Item to Code
• Yorick's Ultimate changed four days prior to release!
• League of Legends' Code
• All Chat - 106 LB Darius Axe
• Check out these Lunar Revel Cosplayers

Meddler on Urgot - Full Rework Planned but Long Way Off

When asked about Urgot and future plans the balance team may have for him, Meddler commented:

"Long term we've got a full rework planned for Urgot. That's a long way off though, he's both a big project and not first in the queue. Shorter term (starting next week) we're going to explore some small, quick buffs for him. Hopefully find some stuff to help him out a bit in the meantime without reintroducing any of the problems that lead to him getting heavily nerfed in the first place."

[UPDATE 2/22] He continued:

"We're going to try a small mana ratio on his shield in testing soon. That was something that showed some promise when tried briefly last time we were testing possible changes for Urgot. Didn't proceed with it at the time due to a desire to focus on other things first and see what impact those had. The last set of changes certainly didn't overbuff him though, so we're going to look at it again."

Meddler on Irelia

With IronStylus's recent discussion on Irelia's eventual visual updates, Meddler also chimed in on the gameplay side of things, noting that don't have any solid plans at the moment:

"Quote:

Do you have any information about the planned gameplay changes? 

I always thought Irelia was a champ who didn't really deliver her fantasy to the player. 

I mean she is this general who has levitating blades and her moveset is pretty much a standard-bruiser kit.Only her ultimate really delivers on the levitating blade thing. 

We don't have anything concrete on the gameplay side at the moment. She's got a lot of potential we'd like to develop at some point, missed opportunities on the telekinetic blade side in particular as Ironstylus has mentioned. She's in a reasonable spot balance wise right now though, and does have some really cool moments (Q chaining especially IMO), so other champs are higher priority for gameplay work right now."

Most Complex Item to Code

In a thread asking Rioters what the most difficult item to code into the game was, Riot Reinboom commented on the complexity of making Zz'Rot Portal:

"Not counting early items (There was a time when actives didn't exist in alpha, after all. Technically the first active probably was the hardest? Or maybe the first item at all)
Zz'Rot Portal is the most complex. 

Some of the new tech in Zz'Rot:

• The health bar. The minorest of it all. We couldn't put a timer bar on structures before the void gate.
• Unit tagging (arbitrary designation of "types" on a unit and in an inherited fashion)... in order to make:
• AI behavior filtering based on tags. This is how Voidspawn ignores Void creatures and Champions (including clones).
• "Gameplay" Navigation cell tagging. We had behaviored nav cells before (pathable, wall, stops vision, grants vision, brush...) but we didn't have arbitrary tagging before that was exposed to our gameplay system. Nor did we have it when we released Zz'Rot (and instead I did some janky math to get it to assign lanes kind of correctly). We made that tech for first intent of making it so Zz'Rot's spawn direction is sensible."

Yorick's Ultimate changed four days prior to release!

 In the same thread as the complex item discussion, Riot Daemon also chimed in to share a story on the Yorick's ult, which was changed right before his release:

"Yorick's ult creation was a fascinating story. His original ult acted somewhat like a combination of curse of the sad mummy and karthus wall. About ~4 days before he was shipped live his ult was changed because everyone who played with the old ult thought it was really unfun to play. The designer ended up combining two highly dangerous systems together, zombie mode and clones. That said, I don't think it was the most difficult thing to code, although understanding all the interactions it has with other things certainly could be. 

You will notice we now never change a champion's ult 4 days before release and never combine those 2 systems together anymore :)"

In a different thread, Riot Daemon also shared a tid bit on Maokai's W from development:

"Maokai's Twisted Advance used to move half as fast and give Maokai a huge armor buff upon hitting someone."

League of Legends' Code

Continuing on the topic of coding, Meddler also replied to a question on if Riot plans to every "completely redo" their game's coding:

"Quote:

Just a question to any Reds out there. I have heard over the years that the code for LoL is messy, so will there ever be a complete rewrite, or at this point is there too much stuff to completely redo it? I heard that the 2.5 AS cap is in place because of coding limitations, so maybe it could be higher with all new code, along with less random bugs caused during tweaks.

Some of the code's updated or rewritten entirely every patch. Which bits depend on where we think there's the most value (what features should be added, where do we see the most problematic or common bugs, are there ways to make the game run more efficiently etc).

As far as attack speed goes the cap's not there for code reasons, but gameplay and animation ones. On the gameplay side having a cap allows you to take a maximum into account for balance reasons (what's the absolute max Xin Zhao can reduce his CDs by for example). Animation wise it then gives a range of possible attack speeds that attacks need to be made to look good and feel right for (do attacks remain distinct, feel natural, read clearly etc)."

All Chat - 106 LB Darius Axe

We also have a new episode of All Chat, where Riot shines the spotlight on a plethora of community creations!

"All Chat is back to kick off 2015 with more fan creations, art, cosplay, interviews, videos, and more! Don’t forget to submit your League of Legends creations to All Chat on the Facebook page and subscribe to the NA Community YouTube channel for more community-created awesome"

Check out the youtube description for links to everything featured in this episode!

Check out these Lunar Revel Cosplayers

Continuing on the community content train, we also have Riot Yuka with a slew of Lunar Revel and Blood Moon cosplayers!

"The moon is about to set on this year’s Lunar Revel, which means it’s time to shine a lantern on the finest Lunar Revel, Blood Moon and Warring Kingdoms cosplay photos you guys submitted in response to our January call for entries. It was a joy to review all the submissions – incredible work as always!

If you like what you see, don’t forget to click on the cosplayers’ names beneath their photos and tell them how much you enjoy their work.

And remember, cosplay is always more fun when done with friends!

If you missed the submission deadline, don’t worry. You can always head over to Boards to share your work and join the discussion."

Be sure to check out Riot Yuka's thread on the boards for a look at even more cosplay, including more of Warring Kingdoms Jarvan IV, Lunar Goddess Diana, Panda Annie, and Blood Moon Akali!