Red Post Collection: Ask Riot: Pre-Season Edition, Beekeeper Singed Delay & More

Table of Contents

• Ask Riot: Pre-Season Edition
• Beekeeper Singed Delay 
• Patch Cadence Change Rumors
• Quick Hits
• Reminders

Beekeeper Singed Delay 

I am Carlos is here with some news that might sting; the new Beekeeper Singed skin will be delayed a patch:

"Hello Singed mains! I know you’ve all been waiting for Beekeeper Singed to be released tomorrow, but we are going to push it back to patch 7.20 to fix some bugs with the skin. We know this stings, but we want to make sure that when the skin is released, it’s in the best shape possible for you. So, please wait a bit longer."

Patch Cadence Change Rumors

In a thread on Reddit covering some rumors of patch cycle changes, a few Rioters gave their thoughts and opinions at the proposed changes and stressed that this was something they were only considering at the moment:

Asyrite commented:

"The main consideration here is primarily for patch to patch balance changes. I don't think there's any intention for us to release skins/champions/other content on a slower cadence, at least not that we've talked about so far. There will still be 24 patches in a year, that won't change, but the actual size of them will adjust based on this new philosophy. 

The primary benefit we want to achieve by adjusting the scale of our balance changes in alternating patches is so we can better plan throughout the year changes that are more holistic solutions to problems we want to solve and make League a better game. Things like ap itemization and melee fighter itemization are things that come to mind for these patches, and by being able to ship them throughout a season, we can ideally hit more high moments where players are experimenting and making interesting choices in all of their games. 

Currently it's pretty risky to do those sorts of larger systemic changes throughout a season because of things like the solo queue ranked season disruption, the pro scene etc, but if we're able to set the expectation that the first patch of the month (or 2nd, who knows!) will be more disruptive, we can start to mitigate those concerns. What this would look like is a large patch that addresses some of the larger aspects of the game, followed by a smaller patch that addresses performance outliers if the health of the game is being degraded by something we didn't expect. We're pretty excited to see how this pans out, and if it proves effective we're likely to continue this going forward. We'll be continually monitoring whether it's successful or not, so consider that nothing is set in stone. 

To make sure a few things are clear: 1. There would still be 24 patches in a year 2. 12 of the patches would be larger/more impactful, with 12 of them being devoted to addressing outliers from the patch before 3. This wouldn't impact skins releases / other feature releases, and it most likely wouldn't impact champion/vgu releases. 

Say for example we shipped some new items in 8.03 that ended up making Fizz busted, and he was an outlier compared to other champions. We'd then either hotfix him (if he needed it), or adjust him in the 8.04 patch which is considered the stabilization patch.

RiotAxes continued:

"We're talking about this for balance changes. Skins wouldn't be impacted, features that aren't pure gameplay wouldn't be impacted (e.g. pinging the UI, vision here ping), etc.
New champions and VGUs would most likely not be impacted. It's less clear whether smaller scope updates like Ability Updates would be impacted (still discussing).
Even then, we're not committed to the approach, but we're considering it."

RiotAxes went on:

"This conversation is a bit difficult because we're not locked in on any direction at this moment, so it feels a bit premature. 

Just so we're very, very clear - we are not talking about changing when simple balance changes happen. Those would still go on any patch that they're ready/needed for, or hotfixes when appropriate. 

We are talking about when, how large, and how often we deliver projects like 7.14 Lethality retuning, Support itemization, Thornmail + Bramble Vest update, Sterak's Gage update, and possibly Ability Updates like Azir - we are considering planning around one larger project every two patches with a guaranteed stabilization patch in between."

Quick Hits

• Eyes on Worlds: Episode 1 (2017)

"Eyes on Worlds is a four-part series that follows the best teams in the world at the 2017 World Championship in China. In this episode, we start at the LPL Finals where Edward Gaming and Royal Never Give Up battle for China’s 1st seed at Worlds on their home turf."

Reminders