Red Post Collection: Quick Gameplay Thoughts: 11/1, Ask Riot: One For All, & More

Today's red post collection includes Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for November 1st, this week's new Ask Riot, covering One for All, comics, and more, and an update to the Fan Contribution to Worlds 2017!
Continue reading for more information!

• Red Post Collection: League Client Strike Team Update, Gameflow Changes, Everything You Need to Know About Finals & More
• 10/31 PBE Update: Victorious Graves Splash & More Tentative Balance Changes
• Champion & Skin Sale 11/3 - 11/6

Table of Contents

• Quick Gameplay Thoughts: November 1st
• Ask Riot: One for All
• Update: Fan Contribution to Worlds 2017 Prize Pool 
• Quick Hits
• Reminders

When asked about Poppy, Meddler commented:

"Quote:

Any plans on changing Poppy in the preseason, her stats look like she needs some love

We'll be reassessing everyone once the pre-season patch hits. The changes to Runes are large enough that balance states will get shifted around quite a lot so basing too much off current state of things doesn't make much sense."

On the VO changes mentioned, Meddler replied:

"Quote:

Hi meddler i have some vo questions. 

How come in spanish lan voices, when they randomly get base champions updates when they get a legendary skin or just a random time, but we are stuck to only getting lux and maoki getting random voice updates and then maybe miss fortune with her upcoming splashes? Have you ever considered doing a "modern" (2 minute) vo update for alpha champs? Such as 2015 where alot of champs for half vus but no new voices (Shen, Alistar, Kassadin, Singed, Fiora) is there any plans at all at updating voices?

We're interested in updating just voices on some more champs, can't make any promises there though. 

Sometimes we'll do voice updates to the base when a legendary skin gets done because the skin's using the same voice actor as the base skin so we've got them in the studio already which makes things easier. I'm not certain, but it's possible what's happened in the case of the spanish LAN voices you mention that the voice actor in question did both the base and skin in that case, while the voice actor in other languages, english included, was different for the base and the skin."

As for Mage Keystones, Meddler commented:

"Quote:

Any thoughts about keystone diversity for mages? It seems like most are pigeonholed into comet, even if it is suboptimal

Phase Rush should be a really solid choice on quite a few. As with Stormraider's Surge we're expecting some people will be slower to pick up on how valuable it is though because it doesn't have damage and people gravitate towards that pretty heavily. For really burst focused mages Electrocute's also a strong option. Dark Harvest's potentially solid too, though that's one of the ones I'm less sure about the current balance tuning on in general. Summon: Aery is also going to be good in some cases, particularly but not only if the mage in question has a shield on their kit. I think it gets automatically dismissed by a lot of people because they see shield in the text, but given the way the CD on it works it's not like you're getting only half the benefit if you don't have a shield. 

Would also expect at least some niche use of the Inspiration keystones, looter especially, to have its place. Resolve's generally not so mage friendly. Bit of splash use of precision's possible, Fleet Footwork on champs like TF especially, though wouldn't expect too much of that."

On the word clouds Meddler provided, he noted:

"Quote:

Who called my boi Braum boring? I’ll kill ‘em

That's one of the things that comes through really clearly in these surveys. Not matter how cool or well done you may think a champ is personally, there's always some group of people who don't see why they're even in the game, without exception. Helps as a regular reminder that taste is never universal."

When asked about Sightstone, Meddler replied:

"Quote:

Meddler, this probably needs a bigger conversation but do you see all of the following as a possibility:

• remove sightstone and its upgrades
• buff yellow trinket, allow an upgrade option into a pink trinket at level 9 or whatever
• add an 8th dedicated item slot for red pill or blue pill

I feel like sightstone isn't really needed anymore because we have yellows now, so maybe getting rid of it and improving team vision is the best thing to do going forward.

I think there's a decent amount of value in letting some players go deeper into vision than others (specialization of skill/output, lack of even vision across the map etc). Pushing all warding onto trinkets has some problems as a result. One useful thing we saw with the Ardent Censer rushing though was that quite a few more people were interested in playing support if they got to buy a 'real' item first', rather than being forced to spend their initial gold on vision. Once pre-season's settled down we've got some interest into looking at whether we can make that a reasonable option without screwing your team on needed vision."

Ask Riot: One for All

This week's new Ask Riot is now out, covering One for all, Comics, and more:

"This week, it’s One for All, League comics, and emotes. 

Is One for All ever coming back?

We want One For All to come back. We like One For All. Unfortunately, the custom voting mechanism in champ select that let’s you vote on the champs—and effectively facilitates the whole mode—needs to be re-built by hand to work in the new client. We haven’t been able to get to this yet, due to the other things we’ve been working on (Star Guardian Invasion, yay!). 

And honestly, it sucks. : ( I want to play One For All with the new champs (Xayah FEATHER STORM!!). Hexakill is in the same boat (we need to rework multiple UI’s to squeeze in the 6th player). We want both of these modes back, but don’t have a satisfying answer for when they’ll be back yet. I’m pretty confident they won’t appear by the end of 2017, so I’m hoping we can get to them next year! <3 

L4T3NCY

Lead Designer, Rotating Game Modes  

Do the comics being published lately influence the biographies of champions or are they separate stories? Are you planning on updating the biographies to include them?

There are some cases where you will see events from the comics reflected in future bio updates, and there were some cases (like Nami) where the bio update helped inspire the comic. Our goal for comics in general is that even if they are not directly reflected in the champion bios, they won’t contradict each other, particularly as we move toward longer stories that move characters forward. 

WITH A SMILE

Senior Editor, Comics Team 

Will you do an event where you can buy emotes with IP or blue essence?

Two new emotes will be available in the upcoming, limited-time Blue Essence Sale as part of the launch of Runes Reforged and the new leveling system. These exclusive emotes will only be available through the Blue Essence Sale. 

We’re also aiming to provide players with multiple paths to unlocking emotes in the future. The primary way to unlock them will still be with RP, but later on, you’ll also see emotes dropping via loot and made available through completing missions. 

RIOT MULLIGAN

eCommerce Manager, Personalization

Thanks for reading this week’s Ask Riot. Have a question?

Head over to Ask Riot and sign into your League account. Check out the Pro Tips, then ask away. 

We promise to read every question, but we can’t guarantee they’ll all get answers. Some questions may already be answered elsewhere, and some won’t be right for Ask Riot. This isn’t the best place to announce new features, for example, and we might skip conversations on issues we’ve talked about in depth before (though we can clarify individual points). 

We are listening, though, so keep asking. We’ll make sure your questions are heard by the Rioters working on the stuff you’re curious about."

Update: Fan Contribution to Worlds 2017 Prize Pool 

A new update on the fan contribution to the Worlds Prize Pool is now available:

"After six weeks of Worlds action, we’re headed to Beijing’s Bird’s Nest Stadium for the 2017 World Championship Finals between SK telecom T1 and Samsung Galaxy. Thanks for following our tour through China and cheering on your favorite teams!

Before the main event begins, we wanted to share an update on how players’ contributions have affected the prize pool. 

So far, fans have added over $2.3M, pushing the prize pool to a grand total of nearly $4.6M. Remember, you have until November 5th at 11:59 PM PT to contribute by purchasing Championship Ashe and the Championship Ward Skin. 

Take a look at our previous post for a breakdown of how this pool will be distributed among competing teams/Riot’s matching contribution to charity, and tune in to Lolesports on November 3rd at 11:30 PM PT to see who will raise the Summoner’s Cup!"

Quick Hits

• Reav3 with context on recent Evelynn reverts on the PBE:

We reverted the E AD ratio because we found through internal playtesting that gunblade was too strong on her and would force us to balance Eve around players rushing gunblade and thus that would likely make Eve players forced into building gunblade in most scenarios (similar to Akali) This would actually make Eve's build path more limited rather then more flexible. 

As for the other changes, we were testing them in case she turned out weak after players mastered her more. We are currently seeing Eve's winrate get to a pretty healthy spot (especially with players with a lot of game on new Eve) so we don't want to put changes in that will cause us to nerf her further down the line. 

We are going through with the stealth changes though (1.5 seconds re-stealth on taking damage) as we feel strongly that this is a good QoL change for Eve even if it does cause us to nerf her a bit later, though we think this will be most helpful in lower elos where she is currently struggling a bit more then higher elos." 

• After it was noticed that the original Championship Riven was available to purchase in the store, Nerp1186 noted that it would be removed from all users who purchased, and they would be refunded RP, as well as receive a random 1350 RP+ skin:

"So, we screwed up. It's disabled from the shop now and will be removed from any accounts that bought it during this time. If you bought while it was up you'll be receiving a full refund and skin from us to compensate for this, our bad!"

"It'll be a random 1350+ skin for a champ you own + a full refund"

• The Riot Games Merch store teased special edition Project merch on November 7th: