Red Post Collection: Quick Gameplay Thoughts: 12/20, Bronze Gods: Making a Monument, & More

Today's red post collection includes Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for 12/20, a dev blog on the making of the large bronze statue featured at Worlds 2017, a new Ask Riot, & more!
Continue reading for more information!

• Red Post Collection: January Sales Schedule, Clash Beta - Thank You! & more
• Champion & Skin Sale 12/22 - 12/25

Table of Contents

• Quick Gameplay Thoughts: December 20 
• Bronze Gods: Making a Monument 
• Ask Riot: URF 
• Quick Hits
• Reminders

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: December 20 

Here's Meddler with his quick gameplay thoughts for 12/20, including thoughts on Evelynn, Tryndamere & Master Yi, Heimerdinger, and more:

"Hi all, 

Usual Disclaimers 

These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get put delayed or even stopped. If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler 

Evelynn 

Wanted to talk about a few champs this time that I've seen a lot of questions about who we haven't talked much about recently. Evelynn's the first of those. She got a full VGU just before pre-season and we had some changes on the PBE for her at one point that mainly got reverted. 

At present we think Evelynn's somewhat on the strong side, though not sufficiently so that she needs to be nerfed. A combination of the pre-season changes, and some recent bug fixes, have improved her performance noticeably. She is getting overshadowed in terms of play rate by a lot of other junglers, our suspicion is that she's flying under the radar as a non lethality user there however, and is quite a bit better than she's being given credit for. We'll check in on her again after the break, see where things are at, no changes planned for 8.1 or 8.2 right now though. 

At some point if she ends up weak we would want to reassess a couple of the changes for her we pulled from the PBE a while back (Q CD down with less monster refund, R refunding some CD on kill). Still interested in exploring those further. No guarantees they're necessarily the buffs we'd ship if she needed power, and as above we think she's closer to too strong than too weak. They had some promise though so would want to look at them again. 

Tryndamere and Yi 

Both Trynd and Yi lost some power with the pre-season changes, Trynd more so than Yi. For 7.24b we concluded it was better to put time into a subset of laning fighters (divers generally), working to improve their state, both in terms of kit changes and itemization. We'll be taking a look at Trynd and Yi in 8.2 instead as a result, see if, given the state of the game in January, they need changes, and if so whether that's changes to them specifically or to runes/items they use. No guarantees of anything specific of course, but they're on our list for when we get back. 

For anyone wondering the reason I mention 8.2 there, rather than 8.1, is because we're basically out of time on 8.1 work already. We'll get some late changes into when we get back if there's anything really urgent (micropatching a patch just before it goes out basically). Because we have to lock patches down well in advance, and that we put some time into 7.24b, we've got limited ability to do stuff with 8.1. 

Heimerdinger 

Finally, thought it'd be good to talk about Heimer. We've got a nerf in for Heimer that looks pretty hefty on paper, with his RQ turret's damage dropping from 200-340 (+0.7AP) to 100-180(+0.7AP). It's likely to be pretty hefty in game too, which we feels appropriate given how well Heimer's performing at present, particularly his ability to make it really difficult for many champs to all in him during laning phase. 

Worth noting though that this isn't a halving of his R's power. That's a nerf to the beam damage only, so the R turret's regular shots will still do the same amount of damage as at present. The ratio's unchanged too, so damage later in the game will be less affected. While the RQ is generally Heimer's go to choice of upgrade, other R uses are unchanged so situations where those are good won't be impacted either. It's still possible despite those things that this will hit Heimer too hard of course and we'll give him a look after 8.1 goes out, see if he needs adjustment in 8.2. 

Last post of the year 

We're about to hit the holiday break, so this will be my last of these posts in 2017. I'm planning on starting them up again early January once we're back in the office and have assessed the current state of the game. I hope you've enjoyed reading these posts. I wasn't sure when I started them back in February if they'd work out particularly well. I've felt really good about them personally though as a way talk about a range of things in a pretty casual (and often typo filled!) manner. I've also just really enjoyed doing them as well most days. Looking forward to keeping them rolling next year."

When asked about Olaf changes, Meddler replied:

"Quote:

Have you got any planned changes to Olaf? You buffed other fighters, but didn't touch him. You were planning buffs but they got reverted.

We'll assess Olaf again in January. As we were investigating possible buffs for him we started to see him do a lot better though as players found ways to be more successful (e.g. use of Sorcery runes) so the buffs looked inappropriate at least right now."

Meddler continued:

"Quote:

But you nerfed Sorcery?

Yep, it was too strong. As above, that's one of the reasons we'll also be reassessing Olaf in January, see what he's using and how he's performing."

As for rune changes coming for 8.1 and 8.2, Meddler commented:

"Quote:

Is there any further news on possible rune changes that may or may not be coming up in 8.1 or 8.2 that aren't already on the PBE?

The only things that might be in 8.1 that aren't on PBE already are urgent changes needed once we get back into the office in January. 

8.2's still open, don't have anything more concrete than what we've previously talked about for possible Runes changes for it yet though."

When asked about the state of the jungle, Meddler replied:

"Quote:

Looking at jungle difficulty in general, doesn't jungle in general became harder to clean ? 

I used to take the old mastery that gave you 2 flat damage reduction, shouldn't all monster have -2 base AD as a result ?

We knocked some monster stats down a bit in pre-season to keep the jungle around the same difficulty level. Not looking to make it meaningfully harder or easier to clear than it was this year. So far not seeing any groups of champs fall out of viability because of difficulty clearing. Inclination is as a result that if we do need to make any changes they're more likely to just be to individual champions. "

Additionally, Reav3 provided some thoughts on Rengar coming up after the holidays:

"We are currently looking into possibly doing a partial revert to him, looking primarily at reverting the Q. Obviously these things aren't always that simple so I can’t say for sure it will ship or when it would ship if it does look promising."

Bronze Gods: Making a Monument 

Here's Dyquill with a dev blog on making the bronze statue seen at Worlds 2017:

"The first time we thought about making a bronze statue was for Riot’s 10-year anniversary in 2016. We’ve had some epic statues built in the past, but in our minds, a bronze sculpture was a little more monumental (no pun intended). 

When we finally made the call to go ahead and build the sculpture, we decided a statue of that size and scope should go where as many players as possible could see it and commemorate the ultimate League experience: Worlds. It was quite a process, so we thought you might like a look at the journey from the spark of an idea to the finished sculpture thousands of players saw in Beijing.

We started with a few rounds of concept art exploring where we could put the statue and what the experience would be like for players who came across it in person. What feeling should that statue evoke? 

One of the early concepts was Garen vs. Darius. While the team was pretty excited by this one, we thought it would be even cooler to connect it to the music video in production at the same time, so we changed the creative direction from a 1v1 into a trio of champs fighting.

We used miniatures to figure out the design of the statue before we actually committed to sculpting. We realized a statue featuring three champions locked in battle presented more of a challenge than one capturing a conflict with two clear sides and a distinct focal point. And when it came to Garen, Ashe, and Lee Sin, we also had to take into consideration three very different fighting styles and weapons. 

We decided to design their fight as a kind of circle, where each champion is facing two rivals from their own angle. No one is at an obvious disadvantage, and visually the sculpture remains balanced. We also thought about the composition in terms of each champion’s visual “weight”: Garen is a big dude with heavy armor, so he grounds the sculpture, whereas Ashe is the smallest and lightest, so we put her at the top. Lee Sin and his ult were used to connect the whole statue together and guide your eye along the circular form. 

Riot doesn’t have any “build a giant bronze statue” roles, so we partnered with Mettle Sculpture Studio to help pull it off. The sculpture began with massive chunk of clay, which they shaped by hand and then supported by welding frames onto it. 

Next, we cast the sculpture in resin, adjusted it for composition, and then separated it into smaller pieces that we cast with bronze. The whole process up to this point took about five months. 

Lee Sin’s kick led us to try capturing the essence of water in a very solid medium, and to add a level of detail to the sculpture beyond what would be seen at first glance. 

While we were pretty confident the miniature composition we designed in plastic would work full-sized in bronze, we were relieved and excited to see the complete sculpture successfully cast. With casting completed, we moved on to sanding, coloring, and polishing—the final touches. 

Some fast stats on the final sculpture: Ashe is 320 lbs, Lee Sin is 370 lbs, and Garen is 440 lbs. The water (including the stainless steel tubes for support inside the statue) is 600 lbs and the foundation pedestal is 440 lbs. The statue is made of bronze and reinforced stainless steel, standing 15 feet tall and with a total area of about 250 square feet. 

We hope you enjoyed this look into the making of our bronze statue—we had a blast making it! "

Ask Riot: URF 

This week's new Ask Riot is here, covering URF, Poro cookies, and more!

Let’s talk URF, the recipe for poro snax, and shooting poros with lasers. 

Why do we keep getting different versions of URF mode instead of regular URF?

URF launched a long time ago, way before we ever started doing RGM. It was basically a crazy April Fool’s gag that ended up becoming hugely popular. Given how popular it is, lots of players want to know why we don’t bring back regular URF more often. There’s one reason that we haven’t really talked about before now: 

URF makes some people stop playing League. 

Every time we ran regular URF, we’d see a huge spike of games being played, and then the numbers actually dropped back down to a level that’s lower than it was just before we ran URF. 

It’s normal for new players to join League and for some longtime players to leave—this happens all the time. But when we turned on regular URF, it was different. In NA, for example, whenever we ran URF we’d usually see over twice as many longtime players leave the game compared to what we would’ve normally expected. 

In other words, some people binged on URF, and then suddenly stopped playing League. And the size of the dropoff indicates that it’s not just people coming back for URF and then leaving afterwards. Despite spending a lot of time investigating the reasons, we aren’t actually sure whether URF causes some sort of “hangover” effect or if it makes regular games feel slow by comparison—maybe it’s because URF feels like playing League with cheats turned on. Regardless, after we turn on URF, total games played go down, as do overall game hours. And they don’t recover for a long time, if ever. 

We’ve been trying to wrap our heads around a way to solve this problem for a while, and that’s one of the biggest reasons you see us experimenting with variations on the mode like ARURF and Snow Battle ARURF. Although these modes still suffer a bit from the “binge-then-churn” effect that regular URF has, it’s not nearly as bad (probably because you’re not seeing the same OP champs every game). 

URF causes some people to stop playing League, but a lot of you really love it. So instead of killing URF altogether, we’re just gonna keep experimenting to find some healthier version of the mode. Tell us your thoughts about Snow Battle ARURF—we’ll listen and apply what we learn to ARURF’s next appearance. 

GHOSTCRAWLER & RIOT CACTOPUS

What’s the recipe for the poro cookie?

The recipe for the perfect poro cookie is as follows… 

This savory blend of free-range, grass-fed Avarosan game hens and organic, non-ZMO Freljordian herbs contains the essential nutrients necessary to keep your poro purring with pleasure. Poro’s prefer their snax warm, so if you have the Living Forge handy, even better. 

WARNING: Bring a handful, because feeding one poro will lead to a whole fluft of them gathering at your feet. 

THERMAL KITTEN

Senior Narrative Writer, League of Legends 

Why do you commit poro abuse on Howling Abyss? Why does the fountain laser shoot poros? :’(

This was just a fun feature the team decided to add—no sinister agenda here! Wa~ay back in the day, there was a plan to fry them up crispy-black style like a cartoon, but that didn’t end up happening. Fountain lasers can’t melt (or even harm) fluffballs of love. <3 

L4T3NCY

Lead Designer, Rotating Game Modes

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."

Quick Hits

• LoLEsports released an article breaking down 2017 into a ton of interesting stats in 2017 LoL Esports Events By the Numbers!

Reminders