1/16 PBE Update: Tweaked Esports Icon & More

The PBE has been updated! As we continue the 8.2 PBE cycle, today's small patch includes tweaks to an esports icon and more tentative balance changes!
Continue reading for more information!

Table of Contents

• Tweaked Esports Summoner Icon
• Balance Changes
• Context & Notes

Tweaked Esports Summoner Icon

An esports summoner icon was tweaked in today's update [previous version here]:

Context & Notes

1) Here's Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for January 16th, including thoughts on partial updated in 2018, Lucian, Meddler's role at Riot, and more:

Hi folks, 

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 

Partial Updates in 2018 

Something we're going to be doing a bit more of this year is updating a single element on a champion that's not up to the standard of that character as a whole. We've been doing that for quite a while with gameplay and things like updating old loading screen art. We're looking to do more of it for other stuff as well too though. 

First up, probably in 8.3, will be new visual effects for Cho'gath. Cho's base VFX are really rough. His model's showing its age somewhat too, but not to the extent his spells are. We're not expecting we'll do a VGU on him for quite a while, so addressing his spells in the meantime makes sense. 

Not all of these projects will be visual. Our next target after that's likely to be redoing the VO for a champ whose voice over is pretty lacking relative to their other elements. More details on that soonish, all going according to plan. 

Lucian 

We're looking at some changes to Lucian, aimed at making him less level dependent (equalize him more between mid and bot lane) and rewarding him more for building crit. Those won't be in 8.2, should be in 8.3 or 8.4 though. 

My Role at Riot 

Figured it might be good to talk a bit about what I do at Riot. Help folks understand why I talk about the things I do, what questions I've got the context to answer, offer a bit more understanding as to what different people at Riot do etc.

• My role is 'Lead Gameplay Designer'. That means I spend most of my time working with/supporting the work of the gameplay teams which make new champions, design items, work on features like runes or the health bar changes, do game balance etc. That's the stuff I talk about the most as a result.
• I'm only occasionally involved with some of the other teams that do things like skins, clubs, the new client, champion mastery, Clash (tournaments) etc. With some exceptions I can't usefully talk about those sorts of things (I either won't know the answers myself or won't be sure what it's appropriate to talk about publicly).
• My days involve a lot of helping teams co-ordinate, building long term plans, managing people, talking through design problems/goals with people and similar stuff. I don't do much hands on building of stuff anymore (direct design's not the core of my role, in contrast to when I used work on champions previously).
• I'm not the head of the balance team. The team that does most patch to patch balance work (Live Gameplay) is one of the teams I'm responsible for, but I'm not one of the primary people picking targets and building balance changes for each patch. I'll offer feedback on both goals and specific changes, to the team, and our overarching balance approach is something I'm heavily involved in, so certainly feel free to hold me responsible for the state of balance. Picking who to buff/nerf and what numbers to change isn't something I do much of though. I do talk a lot about balance, because it's a subject of a lot of interest to you folks, but I'm almost always talking about our views as an organization, not my personal opinions. 

Lower Framerates recently for some people 

Don't have anything new to report on this front yet, we're still working on it though, not a forgotten issue. More to come as soon as we've got something new to share (exact cause of problem, how we'll fix etc)."