7-20 News: Monsters, Punishments, and Bugs.

Morello finally submitted his post about champion variety, themes, and archetypes today. The post is very, very long and I suggest you go take a look at it. Here is an except from the summation at the end of the post.

We have some smart plans to improve this and bring greater variety, especially on the species front, and have some other big plans for our world that will make this level-up big time. What you see, the gameplay, what you read, hear and experience all has to come together to make a notable and specific experience. Fans of Lulu, Zyra and Draven should be very different League players. That’s intentional! We all have strong, specific creative preferences – and many times those differ from other players’. The key to making this work is to provide variety – few players should like every champion, but all players should find champions that they are like “that one is for me!”

There was, however, lots of interesting stuff  in the discussion that followed the post. Here are the highlights:

• Two "pure" support champions a year ( we've only had one so far ).
• Void Monster "in a few months"
• We'll see a new "monster" champ within the year.
• Possible Mages, who control basic elements, before the end of 2012.
• Another Shapeshifter
• A Beast-like Humanoid ( think Warwick or Nasus ) very soon.

In any case, I'm sure we'll see a few of these champions pop up soon enough.


Moving on, Riot's Player Behavior & Justice (PB&J) is introducing a new system to the Tribunal, The Reform Card!

An Example Reform card showing the results of a Tribunal case.

The Reform card is an attachment that comes along side Tribunal punishments that allows those found guilty a chance to see what they did and, perhaps, reflect on what they can to do change their attitude or behavior. Guilty Summoners will be mailed these cards regardless of what punishment they receive ( warning, ban, perma ban, etc ) and is not retroactive - so if you've already been judged by the Tribunal you will not relieve one. To read more about this experimental new feature of the Tribunal, check out the announcement and discussion thread.

On the other side of this coin, Lyte also mentioned that he was "...working with RiotNinjaTabby to do a feature for the people who judge in the Tribunal..." but it has no ETA for now.

Regrettably, we are still awaiting for the Queen of Thorns to be unlocked on Live Servers.

While Zyra is still unavailable for play, you can read up on her design process by checking out this interview with Morello and CertainlyT, designers responsible for our prickly upcoming champion. They discuss her origins, how they arrived at the seed mechanic, what role they wanted to squeeze her into, and much more!

Have you tried the new Eve out? Maybe you should!

Statikk stopped by a thread on the general forums to address the Evelynn rework and how Riot approached her recreation. He highlights the fact that Evelynn is intended to be stealthy, not invisible. He also commented about Evelynn's new learning curve and gave a break down of how he sees the various skill levels of Evelynn players:

Beginner:

• Unintentionally evades Sight Wards and minion vision

Intermediate:

• Intentionally evades Sight Wards and minion vision
• Optimizes ganking paths by positioning to cutoff escape paths

Advanced:

• Layers the passive stealth with other vision advantages such as brush and walls to optimize safe scouting
• Uses the reveal warning systems to deduce where enemy Sight/Vision Wards are
• Understands how to position before team fights in order to flank the enemy back line

While he has since been reanbled, Darius spent the majority of Friday disabled because of a glitch involving his Apprehend ability and the summoner spell Teleport. The issue has been hotfixed, but check out a video of it below; it's pretty entertaining.

..,And that does for the new from 7-20. Thanks for stopping by!