Red Post Collection: Why SGU wasn't a VU, Other VU related topics, and the problem with player made "Mercy Vote" system.

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Is Heimer the next VU?
Meddler commented today saying that it's likely Heimer's gameplay changes will come out long before he gets a visual upgrade.

"It's very likely Heimer's gameplay changes will come out well before he gets a visual upgrade. Xypherous has some kit changes that have been testing well in playtests and there are other champions we feel need the visual upgrade first, particularly since in Heimer's case some goofiness adds to his charm."

As for the actually kit changes, we haven't heard new since Xypherous posted about Heimerdinger's new turrets last month.

Problems with the player suggested "Mercy Vote" System
If you follow the forums, you've probly ran into this player created idea for something called a "Mercy Vote".

This summoner's idea consists of allowing a "mercy vote" to pass when teams are out numbered. For example, if someone AFKs and the game is a 4v5, the 5 player team can start a mercy vote. If it passes, the 4 player team can accept the mercy vote and the game ends. The 4 player team then loses less LP/MMR and the game shows as a "mercy" instead of a loss. Check out the original post for more information.

Drevarius stepped up with his thoughts on the system and what sort of new problems it may create:

"While decreasing the pain involved in a 4v5 is a great idea and a noble goal, we have to be very careful with how we approach this problem. 

NeuroCat touched on this already, but I'd like to reiterate an important point: 

When changing or adding systems to improve the player experience we need to do our best to avoid creating new avenues for negative behavior. 

With the Mercy Vote concept there are a few places where new conflicts are created. 

1. If there is any benefit (smaller loss penalty OR earlier surrender opportunity) to having one of your teammates leave the game, then we are giving an incentive for bullying one of your teammates out of the game. 

2. By putting mercy vote control into the hands of the other team we are creating a scenario where one team mayfeel entitled to a mercy vote but the other team does not issue one. If you know in your heart you deserved mercy but the other team doesn't vote to grant it, you are going to feel pretty bad. 

Any system we implement to make the 4v5 situation better would have to solve for conflicts such as (and not limited to) these.

So - how would you guys suggest we do that?"

One summoner followed up by suggesting that you could only allow something like this "mercy vote" whenever a player doesn't actually connect to the game. Drevarius replied:

"This has come up in internal discussions as well. There is potential value here."

Another summoner mentioned it would be hard to get four players to band together and bully the 5th player into quitting so they could get a mercy vote. Drevarius responds:

"It does not take the cooperation of four players to make someone miserable enough to want to quit. It only takes one dedicated jerk.

Right now toxic behavior is generated mostly by players who are frustrated or who have had a bad day, with focused trolling for the sake of trolling also being a small contributor. There are, intentionally, no gameplay incentives for being toxic. I think it would be very scary to set that precedent."

Riot Dudebro on Why SGU wasn't a VU and other VU related topics
Riot Dudebro has been over on the OCE forums discussing a few visual update related things, particularly commenting on why Spirit Guard Udyr is a skin and not a visual upgrade.

"Hey this a tough question but I'll try and peel back the curtain and let you see my perspective(as someone who currently works solely on the reworks team). 

First let me get to Udyr(since I worked on his Ultimate skin). Does Udyr need a redo? Yes, we agree. However I,personally, don't think the Spirit Guard should have been his rework. I think there are people who love the way current Udyr looks, as well as Black Belt and Primal skins, so we wouldn't want to completely change what people already love and throw in spirit animals. We have to retain what people love that made them make the choice to pick him up in the first place. The second part to that is Udyr is actually a lot of work. Since he has 4 stances that have different models and animations, effects, and sounds. That's a bit more work than something like Sivir who I'd argue needs it more than Udyr with less amount of content and programming needed to complete it. Again these are my personal opinions and I've already got plenty of flack on the NA forums for these.

Also when we started Spirit Guard Udyr, there was no such thing as a relaunch team. In fact that didn't start that until late last year(when he was already done). Again these are my personal opinions, but we should have reworked him and THEN done an Ultimate skin. But don't take those comments the wrong way, reworking a champ means to me we sort out the back-end code to make it easy to go in next time to make a skin. We just released Maser Yi whose effects and animations scripts are lean and mean and ready for the next person to dive in and make something(probably better than me :) ) So take those comments solely as someone who works on them and not a decision maker in rework/skin release stuff. 

A major factor in releasing rework champs is...ready for it... me :( . Not because I'm withholding but some champs take longer than others due to how complex they are. When I was on the New Champ team, I worked on Vi for about 3 weeks and I worked on Lissandra for a month and half(with others helping) because the worldload and content demand is different per champ. We have to pepper in the hard ones with the more straightforward ones. 

We have a BIG list of reworks and we agree, Udyr and Shaco needs them and they will receive them(one day). Master Yi was just release, Sivir is in the works as well as another champ, and we have some great ones coming up!

So I hope this behind the scenes banter helps ya a see to see into world of reworking champs."

Riot Dudebro also elaborated a bit on the visual upgrade team, explaining who it curently consists of:

"The rework team officially is like 8 people(IronStylus(concept art),Grumpy Monkey(concept art and 3d), 2 animators, our awesome sound designer,a texture artist,me, Ququroon (QA Analyst,and a creative designer(for bio/lore/vo stuff). We sometimes have guests but that's usually it. 

It's pretty similar to a champion team. The champion "team" is pretty big and they have like 2 or 3 groups working on new champs and they leapfrog their releases. Skins has a team is big as well, their number fluctuate but it's roughly double the size of ours. In my very humble opinion, that's not enough people :) 

The Art team isn't separate, in my mind at least, from other disciplines. I'm usually hanging out with Ququroon as he helps get my work across the finish line. Grumpy And Stylus hang sometimes with creative designers to understand the theme and lore and such. The art team includes the dudes who make icons and websites and motion graphics and splashes and all sorts of stuff but we are all integrated into little "pods" that zoom in on a champ/rework/skin/etc.

How much work goes into reworking a champion? There isn't a quantifiable amount we put in, each one has challenges that take up more time/resources than the other folks. For example, right now I'm working on something I want to be amazing and I increased the scope a bit :)( The other folks have moved onto the next thing but for me I made this one hard(on myself) but it's taking longer than everyone else wants. I do know we have a lot of conversations and long discussions about elements of the champ we need to retain and/or throw away. If we were to have a simple,simple champ, the wholes process should take about 3 and half months, maybe like 4. But a hard champ will be WAY more."

As for hints on what's coming out next, he noted:

"So Rioters will never tell you what's coming up next because it changes all the time. Even if you are clever enough to figure things out,and you guys certainly are, it will change. Our release and development cycles are very different so I never know exactly what will come out and exactly when. On top of that, even if we did know we wouldn't come right out and say it in a forum tread. We wait until the official announcement before doing that.

I can say both Sivir and Eve are in the development process; as with a bunch of other stuff. When we will be done with them and when they will be released is something we won't know. I had Spirit Guard Udyr finished and sitting on the shelf back in Christmas time and he just came out. "

He also reiterated that Sivir would not be the next visual upgraded to see the light of day.

"Sivir is coming up, not next tho, we had one started that'll be ready for primetime before Sivir. I'm super excited about this champ!"