This afternoon's red post collection features a look at the interactive map and gameplay video for the upcoming Summoner's Rift update, a heads up on the Summoner's Rift Q&A planned for November 7th, a reminder that the 2014 ranked season is ending soon, Riot Rhojin with a discussion on MMR boosting, Meddler discussing Kalista's permanent bond to an ally and noting there are no immediate plans for Quinn, context on the current Azir PBE changes, and much more!
- Red Post Collection: First Light after the Harrowing, Preseason 2015 - Forging a Diverse Armory, Evelynn VU still on the Table, and much more!
- Red Post Collection: Preseason 2015 Q&A
- Champion and Skin Sale 11/7 - 11/10
Table of Contents
- Explore the update to Summoner's Rift
- Join the Team for a Summoner's Rift Q&A
- Season 2014 is ending!
- 2014 Season MMR Boosting Update
- [Continued] Kalista Discussion
- Azir Changes on PBE
- No Immediate Plans for Quinn
- Processing Global Feedback
Explore the update to Summoner's Rift
With the open beta starting soon, Riot has released an interactive map of the updated Summoner's Rift!
"As Summoner’s Rift nears open beta, explore the update in this new interactive map experience to learn more about the next step in League of Legends’ evolution."
They've also put up a Gameplay video of the updated Summoner's Rift!
"Check out another peek at the update to Summoner’s Rift as it nears open beta with this preview of the revamped map."
Join the team for a Summoner's Rift Q&A
"The team behind the development of the update to Summoner's Rift will be back answering your questions on the boards. Join them to get the details on how the new Baron Nashor encounter works, or what happened to the eternally boiling pot of soup.
If you're wondering how we decided on the art style, or how it'll run on your friend's toaster, stop by the Summoner's Rift Q&A in the boards on November 7, 2014 at 1:00 PM PST."
Season 2014 is ending!
Here's Socrates with a reminder that the 2014 ranked season is ending in just a few days!
"With only days remaining until the end of the 2014 season, will you reach your 2014 ranked goals? Can you push your way to Gold and earn the exclusive Victorious Morgana champion skin?
When the clock strikes midnight, turning November 10 to November 11, ranked queues will come down for about twelve hours and we'll start doling out rewards.
Find out more about the 2014 season rewards here!"
2014 Season MMR Boosting Update
With the 2014 ranked season ending on November 11th, Riot Rhojin has posted up information (Boards / Reddit)on how Riot is investigating and handling MMR boosting as well as clearing up common misconceptions:"Hey Everyone,
As the 2014 Season ends I’d like to pop in and give a little rundown on MMR Boosting, what we’re doing to catch those participating in the act and answer any questions you may have concerning MMR Boosting. As we have said in past threads, at Riot we believe MMR Boosting ruins the spirit of competitive play and devalues the effort many players have invested in our game. Over the last year we’ve made numerous improvements to our detection methods to where we are now able to more aggressively pursue and punish players who’ve participated in MMR Boosting during the 2014 Season.
First off I would like to go over some of the more frequently asked questions and reports we have seen in tickets throughout the 2014 Season:
Duo Queuing
We do not consider duo queuing with another player to be MMR Boosting. We have always allowed friends to play games together and will continue to do so. Though in order to keep the game play a little more balanced we recently added limitations placed on duo queuing based on the difference of ranking between the queue members.
Spam Bots
Over the past few months we have received numerous reports about players receiving messages in chat rooms and through PMs advertising cheap MMR Boosts. We are well aware of these bots and are working on a solution to prevent them from spamming in the future. Please avoid these scams, as many players have had their accounts stolen when attempting to use the services advertised in the bot’s messaging.
How do I report people I suspect to be involved in MMR Boosting?
If you suspect a player is involved in MMR Boosting, filing a report through a support ticket is the best way to bring them to our attention. When making these reports please make sure to include any evidence that confirms your suspicions. Please keep in mind that reporting a player puts them in a queue for investigation. The results are not always immediate and we will be unable to comment on any decision made.
I will be keeping an eye on this thread throughout the day to answer any questions you may have regarding MMR Boosting. If you need to report anyone, please send in a support ticket rather than posting the information in the thread."
Rhojin also reminded:
"Legit accounts have nothing to worry about. Our investigations are designed to look for multiple signs of boosting, while taking into consideration the actions of your average League of Legends player. Something like an account going on a long win streak is not something that would automatically flag it for being boosted."
Likewise, he noted that legitimate smurf accounts are NOT considered boosting:
"If you created your smurf account and you were legitimately placed in Silver V there is no way this would be considered to be boosting."
Rhojin continued, sharing the standard penalty for being caught boosting:
"The time suspension for a MMR Boosting suspension is two weeks. Being punished does not ban then from ranked for the rest of the season but it does disqualify them for receiving any rewards, no matter how high they climb on the ranked ladder.
If your friend was being boosted, our investigation will find them and a punishment will be issued (if one hasn't yet already been issued.)"He continued:
"In regards to the suspensions, I really cannot comment on that. VPNs really don't bother us, we understand that there are players who prefer to use a VPN service. Rest assured that using a VPN will never get an account flagged for MMR Boosting. I am afraid I cannot go into detail about what we use in our investigations to determine what accounts have been involved in MMR Boosting. Sorry for the painful vagueness."
When asked if high elo and competitive players will be treated the same as lower ranking players in terms of boosting punishments or TOS violations, Rhojin noted:
"High MMR, Low MMR everyone is treated equally. It doesn't matter if they are in Challenger or currently sitting in Bronze, if they have been identified for participation in MMR Boosting they will receive the same punishment."
As for attempting to subvert punishments by boosting in other regions, Rhojin commented:
"Boosting from a different region does not prevent us from finding them or issuing punishments."Rhojin continued, noting that players playing from from different locations is also factored in and accounted for in these investigations:
"Geography does not hinder our investigation process. We have multiple factors that are investigated when a report is brought to our attention. Our investigation is set up to factor in that there are players who play from different locations (A Friend's House, PC Cafe, College,etc) this is taken into account when identifying someone who has had their account boosted."
As for which category on the Riot Support site to submit boosting reports to, Rhojin noted:
"You can submit any boosting reports in the General Category under Game and Features"He continued, discussing why the end of game reporting feature doesn't have a "boosting" option:
"The in game report system was set up to collect reports for the tribunal and other behavior initiatives. Negative or toxic behavior in games should be reported using this tool.
Reports of misconduct such as MMR Boosting should be reported through a support ticket as the in game report system was not designed for these reports."
Rhojin also replied to concern that boosters are not punished in a timely manner:
"Our investigations take time and there are numerous players we are looking into at any given time. We investigate all reports sent to us, so your report hasn't been ignored. Even if they receive their rewards at the end of the season, if they are found to be guilty we can still punish them. There is no cutoff date to when an account can be punished for boosting."Rhojin also touched on this later in the thread, saying:
"Our investigations are on going. While they may take some time to complete, every report will be looked into. There is no such thing as an open and close case to us in regards to boosting, while screenshots or other evidence you feel may support your report may be provided we still run every account through the full investigation process. If they are determined to have been involved in MMR Boosting they will receive the same punishment as every other confirmed player."He continued:
"We look into multiple aspects when determining if an account has been boosted or not. Simply going on a winstreak will not put an account in danger of being punished for receiving a MMR Boost."
[Continued] Kalista Discussion
When asked about Kalista being permanent bond to an ally and why this effect doesn't reset if that particular ally disconnects of AFKs, Meddler explained the team's thought process:
"She is indeed. That's something we've spent a lot of time internally discussing but eventually decided was for the best. We want Kalista to form a permanent bond with an ally, since that then means the decision about who to bond with's a really significant and interesting one. Do you bond with your support, and if so which one does your lane partner want to choose? How does having access to Kalista's R chance your chance of lane partner? Alternatively do you bond with your jungler and gain strength during ganks/different opportunities mid/late game in exchange for lack of W passive access in lane? Or do you try going to a different lane than bot and get a lot of jungle pressure? Allowing you to change who you bond with to whoever's optimal at each point in the game diminishes both that gameplay and the feel of a soulbond we're aiming to create between two players for the course of the game.
That does admittedly mean that having her soulbound ally disconnect/quit/afk stings even more than a 4v5 already does. Our eventual conclusion though was that we didn't want to incentivize players disconnecting to swap bond targets. Going with a really long DC/afk period until rebinding's possible would get around that, at that point though the point's pretty moot. If you've been 4v5 for 10 minutes the game's probably over regardless. There's definitely an appreciable cost created by making 4v5s even more painful, overall though we felt that the new gameplay we could offer this way outweighed that pain."He continued:
"Yeah, fair question. This one came down to a cost/benefit assessment of how much should we limit the experiences we can offer and potential for cool moments in most games versus exacerbating an existing problem in a subset of other games. I'd argue we've actually been a bit too risk adverse in the past, limiting or avoiding some really cool abilities that 99%+ of the time would create great gameplay because there were some negative cases.
Having said that this is definitely one we'll be watching really closely. It's not the sort of thing we've done as much of before (transfer of direct agency to another player) and as a result is definitely somewhat experimental. If that doesn't overall work as hoped we'll adjust."
Meddler continued, speaking to the decision to allow Kalista the ability to "CC" her team mate and her lack of access to an ultimate when her bound ally is dead:
"There's definitely some trolling potential in there, our conclusion though was that if an ADC on your team's being that trolly the game's probably over regardless. As a result we didn't want to limit some of the cool stuff we could hopefully offer because someone with other trolling opportunities might be annoying every couple of minutes. On top of that Kalista's ally always has the option of trying to escape with the ult of course - being pulled in doesn't commit you to being aggressive with it necessarily.
Lack of an ult when her ally's dead's a definite weakness and ulting early's often a good play, as is keeping a really close watch on your ally's health and ulting defensively if needs be. As you say there's also a lot of options on the rest of Kalista's kit and that situation also assumes the enemy's killed someone else before your marksman, which has some benefits too."
Be sure to check out our PBE coverage for a better look at Kalista's abilities, release skin, and more!
Azir Changes on PBE
"The goal of these changes is to buff Azir's early game and reduce his late game strength, theory being that Azir currently gets shut down too hard sometimes early, but is an absolute monster late game. Having a distinct power curve's no bad thing, we do feel it's currently a bit too extreme though, hence we're testing these changes to tweak it a bit."He also commented that they are currently working to fix a few bugs with Azir's R:
"Thanks for the report. We're digging into Azir's ult at the moment - his ult's occasionally failling against enemies in general (this isn't just a Pantheon bug alas)."
No Immediate Plans for Quinn
"We don't have any current plans to change Quinn in the short term at least. The range change was being tested internally as part of a set of changes that included a number of other things (much shorter ult CD late game, removal of ult damage etc). We'll probably explore some of that stuff again at some point, conclusion was that that wasn't an immediate clear win though and that we wanted to focus on the upcoming pre-season work instead right now."
Processing Global Feedback
When asked how exactly feedback from multiple regions is weighed and assessed when each region views a champion's balance differently, Meddler replied:"Quote:
Sorry the OP was kind of vague, but I'll get to the point. What I'm wondering is how you balance this game when you get different feedback from different regions. This is completely hypothetical, but let's say NA thinks Irelia is OP, but EU West/East thinks she is weak. You also have Riot staff from each region (or who visit different forum regions). If different regions have different opinions on how to balance champions, how do you decide what to do?
"Short version - we don't balance off volume of feedback. What's useful is the logic and justification behind the feedback - one well put argument for why something's too strong, weak, abusive etc's worth more than hundreds of 'wtf nerf' comments. Sometimes that will mean a champ is considered overpowered in some regions and underpowered in others (Ezreal a couple of years ago in China, compared to most of the rest of the world, being one of the clearest examples). We won't always get that assessment right the first time of course, and there have certainly been cases where we've missed something or acted incorrectly based off a pattern in some region's, that's the approach we seek to follow though."
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