Red Post Collection: Reports and Ranked Team Builder, Underworld Poro Ward Available, Context on Riven Q PBE Change, Zz'Rot Portal Temp Disabled, and more

This morning's red post collection includes WookieeCookie and Lyte discussing reports and a potential ranked version of Team Builder, a look at the now available Underworld Poro Ward skin, Meddler with context on the recent PBE changes for Riven's Q, IronStylus with a high quality version of the Tristana update concept art,notes on several bugs following 5.1, and much more!
Continue reading for more information!



Table of Contents


Reports and Ideas for Ranked Team Builder

 In a reddit thread questioning the usefulness of filing reports against players for "intentional feeding", "assisting the enemy", and "refusing to communicate with team" at the end of a match, WookieeCookie stepped in to comment:
"Absolutely. 
Our reporting system lacks a direct feedback component which lets players know when action ends up being taken on people they've reported. I think this could be improved in the future. But reports matter whether you see the results or not.

With that said! Over the years we've added to our PB systems behind the scenes and player reporting is really just one component of many that help us determine where intervention might be needed.

If you are going to report a player, I'd suggest the following:

Think about what that player did, and then prepare to leave a comment on your report.

If you can't be bothered to leave a comment, then maybe they're not worth reporting after all. Plus, comments help provide context to what the player did. And if it is one thing I love doing when trying to learn about a player it's context from the people who were in the same game as them.

Your comment doesn't have to be long, just enough to explain what happened.

But to pre-empt any follow up Q's; comments are NOT required. Just preferred. :D"

WookieeCookie continued, adding:
"Yeah, I think it's worth clarifying my statement. Not all reports are treated the same by our systems and different systems may interact with each type of report."

Lyte also chimed in on reports, explaining the differences in were certain reports influence:
"All of the reports do something, but it varies a lot.

For example, Intentional Feeding reports do help our Intentional Feeder Detection system which aggressively gives 14-day bans to intentional feeders. However, I will note that many players think someone is intentional feeding when they are just having a bad game so there's a lot of analyses that goes into the reports themselves and whether they are accurate.

Unskilled Player reports are used to inform matchmaking updates, but do not directly affect player accounts. For example, if a player is constantly getting Unskilled Player reports then our matchmaking system has wildly misplaced the player, so we can analyze those situations to figure out an improvement to the system. However, players are never banned or penalized for being unskilled.

In saying this, we generally find that some reports have too much overlap so we may remove some options in the future. For example, when a player feeds an enemy team, some players use Intentional Feeding and some player use Assisting Enemy Team... so there's so much overlap with those reports that we may just remove Assisting Enemy Team."

As for the possibility of adding different or removing  report options, Lyte noted:
"We always have to be careful adding or removing options. For example, adding an option about botting or scripting actually raises visibility on those things for players who maybe had no idea it existed.

There's been cases where "spotlighting" something negative has seen large increases of the behaviors... so we want to avoid that if possible."
He also noted that frequently inaccurate reporters  carry a lower report weight:
Yes, players who inaccurately report others have a lower report weight; in addition, we've also done a few bans in the past for players that excessively abuse the report function or use reports to threaten others."

Lyte  continued, mentioning the team's focus on fleshing out the idea of Ranked Team Builder:
"Quote:
I report people a fair amount. It seems that I regularly get people who spit out obscenities, homophobic slurs, and harass in game with the never ending "why?" - (as if that's constructive). People who afk constantly etc. First question: Do my reports get less weight because I frequently report players? Should I hold off and save it for the truly toxic people and not just the infuriating? 
Second question: I (like Riot), think that feedback is one of the most valuable things, and I'd like to see what people are reporting me for. Is there any plans to make these reports on a player visible to them? I'd like to see when I'm reported for things. I'm pretty sure I got reported by both bot laners yesterday when I did jungle Yi and they fed 9 kills before 12 minutes. Obviously I feel that's not something I should be held responsible for.
Report weights aren't adjusted based on a player's report frequency, but a player's report accuracy.

So, if you reported 10 players in 10 games but they were all genuinely toxic, your report weight would actually become stronger.

About your second question, we do want to get better feedback into the reporting system in general but it's just not something we've prioritized in the immediate short-term. We're figuring out things like Ranked Team Builder first and how it'd work with just role selection."
He briefly continued on Ranked Team Builder, explaining:
"It'll be role selection only, with a "Fill" role as well."

Account Sharing is bad.

Speaking of the player behavior team, WookieeCookie stopped by a reddit thread to reiterate that account sharing is against the rules and is a ban worthy offense.
"Yes you can be banned for account sharing.

A lot of players ask "y u hate fun" Riot. But it's nothing like that.

The only way to ensure that your account is 100% safe is when you're the only one that has access to it.

I have a recent example for you all.

A lot of times when we ban players for 3rd party hacks or scripting, they are EXTREMELY persistent that they did not do this.

Some of the times these players are just trying to pull a fast one. But more often than not I find out that it 's because they shared their account with someone else and that person used something illegal.

It sucks for the original owner because now the account is permanently banned and won't be released. We won't make exceptions when you share your account. The account owner is ultimately responsible for all actions that take place.

So please guys. Keep your account information SAFE. Don't share it, even to trusted friends or family."
He continued, assuring players that playing a friends house or lan center is a-ok.
"Quote:
I'm curious if you could possibly answer me this: How do you detect account sharing? Because I used to play with my Laptop and I played at my friends house alot of times, so IP change is not a way to detect that, aswell as MAC-adress, since I have a computer and 2 Laptops I could possibly play at.
"We have methods. Playing League at a friends house, or lan cafe won't get you in trouble though. We know that a lot of players like to do this. League is a social game and we don't want to get in the way of this."

Underworld Poro Ward Now Available!

[1/20 UPDATE: :The official release announcement is now up. This ward is available until through 30th!]

While we are still missing any sort of official release announcement, the spooky Underworld Poro Ward skin is now available for purchase!

Let's take a better look:

Underworld Poro Ward

640 RP - Legacy

I'll be keeping an eye out for any sort of release details, which should also include when this legacy ward skin will be rolling out of the shop.

 No sign of Battlecast Poro  Wardand Dragonslayer Poro Ward  - the other two new ward skins added in 5.1 - yet but Riot KateyKhaos commented:
"Only the Underworld one is available. The other two will be released throughout the patch!"

Tristana Concept Art

IronStylus also swooped back by the boards to drop off a high resolution version of the Tristana concept art from her champion reveal post!

Click the picture for the full quality!

In response to a summoner commenting he wishes this particular art was going to be Tristana's new splash art, IronStylus noted:
"I think you'll really like the new splash we're making for her. It'll use the current as a framework but it'll be with the new design."

Context on Riven Q PBE Change

On the PBE, Riven has an controversial change to her Broken Wings (Q)  - it currently"self cancels" it's own animation which allows players to very quickly auto attack after and between using her Q, something previously possible by manually canceling the animation.by quickly moving ( also known"fast combo").
When asked this was an intentional change, Meddler explained:
"This is an unexpected change from some of the fixes in 5.1 to Overlapping CC effects (Riven's lockouts, which were blocking her from auto attacking automatically at once previously, use some of the same system that governs CC). We're going to look at this and discuss what the appropriate course of action is start of next week, will keep you folks posted."

Warring Kingdoms Katarina Inspiration

When asked why Katarina was chosen for a Lunar Revel 2015 skin and what Warring Kingdoms Katarina is based  off of, Galetta explained:
"Yo Insane Thunder! 
We felt like we had a really cool opportunity to base this skin off of Diao Chan so, we decided to make it! And Katarina happens to be a perfect match, thematically, for Diao Chan. We don't base our skin selections solely off how many skins that character has, though that is a factor. We have lots of criteria like; when was their last skin, do we have a cool idea for this champion, and does our idea tie in with an event that's coming up? 
Also remember that's she's an older champion, so she's going to have a larger back log of skins and her last skin came out in 2012."
Check out our PBE coverage for better look at Warring Kingdoms Katarina or any of the other new skins currently up for testing!

Update: Galetta also commented on Warring Kingdoms Katarina's new vfx, explaining
"Quote:
"Galetta, can we get any sort of reply regarding her lackluster barely-noticeable particles?Any answer would be nice. Even a negative one. 
(just so we know you actually read our posts and we're not writing stuff in vain...)"
"Yo Cat!

You can absolutely get an explanation. Katarina, like some other champions in our game (ex -Wukong and Vayne) are not what we consider "Particle Heavy". What does that mean? That means that in comparison to other champions most of her particles are more subtle, smaller, or have a shorter life span when activated. It's really really hard to have Katarina's particles stand out since most of her particles are only visible for a second before they start to disappear. This issue is exacerbated if a new skin shares a similar color pallet with base skin or another existing skin.

In relation to this skin specifically our particle team decided that keeping her particles mostly red was the most thematically cohesive choice for this skin. We did add new flourishes like the red flowers, gold accents, and subtle smoke to her Ult. But yeah I can understand where you see strong hooks to her base particles.

But, what about adding more smoke or extra fire? The issue here is again related to her kit and how it displays particles. If we layer too may shapes on top of each other we get to a point where no one can tell what's going on any more. There are so many competing layers that no specific aspect of the particle can be the star component. And again this issue is exacerbated by the amount of screen time that her particles get.

Tl;dr - She's a deceptively hard champion to make particles for and the red coloring of her new particles is a result of a thematic cohesion choice.

I hope this was helpful. :D"

Warring Kingdoms Nidalee Skin Tone

In the 1/16 PBE update, the upcoming Warring Kingdoms Nidalee skin received a significant color change to her skin tone.
When asked about the reasoning behind this change, Nurse Flan explained:
"Basically: We want to try and keep to some of base Nidalee's themes keep with her tanner skin identity more. There are always going to be arguments "Not all Chinese/oriental people are tan/pale!" and differing preferences in this case. Nidalee is Nidalee and is from the Kumungu Jungle, as there isn't any "oriental" race in Runeterra :)
Her skin tone on her older model is actually more pink than the "burnished asian olive" skin tone (especially on the back). 
I can't speak for her older skins as, well, they're pretty old :x They were made during the first 1-1.5 years of LoL's infancy and our standards have been better defined since then. "
Check out our PBE coverage for better look at Warring Kingdoms Nidalee or any of the other new skins currently up for testing!

UpdateNurse Flan also commented on the removal of Warring Kingdoms Nidalee's unique Hunt vfx, saying:
"There were reported readability, identification and directional concerns with her previous iteration that the team had to address."

[Bug] Team Builder Last Played Spec & Skin Selection

Riot Blackrook has also posted up that team builder's "Last Played Spec" feature has been disabled until 5.2, as well as commenting on the bug that would switch off your selected skin:
"We are currently investigating an issue in which the "Find Group" button does not load correctly for some players in the Team Builder Solo flow.

For the time being we are disabling the Last Played Spec feature which seems to solve the problem while we work on a fix.

Update 1/16:

We have decided to leave Last Played Spec disabled until 5.2 at which point we will have the issue fixed.

In addition to this, we have re-factored the skin selection system to ensure that skins you select in other queues are also selected in Team Builder and vice versa. This will also solve the issue that sometimes causes you to enter game with the default skin even though another skin appeared to be selected. These changes are currently in testing and are on schedule for 5.2"

[Bug] Zz'Rot Portal Disabled

The new Zz'Rot Portal item  has been disabled due to a bug (no! not a void spawn!)

The service status page has been updated to read:
"Summoners! Due to a discovered bug with Zz'Rot Portal, we've disabled this specific item until the fix is released. Sorry for the inconvenience."
Riot Wittrock also commented on the relative reddit thread, saying:
"We've disabled Zz'Rot portal while we look to fix this issue."

The bug in question is that if a player places a portal and then leaves the game long enough to gain bonus armor and magic resist at the fountain (which afk/dc players receive), the Zz'Rot Portal's Armor/AP scaling with all that bonus armor allow them to start killing towers in only two or three hits! A video of this bug in action can be found here.

Riot Reinboom also tweeted about another bug relating to Zz'Rot Portal:
"Zz'Rot might be a bit overwhelming for some because of a bug. It currently isn't taking the AP to structures as damage mechanic. Oops."

[Bug] Kalista Passive 

Moving down the bug 5.1 bug list, Meddler commented on a Kalista bug that is causing her passive's jumps not to go off after attacks:
"Quote
Just played a game as Kalista post the 5.1 patch. Her jump was going off maybe once out of every 10 attacks. It would go off every time Q was used but no matter how i tried to get the jump to go off during combat it would either have no reaction of she would just walk away after the attack was made. Possible bug?
Yeah, there's an issue we're looking into at the moment where Kalista's passive isn't spending as much time listening for an input command as it should. Definitely not an intended change."

Free NA -> Oceania Transfer Window Opening Soon (23rd-8th)

Between January 23rd and February 8th, current NA players can take advantage of a free server transfer to the OCE servers! Check out this post for instructions and more details!

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