Red Post Collection: New Missile System in 5.12, Team Up Week Update - Level 4 unlocked, Narrative Discussion

• Red Post Collection: July Sales Schedule, 6/19 Team Up Week Update - Level 2 reached, 5.13 Syndra E(Q) fix, and more
• 5.12 PBE Cycle Roundup

Table of Contents

• New Missile System tentatively in 5.12
• Team Up Week Update - June 21th - Level 4 Unlocked
• Mirross on the idea of Champion Mastery Grade on Match History
• Narrative Discussion

New Missile System tentatively in 5.12

When asked if the new missile system / skillshot rewrite will be included in patch 5.12, MeyeA noted:

"No release blocking differences have been reported by PBE. If ever we realize a big problem before 5.12 however, we'll pull out, reevaluate, and plan accordingly. So the new missile system is planned for "special" release in 5.12. We'll elaborate on "special" and the new missile system in general in our patch notes. 

P.s. I am uncomfortably attracted to that pool party draven."

He continued to note "special" refers to turning the new system sometime after the patch rather than immediately. More information on the new missile system available on the PBE boards.

Team Up Week Update - June 21st - Level 4 Unlocked

[6/22 UPDATE] The final community point total, as of June 22nd is just over 45 million meaning we've unlocked a Party IP weekend from 6/26 through 6/28!
Between June 15th and June 21st, the community is participating in TEAM UP WEEK! This week, each server is earning points by playing matchmade games with five player premade groups and sending gifts to other players to earn various Pool Party rewards for all participating players next week!

The current community point total, as of June 21st, we've surpassed 35 million points to unlock pool party themed minions for the duration of patch 5.12!
As seen on the PBE, the Pool Party Minions look like this:

As a reminder, here are the Pool Party Rewards the community is working towards and what we've achieved:

• [ACHIEVED 6/17] At 5 million points, we'll unlock Team UP IP rewards, granting +100% bonus IP for playing with a five player premade group.
• [ACHIEVED 6/19] At 15 million points, we'll earn a ton of sales including the champions, skins, tshirts, ARAM skin boosts, and more! These will start up on 6/26.
• [ACHIEVED 6/20] At 25 million points, we'll unlock a Pool Party themed summoner icon & a free Mystery Champion for anyone who has connected to the Facebook Friend discovery feature
• [ACHIEVED 6/21] At 35 million points, we'll have Pool Party themed minions enabled for the duration of patch 5.12
• At 45 million points, we'll unlock a Party IP Weekend at the end of June
• At 55 million points, everyone who contributed during Team Up Week will receive the upcoming Pool Party Mundo skin for free

As of 6/21, We have ONE more day left of points. The final total will be posted on Monday, June 22nd.

In a reddit thread discussing Team Up week and projections for the end of the event, RiotBuboBubo also popped in to answer a few questions on the event now that we've reached the level 3 rewards:

"Impressive post! A couple of clarifications

I have all the champions but Teemo

If you have less than 10 eligible champions, you will get a mystery skin.

I have all the champions and all the skins

You get a sincere look of awe on my face ... and enough RP to treat yourself or a friend a mystery gift in the future!

Can I disconnect it afterwards?

Players have to be signed up at the time of rewards being granted (the 24 hours between 6/28 and 6/30). Please stay signed up until the you get your mystery champion (in case something goes wrong) and feel free to disconnect after if the feature isn't for you. But if you do keep the feature on, we promise to never post your information and will only use the feature explicitly as stated. 

Back to ARAM for me - next stop Pool Party Minions!"

As for if gaining points today will still qualify you for the Pool Party icon (which you must contribute points to receive), Riot BuboBubo confirmed:

"Confirmed! Contribute 1 or more points today and you still get the rewards"

As for if players will need to purchase the Pool Party Icon through the store or otherwise redeem it, Riot BuboBubo noted:

"^ It will be credited directly to players who contributed at least one point (unless you are excluded based on the negative player criteria)"

When asked what players are to do if they receive a champion they've never wanted through this free Mystery champion reward and want it removed from their account, RiotBuboBubo noted:

"You can contact support and they will remove it for you"

As for if getting the mystery champion will require you to have participated in the event or if you get it for simply linking to the FB friend discovery feature, MattEnth noted:

"No. The Mystery Champion does NOT require you to have participated in the event. Just that you've connected to Facebook during the rewards period."

He continued, confirming you only need to sign up not add friends or anything else:

"You don't actually need to make a friend in order to get the mystery gift. You simply need to connect."

For those only interested in the mystery champion, he also commented you only need to stay connected until July 1st:

"Stay connected until July 1st. 

To give a bit more detail here... We have a giant list of all LoL players that have connected to Facebook (but none of their Facebook information - we don't store any of that). Sometime on June 30th, we will take a snapshot of the list. If you're on that list, you should get a reward.."

As we near the end of the first worldwide the event like this, Riot BuboBubo commented:

"Overall, this has been a huge learning experience for us. The parts we really like and want to do more of are giving the community a reason to come together and earn cool rewards. There is also a long list of things we want to do better next time around. Giving players more direct feedback on how their contributions are adding up and how the overall pace is moving are definitely on the list."

BuboBubo continued, commenting on the projected points for the end of the event:

"Playtime went up on Saturday but gifting upgrades peak when they launch and slow from there. I and a few others here will be hitting the chat rooms today to rally some premade 5s and we hope to see you there! 

(Also - Pool Party Minions Hype!) 

*Edit: From the numbers this morning, it looks like it will be an extremely close finish for Party IP weekend (+/- 1 million points) because Sunday (which is practically Monday in SEA, OCE and KR) typically has a little less playtime than Saturday. If participation stays up we should just make it over the finish line but if community participation drops we could come up short. LFG - lets do this!"

 As it doesn't look like the community will hit the free Pool Party Mundo level, Riot Bubo Bubo replied to comments that Riot should just give it away anyway despite the community not earning enough points:

"If we gave the unearned rewards anyway it would harm every stretch goal we set for players in the future. The long term damage to trust isn't worth avoiding the short term frustration."

He continued:

"Repeating this because I really really mean it... 

We have a ton of room for improvement but its also been great hearing from players that enjoyed this round. I personally can't wait for the pool party minions to hit the rift!"

Hippalus also popped in on reddit to comment on how the different point levels were decided:

"You're partly right. We do know how much people normally play and gift and we set up the event to give a couple rewards just for doing that, and bigger rewards if players increased their playing and/or gifting. We had to guess at how players would respond and we set it up so that greater effort would yield greater rewards, including a couple of stretch goals that were tough to reach. 

The goals of the event are to 1) get the community to pull together to earn rewards, 2) increase playing with friends, 3) increase gifting, and 4) learn the pros and cons of these types of events to help decide if we want to do more of them and, if so, what are the most important things to improve next time."

Mirross on the idea of Champion Mastery Grade on Match History

In a reddit thread about the idea of adding Champion Mastery grades to match history, Riot Mirross commented that if they were to ever add this it would likely only be visible to you and not others:

"If we do this it will likely be so only you can see it. It's feedback that we want players to have access to, without worrying about trying new champs or builds or positions without worrying about it. 

We don't explain the exact metrics around it because we don't want people to optimize for it at the expense of your game. For example, we don't want to encourage people to drag out a game while trying to maximize their grade, or have an ADC off padding their CS when their team really needs them. (Like this never happens...)"

Narrative Discussion

In a thread titled "What the hell is the lore team getting paid for", Jaredan stepped in to comment on  the frustrations - including what the narrative team has been up to, address the idea that "Lore team isn't doing anything", comment on a few format changes to bio/stories, and a promise that we'll soon be seeing the resolution of  the tech issues that have held up things significantly over the past few months:

"Sorry I haven't stuck my head in here until now. I always say it's been a hectic few weeks as we're a busy bunch of folks. And that's the part that can be confusing, and annoying, due to the expectations we have not met. Frankly, Saturday nights are currently the time I'm most able to sit down and put together a semi-cogent response on here. My apologies for that. 

To help with clarity, and for a common place to start from, I'll reiterate what I've said elsewhere on the board when it comes to a misunderstanding of what Narrative is.
At Riot we work from a matrixed concept of Disciplines and Product Teams. Disciplines are made up of people of a distinctive craft. Product Teams are made up of people from various disciplines (crafts) who work together to make something. This thing may be to make something for purely external means or to go to the players. Product team does not mean "thing to sell." It can be something that players pay for or not. It can be something made to go to players, or not. 

With that in mind, this is what Narrative is: We are a distinct discipline made up of people who are focused on the development of characters and stories through ideation and writing. We help ensure thematic cohesion on various products, develop archetypes and personalities, and we help solve creative problems using character, story, and world building. We also write stories because we pretty much love to. You haven't seen enough of them. Yet. There are numerous reasons for this that we are working to solve. In this case, "we" means Riot. 

We employ our craft on various Product Teams. For example, on League of Legends, we have Narrative Writers who work on Champion Team, Champion Update, Events, Promo and beyond. On Champion Team, the Narrative Writers spend a lot of time being part of the creative teamwork, in conjunction with a lot of other disciplines, in making new, exciting Champions that are thought out down to a molecular level when it comes to their identity. 

As you cited Ekko, I'll talk to him in particular. 

From a Narrative standpoint, FauxSchizzle was the principal Narrative writer working on the Ekko Champion team with a large number of people from different disciplines (Art, Game Design etc.). He helped with concepting the character's personality with the team, including writing story sketches (think of them as concept story, you'll likely be seeing an example of this pretty soon) that helped everyone get a clear picture of who the Champion is. 

Taking a Champion from ideation, through production, to release is a very taxing, involved job due to wanting to make the best Champion possible each and every time. That's the same for artists, designers and writers of various specializations.
Faux was also the principal writer on Seconds (Ekko's animation) and Chronobreak (his comic). On all of his work, from concepting to launch, Faux received support from various members of Narrative in the form of edits, feedback and writers room sessions. No matter what the team is, we support each other in our work, because that's what makes us Narrative and Rioters. 

Ekko was one of three champions that Faux has been working on.
The reason I'm outlining this is to clarify and dispute one assertion: Lore team isn't doing anything. 

Firstly, Narrative isn't a "lore team," as the above explanation may help clarify. What we have been doing is working on a variety of Product Teams that make a multitude of things for players. We are more than busy in doing so, hence we have been pushing very hard to hire more superb writers to join us. 

The short character intros are developed by Narrative as part of the work done for Champion Team, or Champion Update. 

They are Narrative's direct responsibility on those teams, and I will say that we have heard you and others very clearly on your displeasure with the shorter introductions to the Champion. The fact is, they have always been intended as a quick overview for folks who don't want to hit a wall of text in the client, particularly in a format that was very inflexible for us. The plan was to release short intros and then have longer stories on the website. 

Then, when initially trying to implement this, we discovered a technical issue made it impossible to do so. We didn't think it would take long to fix. 

We were wrong. 

Thankfully, it seems we have finally got a solution in place and you'll be seeing the fruits of that development within the next month when we'll be releasing some stuff (stuff = things I can't spoil) that will take advantage of the new tech capability. 

While we have been waiting to sort these issues out, it's given us the time to look at our content goals. Much of that desire to question our direction for the specific intros/bios/stories (as they have been in various iterations), has been due to the consternation expressed on these boards. We led an effort to try and drive on short stories to go along with those character intros. When we saw the vocal assertion that something like the old bio format would still be welcome even with those stories, we took another look at what we were doing. 

We anted something that gave the meat of certain details of the old bios, while still feeling current and not creating a sense of that Champion's life being static. 

Ant in Oz pitched a format that makes a lot of sense and it's currently going through fine tuning. To give you an idea though, it's the current introductory paragraph, followed by a background or bio section with some details and story hooks to stimulate understanding and conversation, followed by a quick story that shows the Champion being who they are. They are certainly more in-depth than the current intros and I'm confident of their quality. 

We've formed an impromptu team of Narrative folks doing some extra hours to start formalizing a process, discussing character pitches and then getting them written. We're prioritizing them based on the needs of Product Teams as well as how broken they are. For example, Singed is one that I've personally put an outline together for. I won't talk about the others due to spoilers. 

I understand the overall frustration completely. We're working on moving things in a much more satisfactory direction than has been the case in the last couple of years, but this will never be a case of Narrative deciding to do things on its own, we always work within Product Teams and the priorities are made by Riot as a whole and then within those teams. 

We take our specific responsibility very seriously though. As a discipline we need to do better, and I think folks we've brought on like FauxSchizzle are helping us do that. We try to put as much story as we can into everything we do as we are storytellers by trade and by passion. Story isn't the main product of every team we work on, however.
So while I understand that it is, at times, difficult to pick out Narrative's work from within things made by teams (if we're doing it right, you won't be able to for much of the time), please don't mistake that for us not doing anything. 

That simply is not true. 

I get a bit protective of Narrative as it's my day-to-day responsibility to ensure we are meeting the needs of Riot's many teams, so I have to rein in my urge to leap to their defense each time we are said to be doing nothing. I stop myself because though the details might not always be accurate, the overall sense of being let down, of not having enough prepared and in place after the reset blog announcement, is utterly valid.
The difference comes from perspective. I know precisely how hard the members of Narrative work. I know how many hours Faux and numerous others (including those not on Narrative) put in to make Ekko as a Champion, Seconds as an animation, and Chronobreak as a comic, the best they could be. It's no small effort. 

I know until the content that you desire is available to you, it's difficult to see what it is that we're actually doing. I hope this post at least gives you a little insight into how things are. 

Sorry for the long post, I hope I kept it at least mainly coherent, but I'm a bit knackered.
These posts bother me constantly and are in the back of my mind every day. It's not because of the sometimes unfortunate tone, it's because of the underlying truth. We need to not just tell you how we're trying to get better at putting things in your hand, we need to put them in your hand. 

I'm very excited for the next month or so."

When asked about the promise of seeing something new in a month, Jaredan continued:

"Yup, I'm putting myself in a predicament. But we're at a point where if I just say "soon." folks here are, understandably, really sick and tired of it. There's possibilities things may get moved, I'm not in control of that. But I want to say something of consequence and commit to the work we've been doing. 

I'll risk taking the kicking for it if people get some measure of what we're striving for."

He continued, replying to concern that Riot is failing to understand the community's complaints about the lore and why they are left feeling unhappy with the current direction:

"This is a recurring sentiment and a valid one that I'd like to address. From your perspective, I can completely see that you think we are not listening or unable to understand. 

We do understand. It is not that we can't understand why those who are vocal about this issue are upset. The problem is that we don't agree with some of the players in the way to answer those concerns. 

Of course, we don't like the fact that the decision has caused the unhappiness it has among some of the players. But we're making the decisions we are for the long term health of LoL as a game and as an IP. We want to make Runeterra a much more interesting place to visit than it was and is. 

We will make mistakes, and we most certainly have in the past year. We're trying to address concerns in a way that makes sense for players now and in the future. It's taking much longer than we'd like. 

The big problem is that without things to point at that shows what we're intending to replace, we're talking hypothetical versus real. The real being previous content.
The hypothetical being what we say we want to do. 

The real will always win, particularly in regard to something we are all so passionate about. 

Which is why we screwed up by not having those ducks in a row before making the announcement we did. It was an error built on other errors that became the lesser of a number of evils. 

Until we've taken the proper action to put new content in your hands, that is of a quality you feel is worth your engagement, that trust won't be repaired. 

I would simply ask not to confuse a lack of agreement with a lack of understanding. Because we don't do as you want, doesn't mean we don't understand the benefits and logic in what you say. 

We're hoping to show you we can do more. We haven't done that, but we are going to try."

Amidst the lore discussion and promises, Jaredan also commented on Ekko's relationship with Vi, and Jinx rafter being asked if they belong to the same group of "Lost children" of Zaun:

Quote:

Since Ekko was mentioned as running around with the lost kids of Zaun, I have a question. 

Jinx and Vi are obviously part of his group and his age, yet they're supposed to be in their 30s while Ekko looks like a teenager. How does that work?

Jinx ad Vi aren't in their 30s, but they're also not part of Ekko's group or age.

Firstly, Zaun isn't a small place. It's got many different types of streets and neighborhoods—and places that you don't want to be caught dead in. Mainly because you'd be dead in them. I've always found that an odd expression. Anyway...