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Red Post Collection: 3/11 Patch Update, Jhin color text & others soon, Lee Sin Mix, Tribeca Games LoL Panels, & more

Tonight's red post collection includes information on the March 11th Patch update to fix issues with Azir and Kog'Maw, a heads up that Jhin's color text will be up Monday with others coming soon, videos of the Tribeca Game's League of Legends panels, and more!
Continue reading for more information!



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March 10th & 11th Patch Update

The official 6.5 patch notes have been updated to reflect two hotfixes that went out on March 10th and March 11th to fix up bugs with Azir, Kog'Maw, and Twisted Fate!
"3/11/2016 
Azir
  • OVERENTHUSIASTIC STABBING - Sand soldiers beyond the first now properly deal less damage when attacking the same target
  • DISTRACTED - Sand soldier attacks will no longer fail to deal damage to their original target if Azir directs his soldiers to switch to an out-of-range target during their in-progress attack (targets that move out of range will still avoid damage)
  • MOMENT OF SILENCE  - Azir is no longer briefly locked out of his abilities if a Sand soldier's target dies mid-attack  
Kog'Maw
  • WHY AREN'T THEY MELTING - Fixed a bug that caused on-hit effects to deal significantly reduced damage while W - Bio-Arcane Barrage was active"
"3/10/2016 
Twisted Fate 
  • MAKE UP YOUR MIND - Fixed a bug where the cards in Cutpurse Twisted Fate's overhead W - Pick a Card indicator weren't dimming out as the ability cycled, making it difficult to tell which card would be locked if Pick a card was reactivated"

Jhin's Color Text to be added Monday and others soon! 

WAARGHbobo  has posted that, after several delays, Jhin's story will be added to his champion page on Monday March 14th! WAARGHbobo  also mentions several other champions have stories that will be released very soon.
"Hey All, 
Just a quick heads up. I was informed Jhin's color text will be shipping Monday (USA PST). 
Hope ya'll like it. 
Sorry for the delay, we had more than a couple of unexpected coincidences, which broke our new pipeline. (Problems with ESRB rating, staff leaving riot, back-up staff sick, another team's staff leaving for vacation, Loc team overloaded with other work, and glorious technical hiccups... ---it was a journey.) 
I'm gonna set aside a couple hours on Tuesday to answer questions about the story and Jhin. 
-Cheers! 
WAAAAAARGHbobo 
PS 
In related news Tahm , Sivir, and Rek Sai's new lores will be shipping soon too!"
WAARGHbobo continued, explaining what "color text" means:
"Color Text" refers to the little short story that appears after the bio"
FauxSchizzle added:
"And Ekko's as well. I think Bard, too."

When asked if Skarner's lore is coming, Jaredan noted:
"It's in the pipeline at the moment."

[For an example of this color text, Kindred's page has both an introduction and the Forest for the Trees story & Hecarim has an introduction plus the No One Lives story.]

Socrates on the removal of champ select quotes

As you may have noticed, the champion quotes when team members and enemy team members lock in have been removed from champion select. Here's Socrates with context on the removal:
"Hey dudes, we removed these from champ select. The issue was we had overloaded champ select with too many sound effects, making it hard to tell when key things were actually going on - like when it was your turn to pick. You'll still hear your own champ when you lock them in. 
The upside of this is that since the recent patch we're seeing some of the lowest dodge rates ever."
He continued:
"To clarify, this was part of a package of fixes that improved dodge rates. When we saw dodge rates weren't where we wanted them, this was something we were okay trading to make sure dodge rates are in a healthy place. 
Definitely not saying this change alone caused improvement here, but it was one of the factors we targeted."
RiotBoourns noted:
"Right, and the problem is that the champion quotes can be pretty long and would actually stomp the "your turn to pick" sound. A further refinement could be muting the champion quote if you're picking next or fading it out when your turn starts. That was more complicated and we had some high priority fixes that we were working on so we kept it simple. 
I do hear you, though, we all loved the champion quotes and thought they were a great way to add more flavor to the experience."

Tribeca Games Presents the Craft & Creative of League of Legends


Next up is a set of six videos of the various League of Legends panels from Tribeca Games event in late 2015. These videos were all recently uploaded to the Riot Games youtube channel and feature all sorts of Rioters - artists, designers, musicians, and more - discussing their craft! 













More photos from the event can be found here via the Tribeca website.

HIKU! Lee Sin Mix | Community Collab

We also have a brand new community collaboration champion mix - Lee Sin Mix! 

"Domics and Jomm took Lee Sin's voice and remixed it. Master yourself, master the enemy. 
Domics:
http://www.youtube.com/user/d0mics 
Jomm:
http://www.youtube.com/user/flashj0mm 
Effects my Miccool 
Additional Animation by Ehlboy, Shho, Hyun and Marie Lum 
**Created in collaboration with Riot Games**"
Need MORE? Check out these other LoL Champion Mixes:

Ghostcrawler IGN Facebook Q&A 

Earlier today, Ghostcrawler popped up over on the IGN Facebook page to host a short Q&A session! Check out the facebook thread or look below to see what he had to say:

 Question:
"Can you give us a small tease of whats coming on the future?" -  Luis Lopez 
  Answer:
 "Hextech crafting is going to be live in North America very soon. We are really excited about the response to the feature so far. We continue to work on improving the new dynamic queue. We’ve talked a lot about the new client which will give a really different (and better we hope!) look for League. We have a clubs and parties feature on the horizon. We’re doing a mage update around mid-season. We have some crazy new champs in the pipe - I hope they pan out." - Greg

Question:
"Who's your favorite champion in terms of kit and design?" - Jeremiah Rios 
 Answer:
"That’s always a tough one. It’s like picking your favorite pet or child. I like the thematic and story of Bard and Kindred a lot. I appreciate the gameplay of Orianna. I like how resonant Riven and Jinx are with players. 
I used to play mains like many players do, but after I came to Riot, I realized that I needed more broad exposure to lots of champions. Unfortunately the game kind of steers you towards mastering a few and when you play a variety, you lose a lot." - Greg

Question:
"By what point would too many champions be too many? Of course I love the new champion hype because it always make me want to learn how to play against them or with them." -  Jeremiah Rios
 Answer:
"We think there is a point at which League will have too many champions, but at the rate we release new champions, that date is still years away. 
If you think of a player who only plays say ADC, he or she may only get 1 new champion a year. We know new champions are one of the best ways to freshen up the game in a way that’s still easy for someone who has been away from the game for a time to still be able to easily wade back in." - Greg

 Question:
"What kind of well known stories are champions being pulled from now?" - Stephen Douglas Ely
Answer:
"Overall we like to say that we build archetypes, not stereotypes. In other words, we like for things to be familiar enough for players to relate to, but still feel enough of a twist to get there interest. Some of our earlier champions were a little too generic. I pick on Volibear a lot for being a big armored bear. Ideally their stories have more depth than that. (And the bear will get an update someday!)" - Greg

Question:
"Heard over a Twitch Stream that already the DNA Pods had "dragon" and two others in flux at the time. How many concepts do those teams have going at one time?" - Lance Ferrantino
Answer:
"There are 3 pods on the team. We have 3 champions in the iteration and playtest state at any one time, but champions frequently get put on ice or go back to the drawing board. We also have brainstorm meetings where a lot of ideas get discussed." - Greg

Question:
"If today's technology limitations weren't an issue, what would be one of your dream features or mechanics in a game?" -  Tarik Diaz
Answer:
"I’d love to play a traditional tabletop RPG online and recapture the feel of playing D&D around a table with friends (I mean with a DM and everything). There have been a few attempts here. It will happen someday." - Greg

·Question:
"What type of problems made Ao Shin impossible? What changed in the design and how did he end up becoming Aurelion.? "- Tarik Diaz 
 Answer:
"The serpentine body was a big one. We tried a few different ways of handling that, such as a head that you interact with and a long tail more like a kite that was “just art” but it didn’t feel right and moved weird. The champion just started diverging in a different direction and we felt like he wasn’t going to meet expectations from players about what Ao Shin should be." - Greg

Question:
"What are the future plans for League of legends balance between champions being release and champions being balanced? 
I know they are two different teams but, Do you guys feel like slowing down on champions getting release and focus more on giving the player a more balanced game?" - Luis Lopez 
 Answer:
"We actually split gameplay changes among several teams. The ones you are likely most familiar with are live gameplay, new champions, champion updates, and systems changes (like say items, gold or towers). 
We have slowed down on champion releases a lot. We used to do like 12+ a year. Recently it has only been like 5-6 and we’d like to improve that a little. 
Often our balance changes are limited by playtest time, believe it or not, because you often have to play a bunch of games to really notice a subtle change in the way someone’s Q works or whatever. Throwing a lot more designers on that team doesn’t necessarily help until you’re getting to the point where you’re able to have dozens of playtest games going, and then you probably have problems managing all of those games and processing all of the feedback." - Greg
Question:
"do you guys have any plans to make other champs like Bard and Aurelion sol? It seems that it would be a little upsetting to have a champ that's so prominent in the creation of runeterra be the only of his kind. And in his lore he hints at not being the only one." -
Joshua Petersen
Answer:
 "I don’t want to leak new champions plans of course. smile emoticon I’ve loved the exploration that the team has done for really out-there champions from a lore perspective, like Kindred, Bard and Aurelion Sol. But there is still room for familiar Demacian and Piltover dudes as well." - Greg

Question:
"Would we ever get another story driven event like Bilgewater? I thought this way of exploring territory's in league was very fascinating. And would the reskin of a map (like aram during this event) extend to SR? Or Twisted Treeline?" - Jeremiah Rios 
Answer:
"We keep exploring different ways to tell stories. Overall we don’t want to interfere with gameplay too much to tell a story (and yeah we did totally do this with Gangplank - sometimes it’s fun to color outside of the lines too). We’re telling a bit of a Targon story right now with the imminent release of our next champion." - Greg

Question:
"Since the introduction of chroma packs, their hasn't been that many released latly so is there a reason for that?" - Jeremiah Rios 
 Answer:
"Yes. We evaluated player feedback to the initial round of chromas and are pivoting a little on how we do them." - Greg

Question:
"Hey Greg! When new champions are being designed, how often would you say the team draws inspiration from other games or even other mobas? What external source do you is the biggest font of inspiration for champion design?" - Kyle Danger O'Connor 
 Answer:
"Overall, comics and movies are probably the largest inspiration. We definitely wouldn’t want to lift a character out of another game whole cloth. Sometimes the design comes from a cool mechanic idea and sometimes from a badass piece of art or writing from the team." - Greg

Question:
"Are there such thing as "overpowered" characters." - Everett Borislow 
 Answer:
"Absolutely. We don’t willingly design overpowered champions but it definitely happens. Sometimes players figure out ways to play champions that we didn’t expect, particularly depending on the lane they use or the items they choose. Sometimes players master a play style faster than we expected. Sometimes there is just a bug. 
It’s also worth pointing out that this kind of thing can lay dormant for months and then shift suddenly. Someone used the Zz’rot Portal in a pro game, and then everyone was using Zz’rot, exposing a bug that had been in there for some time. frown emoticon" - Greg

 Question:
"Will there be an mobile version or a console version?" - Everett Borislow 
 Answer:
"It’s not something we are working on today. League is very married to having a mouse and keyboard. If we developed a version on another platform, it would need to be thought about totally differently. If you look at what Blizzard did with Diablo 3, the console version still felt very much like Diablo, but they changed it enough to make sense with a different control scheme. 
I’ll also plug that we don’t always want to be a one-game studio, and mobile and console may be better suited for a totally different game." - Greg

 Question:
"Why graves can't have a cigar?" - Joshua Knights 
 Answer:
 "League ships in a lot of different countries and all of those places have different laws and depictions of tobacco use is one of those areas that gets tricky to navigate. It can depend a lot on how prominent the display is, which is why a cinematic might get different scrutiny than splash art. 
I’m not saying we’ll always just play safe every time either. Sometimes something is so iconic to a character that it’s worth fighting for. Maybe Graves’s cigar crosses that line? We’re still discussing." - Greg

Question:
"Is there consistency on the top tier characters vs medium or lower tier characters and how do you track that? Do you use a website,app or any other social media device to do that?" - Everett Borislow 
 Answer:
"We collect a great deal of data about how champions perform through the game itself. Sometimes this meshes with what players see on fansites and sometimes it doesn’t.

A lot goes into determinations of balance, including play rates, win rates for someone who is just learning a champ vs. someone who has played 100s of games with them, high vs. low elo, regional differences and so on. Sometimes we have champions that require more extensive overhauls before they can really perform well. There are definitely some champions that are super frustrating for players to deal with when their play rates and win rates creep up there. " - Greg

 Question:
"Hi Greg! 
Do MMOs have a future and what does that future look like?" - James Duggan
Answer:
"I think players like to see other players in their games. In that regard, the MMO space is almost limitless. Maybe there isn’t room for a whole lot more quest-based, subscription MMOs, but there is a lot of room to explore. Maybe that means the next big MMO is survivor horror or something. A lot of Rioters are playing The Division right now. Does that qualify as an MMO? Will future MMOs look really different? I will say from experience that making MMOs is hard and it’s so easy for players to plow through all your content quickly. smile emoticon" - Greg

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