Red Post Collection: Hexakill: Twisted Treeline live in RGM Queue, MSI 2016 Primer, and more!

Posted on at 1:20 AM by Moobeat
Tonight's red post collection includes a reminder that Hexakill: Twisted Treeline is up in the Rotating Game Mode queue, a dev blog on some of the behind the scenes improvements to the League Client update,  a primer on the upcoming 2016 Mid-Season Invitational, and more!
Continue reading for more information!



Table of Contents


Hexakill: Twisted Treeline in RGM Queue!

Hexakill: Twisted Treeline returns this weekend in the rotating game mode queue! Between Friday afternoon and Monday morning, Hexakill is back for more 6 on 6 action on the Twisted Treeline map! The RGM Queue schedule is also updated, adding in another round of URF in late May!
"From the original clone-tastic One For All to the sand-strewn battlefield of Ascension, rotating game modes provide unique spins on the classic League formula. It’s time to kick things off with the next game mode in the rotation: Hexakill: Twisted Treeline is now live!

For a refresher on the mode, let’s go over the basics:
  • It’s Twisted Treeline, so there are altars to capture and a nexus to explodify.
  • It’s Hexakill. So there are six champs on your team instead of three.
As in any rotating queue game mode, we’ve specially tuned Champion Mastery so you can earn points in the mode. You’ll also be able to earn keys for your wins and loot chests for your (or your premade’s) S­-, S, and S+ games. 
Hexakill: Twisted Treeline is now available and lasts through the evening on Sunday (we’ll shut it down very early Monday morning--usually between 1:00 AM and 3:00 AM). 
Up next is One For All next weekend, followed by Ascension and the return of Ultra Rapid Fire. If you need to catch up on the rules for any game mode, check back at leagueoflegends.com each Friday, and we’ll give you the lowdown in a quick post like this one. 
We’ll be trying out different things with the rotating game mode queue over the next few months, such as potentially turning it on longer depending on how popular it is, changing the mode cadence or what modes are available. We’re looking for your feedback as we go, so let us know. GLHF, and we’ll bring a sixth man alongside you in the Twisted Treeline this weekend."
As always, remember to check out the S@20 sidebar for the latest RGM queue schedule!

[LCU Alpha] Bugs, Reliability, and a Fresh New Ride 

Here's a new dev blog going over the more technical parts of the League Client Update and what they are doing to combat bugs, make the client more reliable, and the new technical architecture:
"An updated client is coming, and during the 2016 season you'll be able to help us build it by signing up for the League client update alpha. We know that players want a client that's fast, sleek, and modernized, so we're working hard to deliver an experience worthy of their expectations. 
This client update is more than a visual rework—it's a wholly new technical architecture designed to keep pace with evolving technologies and to increase developer effectiveness, so that Riot teams can deliver more and better stuff to players over time. Between the defeat of age-old bugs, a more resource-light program, and better bug-splatting equipment for our developers, players have quite a few reasons to anticipate the upgrade. 
ANCIENT ENEMIES FINALLY DEFEATED 
We've been able to squeeze a lot of features into the legacy client, but it's getting a little rickety with age. Some issues repeatedly rear their head to taunt players: The client doesn't properly fit on smaller computer monitors, it sometimes devours memory without explanation, and we literally can't fit any more tabs on the profile page. 
We pushed the legacy client to its absolute limit, and it just didn't scale that well with Riot Games' organization. A lot of the issues players experience are the result of dozens of development teams all trying to make changes at the same time to a single, monolithic application. This creates a "too many cooks" scenario. The solution to this problem isn't to limit the number of cooks—we just have to rework the client to allow as many cooks as possible to work in parallel without over-salting each other's food. 
We're designing the updated client from the ground up to be exponentially more flexible, so our programmers can fix pesky bugs without tripping over someone else's code. Starting fresh means we can kill bad code which has plagued our lands since time immemorial, and as a result, finally give y'all drag-n-drop pages for runes and masteries (among lots of other stuff). In the earliest stages of the alpha we may actually introduce new bugs to the client, but that's why we're inviting players in as testers in the first place.
CHROME IN OUR DOME MAKES THE RIDE GO SMOOTH 
We'll admit it. The legacy client is a resource hog. Every day hundreds of innocent megabytes are devoured by the hungry hungry code-hippo that powers the legacy client, and countless years of players' lives have been lost watching the spinny loop things in between page transitions in the store. 
To solve this, the updated client uses the chromium embedded framework, affectionately called "CEF" by programmers everywhere. This is a big departure from our old code base, and we expect it to be pretty resource-efficient—expect it to use way less memory than the legacy client, even when you're in game! This thing is like a righteously glorious Janna with homeguards and a popped talisman. 
A big benefit of these memory savings is that players can leave a minimized version of the client running in the background without it eating up your CPU. You'll also have the option to keep your friends list up by itself, so you can chat with your duo pals even if you're unavailable for a full game.
WE CAN FIX IT FASTER 
One of the biggest gripes that players have with the legacy client is that it can often take us forever to fix the simplest of bugs. As we discovered, the legacy client doesn't have many useful built-in debugging tools, which makes dealing with the simplest bugs head-explodingly annoying. 
Example: A year or so ago, we noticed that a few players were experiencing massive memory leaks while running the client. We figured out that the problem was specifically affecting players with over 200 friends, and only those who didn't separate their friends list into groups. These popular peeps were regularly experiencing full-blown system crashes. It was ugly. 
We didn't have any way to simulate or reproduce the bug, so we had to walk around Riot HQ hunting for someone who had a lot of friends and poor organization skills. We found a Rioter that fit the bill and stole his account long enough to reproduce and analyze the bug, then a programmer had to spend an entire week building his own tools and continuously running and re-running inefficient processes to squash the bug. 
Thanks to the updated client, that crap isn't going to happen anymore. The CEF comes built-in with loads of shiny debugging software, and we're building a lot of our own developer efficiency tools that are designed to help us detect bugs earlier than we've been able to in the past. With these tools, one programmer could fix that exact bug in about an hour, without ever leaving their chair. The structure of the updated client also allows individual teams within Riot to address painful bugs on their own, without risking disruption to players or other teams working on the client. In a future post, one of the League client update's lead engineers will dive deep into this issue and others in an extended blog post examining our new technical architecture. 
The implications of this are pretty big. Not only will it be easier for us to deliver a bug-free client from the start, but our turnaround time when addressing unforeseen client issues will be noticeably quicker. 
THE NEVERENDING JOURNEY TOWARDS FRESHNESS 
The updated client will be a fresh start in many ways, but the client, like League itself, is never really done. We'll put it to the test, digging out every possible flaw we can find and continually looking for ways to improve it over time. 
If you haven't yet signed up for the alpha, learn how to here!"
For more on the League Client Update Alpha, check out this page. 

Meddler on Devourer Junglers post 6.9

When asked about the upcoming Enchantment: Bloodrazor replacing Enchantment: Devourer in patch 6.9 and what that means for several junglers who used the old enchantment, Meddler noted:
"We've got a number of Devourer building junglers we're planning to look at once 6.9 has been out for a week or so, see how they've been affected and whether we should look at making changes to them given the new environment. Yi's one of those champs."

2016 Mid-Season Invitational Primer 

The 2016 Mid-Season Invitational starts up May 5th! Get ready for MSI with this event  primer on the competing teams, what is at stake, and more!
"Who will own the Rift when six regional champions clash at our international showdown in Shanghai, China? Welcome to the 2016 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational (MSI). 
Who is playing at the Mid-Season Invitational? 
Six regional champions: one team from North America (NA LCS), one team from Europe (EU LCS), one team from mainland China (LPL), one team from Korea (LCK), and one team from the LMS region (which consists of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau), plus a wildcard slot to be determined at the International Wild Card Invitational on April 16-23 in Mexico City. 
The following teams have already qualified for MSI:
  • Europe (EU LCS) - G2 Esports
  • North America (NA LCS) - Counter Logic Gaming
  • Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau (LMS) - Flash Wolves
  • Korea (LCK) - SK Telecom T1
  • China (LPL) - Royal Never Give Up
  • Turkey (TCL) - SuperMassive
What are they playing for? 
Starting this year, MSI results will have a direct impact on the World Championship (Worlds). The teams who advance to the Knockout Stage of the 2016 Mid-Season Invitational will earn one of the top four seeds for their region at the 2016 World Championship. 
For more information on these detailed changes, head on over to the MSI 2016 Update and Worlds implications. 
Tournament format 
The Mid-Season Invitational 2016 tournament format contains two stages: the Group Stage followed by a Knockout Stage. 
In the Group Stage, teams will play in double Round Robin-style, Best of 1 (Bo1) matchups, meaning each team plays every other team twice. 
The Knockout Stage is a single elimination, Best of 5 (Bo5) bracket that will be determined by the Group Stage results. 
When is it happening? How do I catch the action? 
MSI takes place at the Shanghai Oriental Sports Center on May 4-8 and May 13-15. 
The Group Stage takes place on May 4-8. Group Stage matches begin at 13:30 May 4-7 (Shanghai local time), and May 8 at 11:30. The Knockout Stage takes place on May 13-15 with a Bo5 series per day starting at 13:30 each day. 
We’ll have all the matches on Lolesports. Looking to cheer on your region? Head on over to the Group Stage schedule. 
How can I support my region? 
Starting April 27, players from the six regions competing at MSI (North America, Europe, Korea, China, LMS, and the winning region from the IWCI) will be able to purchase their region’s icon in store for 1 IP. If you want to represent a different region, you can purchase other regional icons in the store for 250 RP, but you can only participate in the icon challenge below for your home region. 
By equipping your region’s icon, you’ll join forces with fellow Summoners in a challenge to determine ‘Who Will Own The Rift?’. Games played with the icon equipped will count towards your region’s points/standing in a contest of regional fandom that will culminate on May 15. 
The performance of teams at MSI will also contribute to the final point total, with the winning fan region receiving an Party IP weekend. Regions who do not qualify for MSI will be able to purchase the MSI Icon for 1 IP in stores. To offset the implications of regions with larger player bases, points will be normalized and weighted based on the size of each region. The breakdown of points earned by teams competing at MSI for their regions is as follows: 
  • 1st: 2000
  • 2nd: 1800
  • 3rd/4th: 1600
  • 5th: 1200
  • 6th: 1000 
We will begin tracking each region’s progress in the icon challenge starting April 27 through updates available on Lolesports.com as well as the MSI Client Hub throughout the the event. Point updates will be posted on the following dates: 
  • Pre-Groups: May 3
  • Post-Groups: May 9
  • Pre-Knockout: May 12
  • Start of Final: May 15 
In addition to the reward for the icon competition, we will also be offering an exclusive MSI 2016 gilded regional icon to the region whose team wins the 2016 Mid-Season Invitational. The winning icon will be available globally from May 16 - May 30 for 1 IP in the winning region and 250 RP in all other regions."

For more information on each of the teams, check out these links:

If you are a player on one of the six competing regions, be sure to pick up your regional MSI 2016 icons for 1 IP and equip them to compete in the WHO WILL OWN THE RIFT promotion! 
Regions who do not have a team competiting in 2016 can pick up the MSI icon for 1 IP.
[NOTE: Point totals for WHO WILL OWN THE RIFT  will be updated on May 3rd, 9th, 12th, and 15th.] 


LCP Episode 19 - Chatting with Sp4zie live at PAX East 

Next up we have episode 19 of the League Community Podcast which sits down with community content creator Sp4zie at PAX East!
"Welcome to the latest installment of the League Podcast, a series in which we take you behind-the-scenes with the people who help make League possible. Expect new guests and new stories every couple of weeks or so, and make sure to hit us with those sweet comments and ratings so we can keep striving toward a Challenger-tier podcast. 
This week we’ve got a special episode, recorded live at PAX East ‘16, in which we sat down with League creator Sp4zie to chat about being a YouTuber and field some live audience Q&A."


/ALL Chat | PAX East Vlog ft. Sky, Sp4zie & more!

After more PAX action? Check out this PAX East edition of  /ALL Chat featuring several league personalities, cosplayers, and more!

"ALL Chat goes to PAX, catches up with old friends, and makes new ones! Xell and Jimmy Wong grab a camera, hit the halls, and take us on a magical journey through amazing cosplay (a 13 foot tall Thresh!), freestyle rapping, and a really bad pirate joke. Spoiler alert: someone gets engaged! Double spoiler alert: it’s not Xell. Maybe that’s obvious."

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