Red Post Collection: Ask Riot on Champ Riven, Jobs and Champ Roles, Hexakill: TT live in RGMQ, & more!

Continue reading for more information!

• Chroma for IP Sale [August 25 - September 8th]

• Red Post Collection: Riot Pls on Ranked, August Bundles, Hextech Sion in shop, CS Riven Details, LCU Updates, & more!
• Champion & Skin Sale 8/26 - 8/29
• Chromas 1.1 - New Chroma Now Available

• 8/25 PBE Update: Tweaks & more tentative balance changes
• Arcade 2016 Content now available! 

Table of Contents

• Ask Riot on Champ Riven, Jobs and Champ Roles 
• Ranked updates now live 
• RMGQ - Hexakill: TT this weekend & updated schedule
• Introducing Invulnerability HUD 
• Riot Mulligan on Future Chroma for IP Sales
• Reav3 on Assassin Champion Update
• Minion AI Rules Documentation 
• Pocket Picks: Doublelift's Lucian
• We /reply to your comments and questions /R /ALL Chat 
• REMINDERS

Ask Riot on Champ Riven, Jobs and Champ Roles 

First up we have a brand new ASK RIOT discussing Championship Riven's return and changes, jobs in the industry, and champion roles.

"Welcome to Ask Riot, where we focus on your questions and give you answers. 

This week, we talk about working in the wonderful world of game design, an update on Championship Riven and how we decide roles for new champions. 

Have a question (or two...hundred) yourself? Head over to Ask Riot and sign into your League account. Check out the Do’s, the Don'ts, and then ask us something. We’ll archive the answers once we’ve accumulated a few of them. One thing to note: Asking the same question over and over again won’t help your cause. 

ASK RIOT 

We’re committed to reading every question but can’t guarantee we’ll answer them all. 

“Okay, why not?” 

Some questions may already be answered elsewhere or won’t be right for Ask Riot. This isn’t the best place to announce new products or features here and we might skip conversations on issues which we’ve already gone into more depth elsewhere (but we can clarify individual points!). Even if your question isn’t the one being answered, we’re listening, and we’ll be sharing your questions with the Rioters who are working directly on the things you’re curious about. 

Hey, have you already settled on the best option for bringing back Championship Riven?
Hi there, 

Worlds is a special time of year, and with the introduction of Championship Zed who rounds out a full Championship team comp, we wanted to look back to Season 2 where the championship line began. We felt this was a great opportunity to bring back the original Championship skin: Championship Riven for a new generation of players. And we damn well wanted to make sure she felt awesome for original owners. So we spent some time giving her texture some love and bringing it up to our current art standards. 

We didn’t want to stop there though, and decided we were going to do something extra special for those who originally obtained her four years ago during the Season 2 World Championship. 

If you are an original owner of Championship Riven, we are adding in some extra in-game recognition for you. Firstly, we will be making a custom vintage loading screen banner that is different than previous versions so people will know you’re an OG. 

Secondly, we’re creating a “vintage” version of her in-game model that features an exclusive crown and a glowing particle on her sword when her ultimate, “Blade of the Exile” is activated. 

Any new owner of the skin will be able to obtain Championship Riven with an updated texture but none of the aforementioned extra goodies. The goal here was to ensure that vintage Championship Riven commemorated the start of the Championship skin line and people who obtained her at that time will get to celebrate that forever. 

Championship Riven has been highly coveted by a lot of you for a looooong time. I mean, there was even a petition about it. Over the years, we’ve heard a lot of feedback, excitement and discussion around this skin so we felt it was important to do something different than what we’ve tried in the past. 

We hope you enjoy the update and changes. As always, let us know what you think. We welcome it. 

-Pabro, Product Manager, Personalization Content 

How does Riot decide which roles and play styles they intend new champions to fill? (e.g., tank support, duelist ADC, AP jungle, etc.) 

With only a handful of new champions coming out each year and a ton of effort put into each one, we have to be extremely deliberate about what we choose to make. We want all of you – whether you’re a mage-only player or prefer playing support - to feel like you’re consistently getting something new to enjoy. This means we try to hit every role and lane as often as possible. 

When we plot out the next year of champions - or even the year after that - we’re looking at what's currently in development as well as where champions we've recently released have landed in terms of role and gameplay niche. Only with all these factors in mind can we then look forward. Questions we’ll ask ourselves include: 

• Which roles or lanes haven't gotten a new champion in a while?
• Are there any unexplored styles we want to try? (e.g., Kindred came from asking ourselves "What would a jungle marksman look like?) 

Occasionally, we also take advantage of special opportunities, such as figuring out what a dragon champion would look like in League of Legends, that may point us towards a particular role (e.g., a dragon is probably a fighter or a mage). 

A new champ’s originally intended role or play style can sometimes also drift during development, like when we realized Tahm Kench was going to be a support rather than a top laner. Sometimes we embrace that drift, while in other cases we push back towards the original plan in order to make sure players who particularly enjoy that style of play aren’t waiting too long for something new. 

As you can see, there a bunch of factors we have to weigh and plan around, but our consistent long-term goal is to release champions that hit a healthy mix of roles, lanes, identities, playstyles, etc so that all players have something new to master on a regular basis. 

– Iniquitee, Champion Team Lead 

I’m interested in becoming a game designer (maybe for Riot!) Any tips on getting into the industry? 

There are a lot of different paths into the games industry so I can't necessarily share a best way, but I’d be happy to share the way it went for me. Based on my personal journey to game design my top two tips are to 1) make sure you have immense passion for the work, and 2) be equally passionate about learning about players (and how they think) as you may be about design. 

As high school was wrapping up for me, for the first time school staff started asking what I wanted to do for a career. That was a huge question to ask teenage me, and I realized I didn’t even know what was out there. Then I thought of games, which were already a huge part of my life, and I figured why not consider it. Interest piqued, I picked up some books on the games industry - and the message I got was devastating. Everything I read made pursuing game design as a profession sound like wanting to be a unicorn when you grow up. I didn't write it off completely, but it certainly helped me make the decision to study economics at a traditional university in order to keep my options open. 

As I wrapped up university and found myself staring down the barrel of a 40-hour work week, I realized I just couldn't get excited about finance or banking. I decided I had to find a career I truly loved, and gave myself a summer to land any job I could find in the gaming industry. From there I could figure out whether or not the field was a long-term fit. I applied to something like 50 positions, and got a handful of interviews. I ended up landing a great opportunity doing QA on game content at a studio that completely integrated QA into the development process, which really excited me. I was able to work with several different disciplines and offer meaningful feedback in addition to reporting bugs. Most importantly, I was passively exposed to a wealth of knowledge, just through the conversations that happened as part of my daily work. 

In my free time, I began using the design tools to experiment and make content of my own. I didn't expect to ship any of it, but it let me learn, experiment, and get help from more experienced coworkers. I actually ended up finding my background in economics (aka the study of how people make decisions) extremely useful. Design doesn’t start and end with “it would be cool if X!” - it’s about crafting interesting and challenging decisions for the player. Suddenly a background in a field that explores why people make decisions was paying off! Then, when a position in game design became available, I had a record of hard work in QA and a portfolio of independent design work that helped me secure the job. 

It’s important to note that when I started off learning about game design, it wasn't purely with the intent to find the job I eventually did, but rather to discover what it might be about the work that would have me waking up excited every day. The more I learned from working on and discussing games, the more I found that I was particularly interested in deep, mastery-filled PvP games. I was a big League player and when I stumbled across Zileas’ design anti-patterns post on the forums it opened my eyes to a different style of design. Riot seemed to be trying to build frameworks that provide analytical, objective ways to evaluate some design values, with counter-play being a good example. Of course, that style comes with its own frustrations - the worst part of iterating towards an ideal is you’re never able to actually reach it! Still, as I learned more about what things I value in a game and in a workplace, I realized Riot’s approach to design reflected my own values and that it was the place I wanted to be. 

Hopefully this provides some insight on the path and mindset that led me into game design! 

– Riot Wrekz, Game Designer"

Ranked updates now live 

The ranked changes mentioned in the latest Riot Pls have now been implemented, including premade restrictions for Diamond 5 - Master & Challenger and Autofill changes!

"We recently announced changes coming to ranked play including new premade restrictions at high tiers, autofill protection during promo series, and no back-to-back autofills. Here’s where we stand:

Premade Restrictions

Now active. Diamond 5 through Master tier no longer includes trios, leaving Solo or Duo options. Challenger players are additionally restricted to solo play. 

"Regardless of the fixes we’ve rolled out since the beginning of the 2016 ranked season, dynamic queue is still failing to meet player needs. More specifically, it’s undermined competitive integrity at the highest levels of play. We’re making a number of changes to ranked, starting with these two."  

• STREAM ON - Players from Diamond 5 through Master tier can choose to queue solo or duo with a teammate  

• LEAVE THE SWORD IN THE CAVE - To ensure accuracy at the top of the ladder, Challenger players are restricted to solo play

Autofill

Players in their promo series will be guaranteed one of the two roles they select later in this patch. Autofill has been introduced to normal draft queues. 

"We recognize that autofilling in promos undermines your ability to contribute your best when it matters most, so we’re preventing that from happening. But, autofill’s proven effective at reducing queue times, so we’ve added it to normal draft to help players still seeing excessive spikes during off-peak hours."  

• AUTO-THRILLED - When in promo series (between tier or division), players will be guaranteed one of their two selected roles 

• PROTECTION - Players can no longer be autofilled in back-to-back games  

• FILL ENABLED - Autofill has been enabled in normal draft for when queue times get excessive

The other upcoming adjustment mentioned in Riot Pls - tightening the decay rules in Challenger and Master tier - isn’t part of our 6.17 changes. We’ll be implementing these new rules in an upcoming patch. (...with better-timed Patch Notes. Whoops.)"

RMGQ - Hexakill: TT this weekend & updated schedule

Hexakill: Twisted Treeline returns this weekend in the rotating game mode queue!

"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 Monday (we’ll shut it down very early Tuesday morning--usually between 1:00 AM and 3:00 AM).

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 you may have seen above, One for All has been added to the schedule for September 16th - 19th.

Minion AI Rules Documentation 

Next up we have Riot Reinboom with a huge documentation post on how minion AI works in game!

"Hello! 

I’m Riot Reinboom and I’m here to drop some Sweet minion AI game documentation on you all. 

What? 

We’re sharing our understanding of how a bunch of weird behaviors of how lane minions work internally and figured it would be informative for you all as well. So, documentation. Exciting stuff. 

This won’t cover the behaviors of all minions and instead just covers lane minions (hereafter just referred to as minions). Primarily, this will focus on some of the more quiet features. This is all also Summoner’s Rift specific. Other maps and modes may change these rules (though, usually not). 

General Minion AI Rules 

Lane minions have a “list” of actions they check if they can execute, following through with the first valid action they reach and ignoring the ones after that. Minions always have a “goal” they’re trying to fulfill in some way. Even while walking, they’re actually moving towards a specific point that keeps changing as they get closer to it. 

The Behavior Sweep 

Every 0.25 seconds, each minion will go down a checklist of options until it finds a valid one to do. It won’t follow invalid actions, and it won’t follow actions after that. This means that in this list of options, the catch-all default option is last (walking towards a waypoint). 

AI Priority List 

• Follow any current specialized behavior rules, such as from CC (Taunts, Flees, Fears)
• Continue attacking (or moving towards) their current target if that target is still valid.
• If they have failed to attack their target for 4 seconds, they temporarily ignore them instead.
• Find a new valid target in the minion’s acquisition range to attack.
• If multiple valid targets, prioritize based on “how hard is it for me to path there?”
• Check if near a target waypoint, if so change the target waypoint to the next in the line.
• Walk towards the target waypoint. 

If a minion can’t follow any of these behaviors, it will do nothing. 

Minions have a lot of checks to note whether or not a target is valid or not. There’s obvious ones like “which team is the target on” but also non-obvious ones like “where on the map is my target”. Many of these will be covered further down. 

Interrupts 

There’s also a number of things that can occur between the 0.25 second interval of the normal sweep through the AI Priority List. There is no particular order to these. 

• Taunt/Fear/Flee/Movement Disable/Attack Disable. All of these cause a minion to freshly reevaluate its behavior (following the AI Priority List) immediately.
• Call for Help. Minions ‘hear’ signals from nearby minions and champions being attacked (even by other minions). This causes them to recalculate their current target and prioritize the attacker that caused the Call for Help.
• Collisions. Minions that end up overlapping other minions will reevaluate their behavior immediately. This usually causes them to shift around to get off each other.
• Their current attack target dies. Minions who witness the death of their foe will check for a new valid target in their acquisition range. 

Waypoints 

When lane minions spawn, they get assigned to a list of points (the waypoints) that follows their intended lane. 

By their default behavior, minions will always try to move towards the next waypoint. If they get near that point (with a rather large circle around for “near”), they will change their waypoint target to be the next in line. All waypoints eventually lead to the opposing nexus. 

For a lane, waypoints are the same for both teams. Each team just changes the direction it searches for the next waypoint in in the list. 

An example of some of the bottom lane waypoints and some lines showing the group they are in: 

Ranges 

Lane minions have three primary ranges: Collision, Attack, and Acquisition 

Here’s a melee minion showing all three of these ranges: 

Acquisition Range 

In the image above, Acquisition Range is represented by the largest circle (red).
When minions sweep for valid targets, they look only to this range and no further. 

Attack Range 

In the image above, Attack Range is represented by the second smallest circle (bright green).
When minions try to attack their target, they must first get them within this range. 

Collision Radius 

In the image above, the Collision Radius is represented by the smallest circle (black).
This is the radius for which all other ranges must reach in order to be valid on an opposing unit. In many games, this is also known as the hit box. 

Specialized AI Rules 

Minion behavior can change dependent on the area of the map they’re in and/or based on when they were spawned. The most important of these are: The First Minion Wave and Region Avoidance. 

First Minion Wave 

The first minion wave has modified behavior. This behavior difference is meant to ensure a that if the first minion wave goes untouched, the minions deaths in that lane are almost mirrored for both teams through at least the first minion wave. 

There’s a few things we need to control for in order to ensure a balanced outcome. These are: 

Minions update every 0.25 seconds. Increasing this isn’t reasonable as it strains the game servers to do so. Minions spawn with a notable gap between them and carry this pace when walking to lane. This gap means that when a minion finally sees an enemy minion, it sees only that enemy minion 

* Minions like to reevaluate their current target for potential better targets a lot. This is why their behavior feels erratic. This is primarily caused by Call for Help and Collision. 

There’s also some possible solutions we’ve tried in the past that show harder to pin issues of the AI. 

For example, when we made minions assign their initial targets at spawn it caused top lane and bottom lane minions to take a tighter turn to get to their target, pulling the whole wave closer to the river. 

In order to get minions dying in an orderly fashion early in the game, and dealing with the above constraints and discoveries, the first minion wave has numerous AI changes. 

“Distribute Fire” Prioritization 

The first minion wave prioritizes targets with fewer allies already targeting that enemy.
This causes them to naturally distribute their focus. 

Temporary Caster Minion Ignore 

When searching for their first target, they will ignore any caster minions they find. This ensures that a melee minion doesn’t run to the unfocused caster minion line when trying to distribute fire. 

Caster minions will still wake up a minion (see “Multiple Acquisition Ranges” below). If after 0.25 seconds a minion still hasn’t found a valid target other than the a caster minion, it loses the caster minion ignore rule. 

Ignore Allied Collision before lane 

The first minion wave ignores all allied collision before they pass the first turret. This ensures that allied champions can’t manipulate the specialized behaviors of the first minion wave. 

Radio Silence 

When getting a Call for Help from an allied minion or collision, the first minion wave minion that hears it will refuse to sweep its behavior again. This ensures they stay focused on their current target until its death. 

Multiple Behavior Shut-offs 

All of this specialized logic can be shut off from various game states. If a minion ever targets an enemy champion or hears a call from help caused by an enemy champion, it will reset to default minion AI. If a minion’s target ever dies, it will also reset to non-first minion wave behavior. This ensures that once lane action actually occurs, minions start acting normal again. 

This rule is especially important to ensure that the Radio Silence rule doesn’t cause minions to chase a champion forever. 

Multiple Acquisition Ranges 

Unlike the default minion behavior, the first minion wave has three different acquisition ranges: Wake Up Range, Acquisition Range, and First Acquisition Range. 

These are all used to solve a tricky math problem created by how minions are spawned. Minions are spawned with some time between each one, forming a line with a leading minion. This means that when the leading minion is finally within the acquisition range of an enemy minion, it is very likely the ONLY minion in that range at that time. The long delay on the sweeps (0.25 seconds) can cause more enemy minions to sometimes to be in range when the sweep finally occurs, making the whole thing very unpredictable. Distribute Fire can’t solve this alone if it’s unpredictable whether or not it gets enough minions to check. 

Wake Up Range: First wave minions spawn in an asleep state. While in this state, they ignore ALL behavior until directly interacted with or an enemy unit enters their Wake Up Range. It is smaller than the acquisition range. 

Acquisition Range: This is as normal (see way way above). 

First Acquisition Range: Immediately upon waking up, a minion will try to find its targets in this range instead of the normal acquisition range. This range is larger than the normal acquisition range. 

All of these together ensure that minions get a broad array of enemies to then check against its other behaviors for its very first target acquisition. 

Walking through this with screenshots should make it more clear. 

The minion hasn’t woken up, even though in this case it would ‘target’ the first minion normally.
Even with the ‘first acquisition range’ circle (the white circle), it would only choose between the first two minions.

Now that the minion finally has an enemy minion in its wakeup range (the blue circle), it “wakes up” and compares all the minions out to its first acquisition range (the white circle). 

It discovered the 3rd melee enemy minion has the least number of things targeting it, so it uses that as its preferred target. The opposite happened with that minion, effectively assigning them to each other. 

From here on only the red ring (and the attack ranges) of the minions really matter. This is the default acquisition range for minions and what every minion after the first minion wave uses always. 

Region Avoidance 

Following just the General Minion AI Rules, there is nothing to actually keep a minion from following an enemy through the river or jungle, across the map, and into other lanes as long as it keeps its target. 

In the past this meant you’d experience awkward “minion chase” scenarios through the jungle which finally ended only when the minion lost vision of your champion (most commonly through jungle brush). 

Since Season 2016, Lane Minions now avoid specific regions of the map. 

This rule is special because the solution is as obvious as it seems from a problem description standpoint: 

“Don’t chase into the river!” (or jungle or base perimeter). Unfortunately, that’s actually not a concept the game had until Season 2015. League of Legends game servers don’t have the models or art that you have when you play. The server actually sees things closer to this graphic (which is just a visual representation of some numbers it has): 

The solution we arrived at for this was “...it should just know where the river is.” (Random advice to other game developers out there: it helps to have tools reflect the mental leaps of your players.) 

So, we added more data to the map. 

This is what minions now use to figure out things like, “Hey, am I allowed to be here?” 

There’s a couple subtle rules for this though. 

1. Minions can still attack things when those things are inside regions the minion itself isn’t allowed in. These minions won’t acquire new targets that are already there, however.
2. Minions will drop all targets when that minion manages to get into the zone, even if that minion is already targeting something. 

The minion can lock on to Ahri because she’s in an area marked as a lane. (Rule 1)
(If Ahri was in the River, the minion wouldn’t be able to target her if it wasn’t already targeting her) 

It will continue to attack Ahri even when Ahri moves out of lane since it had already acquired her as a target. It will not acquire any new targets in the River however. (Rule 1) 

Once the minion exits the lane itself, it will drop all targets and refuse to acquire anymore targets until it gets back into lane. (Rule 2) 

And with these behaviors we can clearly mark some zones minions aren’t allowed in: Jungle. River. Base Perimeter."

When asked about hitboxes and collision radius, Reinboom explained:

"Quote:

Why do minions need a hitbox/ collision radius? Is this an essential part of the gameplay of League? SImple removing this would make minion blocking/ other minion bullshit a lot more tolerable to deal with. 

Or even just shrinking their collision radius. Are you currently satisfied with body-blocking / minion block? 

In other games (ie heroes of the storm) champion can effectivly hinder each other's movements by body blocking. This is not a thing in league, so why do minions have so much power in dictating champion movement? 

Hell even champions cant force enemies to path differently/ get stuck in this game, but the minions can?

Cheers.

Champions can and do have hitboxes themselves. 

Hitboxes are vital to all games of this type. It's what skillshots check against to hit, for example. 

If you want to shrink their collision radius, what you'll initially get is that minions will start stacking on top of each other. The "formations" they create (lines, clumps, etc.) is more a product of their collision radius than anything else. Without it, things start to get weird: 

For champion specific collision removal (ghost through minions) you start losing a lot of other gameplay. Manipulating a minion wave for lane defense or offense IS a skill test in League and it's a major contributor to how a lot of lanes play. There's a cost to Blitzcrank charging you directly with a clump of minions in his path. Annie needs to expose herself to skillshots to have a clean chance of landing a stun Q if she would otherwise need to go through the wave. 

There's even more significant abuse cases that removing champion to minion collision creates. For example, the aforementioned Annie can just stand inside a minion wave to be safe from skill shots in general." 

Pocket Picks: Doublelift's Lucian

Next we have a new POCKET PICKS discussing TSM Doublelift's Lucian play!

Pocket Picks is a series where pro League of Legends players share tips and tricks to help you master the champions closest to their hearts. This episode features TSM's AD carry Doublelift showing you how get the most out of his Pocket Pick, Lucian. 

Head to Lolesports.com to find even more Lucian advice from Doublelift and to download the Doublelift Lucian wallpaper illustration by Nips: [link]

Check out the full article on lolesports for more!

We /reply to your comments and questions /R /ALL Chat 

New /ALL Chat is also up, this week focuses on answering player questions!

"We’re bringing back /R to respond to your comments and questions! Where are all the hosts? Is the set really getting smaller? Should we redo Will It Jungle - Sona because Dash didn’t go attack speed?

Send your questions for the show to the hosts’ Twitters, or leave a comment here and we might answer it on the next edition of /R!"

REMINDERS

To round out tonight's red post collection, here are a few reminders on current promotions or limited time events!

• The six new SKT World Championship skins are  available in the shop through September 1st! These skins are legacy and will return to the shop in the future.

• There is currently a CHROMA FOR IP sale between August 25th and September 8th! This means all chroma released PRIOR TO AUGUST 2016 will be on sale for 2000 IP each  More information available here.

• To go along with his updated splash arts in 6.17, Hextech Sion (legacy) is back in the shop through September 24th and  there is a Sion skin bundle in the shop through August 31st!